We hate Jay tonight. We hate man.

The craving for caresses. Wanting and fighting the want. Both frightened by the vagueness of their desire, the indefiniteness of their craving.

A rosary of question marks in their eyes.

Sabina whispered: "Let's take drugs tonight."

She pressed her strong knee against Lillian, she inundated her with the brilliance of her eyes, the paleness of her face.

Lillian shook her head, but she drank, she drank. No drink equal to the state of war and hatred. No drink like bitterness.

Lillian looked at Sabina's fortune teller's eyes, and at the taut profile.

"It takes all the pain away; it wipes out reality."

She leaned over the table until their breaths mingled.

"You don't know what a relief it is. The smoke of opium like fog. It brings marvelous dreams and gaiety. Such gaiety, Lillian. And you feel so powerful, so powerful and content. You don't feel any more frustration, you feel that you are lording it over the whole world with marvelous strength. No one can hurt you then, humiliate you, confuse you. You feel you're soaring over the world. Everything becomes soft, large, easy. Such joys, Lillian, as you have never imagined. The touch of a hand is enough...the touch of a hand is like going the whole way... And time...how time flies. The days pass like an hour. No more straining, just dreaming and floating. Take drugs with me, Lillian."

Lillian consented with her eyes. Then she saw that Sabina was looking at the Arab merchant who stood by the door with his red Fez, his kimono, his slippers, his arms loaded with Arabian rugs and pearl necklaces. Under the rugs protruded a wooden leg with which he was beating time to the jazz.

Sabina laughed, shaking her whole body with drunken laughter. "You don't know, Lillian... this man... with his wooden leg... you never can tell... he may have some. There was a man once, with a wooden leg like that. He was arrested and they found that his wooden leg was packed with snow. I'll go and ask him."

And she got up with her heavy, animal walk, and talked to the rug merchant, looking up at him alluringly, begging, smiling up at him in the same secret way she had of smiling at Lillian. A burning pain invaded Lillian to see Sabina begging. But the merchant shook his head, smiled innocently, shook his head firmly, smiled again, offered his rugs and the necklaces.

When she saw Sabina returning empty handed, Lillian drank again, and it was like drinking fog, long draughts of fog.

They danced together, the floor turning under them like a phonograph record. Sabina dark and potent, leading Lillian.

A gust of jeers seemed to blow through the place. A gust of jeers. But they danced, cheeks touching, their cheeks chalice white. They danced and the jeers cut into the haze of their dizziness like a whip. The eyes of the men were insulting them. The eyes of men called them by the name the world had for them. Eyes. Green, jealous. Eyes of the world. Eyes sick with hatred and contempt. Caressing eyes, participating. Eyes ransacking their conscience. Stricken yellow eyes of envy caught in the flare of a match. Heavy torpid eyes without courage, without dreams. Mockery, frozen mockery from the frozen glass eyes of the loveless.