Jersey, and up to a year ago she got the right to breathe by
pushing Nabiscoes in Marcel's tea-room in Trenton. She started
going with a guy named Robbins, a singer in the Trent House
cabaret, and he got her to try a song and dance with him one
evening. In a month we were filling the supper-room every night.
Then we went to New York with meet-my-friend letters thick as a
pile of napkins.

"In two days we landed a job at Divinerries', and I learned to
shimmy from a kid at the Palais Royal. We stayed at Divinerries'
six months until one night Peter Boyce Wendell, the columnist,
ate his milk-toast there. Next morning a poem about Marvellous
Marcia came out in his newspaper, and within two days I had
three vaudeville offers and a chance at the Midnight Frolic. I
wrote Wendell a thank-you letter, and he printed it in his
column--said that the style was like Carlyle's, only more
rugged and that I ought to quit dancing and do North American
literature. This got me a coupla more vaudeville offers and a
chance as an ingenue in a regular show. I took it--and here I
am, Omar."

When she finished they sat for a moment in silence she draping
the last skeins of a Welsh rabbit on her fork and waiting for
him to speak.

"Let's get out of here," he said suddenly.

Marcia's eyes hardened.

"What's the idea? Am I making you sick?"