It was afternoon. Mrs. Basine listened to Judge Smith explaining the new

moving pictures that were being shown at the vaudeville theaters.

"It's all part of the craze for new things," he was saying, "and these

awful pictures are merely a fad. There is nothing of basic appeal for

Americans in them and they'll die out in a year or so."

Mrs. Basine was always impressed by the judge. He had three days before

been on one of his debauches. His manner as a result was heavier and his

words slower. After one of his wild nights the judge sought to efface

the memory of the uncleanliness by heightening his personal appearance.

He would indulge himself in Turkish baths, facial massages, hair

shampoos, manicures and changes of linen during the day.

The sight of himself immaculately dressed, spotless, his face, collar,

nails and shoes shining, gave him a feeling of reassurance. Clothes and

appearance had more and more become a fetish with him until he had

developed into a fop. There was a certain passion in his demand for

cleanliness. A disordered tie would mysteriously depress him. A spot on

his trousers or shoes would preoccupy him until its removal. Once while

on his way from the theater he had been splashed by a horse. Unaware of

the accident at the time he had gone to a restaurant. There he had

noticed the condition of his clothes. The mud had reached as high as his

shoulder. A nausea overcome him. He hurried to the lavatory and cleaned

his clothes.

His daughter admired her father for his fastidiousness. She looked upon

all other men as somewhat sloppy in comparison.

"It isn't just that father dresses well," she said, "but he's so

particular about everything. About his plates and forks, and his bedroom

must be bright as a new pin. Oh, it's just wonderful for a man to be

thoroughly clean like that."

Although the judge had spoken to Mrs. Basine it was her son who

answered.

"I saw the pictures at the vaudeville the other evening," he said, "and

I quite agree with you, Judge."

The judge nodded pleasantly. He liked Basine and had already prophesied

a future for him. Henrietta was informing Doris of the trouble they were

having with the church choir.

"Dr. Blossom," she was saying, "is just absolutely at his wits' end. We

can't get anybody ... anybody at all that's at all suitable."

"Mrs. Gilchrist and Aubrey are coming over," Mrs. Basine remarked to the

judge. She was unable to keep a sound of pride out of her voice.

"A very fine woman. An exceptionally fine woman," he answered. Mrs.

Basine nodded.

Basine sat down beside his sister Doris. He was interested in Henrietta.

The news of her approaching engagement had exhilarated this interest. He

had been a half-hearted wooer himself when he first came out of college.

As she rattled on he was thinking, "She has nice eyes. She probably

doesn't love Aubrey." He thought of Aubrey. A putty-faced, swell-headed

fool. He could put it all over him, even as a writer, if he wanted to.

"I hear," he said aloud, "that you and Aubrey are engaged or almost

engaged."

"Why the idea! Gracious!" A disturbed giggle. "Where on earth did you

hear that! Father hasn't announced it yet."

"A little bird," smiled Basine. Doris looked at him and frowned.

"What do you say we pop some corn," he announced.

One of Basine's most engaging facilities was an ability to reflect in

his own words and actions the character of those to whom he talked.

Judge Smith regarded him as a young man of stable ideas and profound

seriousness. Henrietta looked upon him as a charming, light-hearted

youth who was able "to play." There were others to whom he appealed

separately as a young man of culture, modern to his finger tips; as a

man of pious kindliness; as a man interested exclusively in politics, in

economics, in literature, in women. His pose was seemingly at the mercy

of his audience. He did not deliberately seek to make himself agreeable

by presenting exteriors acceptable to his friends. His proteanism was in

the main unconscious. It was the result of an underlying desire to

impress men and women he knew with his superiority.

He had found instinctively that a short cut to such impression was not

contradictions but agreement. But he would not merely say "yes" and

please his listener by subscribing whole-heartedly to the ideas or

points of view under discussion. He would take these ideas and points of

view and develop them, show with a sincere creative enthusiasm why they

were correct and how astoundingly correct they were.

He was usually cleverer than the people with whom he agreed. This made

it possible for him to develop their ideas, to add to them, supply them

with nuances and far-reaching overtones of which their originators had

had no inkling. When he had finished they would find themselves warmly

applauding what he had said, admiring his sanity and intelligence.

It was no longer Basine who agreed with them. They agreed with Basine

and each of them went away saying, "A remarkable young man. Full of very

fine, worthwhile ideas and able to express himself."

They were conscious while praising him that they were also praising

themselves. Although they were unaware of the adroit theft committed by

Basine and unable to follow the way in which he filched their little

prejudices and inflated them to noble proportions with his cleverness,

they felt a kinship with the young man. Their inferior egoism did not

demand recognition as collaborator. They were warmed with the emotion of

being _en rapport_ with someone whom they admired. So often clever

people were people with whom, somehow, one had little or nothing in

common. But Basine was a clever person with whom everyone seemingly had

everything in common. And they were delighted to have things in common

with a clever man.

There were occasions on which Basine's cleverness was put to a difficult

test. These came when a number of people, each of whom knew him

differently, to each of whom he had identified himself as a champion of

divergent opinions, assembled in his presence. Basine, it usually

happened, was the friend in common and therefore the pivot of the vague

debates which sometimes started--the awkward exchange of half-remembered

arguments which constituted the intellectual life of his friends, as the

make-believe of "playing house" had constituted their adult life when

they were children.

But at such times Basine revealed his interesting talents as a

compromiser, fence straddler, pacifier. Without espousing any of the

sides presented, without denial or affirmation, he managed to convince

the assembledge that he was a champion of all and detractor of none. He

pretended a worldly tolerance, saying such things as:

"Well now, there are always two sides to a question. And a man who

closes his mind to either side is likely as not to find himself in the

dark. What Henning says is interesting. I can entirely understand it

and see the reasons for it. He sees the thing in a clear, definite

manner. Yet what Stoefel says is also interesting and, of course,

entertaining. I don't mean that I believe two sides to a question can

both be the right sides. But it's my experience that there's an element

of truth as well as of error in both sides. And I'm not so convinced

that Henning and Stoefel actually differ. Often people meaning the same

thing get into violent arguments because they misunderstand each other."

In this way he would convince both his friends that they were both men

of intelligence, which is more flattering than being merely men of

intelligent views. And, what was more important, he would give the

listeners the impression of a calm, deliberative Basine, not to be taken

in by the tricks of prejudice and speech which caused men to knock their

heads together in endless argument.

Henrietta accompanied him into the kitchen in quest of corn to pop.

Doris remained behind, staring disinterestedly at the judge who was

talking to her mother. She had noticed something about the man that

displeased her. She kept it, however, to herself. When he shook hands

with her he assumed a paternal manner. He said to her:

"Well, my dear child, and how are you today? Serious as ever, I see. I

understand that you and my little girl had quite an interesting time at

the choir practice Saturday evening. Dear me, you will both soon be

grown up and young ladies before I'm aware of it."

He talked with a kittenish banter in his voice as if he were patting a

child of five on the head. But he held her hand during his entire

speech and his soft finger tips pressed moistly into her palm. It was

hard at first to detect but after a long time Doris understood. Fanny

had told her in an unsolicited confession that young men did that when

they wanted to be familiar with a girl. It was a familiarity which only

bad girls understood. Fanny added that a number of nice men whom she

never would have suspected of such a low thing had done that to her hand

but that the way to get the better of them was merely to pretend you

didn't know anything about it.

Doris, disgusted by her sister's chatter, had remembered Judge Smith.

The judge always did that, ... moving his finger tips as if he were

unaware of the fact. This afternoon he had done it again. She had never

been able to see the judge as her mother and brother saw him. To Doris

there was something intangibly repulsive about his flabby, smooth-shaven

face, about his shining linen and deliberate manner that impressed

everybody. She did not resent the things he said. To these she was, in

fact, indifferent. But the man's personality awakened a revulsion in

her. She did not explain it to herself. She was aware only that she felt

uncomfortable when he looked at her and that when he beamed his

kindliest or boomed most virtuously, she felt like sinking lower in her

chair and contorting her face with shame, not for herself but for him.

Basine and Henrietta had returned to the room. A grate fire was burning

wanly. Basine, squatting down like an elated boy, arranged a cushion for

her.

"Oh, we've forgotten the thingumabob," he exclaimed, "come help me find

that."

Henrietta skipped excitedly after him. Moments like this were dear to

Henrietta. Looking for thingumabobs, planning popcorn feasts, having

lots of fun and in a way that was intelligent. In the kitchen Basine

searched for a minute and then turned to the girl with a laugh.

"I wanted to ask you something," he said. "That's why I lured you out

again."

"For heaven's sake! Gracious! Aren't you ashamed of yourself, George

Basine!"

She laughed with him. The thought had secured to him that it would be

interesting to take Henrietta away from Aubrey. He didn't want her

himself for any particular purpose. She was not a girl one could seduce,

or even desired to seduce. And marriage was miles from his head.

Yet he had once held her hand while sitting on her father's porch and

whispered idiotic things to her. He had made love to her, said to her,

"Henny dear, I'm wild about you." It annoyed him to think that Aubrey

Gilchrist would marry her, would appropriate her as if the things he,

Basine, had said and done were of no possible consequence. In addition

he had always disliked Aubrey.

"Henny," he said quickly, he had called her Henny two years before, "are

you really in love with Aubrey?"

Henrietta made a face and swung her shoulders like a child embarrassed.

Like Keegan, he was physically tired from his night's debauch. But in

Basine there was no impulse to repent. As he stood looking at the girl

he grew curiously sensual in his thought.

The consciousness of his deadened nerves was an irritant to his vanity.

He was always doing things he felt disinclined to do, as a result of his

constant work of idealization. Also, to follow one's impulse and act

logically was what everyone did in a way. If Hugh Keegan was tired he

sighed and said so. But Basine, if he was tired, would laugh and suggest

adventures. If Keegan or the others he knew were elated over something,

they announced it, naively, like children. But Basine edited his elation

and often pretended to be bored. And when he was actually bored he often

pretended enthusiasm.

Such odd perversions had become a habit with Basine. Behind the

confusion of purpose that inspired them was a certainty that in acting

the way he did he distinguished himself from other people. Often no one

was aware, of course, that he was acting, that his enthusiasm was the

heroic mask of weariness. But Basine was enough of an egoist to enjoy

secretly the emotion of superiority.

Because he was tired and because he would have preferred ignoring the

trim figure laughing beside him, he deliberately took her hand and

allowed his smile to grow serious. Now as he looked at her and saw her

eyes soften, his vanity clamored for satisfaction. It was one of the

moments in his life when his vanity most desired satisfaction, proof of

the high opinions he held of himself. He was tired, bored and without

impulses.

To dominate others, to possess himself of their regard and homage was

the goal toward which he always built. Now the desire to possess himself

of the regard and homage of the girl whose hand he was holding came

acutely into his thought.

"Henny," he whispered, "I'm sorry about you and Aubrey."

"Why?"

This was the sort of boy and girl scene at which she was almost adept.

People held hands and even kissed without altering the correct social

tone or content of their talk.

"Because," said Basine, "Oh well, because I love you."

The phrase stirred, as it always did, a faint emotion in his heart. He

had used it frequently, even with prostitutes, and it had always given

him a fugitive sense of exaltation. Walking alone in the street at night

he would sometimes whisper aloud, "I love you, George. Oh, I love you

so." He would have no one in mind whom he might be quoting at the

moment. The words would come and utter themselves and give him a sudden

lift of spirit. It was like his other self-conversation when walking

along swiftly in the street he would begin exclaiming under his breath,

"Wonderful ... wonderful ... wonderful...." The word like his

mysterious, "I love you, George" came without cause or relation to his

thoughts and repeated itself on his lips.

Henrietta was staring at him. It was chiefly because she was surprised.

She remembered that they had been friends once and held hands and that

he had said things. But all that had been a part of a pretty game one

played with boys, because they liked it and because it was rather

likable in itself. She was surprised now because he looked sad. Sadness

in her mind was synonymous with seriousness. People were never serious

unless they were sad. When she wanted to be serious she would always

lower her eyes and arrange her expression as if she were going to weep.

Then people understood that what she said was really truly serious and

not just part of the game people were always playing among themselves. A

game in which nothing was serious or funny or anything--but just was.

Because that was the way it should be.

Basine was pulling her slowly toward him.

"Don't you love me?" he asked. "Don't you love me at all?"

He was talking aloud to conceal the fact that he had drawn her to him

and was placing his arms around her. To do anything like that in silence

would have frightened Henrietta. But to talk while one was doing it,

that made it seem less definite. One could ignore what one was doing,

ignore the hands pressing one's shoulders and the touching of bodies by

pretending to interest one's self entirely in the conversation.

Basine knew this because he had made love to girls and taken liberties.

As long as he kept talking and asking questions the girl would pretend

she was so occupied in answering the questions and keeping up socially

her end of the talk that she was oblivious to the liberties that were

being taken with her.

Henrietta answered, "Why do you ask that? Do you really think you ought

to ask me questions like that, George Basine?"

"Yes I do," he said, "why shouldn't I?"

"Oh because. Because you're engaged to Marion."

"Who told you that?"

"I know. Anybody could know that. Aren't you?"

"No more than you are to Aubrey."

"Gracious! Aren't you the clever boy. I declare! Engaged to Aubrey!

Heavens, I'd like to know where you heard that."

"A little bird told me."

"It did not."

"Yes it did."

"You know better than that, George Basine. I wish you'd tell me really."

"Why should I."

"I'd like to know, that's why. I think I have a right to know."

"Oh but I did tell you something. I told you I love you."

"Why, George Basine!"

During the talk Basine had moved her closer to him. His arms were

tightly around her and he had kissed her eyes and cheeks between his

questions and answers. The embrace had aroused no physical desire in

him. He was irritated by the coolness of his nerves. He was irritated at

his being unable to feel anything with his arms around a pretty girl.

Usually the incident would have reached its climax with the half kiss he

placed on her mouth. That was as far as good girls went. At this point

they ordinarily said something like, "Listen, I want to tell you

something. I almost forgot." And gently detaching themselves from one's

arms, continued to talk in the same tone they had used during the

embrace about some event that had occurred during the week.

And then one returned to the sitting room and went on talking casually

as if nothing had happened. It was the height of bad taste to remind a

good girl today that one had kissed her yesterday or to presume upon it

in any way. It was the height of bad taste also to resist when they

gently pushed one away and said, "Listen, I want to tell you something.

I almost forgot."

Basine knew the simple technique of these virginal intrigues.

Henrietta's hands were pressing him. This was the signal to release her

and pretend that nothing had happened. Ordinarily Basine would have

complied. He had no interest in the girl. His original impulse to take

her from Aubrey had slipped from his mind.

But he had grown sad. The mild sensual moment he would usually have

experienced in the embrace had been missing. His tired nerves had not

responded. Unable to exhilarate his senses he sought to make up for the

failure by treating his vanity to an exhilaration. This exhilaration

would come if the girl he was holding grew suddenly sad, raised wide

eyes to him and in a shamed voice murmured, "I love you, George. Oh, I

love you so."

He would make her do this.

"Oh, Henny. Why don't you love me? I want you so much all the time."

"Why George Basine!"

She had suspected something different about the game when it started.

And this was different. Even with Aubrey it had not been as different as

this. Aubrey's mother and her father had decided upon the engagement

after Aubrey had been fussing her for a few weeks.

But this was different. George Basine was in love with her! She had

always liked him because her father said he was a fine, promising young

man and because he knew how to play, and was really like herself in many

ways. She wondered what she should do. She felt worried because she was

afraid she would say something that wasn't right.

She couldn't ask him to let her go because he was only holding her

lightly and she could move away if she wanted to. She thought his eyes

were sad and she felt suddenly sorry for him. He had stopped talking and

his eyes were sad. They were looking at her and they made her feel sad,

too. Things were so different when one felt sad. Everything seemed to go

away then and nothing remained. Everything went away and left one a

little frightened. As if the world were unreal and everybody was unreal

and nothing really was.

She was frightened like that now. Or at least she thought it was fear.

Then she saw it was something else. Her heart had started to pound hard

and her throat fluttered inside. No one had ever looked at her like

this. So seriously. As if she were somebody very serious. It made her

feel strange. She grew dizzy and her arms felt weak. She whispered his

name and his hands crept over her cheeks. This thrilled her as if there

were electricity in his fingers. And frightened her again. But it was

nice. Like being a little girl, almost a baby, and falling into an older

man's arms--her father's arms. She could almost remember being a little

girl and lying in her father's arms.

"Do you love me?"

She would answer this time.

"Yes," she said. "Oh George."

She hid her face against his coat. Basine was careful not to embrace

her. Her "yes" had given him an inexplicable moment. He had felt himself

expand under it. In her unexpected submission--he had never dreamed of

such a thing ten minutes ago--she became suddenly someone who was very

rare and sweet. He was still utterly oblivious of her and had it turned

out to be Marion in his arms instead of Henrietta the difference would

have made no change in him. The thing that was rare and sweet was the

exhilaration in his senses--a purely spiritual exhilaration. He enjoyed

it as one might enjoy some unforeseen and startling gift.

He grew tender. He wanted to kiss the eyes and hair of her who had given

this gift to him--the thing which felt so warm in his heart and tingled

so pleasantly in his thought. He must reward her somehow for having

stirred in him this delicious excitement, reward her for the sweet

surfeit her surrender had given his vanity. For a moment bewildered by

this inner desire to express the gratitude he felt, he stood trembling.

"Oh, I love you so, my darling," he whispered. "You're so beautiful."

It was her reward for having surrendered to his unspoken demand. It was

an expression of the overwhelming generosity that choked him. He found

in the saying of the words a sweetness almost as keen as her surrender

had afforded him. To hear himself say to someone, "I love you," was

mysteriously exhilarating. The thrill that accompanied his bestowal of

largesse excited him to further experiment. He was not carried away but

he relished the emotions between them, the sense of having triumphed

and the provoking sense of bestowing grandiose reward.

"Darling, tell me ... please tell me--will you marry me?"

"Oh George!"

"Tell me ... tell me...."

He was acting now, making his voice dramatic, pretending uncontrollable

longings. She must say "Yes." He wanted her to and she must. He did not

want to marry her. The thought had never occured to him. But it would be

unbearable now unless she said "Yes." He must pretend and act and make

the thing end by her saying "Yes."

"Oh, I can't tell you, George dear."

"You must, please...."

He had decided now finally to make her. A contest of wills. If he wanted

a yes there must be a yes. Because he wanted it. His arms crushed her.

He fastened against her. He felt her resisting. There was still no

desire in him. His arms were still dead. But he could brook no

resistance. The fact of resistance was unimportant but the idea of being

resisted fired him with a passion entirely cerebral. He would warm her

into saying yes, stir her senses, make her yield and her head swim until

she said yes.

"I love you. Please say it. Say yes."

Yes to what? Henrietta for an instant awoke from the confusions of the

past few minutes. Her morality, training, code of life and all sat up

like a wary censor and surveyed the scene. The censor nodded an

affirmation. It was all right. Go ahead. With this affirmation her body

took fire. The weakness she had been struggling against became a

beautiful enervation--a lassitude that swept her unresistingly forward.

She had never done this before. She struggled for a moment to recall the

censor--the thing that had always directed her. But she seemed to have

been deserted. She was alone with sensations.

Her virginal mind was unable to identify the excitement rising in her.

She waited while his caresses grew bolder. Then in a panic, born of a

dim realization, she flung her arms passionately around Basine and

sobbed.

"Yes.... Yes.... Oh George.... I will...."

She felt at once that she had said it just in time--that it would have

been sinful to continue another moment without promising she would marry

him.

Basine released her slowly. The incident abruptly was over. He had in

fact lost interest in it immediately before she had spoken. The thrill

had come, developed and gone--a spiritual exaltation which he had

enjoyed to the utmost.

But now it was over. His vanity, surfeited, had withdrawn from the

situation. He was surprised to find himself looking at the girl with

utter dispassion, as if nothing had happened.

Inwardly he was amused. Such things were amusing, in a way. Moments in

which one saw oneself as an outrageous actor, doing something

ridiculous. It was like that now. Absurd. But it had been pleasant.

Curious, how pleasant. However, that was over. Henrietta would of course

forget about it. And he, he was prepared to return to the library and go

on popping corn as if nothing had happened, absolutely nothing.

But Henrietta leaned weakly against his arm.

"Oh George, darling. Do you really love me?"

He answered out of a social respect for consistency and nothing else. He

thought the question rather tactless. Of course he didn't love her and

she should have known better than to ask it. It had just been a game

they had played while looking for the thingumabob.

"Yes, Henny, of course."

Her eyes were wide and her lips quivered. She was looking at him as if

he were doing something remarkable and she overcome with astonishment.

For an instant Basine wondered why the deuce she looked that way. Then

he felt an unexpected chill that he dismissed promptly with an inwardly

reassuring smile as he heard her saying.

"Oh, we'll be so happy together when we're married. Isn't it wonderful,

just too wonderful for words to be married--together. Oh George! I'm so

happy.... I love you so much. And father will be so...."

6

They had not expected Mr. Gilchrist to come. Mr. Gilchrist was an

undersized, mild little man with greying sideburns. When he was alone he

read a great deal.

He had made money in the selling of expensive furniture. He was part

owner of a store in Wabash Avenue. It was generally understood that

people with taste patronized the Gilchrist-Warren establishment.

He arrived at the Basines' with his wife and his son Aubrey. Keegan and

Fanny had returned from a long walk. They and the judge, Henrietta,

Basine and his mother and sister Doris all expressed surprise at seeing

Mr. Gilchrist. There was always about Mr. Gilchrist the air of a museum

piece--a quaint museum piece such as a keen but sentimental collector

might delight in.

The exclamations of surprise embarrassed the little man and he stood

fingering his sideburns and trying to smile in just the correct way. Mr.

Gilchrist's arrival anywhere always precipitated this air of surprise.

People said, "Why, Mr. Gilchrist! Awfully glad to see you! Haven't seen

you for an age. Well! How are you?"

This was as if they were extremely surprised. But they weren't. They

were merely annoyed, upset, vaguely hostile and condescending. And these

emotions inspired by the innocent Mr. Gilchrist could be best concealed

by the feigning of a correct social astonishment.

To the queries shot at him Mr. Gilchrist answered, "Very well, thank

you. Thank you. Very well, thank you."

After greeting him with these exclamation points, people immediately

forgot he was present. Mr. Gilchrist would sit the rest of the evening

ignored by everybody and trying to the end to smile in just the correct

way.

Inside Mr. Gilchrist were many little lonelinesses. His head was full of

things he had read, of plots, of great characters, even of epigrams and

biting iconoclasms. When people talked he did his best to be attentive.

And if they talked about things that interested him--the Kings of

France, the Italian wars of the fifteenth century, the topography of

early London and kindred subjects--his face would tremble with

enthusiasms.

He would listen, his eyes questing eagerly for epigrams, for

illuminating sentences he might contribute. But his unegoistic love for

the subject would make him inarticulate. His eyes that had seemed about

to speak of themselves, that had seemed laden with excited informations

would close and a chuckle would come from his lips. The Caesars, the

Borgias, the Medicis, the Bourbons, the Valois, Savonarola, Richelieu,

the various Charles, Phillips, Williams, Henrys, the plumed headliners

of history around whom had centered the hurdy-gurdy intrigues, the

circus romances and wars of vanished centuries--these were the

hail-fellows of his imagination.

But people seldom talked of these names. People were more interested in

contemporary topics. He did his best to be attentive. But his thought

played truant and before he knew it he would be going over secretly

certain things in his head. Villon, Marlowe, Balzac, Dumas, Gautier,

Suetonius--there was a rabble of them continually arguing and declaiming

in Mr. Gilchrist's head.

He liked to half close his eyes and imagine what the great names used to

have for breakfast, what the great names would say if he were to enter

their presence or if they were to come into this room. He liked to bring

up in his mind pictures of old Paris, London, Florence, Avignon, Vienna

with their lopsided roofs, winding alleys, night watchmen and king's

guards. He could sit a whole evening this way thinking, "then he came to

an old Inn and there were lights inside. People drinking inside, telling

stories and laughing. The inn-keeper was a man named Simon. The curious

stranger looked about him with an imperious eye...."

These words murmuring in his head would conjure up the picture and there

would be no further need for words. He was content to sit in the old

inn, noticing its quaint decorations, its quaint but romantic inmates.

Adventures would follow, strange episodes, denouements, climaxes--all

without words as if he were watching a cinemategraph. His attempted

smile would remain--a smile that concealed the fact he was neither

smiling at those around him nor aware of what they were saying. For he

would only half hear the chatter of the room and now and then nod his

head vaguely at some question that people were answering--as if he too

were answering it.

He was almost sixty, and lonely because he knew of no one to whom he

could talk. His wife in particular was a person to whom he never dreamed

of talking. He had only a dim idea of what he wanted to say to someone.

But all his life he had been hoping to meet this one who would be like

himself. This someone would be a friend whom he could take with him into

places like the old inn and the crazily twisting streets of old London

or Paris.

His days and years passed however without bringing him this companion.

And outwardly he remained a mild little figure with sideburns, kindly

tolerant toward everyone.

When his dreams left him long enough to enable him to notice closely

those about him, a feeling of sadness would come. He would feel sorry

for the men and women he saw gesturing and heard talking and laughing.

He thought they must be like himself--looking for something. His faded

eyes would peer caressingly from behind his glasses and he would make

simple little remarks in an apologetic voice. He would ask what they had

been doing and when they answered in their careless, matter-of-fact ways

he would nod hopefully and appear pleased.

To see Mr. Gilchrist in the midst of his family was to be convinced of

the plausibility of immaculate conception. It was difficult imagining

Mr. Gilchrist ever having done anything which might have resulted in

fatherhood. But more than that, it was impossible even suggesting to

oneself that his wife had ever received the embraces of a man, had ever

so far forgotten the proprieties as to permit herself to be trapped

alone with a man.

Thus the presence of Aubrey, their son, became incongruous. And Aubrey

himself helped this illusion. He was a young man who looked incongruous.

He seemed like a hoax or at least a caricature. He had enormous feet and

ungainly legs, large hands and pipe-stem arms, hips like a woman and a

face capriciously modeled out of soft putty. His ugliness by itself

would have been whimsical--his protruding eyes, long pointed nose,

uneven cheeks and bulbous chin hinted at something waggish.

But Aubrey had triumphed over his physical self. He had with the aid of

a pair of large glasses from which dangled a black silk cord, and by

holding his head thrown back as if there were a crick in his neck,

acquired an air of dignity. It was his habit to glower with dignity, to

stare with dignity and to preserve a dignified inanimation when he was

silent. He was pigeon breasted and this helped. In fact his many slight

deformities seemed all to contribute somehow toward making him a man of

inspiring dignity.

People had little use for Mr. Gilchrist, his father. He was, of course,

wealthy but not wealthy enough to earn the regard of the poor. They

discussed him, saying, "He's not so simple as he pretends he is. Any man

who's made a pile like old Gilchrist in the furniture business has a

pretty smart head."

And they added that they wouldn't be surprised if something eventually

were found out about old man Gilchrist. He had a past. Of this people

were convinced. It was his wife's position and the fear of her

personality that protected Mr. Gilchrist from the downright attacks of

rumor. Any man who pretended to be as kindly as Mr. Gilchrist and who

talked so tolerantly about everybody and everything was, you could bank

on it, a sly rogue afraid to say what he thought because he himself was

guilty of worse sins than those under discussion.

Mr. Gilchrist, by seeming above the social agitations surrounding him

came to appear as one who looked down tolerantly upon inferiors--and

this annoyed people. Who was Mr. Gilchrist and what had he done that he

should be giving himself airs? Of course--there was Aubrey and....

Aubrey was aloof and dignified. But that was to be expected of a man who

worked with his brain all the time, inventing plots and characters--his

friends explained. In fact Aubrey's silences thrilled them even more

than his talk. They felt, when he sat silent, that they were witnessing

the birth in his head of some great idea which they would later read in

a book. Aubrey was a man of superior qualities and to bask in the

presence of a superior was to partake of his superiority.

Aubrey's superiority consisted, so far as Aubrey was concerned, of

wearing the proper kind of eye-glasses, keeping his neck stiff,

refraining from giving utterance to all the asininities which crowded

his tongue and writing romances containing heroes with whom a

half-million women readers had imaginary affairs every night and

heroines whom another half-million men ravished in their dreams. For

Aubrey was a celebrated popular fiction writer. To conceal the horrible

reasons which made for the celebrity of Aubrey's fiction, the army of

literary morons who succumbed to its influence grew louder and louder in

their protestations that Aubrey was a great moral writer. They pointed

out that here was a man whose heroines were pure, whose heroes were

noble and virtuous--neglecting to add that these were the only kind of

phantoms which could penetrate the guard of their own puritanism and

stir the erotic impulses beneath.

Aubrey's superiority was, for the most part, a state of mind that

existed among the people who knew him or had heard of him or read of

him. And this attitude toward him became part of Aubrey. He adopted it

as the major side of his character and lived chiefly in the opinions of

others. His introspection consisted of reading press notices about

himself and thinking of what other people thought of him. Thus to

understand Aubrey it was necessary to go outside him and to investigate

this external state of mind, the ready-made robes of purple in which his

little thoughts strutted through the day.

The people in whose acclaim Aubrey robed himself were varied and many

but they inhabited an identical psychological stratum. They believed

firmly that all artists and writers were poor, starving, unhappy

creatures.

This belief was borne out in their minds by history--such history as

they permitted themselves to know. History was continually telling of

geniuses who died in garrets, of great minds that could not make enough

money to feed or clothe their bodies. In fact one of the shrewdest ways

to tell whether a man was a genius--that is, had been a genius--was to

determine whether he had been neglected during his life and died of

malnutrition and disappointment.

The people who acclaimed Aubrey found a compensation in this. They liked

to assure themselves that geniuses starved to death. This compensated

them for the fact that they themselves were not geniuses. It made them

feel that it was actually a vital misfortune to be gifted, since being

gifted meant to suffer the neglect of one's fellows and the pangs of

hunger.

But the knowledge that genius was neglected and hungry in no way

inspired them to remedy the situation by recognizing its presence and

feeding it. To the contrary they were determined to see that it remained

neglected and hungry. The idea of struggling long-haired poets dressed

in rags pleased them. The idea of long-haired painters living on crumbs

in attics gave them peculiar satisfaction.

Geniuses were people different from themselves. They believed in

different things and pretended to be excited by different emotions and

lived different lives. And the people who acclaimed Aubrey were pleased

to know that there was a penalty attached to being different from

themselves and they were interested in seeing that this penalty was not

removed. By penalizing the different ones whom they sensed as superiors,

they increased the value of their own inferiorities.

Yet they acclaimed Aubrey and there was no malice in their acclaim. This

was a phenomenon that had once startled Aubrey. Long ago, when he had

first started to write, his family's friends had said, "Poor boy, he'll

starve to death. There's no money in being an author and you lead a

terrible life."

But Aubrey had gone ahead and remained an author. He had written, at the

beginning, rather biting if sophomoric things, inspired by the malice he

sensed toward his profession. But the inspiration had not been

sufficiently strong to handicap him. When success had come and his name

was emerging, the people who knew him and who had talked maliciously

about his trying to be an author, were the first to acclaim him. This

thing had confused Aubrey. He had felt that the public was a curious

institution and he had for a few months wondered about it.

People sneered at struggling writers and referred with withering humor

to art as "all bunk" and indignantly denounced its immorality. Then when

one put oneself over despite their sneers they turned around and

congratulated one as if one had done something of which they heartily

approved. It was as if they tried to make up for their previous

attitude, and for a few months Aubrey cherished a cynical image of the

public. It was a great bully that spat and snarled at genius, refusing

to recognize it and making it a laughing stock wherever it could. But as

soon as genius came through, this same bully of a public turned around

and prostrated itself and worshipped blindly at its feet.

Then Aubrey had spent the few months wondering why this was so. But he

had become too busy to do much thinking. His publishers were demanding

more work--so he let other matters drop. His curiosity had carried him

to the brink of an idea and he had somewhat impatiently turned his back

on it. He had felt that to think as he was thinking about people who

were praising him and buying his books, was to play the part of an

ungrateful cad.

The idea that had come dangerously close to Aubrey's consciousness was

the curious notion that people resented acclaiming anybody like

themselves. The lucky ones who secured their hurrah became in their eyes

no longer normal humans but super-persons about whom they were prepared

to believe all manner of mythical grandeurs. The more remarkable and

more superior people could make out their heroes to be, the less

humility they felt in worshipping them. And since their heroes were

creatures in whom they recognized a glorification of their own virtues,

the more self-flattering it was to increase this glorification. They

were able to worship themselves with abandon in the splendors they

attributed to their chosen superiors.

Thus when they started they went the limit, heaping honors and honors

upon a man until he became a glittering God-like person. The country at

the time of Aubrey's ascent was full of such glittering God-like

creatures whose names were continually in people's mouths and in their

newspapers. The instinct of inferiority demanding, as always, an outlet

in the invention of gods, had found a tireless medium for this

hocus-pocus in the press. Great reputations were continually springing

up--the newspapers like the half-cynical, half-superstitious priests of

the totem era busying themselves with creating towering effigies in clay

and smearing them with vermillion paints. These gods whom people busily

erected and before whom they busily prostrated themselves were, as

always, the awesome deities created in their own image.

There had been a crisis in Aubrey's life when he was caught between a

desire to be himself and the desire to be a great clay figure with

mysterious totems splashed over it. To be himself he had only to write

as he vaguely thought he wanted to write. And to be one of the great

figures he had merely to write what he definitely knew would win him the

respect of others.

The decision, however, had been taken out of his hands. Aubrey's talent

had not been of the sort that has for its parents a hatred of society

and a derision of its surfaces. He had, indeed, fancied himself for a

short time as desiring to adventure among the doubts and iconoclasms

which distinguished the literature he had encountered during his college

days. But the fancy had proved no more than an egoistic perversion of

the true impulse in him. This, it soon developed, was a desire to

impress himself upon people as their superior, not their antithesis.

As a result he fell to writing books which carefully avoided the revolt

which the dubious spectacle of manners and morality had stirred in him.

He concentrated upon crystalizing his day dreams. He turned out tales of

deftly virtuous Cinderellas who provokingly withheld their kisses for

three hundred pages; of debonnaire Galahads with hearts of gold who,

utilizing the current platitudes as an armor and a weapon, emerged in

grandiose triumphs with the stubborn virgins thawing deliriously around

their necks. Aubrey's tales were popular at once. They were the

technically arranged versions of the rigmarole of secret make-believes

that went on in his own as well as other people's heads. People read

them and quivered with delight. They were tales which like their own

daydreams served as an antidote for the puny, unimpressive realities of

their lives. Also they were moral, high-minded tales and thus they

served as a vindication of the codes, fears, taboos which contributed

the puniness to the realities of their lives.

Aubrey's success increased rapidly as he abandoned altogether the

pretence of plumbing souls and gave himself whole-heartedly to the

creative pleasantries of plumbing the soap-bubble worlds in whose

irridescence people found their compensations. At twenty-nine Aubrey was

becoming one of the glittering God-like personages in whose worship the

public finds outlet for its inferiority mania and simultaneous

concealment therefrom.

He had realized this in time and without conscious effort adjusted

himself toward the perfections demanded of a personage worthy of

receiving the masochistic and self-ennobling salute of the mob. These

perfections were simply and easily achieved. One had only to acquiesce,

to accept the acclaim of outsiders as a part of one's self and to live

one's inner life in a roseate contemplation of this acclaim. One had

only to "remember one's public" as he put it himself, and not to

disappoint them or antagonize them.

In his own family he was regarded with awe. His father always felt

bewildered when he spoke to him. And even Mrs. Gilchrist revealed a

slightly human nervousness in her contacts with her son.

Concerning Mrs. Gilchrist there was not much to be said, even by such

incipient iconoclasts as Mrs. Basine. She was too defined an exterior.

One was conscious in her presence not so much of a woman as of an

invincible battle-front of ideas. Nobody had ever heard Mrs. Gilchrist

give expression to anything which could remotely be identified as an

idea. Nevertheless she was a battle-front.

She was a woman with an intimidating coldness of manner. This manner

spoke without words of an incorruptible intolerance toward all

deviations from her code. Backsliders, moral culprits, unmannerly

persons and, in fact, everyone not actively under her domination were,

to Mrs. Gilchrist, suspect. She managed to give the impression that

people whom she did not know were creatures whose virtues as well as

social prestige were matters of sinister doubt. They were outside the

pale.

The secret of her domination was a psychological phenomenon that eluded

her antagonists and so left them powerless to combat it. The strength

Mrs. Gilchrist felt within her was the product of a complete repression.

She had managed since her youth to shut herself successfully within the

narrow limits of her consciousness, successfully divorcing all her

thoughts, desires and actions from any dictates of an inner self. She

had formed an ideal, basing it upon her social ambitions and her

childish prejudices of good and bad, desirable and undesirable. And she

had been able to perfect this ideal. Her mind was a tiny fortress

against which her own emotions and hence the emotions of others battled

in vain. It could neither think nor understand and this was its

strength.

The doubts which thinking sometimes stirred in the minds of her

antagonists, the knowledge of secret impulses and obscene imaginings

which they were able only imperfectly to keep from themselves and which

made it possible for them to appreciate dimly the sinners and

iconoclasts in the world--such knowledge never intruded upon Mrs.

Gilchrist.

Her indignation toward backsliders and moral culprits was not a

projected censure of similar weakness in herself. There were no windows

in the tiny fortress in which she lived. Protected from all human

disturbances of her spirit, she spent her days closeted within her

little fortress in grim contemplation of her rectitude.

Friendship was impossible to her. She was, however, a duchy, a

corporation in which one could buy stock. By subscribing unquestionably

to her rectitude, admitting its existence publicly and succumbing to its

strength, one earned the dividends of her social approval. One became to

her a very nice person in whose submission she grudgingly saw, as in an

imperfect mirror, the image of her own virtues.

Curiously enough, Mrs. Gilchrist was renowned for her activity as a

philanthropist and charity worker. Her social prestige, aside from her

strength of character, was based upon this. She was a perennial

patroness, a member of hospital boards, a chairman of bazaars, special

matinees, charity balls and money-raising campaigns. All these

activities were in the interest of the poor. The money raised by them

went toward bringing comfort to creatures whose moral obliquity and

human weaknesses Mrs. Gilchrist authentically despised. Yet she was

indefatigable in her work, darting in her unvarying black dress from

meeting to meeting, bristling with magnificent plans for further

philanthropies.

Her husband occasionally wondered. He was unable to reconcile the

coldness he knew in his wife with the character of her labors. At times

he dimly felt that it was her way of saying something--perhaps a way of

showing a hidden warmth toward people.

But in Mrs. Gilchrist's thought there was no such explanation.

To have admitted to herself a concern for the creatures in whose behalf

she devoted her energies would have been to open a door in the tiny

fortress, or at least to create a loophole out of which she might look

with sympathy upon the confusions and torments of her fellows.

Her inner humanism, divorced from the narrow limits of her

consciousness, was finding its outlet, as her husband suspected, in her

work. But during this work never for a moment did Mrs. Gilchrist think

of the creatures she was benefiting. She had rationalized her activities

and made them a part of the emotionless content of her mind.

All relation between the things she did and the people she did them for

was divorced in her thought. In bazaars she superintended, in balls,

fetes, campaigns, auctions she energized with her presence, she saw only

bazaars, balls, fetes, campaigns and auctions. She worked for their

success with an invulnerable preoccupation in the details which went to

make them socially proper and financially triumphant.

The altruism of her work inspired no altruism in her. She did not allow

herself to sympathise with the weakness and poverties she was aiding or

even to contemplate them for an instant. Yet her work accomplished, the

charity a success, she experienced the stern elation of "having done

good." This elation was inspired in no way by the thought of the solace

she had brought to others. It was entirely egoistic--a moment in which

her rectitude congratulated itself upon--its rectitude.

7

Fanny Basine smiled timidly at Aubrey. He was paying little attention to

her. He was listening to Judge Smith airing his views on the annexation

of the Philippines.

The judge was forcibly declaring that the thing was essential and that

no gentleman with his country's future at heart could possibly believe

otherwise. Aubrey, to the judge's secret discomfiture, somehow managed

to convey an assent to these views, but an assent based upon superior

motives. What these motives were Judge Smith was unable to fathom.

Aubrey, when it came his turn to expound, further irritated the judge by

revealing them. He, Aubrey, was for the annexation of the Philippines

but only because he was convinced such an annexation would be of

supreme benefit to the natives of the islands.

Mrs. Gilchrist nodded sternly in agreement with her son. The rest of the

company listening with vacuous attentiveness waited for the debaters to

continue talking for them. Basine who had been silent came to the

judge's rescue. He explained that the judge and Aubrey meant practically

the same thing but that they had chosen different ways to express

themselves.

"Judge Smith," Basine smiled, "sees in the annexation something which

will benefit his country. He knows as well as any of us that it will not

benefit it financially. It will be a source of expenditure and strife.

Then how will it benefit us? Because it will give us an opportunity to

aid a pack of uncivilized and benighted heathen and despite them to

bring peace and prosperity to their own country--not ours. Which is

exactly what you mean, Aubrey."

The judge beamed approval and Aubrey contented himself with a stare of

dignity. He did not relish psychological interpretations of his words.

As an author, he felt annoyed. But Basine continued to talk undeterred

by his stare. He disliked Aubrey. Not so much as Doris. And in a

somewhat different way. Further, the presence of Henrietta was a curious

inspiration. The girl's wide-eyed tenderness had irritated and

frightened him after the incident in the kitchen when they had gone

searching for the thingumabob. Now he had no interest in the Philippine

controversy. But he had entered the discussion in order to rid himself

of the uncomfortable memory the episode with Henrietta had left him. As

he talked the memory played hide and seek in his words.... "She thinks

I'm going to marry her ... but she's engaged to him ... she's crazy ...

what the Hell did I do it for?... Damn it ... damn it...."

Instinctively he took the judge's part, as if he must establish himself

firmly in the father's good graces in order to make premature amends for

the jilting of his daughter. The position he had taken pleased him

because it also involved an opposition to Aubrey.

Fanny continued to smile at the novelist. Keegan bored her. They had

been walking together and she had lost interest in the sensual game she

had been playing with him. Alone, she might have tried to repeat the

experience of the morning with Keegan. But her physical curiosity

partially gratified for the moment by the surreptitious excitement she

had derived from him, her interest transferred itself to Aubrey.

The man amused and impressed her. Her thought separated him into two

people. She resented his persistent dignity. Her perceptions, sharpened

by the practical sensuality of her nature, saw through the little ruses

by which Aubrey converted his slight deformities into a dignified whole.

As she listened to him she said to herself, "... he thinks it's smart to

wear a ribbon on his glasses ... he sticks his chest out ... he's got

skinny arms ... he looks funny...."

After a half hour she lost her resentment and the thing that had

inspired it came to amuse her. She could see through his funny manner so

it didn't anger her. But although now she smiled with amusement at the

man's impressiveness, a feeling of awe penetrated her. Aubrey was a

great man. People spoke his name everywhere. He was known.

A delicious tremble passed through her. She was careful not to translate

it into words. Had she inspected the tremble and its causes, it would

have outraged her. She was content always to accept her emotions blindly

for fear of having to forego them if she knew their causes. She kept

herself intact in her own mind as a good girl not by belligerently

repressing her impulses but by enjoying them secretly outside her mind.

She had thought of Aubrey as a great man and with it had come the inner

impulse to be embraced passionately by him. Not because he was Aubrey,

but because he was the famous Aubrey Gilchrist, whose name was known. To

be embraced by a famous man would be like being embraced somehow by all

the people who knew his name. She would be able to think while

satisfying her desire, "Everybody knows him. They know all about him.

It's almost as if they knew he was doing this ... I was doing this."

Then, too, there would be a feeling of intense secrecy about it, a sort

of blasphemous secrecy. When an ordinary man kissed her, that was of

course, a secret. But if a famous man should kiss her, a man like

Aubrey, that would be a super-secret. A violation of something

remarkable. It would be a thing concealed not merely from her family and

from the vague circle of friends who might be interested, but from

millions of people who knew Aubrey and who would be tremendously

interested in everything he did. She would be giving herself to a public

figure and yet the thing she was doing would be marvelously concealed

from the public. And so she would be able to enjoy the thrill of

demonstromania--of being taken by someone who was not an individual like

Keegan but a man who was part of other people's minds--and at the same

time she would be able to enjoy the thrill of defiant intimacy; the

knowledge that the people in whose minds the name Aubrey Gilchrist was

alive would be ignorant of what she was doing to the man they admired.

All this would be a sharpening of pleasure by the consciousness of

wholesale deceit, wholesale intimacy.

These intuitions whose articulation would have been entirely

unintelligable to Fanny sent the delicious tremble through her body.

Immediately the two separate Aubreys of her mind focussed into one and

she lost both her amusement and her awe of him. She sat regarding him

with a timid smile designed to arouse his curiosity. As yet he had

ignored her, his eyes seeking out Henrietta when the annexation debate

waned.

Basine had diverted the talk into literary channels by inquiring,

apropos of nothing, whether anyone had read a book by a man named

Meredith. He had found it in Doris' room one evening and glanced through

it. Seeking now for further material with which to discomfit Aubrey he

had remembered the volume. He took it for granted that since his sister

Doris had been reading it, the book was a very worthwhile book--the kind

he cared nothing about reading himself. This did not interfere with his

utilizing an exposition of its merits as a weapon against Aubrey.

"I was quite surprised," he explained. Doris listened with a frown. She

was certain her brother had not read the book and the knowledge he was

lying aggravated her. She knew he lied continually but was indifferent.

But to have him lie about something she admired, even in its defense,

made her uncomfortable as if he were trying to establish false claims

upon her regard.

"The book is altogether unlike most books," he went on, generalizing

carefully. His mind, totally ignorant of the subject he was discussing,

was shrewdly inventing a book diametrically opposite in style and

content to the books Aubrey wrote. By praising such a book he would

manage without reference to his antagonist to disparage his entire

literary output.

He was not clear in his mind why Aubrey had become an antagonist. The

memory reiterating itself behind his words "... she thinks I'm going to

marry her ... damn it...." was mysteriously finding outlet in an

indignation neither against himself nor Henrietta, but against the

unsuspecting Aubrey.

Fanny listened to the new conversation, but Meredith was soon dropped.

The sight of Mrs. Gilchrist grimly poised opposite her mother, became a

part of the lure Aubrey exercised over her. He was the son of this

hard-faced, domineering woman. To do something with him that was

intimate would be a deliciously concealed violation of the mother's

propriety. Fanny had always been intimidated by Mrs. Gilchrist's

propriety. Embracing her son would be a sort of revenge.

Without wasting time looking for reasons, Fanny felt Aubrey as an

attraction. Her attitude toward him grew more intimate. She did not try

to enter the talk but adjusted herself in the chair, placing her body

so that the curve of her hip and leg were effectively visible to Aubrey.

And while the others talked she assured herself of the plausibility of

her ambitions. Aubrey was a great man and very famous and distinguished.

But he was after all entirely human. He had written books and Fanny fell

to thinking about them, about the descriptions of love-making which

crowded the pages of his books. Aubrey was famous and therefore aloof.

But the things that had made him famous--the love passages in his books,

were not intimidating. She remembered them with gratitude. They were

love descriptions and Aubrey had written them.

Love passages were in fact all that Fanny usually remembered of her

reading. Plots and characters escaped her. After she had closed a book

there remained in her mind merely the scenes in which men had placed

their arms around women and whispered after a succession of exciting

adjectives, "I love you."

This was due to the manner in which Fanny read. As a girl she had

ploughed laboriously through a set of Shakespeare in quest of obscene

passages. Her girl's eyes would skip with irritation the speeches that

seemed to her extraneous until, caught by some "nasty" word, she would

become eagerly interested and carefully digest the sentences preceding

and following it. At fourteen she had discovered that the dictionary,

stuck away in a dusty corner of the book case, was filled with many such

words. Whenever occasion permitted she opened the big volume and poured

intently over its contents, digesting with excitement the definitions of

what she called to herself, the nasty words.

The result of this curious reading technique had gradually shown itself

as she matured. Literature became to her a secretly immoral and indecent

thing. She would blush when people mentioned _Shakespeare_ or any of the

books in which she had eagerly browsed. Observing that her blushes gave

people an impression of her sensitive chastity, she developed a habit of

seeming offended at the mention of any volume she suspected of

containing such words and passages as she was continually searching for

in secret.

She would say, "Oh, I don't like that kind of a book. I don't think

people should write like that--about such things. There are so many nice

things to write about I don't see why people must write about the

others."

Delivering herself of these sentiments on all occasions, she continued

her furtive hunt for books about "such things." One red-letter evening

she stumbled upon a pamphlet in her brother's room describing the

horrors of venereal diseases and outlining with verbal and pictorial

illustrations the ravages wrought by the disease germs. She had devoured

the information greedily, her sensuality editing the well-intentioned

brochure into a mass of erotic revelations.

Aubrey's books, although a bit too innocuous to exhilarate her as the

pamphlet had done or even the dictionary, properly read, was able to do,

contained innumerable passages she remembered. She treated his writing

as she did all writing, skimming hastily over irrelevant matters such as

dialogues between men, discussions of abstract problems, mother and

child scenes and coming to a pause only at the portions which began with

some such sentence as "He looked at her with burning eyes," or, "She

felt nervous because at last she was alone with him," or, "He tried to

draw her to him but she resisted, her virtue outraged by the light in

his eyes."

She recalled these passages now as the literary discussion grew warmer.

The knowledge that Aubrey had written them served to humanize him and

remove his aloofness in her eyes. He was a famous man. On the other hand

he was famous because he wrote such things as, "She yielded with a happy

sigh to the manly embrace."

Aubrey felt irritated with Basine. He stood up and seemingly without

intention walked to a vacant chair next to Fanny. The conversation had

been taken up by Mrs. Gilchrist who was explaining the real purpose of

her visit.

"We are giving a fete on Mrs. Channing's lawn," she was saying, "and I

would very much like you to be one of the members of the committee on

printing."

Mrs. Basine felt an elation at the words. She had read about the

Channing lawn fete. An affair of social magnificence designed to raise

funds for the Associated Charities. Great social names were involved.

Mrs. Basine's heart trembled gratefully.

"Oh, thank you," she said, her voice taking on a formal, artificial

tone. Mrs. Gilchrist nodded. The tone pleased her. She could count on

the Basine woman among the select who showed their gratitude openly at

the largesse of her favor. She would, in fact, deign to stay for supper

as a reward.

Mrs. Basine, urging her to remain for the light Sunday evening meal,

felt indignant with herself. She would have preferred to refuse the

committee on printing. Even as she accepted and experienced the elation

her thought bristled with revolt.

"The old fool ... the old fool," repeated itself with annoying clarity

in her mind. She detested Mrs. Gilchrist. Since her husband's death Mrs.

Basine had outgrown the snobbery which had inspired her during her life

to pour over the society columns. But a habit had been established, the

habit of a desire to become a member of the closely knit organization

known as Society. And now she was apparently powerless to overcome this

desire which no longer animated her but yet intruded out of the past.

She looked down upon herself for the elation over becoming a member of a

printing committee for a social charity fete.

"I hate it ... I just hate it," she would murmur for days at a time. But

the elation would persist, a thing beyond the control of her improved

outlook upon life. She was aware also of the simple process by which she

transferred her self-indictment into a detestation of Mrs. Gilchrist.

Mrs. Gilchrist was the one who appealed to what Mrs. Basine had grown to

regard as her "smaller nature." And her anger toward the imperturbable

dowager was the anger of a virtuous woman toward one whose temptations

she was unable to resist.

"You've been rather silent." Aubrey smiled patronizingly at Fanny. She

nodded.

"Oh, I've been so interested in what you've been saying," she answered.

She noticed with a feeling of sisterly gratitude that Basine had

occupied himself with Henrietta. Aubrey caught the direction of her

glance and frowned. He had developed a definite dislike of Basine during

the afternoon.

Keegan, listening uncomfortably to the judge who was ignoring him in his

talk but whose audience Keegan felt it a social necessity to remain,

tried vainly to capture Fanny's eyes. She had apparently forgotten his

existence. But now as Aubrey seated himself at her side, she smiled

intimately in the direction of the confused Keegan.

"Oh, Hugh," she said loud enough for him to hear.

The sound of his name from the girl gave Keegan an inexplicable

sensation. He felt himself break into happy smiles and the anxiety that

had been growing in his heart seemed abruptly to have vanished under her

voice. He came to her side and stood looking timidly at her. The

conviction came over Fanny that Keegan was in love. She felt pleased and

her heart warmed toward him. But her interests remained exclusively

preoccupied with the novelist.

"I was just going out to the kitchen and wondered if you wanted to help

cut sandwiches," she smiled at Keegan.

"Sure," he answered.

"I'm an excellent cook myself," Aubrey unbent gravely.

Fanny stood up and started toward the hall. The two men hesitated and

then followed her. Basine, frowning slightly toward the door, listened

to her voice chattering to cover the embarrassed silence of the two men

she had bagged.

"Don't you want to go out there and help," he turned to Henrietta.

She shook her head.

Keegan felt himself being slowly transported. His penitence had faded

into less satisfactory emotions toward the middle of the day. A gloom

had come over him and his heart had felt weighted. He had at first

identified this state of mind as a ghastly premonition of disease as a

result of last night's debauch and thought that the depression he felt

was his nervous system or something warning him of this fact.

The depression lifted. He sat around the Basine home listening to the

chatter of the arriving guests and feeling out of place. He felt that he

was wishing for something but couldn't make out what it was. His heart

hurt, his head felt heavy. There were aches in him and a feeling of

listlessness. More, he couldn't sit still. The room seemed a suffocating

place. He was unhappy.

Several hours later it dawned on him with a shock that he was in love

with Fanny. The sudden explanation frightened him. He attempted to deny

it to himself. The struggle endured a half hour. He surrendered.

When he looked at Fanny again she had undergone a complete change. There

was a startling intimacy in her features. Her contours were stamped with

an appeal he had never observed before in a woman. The rest of the

company sat behind a thin film of politeness and formality. But Fanny

sat with him outside this film. The others in the room were blurred as

if half hidden. Fanny was distinct. A light seemed to beat upon her. He

looked in amazement.

A few hours ago he had noticed nothing. Now he noticed everything ...

her dress, her hands, her hair, her eyes, her ankles. He was frightened

because it seemed as if someone had invaded the secret world in which

he alone lived. He remembered frightenedly that he had lain with his

head in her lap, that he had embraced her. There had been something

curious about the embrace but he was unable to identify it.

"She felt sorry for me, that's all," he thought and at once all hope

ebbed out of him. Yet he continued to look at her and watch her grow

more familiar, so familiar that her image seemed to have come into his

heart where he could feel it choking him.

A few minutes after entering the kitchen he grew hopeful. He found

himself in the position of an intimate--at least by comparison. She was

paying no attention to Aubrey. She laughed at his, Keegan's, clumsiness,

chided him good-naturedly. She held his hand and, his heart beating

wildly, directed him in slicing the bread. When he was drawing the water

from the sink faucet she leaned over resting her chin on his shoulder

and effected a humorous concern. He felt her body press warmly against

him and almost dropped the cut-glass pitcher he was holding. He was

being transported.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched the novelist. A sorry fellow

with gawky feet and a clumsy-looking face. Keegan vaguely pitied him as

he stood around doing his best to horn in on the intimacy between Fanny

and himself. He knew how the novelist felt. It seemed to Keegan even

that it was he, Keegan, feeling that way, and that the carefully

concealed embarassment, the futile chagrin and lameness were his own

emotions and not Aubrey Gilchrist's. In an effort to put the defeated

rival at his ease, so Keegan regarded him, he tried magnanimously to

include him in the little byplay between himself and Fanny.

"Here, you try your hand at this," he offered, handing Aubrey the knife.

Fanny pouted.

"Hm! Just as I was teaching you the art of bread cutting you run away

from school," she complained. Keegan resumed his operations on the

bread, a satisfied warmth in his heart. For her hand had returned to its

position and she was again going through the idiotic pretense of

teaching him how to move a knife. He was being transported. His vacuous

face had taken on a vivacity. He was fearful of presuming, of doing

something wrong, and he made no effort to caress her. No effort was

necessary for, somehow, despite his carefully edited behavior, their

fingers were always touching, their bodies coming together.

Still he was afraid to think that Fanny had fallen in love with him. He

was even afraid that Aubrey would go away and leave them alone in the

kitchen. If they were alone he would have to try to kiss her or

something and she would laugh and then say indignantly, "You idiot, I

was just playing. I see now that you think all women are like those you

told me about."

He would rather that Aubrey remained and that everything continued as it

was. The sandwiches were piling up on the large platters.

"Here," Fanny cried, holding one of them up for him to bite.

He looked apologetically at Aubrey as if asking to be forgiven for this

proof of her superior regard and with a blush ate from her fingers.

Fanny suddenly let go the sandwich and as it dropped to the floor,

patted him tenderly on his cheek and laughed.

"Um ... big man hungry," she whispered.

He turned to place the fallen pieces of bread in the sink. His hand

brushed hers and he felt her fingers close firmly around his palm with a

squeeze. He half shut his eyes at the shock that filled his heart.

Fanny's eyes, however, ignored him. She was engaged in watching Aubrey

for whose benefit the entire scene was being staged. Her instinct had

supplied her with a mode of attack. She would arouse desire in the

novelist by showing herself desired--although by another man. A desired

woman was an irritant. It aroused illogical jealousy.

The icebox was in the back hallway.

"The cream and things are in here," Fanny exclaimed.

Keegan followed her out of the kitchen into the rear vestibule. She had

squeezed his hand before starting and thrown him a glance as she passed

through the doorway. He felt embarrassed for Aubrey and was on the point

of inviting him to share the intimacy of the small vestibule. But Fanny

interrupted him.

"Oh Hugh," she called softly, "will you chop some ice, please, for the

water."

She handed him the ice pick and laughed nervously. The door was half

open and Keegan caught a glimpse of the novelist pretending a vast

interest in the arrangement of the sandwiches on the plates.

"What's the matter, Hugh? You seem so ... so funny," Fanny whispered

close to him.

His heart contracted. He was afraid. If he dared he would put his arms

around her. But after all the things he had confessed to her in their

walk.... A longing to weep almost brought tears out of his eyes. He

stood with his mouth open and stared as in a dream at a blurred vision.

"Fanny," he muttered, "I'm sorry...."

"About last night," she whispered. He nodded.

"But Hughie, you said you wouldn't ever again...."

He felt despair.

"If I only hadn't ... I would...." He stopped.

"Would what, Hughie?" Fear halted him definitely. He could go no

further. A misery clouded his thought. He felt her hand touching his

arm.

"You mustn't feel sorry, Hugh. Please promise me you won't feel

sorry...."

The sweetness of her voice overpowered him and his eyes grew wet. He

tried to talk but was ashamed of the quiver he felt in his throat. Fanny

pressed lightly against him. He stood with his head reeling and his

heart dancing crazily as her arms circled his neck. Her face was raised

to his.

"Just one ... Hughie. Please ... don't forget. Please hurry...."

He heard her words but they conveyed no meaning. He loved her ... he

loved her. He had never been happy like this. He couldn't tell her now

... the icebox, something, was in the way. But sometime he would tell

her. His arms and body felt alive.

"Oh," he thought, "Fanny, Fanny...."

Then he heard himself repeating the thought aloud. He was saying in a

voice he hardly recognized, "Oh, Fanny, Fanny."

He kissed her lips.

For a moment Fanny returned his kiss passionately. Her arms clutched

him tightly. She felt a curious lift in her heart, a thing she had never

experienced before. It made her almost close her eyes. But she kept them

open, watching furtively over Keegan's shoulder the figure of Aubrey.

Aubrey had remained bent over the plates of sandwiches. Despite the lift

in her heart this annoyed her. She wanted Aubrey's attention.

"Oh," she sighed aloud. Aubrey heard. He straightened and for a moment

stared at the tableau of the lovers. Fanny watching him behind Keegan's

kiss saw his face grow red. Then she lowered her eyes and abandoned

herself to the sensation of Keegan's arms. But the sensations faded. An

interest seemed to have gone out of the situation. She pushed Keegan

gently away and looked into the kitchen. Aubrey was gone.

"Oh," she whispered. Keegan looked at her dizzily. "He saw...."

"Who?"

"Aubrey Gilchrist saw you." Her face flushed.

"Did he?" Keegan leaned against the icebox. He felt weak.

"I'm sure he did," Fanny insisted, an elated note in her voice, "I'm

just positive."

"He couldn't have seen much if he did, from where he was standing,"

Keegan murmured.

"I don't care anyway," Fanny smiled. Keegan felt a thrill at the words.

She loved him and didn't care who knew!

"Neither do I," he agreed. He felt glad they had been seen. It made him

blush inside but he was glad.

"Oh, what do we care?" Fanny cried, "if the old stick-in-the-mud did

see." Keegan reached his hands to her but she eluded him and darted into

the kitchen.

"Hurry, chop the ice," she called. She was confused. For a moment she

had been surprised by an emotion--a curious, unsensual desire for the

awkward Keegan. She had felt her heart yield to his embrace as she

usually felt her body do. But the whole thing had been for Aubrey's

benefit. It had started with an intention of making Aubrey jealous by

flirting with Keegan. And when Aubrey had refused to show any signs of

jealousy she had carried the flirtation further until it had seemed

logical to kiss and embrace Keegan as a part of her original ambition to

stir Aubrey. But she had been stirred herself by the man's kiss. Yet now

that Aubrey was gone she had lost all interest in Hugh. She wanted to

hurry back where the novelist was.

She glanced apprehensively toward the door. Doris was standing looking

at her.

"What's the matter, Dorie?"

"Mr. Ramsey has come. Mother said to set another place."

"Good heavens! What a houseful."

Doris nodded. Keegan was standing in the center of the room smiling

inanely at the sink.

"I'll help you," said Doris.

8

Mrs. Basine was embarassed by the arrival of her friend Tom Ramsey. He

had been a friend of her husband and a rumor had become current that he

was now courting her. She denied this with indignation. To herself she

admitted she liked to be alone with him. He was a sour-minded man with

a liver-red face, a patrician nose and the look of a man of importance.

But he was too thin and too short to live up to this look.

In the presence of others he usually fell into a silence unless one of

the two or three subjects on which he felt himself an authority came up.

These subjects were things that had to do with advertising--effective

copy, effective display, prices, results. Mr. Ramsey was in the

advertising business.

Mrs. Basine's embarassment at his arrival was caused by her sympathy for

the man and her resentment of his weakness. She knew exactly what would

happen. Tom Ramsey would sit through the evening, scrupulously polite to

everyone, saying, "Yes, yes. Quite right. Oh, of course. That's

absolutely right.... Indeed, I agree with you...."

For the first few minutes he would impress everyone as a man of

character and intelligence. But gradually this impression would fade and

people would stop talking to him and eventually ignore him altogether in

the conversation.

Why this happened Mrs. Basine could never determine. But it did and it

always hurt her. Mr. Ramsey, smiling exuberantly through the

introduction, his thin body alive in the slightly overheated room, would

in an hour become Mr. Ramsey sitting glassy-eyed and polite in a corner,

his liver-red face holding with difficulty a grimace of enthusiastic

attentiveness. He would make sporadic starts trying to recover

something. When the talk grew boisterous and everyone was making puns

and delivering himself of bouncing sarcasms, Ramsey would try to become

part of the scene in a way that always startled the company. He would

come to life with mysterious suddeness and hurl a jest into the common

pot. His manner, however, focused attention on himself rather than his

words. In back of the drollery he offered would be a desperation, in

fact, sometimes a sense of fury. People would stare at him for an

instant thinking, "What an odd, impossible man." And in their

contemplation, forget to laugh at his remark, forget even to answer it.

And he would be left stranded in a silence--a conversational castaway. A

moment later he would collapse, sit glowering in his chair, looking

angrily at the carpet. This was painful to Mrs. Basine since she had

grown to understand him.

When they were alone Ramsey became a different man. He talked to her

usually about people he had met in her house. At such times he was

master of caricature. Their absurdities, pompousness, banalities,

hypocricies took grotesque outline in his words. His method was

unvarying. It was based upon a crude, vicious skepticism, inspired in

turn by a fanatic resentment of success in others. He seemed determined

always to prove to his own and her satisfaction that despite their

pretentions people were no more successful than he. His nature seemed

unable to tolerate the thought of superiors. At the same time people he

encountered, particularly in the Basine home, managed always to override

him, to reduce him to silence, to deflate him.

He would retire into himself, protesting viciously at the injustice of

this phenomenon. And while he sat in silence he would seek to wipe out

the consciousness of his own inferiority by attacking with contempt the

people around him. He would sit belittling and ridiculing the company to

himself until he had hypnotized himself with a conviction of their

general worthlessness and inferiority. Bolstered up by this treacherous

conviction, he would come suddenly to life with a grotesque sense of

magnitude in his mind. He was a giant among pigmies, a Socrates among

clowns! Who were these numbskulls and fourflushers that they thought

they were better than he was! He would show them! He would step forth

and by a single gesture, a scintillant phrase, reduce them to their

proper place.

And the company would find itself staring for an instant at a thin,

little man with a wild look in his eyes and a snarling quiver in his

voice, saying something not quite intelligible--usually an involved pun

or a tardy comment on some issue under discussion. The intensity of the

sullen-faced little man with the patrician nose embarrassed them for the

moment. Not as much as it did Mrs. Basine whose heart would almost break

at the spectacle, but enough to make them feel it were best to ignore

this curious Mr. Ramsey and not let on what a fool he somehow made of

himself.

Ramsey's indignation toward people, his sour skepticism of their values,

was his futile way of reassuring himself of his own worth. Futile,

because he had no conviction of this worth. When he sat denouncing in

silence the talkers around him, ridiculing and belittling them, it was

merely a less painful outlet for the contempt he had of himself.

He had been since his youth ridden by this inner feeling that he was a

fool, a weakling, not quite a man. It had started in his boyhood when

the nickname "Sissy" had been attached to him. His high-pitched voice,

his thin body and his unboyish modesty had earned him the name. As he

had grown older the fact that he did not care for girls as other youths

did, and that he sometimes played with them as if he were a girl

himself, had not escaped the keen, cruel eyes of his companions. The

name "Sis" Ramsey had stuck.

In order to convince these companions of his masculinity he had thrown

himself with violence into their roughest games. In high school he had

sought to establish himself as a hardened sinner--a drinker and tough

citizen. Despite his slight body he had developed into a creditable

athlete. More than that he had become known as a fellow who would fight

at the drop of a hat. His fiery temper became a byword.

But all these masculine, or seemingly masculine attributes were part of

his effort to prove that, despite his somewhat odd voice and his equally

odd indifference toward girls, he was a man. When he left high school

and started in the offices of the Mackay Advertising Company, the name

"Sissy" had dropped from him. He had no longer to contend with the keen,

cruel eyes of boy companions. Men were content to accept him at whatever

value he chose to place on himself, as far as his character was

concerned.

The struggle instead of abating, however, only increased. It removed

itself from the external combat of his boyhood to an internal

complication, and became the basis of the feeling of inferiority which

shaped his life.

This inner knowledge he cherished, that he was inferior to people, was

founded on the conviction that he was impotent; or at least nearly

impotent; that he could never marry and have children like other men.

His mind refused to acknowledge this fact and thus instead of finding

the comparatively harmless exit of regret, it permeated his entire

thought with the word--inferior ... inferior.

Ramsey kept himself desperately blind to the cause of this permeation.

He concentrated on the detached word "inferior" and belabored it with

untiring fury. There was another secret, one that went deeper than the

hidden conviction of impotency.

In the indignation which continually filled his mind, the hideous secret

that lived almost within grasp of his understanding was conveniently

clouded. It was the secret that his lack of vigor--a fact in itself that

he sometimes contemplated--was caused by a still deeper thing--a thing

that never reached any clearer articulation than a shudder.

They had called him "Sissy" as a boy and he had not changed with age. He

had been able to repress the impulses that sought to turn him toward men

instead of women for companionship. He had repressed them by the ruse of

convincing himself he was an ascetic.

It was, moreover, an attitude which could find outlet. He could devote

himself to the continual denunciation of others, developing into a sour,

cynical choleric man of fifty. A vindictive, unpleasing personality.

Mrs. Basine herded her guests into the dining room. Ramsey's presence

preoccupied her. She found herself watching him as a mother might look

after a sickly child.

The intimacy that had grown between her and her dead husband's friend

had been too gradual to trace. It had started when Mrs. Basine had sat

one evening in the midst of a company similar to this and thought, "Poor

man. He jumps around like that and acts queerly because he's ashamed of

himself. He's ashamed of not being what he wants to be."

She did not quite understand what this meant but she felt herself

suddenly close to the man after having thought it. He began to seek her

company alone and more and more to use her as an audience for his ruse

of transferring his self-rage into a critical indignation of others.

A realization of Ramsey's character had stirred a pity in her and out of

this pity she was careful not to let him see it. She went to the extreme

of pretending a blindness toward his shortcomings and of accepting him

for the thing he tried to make himself out to be--a giant among pygmies.

She would agree with him in his attacks upon others, second his vicious

caricaturing and appear always impressed by his desperate skepticism.

Ramsey as a result had come to regard her as the one person with whom he

had ever felt at ease during his life. Mrs Basine was a woman who

understood him, that is, one who was completely deceived by him. In her

presence the creature he struggled unsuccessfully to become, the

masquerade of magnificence which his inferiority sought futilely to

assume--in her presence these became realities. He would swagger before

her, deride her, browbeat her and the rage which bubbled everlastingly

in him would have respite. His mind seemed to uncloud and his talk would

grow actually clever, some of his caricatures bringing an authentic

laugh from her.

But the widow as a rule would sit listening to him, watching his

swagger, her heart lacerated by the poignant things it sensed. It was as

if he were a little boy dressed up in an Indian suit and emitting war

whoops and she must sit by and pretend real horror of his juvenile

make-believe; as if he were someone who would drop dead with anguish in

the midst of his laughter if she were to say aloud what was in her mind,

"Oh you poor man, I'm sorry for you. I'm so ashamed for you."

She did not understand why, despite these things, she felt a thrill of

pleasure when she found herself alone with him. Her pity for the man

seemed a pleasant excitement. It gave her a sense of intimacy toward

him. She admitted this to herself but wondered about it.

There had been one evening that remained confusedly in her mind. He had

seemed unusually buoyant, she recalled, after it was over. His

cleverness had actually diverted her--his caricatures of Judge Smith and

Mrs. Gilchrist and even her own son. She had felt a certain truth in the

distorted descriptions he gave of her friends.

Then without warning he had grown violently excited. She had watched him

with a fear in her heart--a warning to her that he was going to say

something. She remembered him walking up and down the room saying, "The

trouble with you, like with most people, my dear lady, is that you don't

understand things. You look at things through a fog. You don't see

through the pretences of people. Your brain isn't active. It's merely

receptive. It doesn't question. And what's the result?"

His voice had become high-pitched.

"You live your lives among lies. That's what you do. Lies, lies--you

thrive on lies. Your friends are lies. Your thoughts, everything. Take

me.... Now take me ... my case.... I'll tell you something you don't

understand ... just by the way of proof.... I'll tell you something...."

His voice had broken off, overcome by excitement. He was walking up and

down in front of her, his eyes staring wildly. He was going to say

something, something about himself. And for a moment she had sat

cringing inside. Why had she been afraid? Perhaps because he had looked

so wildly around him, like someone trying to escape. But he had grown

silent and dropped exhausted into a chair.

She tried not to look at him because he was trembling and he had gone

away ten minutes later. He had kept away for two weeks and then returned

and their relations had resumed as if nothing had happened. Her mind

tingled with curiosity but a fear restrained her. She somehow had not

dared ask the question, "What were you going to tell me about yourself."

But she remembered that it had seemed for a moment as if he were going

to escape, that he had looked like a man on the verge of ridding himself

of an incubus.