William Faulkner, SANCTUARY – WordPress.com - literature save 2

were trying to touch him with all of her body-surface at once. He freed himself and thrust
her into the passage.
"Go on," he said. "I'll be there in a minute."
"You won't be long? I'm on fire. I'm dying, I tell you."
"No. Not long. Go on, now."
The music was playing. She moved up the corridor, staggering a little. She
thought that she was leaning against the wall, when she found that she was dancing again;
then that she was dancing with two men at once; then she found that she was not dancing
but that she was moving toward the door between the man with the chewing gum and the
one with the buttoned coat. She tried to stop, but they bad her under the arms; she opened
her mouth to scream, taking one last despairing look about the swirling room.
"Yell," the man with the buttoned coat said. "Just try it once."
Red was at the crap-table. She saw his head turned, the cup in his lifted hand.
With it he made her a short, cheery salute. He watched her disappear through the door,
between the two men. Then he looked briefly about the room. His face was bold and
calm, but there were two white lines at the base of his nostrils and his forehead was
damp. He rattled the cup and threw the dice steadily.
"Eleven," the dealer said.
"Let it lay," Red said. "I'll pass a million times tonight."
They helped Temple into the car. The man in the buttoned coat took the wheel.
Where the drive joined the lane that led to the highroad a long touring car was parked.
When they passed it Temple saw, leaning to a cupped match, Popeye's delicate hooked
profile beneath the slanted hat as he lit the cigarette. The match flipped outward like a
dying star in miniature, sucked with the profile into darkness by the rush of their passing.
XXV
The tables had been moved to one end of the dance floor. On each one was a black tablecloth.
The curtains were still drawn; a thick, salmon-colored light fell through them. Just
beneath the orchestra platform the coffin sat. It was an expensive one: black, with silver
fittings, the trestles hidden by a mass of flowers. In wreaths and crosses and other shapes
of ceremonial mortality, the mass appeared to break in a symbolical wave over the bier
and on upon the platform and the piano, the scent of them quickly oppressive.
The proprietor of the place moved about among the tables, speaking to the arrivals
as they entered and found seats. The negro waiters, in black shirts beneath their starched
jackets, were already moving in and out with glasses and bottles of ginger ale. They
moved with swaggering and decorous repression; already the scene was vivid, with a
hushed, macabre air a little febrile.
The archway to the dice-room was draped in black. A black pall lay upon the
crap-table, upon which the overflow of floral shapes was beginning to accumulate.
People entered steadily, the men in dark suits of decorous restraint, others in light, bright
shades of spring, increasing the atmosphere of macabre paradox. The women, the
younger ones, wore bright colors also, in hats and scarves; the older ones in sober gray