The Project Gutenberg eBook of Narcissus, by Evelyn Scott. (2024)

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Narcissus, by Evelyn ScottThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.orgTitle: NarcissusAuthor: Evelyn ScottRelease Date: April 14, 2013 [EBook #42533]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO-8859-1*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NARCISSUS ***Produced by Clare Graham & Marc D'Hooghe athttp://www.freeliterature.org (Images generously madeavailable by the Internet Archive.)

BY

EVELYN SCOTT

NEW YORK

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY

1922

"Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know."
William Blake.

PART I

At three o'clock in the afternoon Julia put on her hat. Her dressingtable with its triple mirror stood in an alcove. It was a very finesevere little table. It was Julia's vanity to be very fine and dainty inher toilet. Here was no powder box, but lotions and expensive scents.When she sat before the glass she enjoyed the defiant delicacy which shesaw in the lines of her lifted head, and there was a thrill which shecould not analyze in the sight of her long white hands lying useless inher lap. They made her in love with herself.

Her hat was of bright brown straw and when she slipped on her fur coatshe was pleased with the luxurious incongruity of the effect.

Nellie, the old Negro servant, was away, and Julia's step-children, Mayand Bobby, were at school. As Julia descended the stairway to the lowerhall, her silk dress, brushing the carpet, made a cool hissing sound inthe quiet passageway.

She opened the front door softly and passed into the long street whichappeared sad and deserted in the spring sunshine. Under the cold trees,that were budding here and there, were small blurred shadows. In thetall yellow apartment house across the way windows were open and whitecurtains shook mysteriously against the light. Above a cornice smokefrom a hidden chimney rushed in opaque volumes to dissolve against thecold glow of the remote sky.

Julia walked along, feeling as though she were the one point in whichthe big silent city in the chill wind grew conscious of itself. It wasonly when she reached Dudley Allen's doorstep that her mood changed, andshe felt that when she went in she would be robbed of her new gloriousindifference about her life.

She rang the bell above the small brass plate, and when the white doorhad opened and she was mounting the soft green-carpeted stairs up thelong corridor, it seemed to her that she was going back into herself.

In the passage before Dudley's rooms he came to meet her as he had donebefore. His hard eyes as they looked at her had a sort of bloom oftriumph.

"I was sure you'd come." He grasped both her hands and drew her throughthe tall doorway. "Dear!"

"I suppose you were." She smiled at him with a clear look, knowing thatin his discomfort before her he was condemning himself.

"Won't you kiss me?" They were in his studio. He pouted his lips underhis mustache. His eyes shone with uneasy brilliance.

She kissed him. She understood that the simpler she was in her abandonthe more disconcerted he became.

When she had taken off her hat and laid it upon his drawing-board, heheld her against him and caressed her hair. Because he was afraid of hisown silence, he kept repeating, "Dear! My dear!"

"Aren't we lovers, Julia?" he insisted at last, childishly. He wasembarrassed and wanted to make a joke of his own mood, but she saw thathe was trembling. His mouth smiled. His eyes were clouded and watchfulwith resentment.

"How deeply are we lovers, Dudley?" She leaned her cheek against hisbreast. She did not wish to look at him. Suddenly she was terrified thata lover was able to give her nothing of what other women received.

"You love me. Look at me, Julia. Say you love me."

Her lids fluttered, but she kept her eyes fixed upon his small plumphand, white through its black down. The hand was all at once a pitifultrembling thing which belonged to neither of them. It had a poordetached involuntary life.

Because of the hand she felt sorry for him, and she said, warmly andabruptly, "I love you." Her eyes, when they met his, were filled withtears. Yet she knew the love she gave him was not the thing for which heasked.

He was suspicious. His hands fell away from her. "Was I mistakenyesterday?" His voice sounded bitter and tired.

She was pained and her fear of losing him made her ardent. "No, Dudley!No!" Her face flushed, and her eyes, lifted to his, were dim withemotion.

"Did you understand what I hoped—how much I hoped for when I asked youto come here to-day, Julia?"

"Yes," she said. All the time she felt that she loved him because theywere both suffering and in a kind of danger from each other which he wasunable to see. She loved him because she was the only person who couldprotect him from herself. She was oppressed by her accurate awareness ofhim: of his hot flushed face close to hers, the shape of his nose, thepores of his skin, the beard in his cheeks, the irregular contour of hishead matted with dark curls, his ears that she thought ugly with thetufts of hair that grew above their lobes, his neck which was short andwhite and a little thick, and his hands, hairy and at the same timewomanish. Already she knew him so intimately that it gave her a sense ofguilt toward him. Her recognition of him was so cruel, and he seemedunmindful of it.

When she had reassured him that she loved him, he drew her down besidehim on the couch with the black and gold cover. He wanted to make teafor her and to show her some drawings that had been sent to him for hisjudgment.

She knew that while he talked he was on his guard before her. It seemedugly to her that they were afraid of each other.

The drawings, by an unknown artist, were very delicate, indicated by afew lines on what appeared to her a vast page. It humiliated her torecognize that she did not understand the things he was interested in.To admit, even inwardly, that something fine was beyond her awoke inher an arrogance of self-contempt. I'm only fit for one need, she saidto herself. Then, aloud, "They are very subtle and wonderful, Dudley.Much too fine, I think, for me to appreciate. I really don't want anytea." And she gazed at him hatefully as though he had hurt her.

Feeling herself so much less than he, even in this one thing, made herhard again. She stretched her hands up to him. "Kiss me!" The franknessand kindness were gone out of her eyes.

He was startled by the ugly unexpected look, and his own eyes grewsensual and moist as he sank beside her on his knees.

She drew his head against her breast and between her palms she couldfeel his pulses, heavy and labored. Each found at the moment somethingloathsome in caressing the other; but it was only when they despisedeach other that their emotions were completely released.

It was growing dusk. The cold pale day outside became suddenly hecticwith color. Through the windows at the back of the room Julia could seethe black roof of the factory across the courtyard and the shell-pinkstain that came into the sky above it. The heavy masses of buildingswere glowing shadows. The room was filled with pearl-coloredreflections.

Dudley watched her as she lifted her hair in a long coil and pinned itagainst her head.

She glanced at his small highly colored face with its little mustacheabove the full smiling lips. Again she was ashamed of seeing him soplainly. She wished that she were exalted out of so definite a physicalperception of him.

"Julia. Julia." He repeated her name ruminatively. "You did come to carefor me. What do you feel, Julia? What has this made you feel?" He couldnot bear the sense of her separateness from him. He was obsessed bycuriosity about her and a lustful desire to outrage her mentalintegrity. He could not bear the feeling that the body which hadpossessed him so completely yet belonged to itself. His eyes, intimatewithout tenderness, smiled with a guilty look into hers.

She gazed at him as if she wanted to escape. For a moment she wishedthat they could have disappeared from each other's lives in the instantwhich culminated their embrace. Their talk made her feel herselfgrotesque. "I don't know," she said. "How can I say? I don't know."

Though he would not admit it to himself, her air of timidity andbewilderment pleased him. "How many lovers have you had, Julia?"

She thought, He only asked that to hurt me. She could not answer him.She smiled. Her lips quivered. She looked at her hands.

She saw him only as something which contributed to her experience ofherself. She had her experience of him before she gave herself to him.What happened between them happened to her alone.

"What do you feel? Tell me? How deeply do you love me, Julia?" He knewthat he was making her resentful toward him, but it was only when womenfelt nothing at all in regard to him that he found it hard to bear. Hegrasped her hands and held them.

"Of course I love you deeply." Her voice trembled. She turned her headaside.

"What do you feel about your husband, Julia?"

In spite of the pressure of his hands she felt Dudley far away,dissolving from her.

When she did not answer him at once he was afraid again and began tokiss her. "You love me. You love me very much."

"Oh, you know I love you," Julia said. She wanted to cry out and to goaway. He hurt her too much. Everything about him hurt her. She had adrunken sense of his disregard of her. She could no longer comprehendwhy she had come there and given herself to him. It was terrible todiscover that one did irrevocable things for no articulate reason. Shewas less interested in Dudley now than in this new and terribleastonishment about herself. She could not believe that she had taken alover out of boredom and discontent with herself, so she was forced to amystical conviction of the inevitability of her act.

"I must leave you, Dudley. I can't bear to go. I love you. I love you."She kept reiterating, I love you, and felt that she was trying toconvince herself against an uncertainty.

He regarded her curiously with the same uneasiness. "I may be going awaysoon, Julia. The French painter I told you about—the friend I had whenI was in Paris. He's through with America now and wants me to go toJapan with him. Do you want me to go? I can't bear to be away fromyou."

"Go. Of course you must go." She felt hysterical. She took up her hat.

He could not endure the cold reserved look that came over her face."Julia." Hating her, he put his arms about her, and when her bodysuddenly relaxed he resented its unexpected pliancy.

I don't know her, he repeated to himself with a kind of despair againsther.

Julia unlocked the front door and stepped into the still hall. A neatmirror was set in the wall of the white-paneled vestibule. Here she sawherself reflected dimly. Everything about her was rich-colored in theafterglow that came golden through the long glass in the niches oneither side of the entrance. The polished floor was like a pool. Juliafelt that she had never seen her house before and this was a momentwhich would never come again.

When she went into the dining room she found the table laid, and theknives and forks on the vague white cloth were rich with the purplishluster of the twilight. The white plates looked secret with reflections.Beyond the table, through the French windows, she could see the darknessthat was in the back yard close to the earth, but above the high wallat the end was the brilliant empty sky. The base of the elm tree was inthe shadow. The top, with its new buds, glistened stiffly.

She passed into the clean narrow kitchen. She had planned white sinksand cupboards when she and her husband, Laurence Farley, were directingthe renovation of the place. Julia loved the annihilating quality ofwhiteness.

Old Nellie, standing before the stove, glanced impassively at hermistress.

"Dinner time, Nellie?" Julia wondered what was in the old woman's mind,what made her so strong in her reticence that everything about herseemed carved from her own will. The long strong arms moved stiffly inthe black sleeves. The ungainly hands moved heavily and surely.

"Reckon 'tis, Miss Julia." Nellie mumbled with her cracked purplishlips. When she smiled her brown face remained cold. She wore a wig ofstraight black hair, but baldish patches of gray wool showed under theedges against the rich dry color of her neck. Her shoulders were roundedas if by the weight of her arms. Her breasts fell forward. When shemoved, her spine remained rigid above the sunken hips of a thin oldsavage woman. Her buttocks dragged. She was bent with strength.

Julia was all at once afraid of her servant. "I must find my children."She moved toward the door, smiling over her shoulder. Nellie's reserveseemed to demand a recognition. Julia wanted to get away from it.

She went on to her sitting room. The door was ajar. Fifteen-year-old Maywas there with her boy friend, Paul. As Julia entered Paul rose clumsilyand May leaned forward in her chair.

Paul, irritated by the sight of Julia's radiance, was gloomy. He wasaware of May, young and awkward, a part of his own youth. May's presenceexposed a part of him and made him feel cowed and soiled.

"Paul's still talking about Bernard Shaw, Aunt Julia." May was glad"Aunt" Julia had come. When May was alone with Paul he expected thingsof her that she could not give. He would not allow her to be close tohim. He required that she pass a test of mental understanding. She likedhim best when others were present. Then she could warm herself timidlyand secretly in a knowledge of him that she could never utter.

Julia laughed affectionately. "Aren't you weary of such serioussubjects, Paul?" She felt that she saw the two from some distance insideherself. She saw herself, beautiful and remote before Paul, and himloving her. They loved the same thing. It filled her with tenderness.He's a child! She felt guilty in her recognition of his youth.

"Is that a serious subject?" Paul was wary. Being serious always madeone ridiculous. Without waiting for her reply, he said, "I'm boring Maywith my company. I must go." As he glanced toward Julia his eyes had thesad malicious look of a monkey's. A little color passed over his palenarrow face with its expression of precocious childishness.

Julia's long arms reached up to her hat. Paul's gaze made her feel herbody beautiful and strong, but her heart felt utterly lost inwickedness. I'm Dudley Allen's mistress, she said to herself. She hadexpected the reassurance of pain in her sense of sin; but the meaning ofwhat she had done was so utterly vacant that it frightened her. "Why nothave dinner with us? I want to hear more of your discussion."

Paul resented everything about her, her strongness and poise and theimpression she gave him of having passed from something in which he wasstill held. He moved his shoulders grotesquely. "Oh, Shaw's too facile.He's only a bag of tricks." He could not bear to be with May any longer.She's a silly little girl. "Good-night." He went out quickly. She'slaughing at me! She's trying to make me rude. They heard the front doorslam.

Paul's accusing air had given Julia a feeling of self-condemnation. Shecould not look at May at once.

"I am stupid with Paul," May said. "I don't see why he likes to talk tome. He's so grown-up and intellectual and I never know what to say tohim." She smiled unhappily. Her thin little hands moved awkwardly in herlap. She wanted Aunt Julia to like her.

Julia found in May's eagerness an inference of reproach, and was kindwith an effort. "Nonsense, May. Paul finds you a very interesting littlecompanion. He enjoys talking to you very much."

May's mouth quivered. Her eyes were soft and appeared dark in her smallpale face. "But he's eighteen," she said.

There were slow footsteps, ponderous on the stairs. Julia knew thatLaurence had come. Her heart beats quickened almost happily. She wantedto experience the reproach of his face. Without naming what she waitedfor, as a saint looks forward to his crucifixion, she looked forward tothe moment when he should condemn her.

Laurence stood in the doorway. "Well, Julie, girl, how are youto-night?" His brows contracted momentarily when he noticed May. "Howare you, May?" But his gaze returned to Julia and he smiled at hersteadily. His lips were harsh and at the same time sweet.

"You're tired, dear. Come sit by our fire." Julia could not meet hiseyes. She watched his heavy slouched shoulders and observed the loosebulge of his coat as he sank deeply in the high-backed chair which sheoffered him. His hands were wonderful. Small white hesitating hands. Sheremembered Dudley's hands passing over her, repulsive to her, hungryhands with a kind of lascivious innocence that hurt.

Dudley's bright secretive eyes seemed close to her, between her and herhusband, giving out a harsh warmth that suffocated her. She identifiedherself so with her imaginings that it was as if she had becomeinvisible to Laurence.

"Yes. I've had an interesting day at the laboratory. Even the commercialside of science has its diversions."

On the hearth the delicate drifting ash took a lilac tinge from somefallen bits of stick in which a crimson glow trembled like a diffusedrespiration. The room was strange with firelight. Bronze flames burstsuddenly from the logs in torrents of rushing silk.

Laurence began to tell about the experiment in anaphylaxis which he hadbeen making in the laboratory that he had charge of at a medicalmanufacturing establishment. He put the tips of his fingers togetherwhile his elbows rested on the arms of his chair. His heavydistinguished face was brown-red from the fire. The gray hair on histemples was animate as with a life unrelated to him. In his ungainlyrepose there was a dignity of acceptance which Julia recognized, thoughshe could not state it.

Julia felt annihilated by his trust. When he talked on, unaware of hersecret misery, it was as though he had willed her out of being. She andher pain had ceased to be.

She had a vision of herself in Dudley's arms. That person in Dudley'sarms was alive. She was conscious of herself and Laurence as a doubledeadness on either side of the living unrelated vision. Then it passedand there was nothing but Laurie's dead voice.

After dinner, while Julia was hearing Bobby's lessons downstairs,Laurence went up to her sitting room to rest and wait for her. He satdown by the Adams desk. The glow from the blue pottery lamp with itsorange shade shone along his thick gray-sprinkled hair and lighted oneside of his strongly lined face, his deep-set eyes with their crinkledlids, his large well-shaped nose with its bitter nostrils, and hisrather small mouth with its hard-sweet expression.

When he heard Julia's step he lifted his head and glanced expectantlytoward the door.

Julia's hair was in a loose knot against her neck. She was dressed in along plain smock of a curious green. Laurence wondered what genius hadtaught her to select her clothes. While his first wife was alive hedespised the mere vainness of dress, but since marrying Julia he hadcome to feel that clothes provided the art of individualization. It wasmarvelous that a woman who had previously expended most of her industryas a laboratory assistant had lost none of the knack of enhancing herfeminine attributes.

"Bobby has the most indefatigable determination to have his own way. Hehasn't any respect for our educational system. I felt he simply mustfinish his history before he succumbed to the charms of Jack Wilson'snew motor cycle."

Laurence found in her voice a peculiar emotional timbre which neverfailed to stir him, and when she sat down near him he was caught asalways by the helplessness of her large hands lying in her lap.

"I don't fancy his playing with motor cycles."

They were silent a moment.

"Julie?" He smiled apologetically. He noticed that her eyes evaded himand it made him unhappy. "Not much company for you. I'm a typicalAmerican man of business—engrossed in my profession. Wasn't it to-nightthat you were going to that meeting on Foreign Relief?"

"You've discouraged my philanthropies," Julia said. "Besides, they won'tmiss me." She lowered her gaze, and made a wry deprecating mouth.

He felt that she was shutting him out from something—from her coldyouth. He had not intended to discourage her enthusiasms, but it wouldhave relieved him to enfold her in the warmth of his inertia. He saidinwardly that he must keep himself until she needed him. He wondered ifhe were merely jealous of her youngness which went on beyond himdiscovering itself.

There was a pastel on the desk beside him. "I see Allen has done anotherportrait of you."

Julia flushed as she turned to him. In her open look he found somethingconcealed. He was ashamed of his thought. He stared at his own hands andhated their sensitiveness.

"I can't pretend to see myself in it. It looks grotesque to us with ourVictorian conceptions of art, doesn't it?" She smiled, gazing at himwith a harassed but eager air of demand.

He did not wish to see her eyes that asked to be defended againstthemselves. He stared at the picture a moment in silence. It irritatedhim to feel that the artist had observed something in Julia which washidden from her husband. When he finally glanced with hard amused eyesat her, he felt himself weak. "My mentality is not equal to anappreciation of your friend's stuff. I'm hopelessly bourgeois, Julia."He would not admit his hardening against each of Julia's interests asthey came to her. He put his pain with the transience of her youth andcondescended to her so that he need not take note of himself. "Did youarrange for the lecture courses at the settlement house?" he asked. Hemissed her former feverish engrossment in the projected lecture seriesand wanted to bring her back to it.

Julia made a pathetic grimace. "You've laughed at me so, Laurie. Irealize all that was absurd—terribly futile."

"Did I? I thought I agreed with you that it was a fine thing toinoculate the struggling masses with the culture bug." He could notcontrol his sarcasms, though he uttered them lightly. He wanted her tobe as tired as he was—to rest with him. There was sweat on his wristsas he took his pipe from his pocket and pushed some tobacco into the drycharred bowl. When he laughed at her the pupils of his gray eyes weresmall and sharp and defensive, as though they had been pricked by hispain. Beautiful, he thought. She doesn't need me.

"I have a very middle-aged feeling about the welfare of humanity."

She came over and knelt by his side. "Am I too ridiculous? Can't youtake me seriously, Laurie?" She wondered why it was that when he lookedat her she always found suffering in his face. He held himself away fromwhat she wanted to give. She wanted an abandon in which she would beglorified. She imagined eyes finding her wonderful. She smiled at him,her sweet humorless smile.

Laurence stroked her hair. "I take you too seriously," he said. "Isometimes feel that a husband is a very casual affair to you modernwomen."

She was tender to his ignorance of her and vain of her secret terror ofherself. Watching him, she thought of the day when his youngest childdied and he had allowed her to see his suffering. Because she had neverwished to hurt him she resented it that he had never again been helplessbefore her. She wondered if he had been strong like this to his otherwife, or if he gave more of his suffering to the dead than to theliving. Suffering filled Julia with tenderness, so she could not thinkherself cruel. "Dear!" She kissed him gently, maternally, and climbed toher feet.

He saw her reproachful eyes. Youth, so free with itself. Rapacious foremotion. He felt bitterly his necessity more final than hers. "Where'smy last Journal of American Science?" He dismissed her intensity.Lifting his thick brows, he took out spectacles and put them on. Hewatched her over the rims.

She handed him his paper. He was a child to her. Her secret sense of sinmade her strong and superior. She wanted to be gentle. She did not knowwhy the sense of wrongdoing made her so confident of herself. While heread the journal she seated herself on the opposite side of thefireplace with her embroidery. When he lowered the paper for an instantand she had a glimpse of his oldish oblivious face, she loved itsunawareness and tears came to her eyes again.

On Saturday morning Julia attended the meeting of a club in which theproblems of business women were reviewed. The members gathered in ahotel auditorium where musicales were sometimes given. The long windowsof the room opened above an alleyway and its gold rococo gloom wasrelieved of the obscure sunshine by electric lights. The women sat inlittle groups here and there, only half filling the place, and themurmur of voices went on indistinguishably until the president, Mrs.Hurst, a pale self-confident little woman with a whimsical smile,stepped to the platform, below the garlanded reliefs of Beethoven andMozart, and struck her gavel on the desk. Then an unfinished silencecrept over the scattered assemblage. A stout intellectual-looking Jewesscame forward ponderously, adjusted her nose glasses, and read theminutes of the previous meeting, while those before her listened withforced attention, or frankly considered the interesting design of greenand black embroidery which ornamented her dark blue dress.

But once the subjects of the day were under discussion the concentrationof the audience was natural and intense. Then the president, with demureseverity, rapped with her gavel and reminded too ardent debaters thatthey were out of order.

Julia could not resist the sense of importance that it gave her to stateher serious opinion upon certain problems which affected her sex. Whenshe rose to express herself her exposition was so succinct that she wasinvited to the platform where what she said could be betterappreciated.

The repetition of her speech was uncomfortably self-conscious. Hercheeks grew faintly pink. There were several women in the audience whomshe disliked, and when she talked in this manner she felt that she wasbeating them down with her righteousness. She observed in the faces ofmany a virtuous and deliberate stupidity that was a part of theirdetermination not to understand her.

Her speech intoxicated her a little. When she stepped to the flooramidst small volleys of applause, the room about her grew slightly dim.For an hour the discussion went on, back and forth, one woman rising andthe next interrupting her statement. After Julia herself had spoken,nothing further seemed to her of consequence. The other women werehopelessly verbose, or, if they argued against her, ridiculouslyunseeing. Their past applause rang irritatingly in her mind. Sherecalled Dudley Allen's contempt for this feeble utilitarianconsideration of eternal things. She was proud of comprehending theunmorality—the moral cynicism—of art. She felt that her broad capacityfor understanding men like Dudley Allen liberated her from the narrowethical confines of the lives that surrounded her, which took theircolor from social usage.

Yet she resented Dudley's attitude toward her slight attempts atself-expression. It reminded her of Laurence's protective air when shefirst took a position under him at the laboratory. It was part of theconspiracy against her attempt at achieving significance beyond thelimits of her personal problem. It hurt her as much as it pleased herwhen either Dudley or her husband complimented her dress or commented onthe grace of her hands when she was pouring tea. Her feeling was thesame when she thought of having a child. She wanted the child ineverything but the sense of accepting the inevitable in maternity. Shesometimes imagined that if she could bear a child that was hers aloneshe could be glad of it. In order to avoid being stifled by a convictionof inferiority, she was constantly demanding some assurance ofdependence on her from those she was associated with.

Since childhood Dudley Allen had looked to himself to achieve greatness.He had been a pretty child, but effeminate, undersized, and not notedfor cleverness. His father was a Unitarian minister in a New Englandtown; his mother, an ambitious woman absorbed in the pursuit of culture.Her esthetic conceptions were of an intellectual order, but she sang inthe choir of her husband's church and thought of herself as frustratedin the expression of a naturally artistic temperament.

Dudley remembered her with vexation. She had been ambitious for him, andhe had resented her efforts to use him for vicarious self-fulfilment.She had him taught to play the violin and developed his taste for music.It was chiefly in contradiction to her suggestions that he earlyinterested himself in paint. Now he played the violin occasionally, butnever in public.

His father was a man repressed and made severe by his sense of justice.As a child Dudley knew that this parent was ashamed of his son'sphysical weakness and emotional explosiveness. His father wanted him tobe a lawyer. His mother wished him to become a man of letters or amusician of distinction.

Dudley was reared in the sterile atmosphere of a religion which confineditself to ethical adherences. However, he absorbed Biblical lore andadapted it to his more poetic needs. His father's contempt pained him,but in no wise diminished the boy's vaguely acquired conviction that hewas himself one of the chosen few. Dudley identified himself with thesingers of Israel who spoke with God. As he was unable to cope withbullying playmates of his own age, his exalted isolation was hisdefense.

When he was twelve years old his mother discovered a journal in which hehad set down some of his intimacies with the Creator. She admonished himfor his absurdities and burned the book. The incident helped to develophis resistance to the opinions of those who would destroy his consolingfancies. He noted precociously symptoms of his mother's weaknesses.

By the time he was sent away to college he had developed his secretdefense, and his timidity was no longer so apparent. His progressthrough his courses, while erratic, was in part brilliant. When hereturned home after his first absence his father showed some pride inthe visit.

At eighteen Dudley had evolved a philosophy which permitted him to lookupon himself as a prophet. Praise irritated him as much as blame. Whenpeople made him angry he retorted to them with waspish sarcasms. When hewas alone he worked himself into transports of despair which made himhappy. He thought of himself as the peculiar interpreter of universallife. He liked to go out in the woods and fields alone, and under thetrees to take his clothes off and roll in the grass. He was recklesslygenerous on occasion, in defiance of habits of penuriousness. He feltmost kindly toward Negroes, day laborers, and other people whose socialstatus was inferior to his own. Yet among his own kind he exacted everyrecognition of social superiority.

After vexatious arguments with his father, he went to Paris to continuethe study of painting. His technical facility surprised every one. Hisconversations were facile and worldly, he was impeccable in his dress,while he thought of a trilogy in spirit which embraced David in Israel,Spinoza, and himself. His greatest fear in life was the fear ofridicule. The physical cowardice which had oppressed his childhoodremained with him, and his escape from it was still through hisreligious belief in his inward significance. Men of the crasser typedespised him utterly, and he confuted them with stinging cleverness. Afew who were artists were attracted by the rich, almost feminine qualityof his emotions. He found these men, rather than the women he knew,were the dominant figures in his life.

He was in terror of all women with whom he could not establish himselfon planes of physical intimacy. But after he had arrived at such a statewith them, they interested him very little. Their attraction for him wascurious, rarely compelling. In all of his affairs his condition wascomplicated by his fear of relinquishing any influence he had once beenable to assert.

When he returned to America after two years abroad he felt stronger bythe intellectual distances which separated him from his former life. Ifhe had not rebelled against the tone of condescension in which hisfellow artists referred to his youthful success, he might have beencontented with the humbler friends who were waiting to lionize him. Hecontinued to cultivate an aloofness which sustained his pride as muchagainst inferior compliments as, in the past, it had protected him fromjibes.

He could not console himself with the praises of most of the women hemet, for he always fancied that they were attempting to flatter him intoentanglements. When he encountered Julia, however, the mixture ofegoism and humility which he sensed in her discontent intrigued hisvanity. He saw that she was isolated and unhappy, and he longed for anadmiration which his discrimination would not condemn. In her heanticipated a disciple of whom he need not be ashamed; but until sheshould be sexually disarmed he was frightened of her.

May and Paul were in the park, by the side of the lake. The water wascaught in meshes of hot rays as in a web. In the sky, above the trees,the light, drawn inward from the vague horizon, glowed in a fathomlessspot where the sun was sinking. The grass was uncut in the field aboutthem and the little seeded tops floated in a red-lilac mist above thegreen stems.

"I don't like your Aunt Julia, May!"

May's mouth half smiled, uneasy. "Why not?"

They sat down on a hillock and Paul began to tear up grass blades as ifhe wanted to hurt them. When he thought of Julia it made him feel sorryfor himself, and he hated her. "She's so darn complacent and shallow."

"Why, Paul, Aunt Julia's always doing things for people. She's beenawfully good to you. After the way she helped you with your exams Ishouldn't think you'd talk like that." May gazed at him with wide softeyes of reproach.

He picked at the grass. "Oh, I'm joking. I suppose she felt veryvirtuous when she helped me."

"But she does lots, Paul. She's always interested in some charity work."

"Pish! Charity! What does a woman like that know about life!"

May was timidly silent.

"Some of these days I'm going to cut loose from everything—all thesesmug conventions."

"But where'll you go, Paul? I thought you wanted to study medicine."

"Well, I'd rather give up that than stand this atmosphere. Oh, hell!What's the use!"

She liked it when he said hell. It made her feel intimate with a strangething. Afraid. "But what do you want to do, Paul?"

Looking away from her, he did not answer. It soothed him to be superiorto May, but he knew enough to be ashamed of such consolation. Too easy.A kid like that! "It don't matter. I've got to get away. I don't fitinto the sort of life your Aunt Julia stands for. What's there here forme anyway!" He added, "Of course you're too young to bother with mytroubles." He stared stubbornly at the twinkling tree tops across thelake.

May was crushed by this accusation of youth. "You used to say you wantedto stay here and help radicals. Some day there'll be a revolution—" Herhumility would not permit her to continue.

Paul was irritated by this reminder of his inconsistency. Still he feltguilty and wanted to be kind. "Pshaw! A lot of chance for revolution inAmerica now. You must have been listening to your Aunt Julia talk parlorsocialism, child."

May was feebly indignant in defense. "You didn't think so when you usedto read Karl Marx. You know you didn't!"

The thin immature quality of her voice wounded him. He wanted to beseparate from it. He was aggrieved because all the world seemed to cometo conclusions ahead of him. He wanted to think something no one hadever thought before. Now he had an unadmitted fear that what Julia hadsaid had diminished his interest in the struggles of the working class."I know a fellow who cut loose from home a couple of months ago andshipped as a steward on a White Star boat. His sister got a letter fromhim saying that when he got over he was fired, but he found another bunkright away in a sailing vessel. He's going to West Africa. You rememberthat kid that came and visited the Hursts?"

"Yes, but I don't see any reason for you to throw up everything you'vealways planned."

Paul rubbed his chin. Beard. Of course it was childish to talk about"seeing life". He didn't take pride in such absurdities as that. "Whatare you going to do with yourself, May?" He was gentle but light.

"Me?" She smiled with a startled air. She felt helpless when peopleasked her about herself. Of course she understood he wasn't serious. "Isuppose I'm going to college where Aunt Julia went—and then—oh, Idon't know, Paul! I'm not clever like Aunt Julia. You know she putherself through, and then earned her own living for a long time." Hersmall face flushed.

As she turned a little he watched the thick pale braid of her hair swingbetween her shoulders. "Yes, I know. Aunt Julia thinks the fact that sheonce worked deserves special recognition." His sarcasm was laborious. Heknew that he was saying too much. He leaned forward and twitched May'splait. "Why don't you do your hair up? You want to look grown-up."

She laughed. She was grateful when he teased her. That meant it didn'tmatter what she answered. "I don't want to look grown-up."

"Aunt Julia doesn't want any grown-up step-daughters around." Somethinghad him, he thought. It was irresistible.

"Paul!" A catch of surprise and rebuke in her soft tone. "I don't knowwhat's got into you lately. I think it's horrid—always suggesting AuntJulia has some mean motive in everything she does! She's one of theloveliest people on earth! She's too good for you. You just don'tunderstand her and you're jealous."

Paul was amused. "Jealous, am I!" He would not show the child hisvexation with her. All at once he was disconcerted to realize that hehad become very depressed. He pitied himself. He watched May's legs asshe stretched them stiffly before her, thin little legs. Her high shoeswere loosely laced and the tops bulged away from her ankles. Sweet. Hereached and took her hand. Cold little hand! May, too embarrassed totake notice of his gesture, let him hold it. He thought she was sweet.He might like to kiss her—maybe. Not now. He could not bear to be asyoung as she was. While he held her hand it came over him that there wassomething dark and sickly in himself. He was vain that she could notunderstand it. Rotten. She's a kid. He tried not to recognize his pridein finding himself impure. He was fed up with everything. Hell!

As the sun disappeared the world grew suddenly bright, and long red raysstriped the tree trunks and the grass, endless rays reaching softly outof the gorgeous welter in the western sky. The water twinkled fixedly.The green grass was like mist over the fields.

Paul became abruptly agitated. "Better go home, hadn't we?"

May glanced at him furtively. His eyes made her unhappy. "I suppose wehad."

They got up awkwardly. When they were standing he let her hand drop asif it had been nothing. She walked before him, a little girl in a shortdress with a soft braid of hair hanging under a red cap.

"You don't look fifteen, May."

"Don't I?"

He tried to catch up with her. He wondered what he was afraid of. Hervoice had a smothered sound, almost like a sob. She did not look back.

It was nearly night now. The sky without the sun was a dark burningblue. A strange cloud floated white above the black trees.

Paul was suddenly happy and excited. When I get home—Uncle Alph—thatold fool. Aunt Susie. They were married. What did that ever mean!Purification by fire is all that's good enough for people like that. Asin to get married at all. If I thought people's bodies were like that!Paul wondered to himself if he were mad. It hurt to think throughthings. People went on living in their filthy world. Thick stockingswere ugly. May's legs. Thin little legs in ugly stockings. Why doesn'tshe shine her shoes! Little rag picker! "Did you know that you were anuntidy person, May?" he called. As she looked back over her shoulder hecould feel her smile. Her vague face stared pale at him down the path.The moon was floating out from the trees, pale moon like a face. Thinlight stole silver along the branches high up. Little moon, said Paul tohimself, staring at May's face and smiling. He felt ill, foolishly,pleasantly ill.

When he came up with her it was as if he were his own shadow walkingbeside her. "Little moon, I love you." He talked under his breath. Hescarcely wanted her to hear his absurdity. Then he placed his arm aroundher. Her cold sweet thinness was like the shadow of the moon, thin andstill on the topmost branch of the strange tree. Her small breastswelled against his hand and he could feel her heart beat. "Oh, May!" Hekissed her. He kissed the silence between them. "Gee, kid!" he said.

"Paul, dear."

They walked along together, happy; but less happy as they neared thehedge that cut them off from the street and the glow from an arc lampbegan to fall across the grass.

When they stood under the light the absurdity had gone from Paul. Hewondered what had happened to him back there in the darkness. He hadtaken his arm from her waist and now he pressed her hands, afraid thatshe would observe the change in him. "Good night, May, child."

May was tremulous and bewildered. "Good night, Paul." She triedlaboriously to fit her tone to his brotherly kindliness.

Mrs. Hurst sat with Julia at tea in Julia's upstairs room. The late sunstretched tired rays across the soft blue carpet. The yellow curtainsglowed before the open windows, and, fluttering apart, showed the thickfoliage of the trees that screened the houses opposite. The atmosphereintensified the very immobility of the furniture. There was a voluptuousfinality in the liquid repose of light on the polished floor and theglint of a glass vase, where needle rays of brightness were transfixedamong the stems of flowers.

Julia poured tea from a flat vermilion pot. The tea stood clear and darkin the black cups. Over the two women hung a moist bitter odor, thebruised sweetness of withering roses. The afternoon smells of dampeneddust and new-cut grass blew in from the street.

Mrs. Hurst took her cup in her small, slightly unsteady hand, andsipped. The veins were growing large and hard and showed through thedelicately withered skin on which there were tiny brown spots likestains. She wore a wedding ring rubbed thin. "My dear, you still havethat wonderful old Negress who used to be your maid? How do you manageto keep her? I'm always struggling with some fresh domestic problem."Mrs. Hurst smiled and with her free hand settled her trim glasses on herneat nose. Her sweet little face, turned toward Julia, showed adetermined insistence on negative happiness. "I think we have a greatdeal more to struggle with than our grandmothers did. We haven't onlyour homes to look after, but our social responsibilities are so great."Mrs. Hurst was beautifully and simply dressed in gray, and the softoutline of her hat, with its tilt of roses at the back, gave an air ofgallantry to her faded features, which were those of a sophisticatedlittle girl—the face of a woman of forty-six whose sex life has passedaway without her knowing it.

"I'm afraid I've become a renegade as far as my social responsibilitiesare concerned. I feel myself so inadequate to any real accomplishment,Mrs. Hurst." Julia smiled guardedly and resentfully. Something in herwanted to destroy the delicate aggressive repose of the woman opposite,and felt helpless before it.

"Ah, you mustn't feel that, my dear. All of us feel it at times, but Ido believe that it depends on us women more than on our men folk,perhaps, to allay the unrest of our day. Changing conditions of laborhave taken the homes away from so many. I think we should carry thespirit of the home out into the world." Mrs. Hurst made a plaintivelittle moue of faded sauciness. As men were obliterated from herpersonal interests, she reverted to a child's demure coquetry inpleading her cause with her own sex.

"I can't look upon myself as the person for such a mission," Julia said.Her eyes and lips were cold as she stared pleasantly at her visitor.Julia felt a sudden sharp vanity in the thought of the sin againstsociety which initiated her into another life. She was confused by herpride in adultery, and sought for an exalted ethical term which wouldjustify her sense of glorying in her act. Dudley—his hands upon me. Icouldn't be free. Eagles. The ethics of eagles. Julia knew that she wasabsurd. She was humiliated and defiant. She was aware of her body underher clothes as apart from her, and as though it were the only thing inthe world that lived. It was terrible to feel her body lost from her.She fancied this was what people meant by the sense of nakedness. WhenDudley kissed her on the lips there was no nakedness, for she and herbody had the same existence. She despised Mrs. Hurst, who separated herfrom her body. "You know I haven't a real genius for setting the worldright."

Mrs. Hurst was gentle and severe. "We can't afford to lose you! I shallask your delightful husband to influence you. As for genius—I imagineeach of us has his own definition of that. We all think you showedsomething very much like genius in your conduct of the college campaignfund last winter. You should hear Charles expatiate on your clevernessas a business woman. We are practical people, Julia Farley, and we doneed money. It is the golden key which opens the door for most of ourideals, I'm afraid."

Julia frowned slightly and tried to control her irritation. "Why can'tMr. Hurst undertake some of the financial problems? He would reduce mypoor little efforts to such insignificance."

"But there you are, my dear! Charles lives in a man's world. He doesn'tunderstand these things. Women are the conscience of the race." Mrs.Hurst smiled again and in her small mouth showed even rows of artificialteeth.

When Julia woke in the night beside Laurence she perceived her bodylying there naked and apart, and hands moving over it—horrible andsecret hands. In the daytime in the street the body walked with heroutside her clothes. With strange men her consciousness of that horribleimpersonal flesh that was hers, though she knew nothing of it—though itbelonged to the whole world—was most acute.

The curtains moved and the spots of light on the floor opened and closedlike eyes. A fly had crept inside the screens and made a singing noiseagainst the window. A vase of flowers was on the table, and the shadowof a blossom, rigid and delicate, fell in the bar of sunshine thatbleached the polished wood. There was pale sunshine on the chess boardat which May and Paul were playing. Light took the color from theclose-cropped hair at the nape of Paul's neck, and, when May glanced upat him, filled her eyes with brilliant vacancy so that she lookedstrange.

May bent forward again, her mouth loose in wonder.

Paul made a stupid move.

"Ah! You've lost him!" Aunt Julia said.

He did not answer her, but his shoulders took a resentful curve. He feltas if the veins in his temples were bursting, pouring floods of darknessbefore his eyes. He wished he might be rid of her, always there in theroom beside him and May. He pushed forward another piece.

Aunt Julia came and stood beside him. She leaned down. She leaned downand laid her hand on his arm. "If only you hadn't lost that knight!"

The sound of her voice made everything dark again. He resented her morethan he had ever resented anything on earth.

"Let me move for you once, Paul, child."

"But that won't be fair, Aunt Julia!" May watched them with a suddenbrightening and dimming of the eyes. She was startled by the look ofAunt Julia's faintly flushed face so close to Paul's. What makes himlook like that!

"I'll play for you, dear, too," Aunt Julia said. She was sorry forherself because her loneliness made her want even the children. She wastender of them. They could not understand her. She would not admit toherself that Paul's response to her presence thrilled and strengthenedher. She wanted to be kind to the poor awkward boy. May was such ababy. "Will you let me move your pawn there, May?"

May nodded. She was restive. She wanted to move for herself. When sheresumed the game her eyes became wide and engrossed. "Check! Check!" Shecame out of her delight. She was clapping the palms of her thin handsand they made a muffled sound. They fell apart abruptly. Once more AuntJulia was leaning close to Paul.

"You finished me all right, May."

May wondered if Paul were angry with her. What made his eyes so hard!

Julia was ashamed before May. That spineless little girl! Julia wantedto leave them both. May and the boy hurt her. Her body was so alive thather awareness of herself was very small. She was sure of her existenceonly through this humiliating certainty of other being. Their youthseemed disgusting to her and she wanted to leave them with it. Shesmiled at them constrainedly. The two figures swam before her. "Good-by,Paul. I must leave you children and attend to some humdrum duties belowstairs."

"Good-by," Paul said. He could not look at her. She went out. The stirof her dress died away. He feared to hear it go and to be alone withsomething in himself. "I'm sick of chess, May. I must be going too." Herose.

"Must you?" May got up.

Paul went to the table and took his cap. He wondered why she was sostill, why he could not bring himself to see her. When he turned aroundshe was watching him with her silly timid air. It repelled him that shesmiled so much for nothing at all. His eyes were blank with distrust ofher. Why does she smile like that! She made him cruel. He hated her formaking him cruel. He wanted to be cruel. "You seem pretty glad to getrid of me!"

"Why, Paul!" May flashed a glance at him. She stared at the floor, andshe was dying in the obscure impression of moonlight on trees near apark gate.

Paul came up to her and, with the surreptitious movement of a sulkychild, pressed a hard kiss against her mouth.

Before she could respond to him he ran out, through the hall and downthe stairs and into the street. He was terrified lest he should seeJulia before he could leave the house. Anything but May! He didn't wantMay. Aunt Julia always coming close to him, touching him, laying herhand on his. He felt trapped in his loathing of her. Why was it hecould never forget her!

It was growing dusk. On either side of the infinite street the houseswere vague. The trees were like plumes of shadow waving above him. Thestars in the sky, that yet glowed with the passing of the sun, wereburning dust. He tried to think that he was mad. Beyond him under astreet lamp he saw a dimly illumined figure—big buttocks wagging beforehim under a thin calico skirt. And the Negress passed out of sight.

By the time he reached home he was sick of himself, thoroughly dejected,perceiving the vileness of his own mind. He crept up the back stairsunseen, and in his small room lay face downward on his bed. He thoughthe ought to kill himself to keep from thinking things like that. UncleAlph and his Aunt down in the dining room. He began to sob. God, all therottenness in the world! If I did that it would be outright in thedaytime. I wouldn't be ashamed. Naked bodies moved before him in a longline. They were ugly because he wanted to keep them out. Aunt Julia wasthere and even May. He would not see them, but they were ugly. Theirugliness was the horror that enveloped him. He knew their uglinessbecause it became a part of him without his having seen it.

There was something beautiful at last. It was nakedness that belonged tono one. Nakedness without a face. It took him. He was asleep. There werebreasts in the darkness. He was afraid. He could not wake up. He wasfear and he was afraid of himself. He was against naked breasts thatheld him, that he could not see.

May tip-toed down the dark stairs, her small hand sliding along the coldmysterious rail.

When she reached the lower hall she saw the door of the study open andFather sitting there with Bobby who was studying and very intent on thebook he held upon his knees. There was a green lamp on the desk and amoth bumping against the shade and shattering its wings. The light,falling on Father's back, made the strands of hair twinkle on hisdrooped head, and his shoulders looked dusty in the black coat he wore.The study windows were open. Beyond Father was the dark yard. A squareof the sky was like green silk. The moon, laid on it softly, wasbreathing light like a sea thing, glowing and dying.

When May had reassured herself of this unchanged world she tip-toed upto her room. She wanted to undress quickly so that she could be in bedand forget everything but Paul's unexpected kiss and the new cruel feelof his lips. Now that she was alone she wanted to forget about beingashamed. She had a curious, almost frightening, intimacy with her ownsensations. She wanted to go on thinking of herself forever and ever.

Dudley's intuitions were capable of sensing what might be called thepsychological essences of those about him. He never became aware of theelusive value of a personality without wishing to absorb it into himselfso that it became a part of his own experience. He could not bear tolose his sense of identity with those from whom he had compelled suchcontacts. For this reason, though he despised his parents, he maintainedtoward them the attitude of a dutiful son.

It was the same with all the friends of other days. When he wasattracted by some one Dudley initiated him into a devastating intimacy.The person, for a time, would yield to a flattering tyranny, but, in theend, would rebel against the inequality of possession. Dudley refutedall intellectual justifications of protest, and attributed the failureof his friendships to the emotional inadequacies of his disciples.

When women abandoned their sexual defenses to him, however, he foundnothing left to achieve. They held a view of their relationships whichmade the subtler kinds of personal pride unnecessary to them. If theyhad received in life any spiritual disfigurements, they were only tooready to expose these where it would buy them a little pity throughwhich they might insinuate themselves into another soul. Their spiritualinstincts were as promiscuous as the physical expressions of embryolife. It was only as regarded their bodies that they showed anythinglike reserve. Even here it was more a matter of vanity than anythingelse, for in surrendering themselves in the flesh the thing they seemedmost to fear was that once they were revealed they would not besufficiently admired. It was irritating to feel that when they abandonedeverything to a man they but attained to a subtler possession.

Not long before meeting Julia, Dudley passed through an experience inwhich he narrowly avoided matrimony. The girl had appeared to bepeculiarly submissive to his influence; but at a time when hiscomplacency had allowed him to feel most tender of her she had evadedhim. If she had been less precipitate he would have married her. He wasthankful for the circ*mstance which had saved him, and when hecorresponded with her he called her "my dear sister," or "my very dearfriend". Now that she had abandoned him he was more generous toward herthan he had ever been. He knew that one could give one's self in animpersonal gesture. But it was very tricky to take from others. He wroteher that he must learn to function alone, that it was the artist's life.She could never explain to herself why it was that she resented sodeeply his condemnation of his own weakness and his reiteration of hisneed of the isolation and suffering which would clarify his innervision.

Dudley hinted to all the women he met that Art was his mistress and thathe could not permit himself to approach them seriously withoutsubjecting them to the injustice of this rivalry. The physical terrorsof his childhood had aggravated his caution. His inward distress wasterrible when he was obliged to reconcile his resistance to the worldoutside him with the ideal of the great artist which commanded him toabandon himself to all that came. His desire, even as regarded materialthings, was to hoard everything that contributed to the erection of abarrier between him and the ruthless struggle of men. He longed forcommercial success, and he displayed an ostentatious indifference to thesalableness of his work. He had a physical attachment for hispossessions.

He hated gatherings of all sorts unless they were of friends who wouldrespond to all he had to say and whom he might insidiously dominate. Yethe had encountered Julia first at the home of Mrs. Hurst, whosebourgeois pretensions to esthetic interest he despised. Theseheterogeneous assemblies gave him the cold impression of a mob. Anythingwhich affected him and at the same time evaded him was unadmittedlyalarming. He had not appeared at his best that night until he was ableto lead Julia aside and talk to her alone. Then he became suddenly atease. There was a slightly bitter humility about her confessions ofignorance that made him feel her potentially appreciative in a genuinesense.

Strangely enough the frankness of her self-depreciation disarmed him. Hefelt that he must search for a hidden pretension that would show herweak and allow him an approach. Wherever she displayed symptoms ofconfidence he confronted her with her dependence on illusion. He toldhimself that all that one individual owed another was the means totruth. Believing in the dignity of self-responsibility, he could notassume the burden of Julia's discouragement. He imagined her unhappy. Ifhe helped her to see herself he was aiding her to attain the onlyultimate values in life.

After he and Julia became lovers he was troubled not a little by thenecessity for concealment, for he had told her so frequently that herrelation to Laurence had been falsified by the accumulation of reserves.

Dudley had said so often that he considered Laurence a repressed andmisunderstood man that Julia, with an antagonism which she did notconfess to herself, asked her lover to dine at her home. Meeting Dudleyas Laurence's wife again put her on the offensive regarding everythingthat concerned her house and the usual circ*mstances of her existence.She had never taken such care in composing a meal as she did for thisoccasion, and she spent half an hour arranging the flowers in a low bowlon the table.

When Dudley came he greeted Laurence with peculiar eagerness. Juliafound it hard to forgive her lover for making himself ridiculous.

During dinner the guest led the talk which was exclusively between thetwo men. He insisted on discussing bacteriological subjects withLaurence. Laurence deferred politely to Dudley's ignorance.

The large room in which they sat was lighted by the candles at eitherend of the long table. The glow, like a bright shadow, was reflected inthe dark woodwork and against the obscure walls. Through the tall openwindows the wind brought the warm night in with a soft rush ofblackness. Then the pale candle flames flattened into fans and the waxslipped with a hiss into the burnished holders.

Laurence was humped in his chair as usual, so that the rough collar ofhis coat rose up behind against his neck. Most of the time as he talkedhe stared straight before him; but occasionally he glanced with hissmall pained eyes into Dudley's engrossed and persistent face.

Julia saw with unusual clearness everything that Laurence said and did.She was possessively aware of his gestures, and when he spoke easily andfluently of his work she had a proprietary satisfaction in it, and wasfull of animosity toward Dudley's questioning.

She felt betrayed by Dudley, who approached Laurence by ignoring hermediumship. She could not bear the admission of Dudley's power toexclude her. They could only live in each other. She gave him life inher, but he obliterated her from himself, and so condemned her to a sortof death. And while she was dead he gave Laurence her life. She was deadand alone with her body that was so alive. She felt her breasts swellingloathsomely under her crisp green muslin dress, and her long hidden legsstretched horribly from the darkness of her hips. Her live bodypossessed her stupidly. If only he would take it from her! If only withone glance he would admit her to himself!

As they passed from the dining room Julia touched Laurence despairingly.He saw her worried smile. "You're warm, dear," she said. And she added,"I wonder how our children fared upstairs, eating alone in state." Shewanted to compel Laurence into the atmosphere of domestic intimacieswhere her guest had no part.

"I wonder." He returned her smile abstractedly and spoke to Dudleyagain. "You know Weissman of Berlin—"

Julia looked unconsciously tragic and bit her lip. "Have you been ableto arrange for your exhibition, Dudley?" she interrupted demandingly.Her voice was sharp.

"Why, no—" Dudley glanced at her with pleasant interrogation. "You weresaying—about Weissman?" He was naïve like a child unconscious ofrudeness.

When they came to the staircase Laurence went on ahead because of thelight. Dudley took Julia's arm, bare to the elbow. She shuddered awayfrom him. She was observing his strut, the way he walked, his weightbearing on his heels. When the glow from the upper hall fell on them shesaw his short arms held stiffly at his sides, the black down clinging onhis wrists and the backs of his hands, the twinkle of his crisp reddishmustache that appeared artificially imposed on his small, almostwomanish, face, and the thick black curls, soft and a little oily, thatclung about his ill-formed head. She disliked even the carefulcarelessness of his dress.

But her loathing of him was after all only horror of herself. If he hadgiven her a look of acceptance she would have become one with him. Thenit would have been impossible to see him so separately. She wanted toexplain the horror to him. If he had known her thoughts he could nothave endured them, and he would have saved them both.

But he was separate and satisfied in himself. "Julia," he said in a lowvoice, "Laurence Farley is a remarkable person. There is something inthe dignity of his reserve that puts us to shame. My God, what a tragedyhe is! He interests me tremendously. I'm grateful to you for letting meknow him."

Julia felt hateful that he presumed to tell her this. She had alwaysspoken gratefully of Laurence. She had much pride in her pain in neverfinding excuses for herself.

"He isn't sophisticated in our sense," Dudley said, "but he makes mefeel that there is something puerile and immature in both of us."

Julia said, in a hard voice, "I don't think I have ever failed inappreciation of Laurence." Suddenly she realized that both these menwere strangers to her, that she loved and wanted only herself. Herdespair was so complete that it relieved her, and she could scarcelyhold back the tears.

Dudley wanted to despise Laurence. There was something in thepersonality of Julia's husband which defied contempt. If Laurence haddisplayed any crass desire for recognition Dudley would have passed himby with relief; but the artist wished to force all sensitive natures toadmit that their secrets could not be hidden.

Laurence's regard for Julia was full of the condescension of maturity.He gave to her where it was impossible for him to take. Dudley hadalways despised her a little, and now the fact that her husband excludedher from his suffering was testimony of her inadequacy. Withoutadmitting it to himself, Dudley was beginning to resist being associatedwith her. He reflected that it was grotesque to dream of findingunderstanding in such a struggling and incomplete nature. Julia waspossessive. The heroic woman must rise above this instinct.

Her breasts were a little old, her body thin. He remembered theangularity of her hips, the too long line of her back. He saw her eyesuplifted to his with that pained, withheld look which annoyed him somuch. Her skin was very white, but a little coarse. When she put herarms about him her hair, all disarranged, fell wild and heavy about herstrained throat. He did not wish to admit that he had discovered hismistress to be less beautiful than, in the beginning, he had imaginedher. He revolted against these obvious judgments of the senses. It wasunpleasant to recall her so distinctly. He pitied her mentalincompleteness which made it impossible to give her the purer valueswhich he wanted to share with her.

Dudley congratulated himself on a curiously sensitive understanding ofwhat Laurence had endured. To escape the unpleasant vision of Julia'sbody and the dumb gaze which fatigued him so much he concentrated allhis reflections on his magnanimous sympathy for the man.

He felt that face to face with Julia he would never be able to explainto her what he perceived in regard to her husband, so he wrote her aletter about it. "Laurence Farley is our equal, Julia," he wrote. "Weowe it to ourselves to treat him as such. Now that I have had theopportunity to observe and appreciate his rare qualities I know that therelation between you and me will never fulfil its deep promise whilethis lie exists between you and him. The truth will be hard, but he isbig enough to bear it. He is a man who has suffered from the Americanenvironment, and has been warped and drawn away from his true self. Ifhis scientific erudition had been fostered in an atmosphere which lovedlearning for its own sake, he would have been able to express himself.He has the ripe nature of a savant. I feel that meeting with you bothhas a rare meaning for me. We must all suffer in this thing. Perhaps hemost, except that I must suffer alone. You and he are close—in spite ofeverything you are close. Closer perhaps than even you and I have been.But I must learn, Julia. I am struggling yet. I have farther to go thanhe has, in spite of my superior knowledge of certain things, of worldsof which he has never become cognizant. I have not yet learned as he hasto rise above myself. In my slow way I shall do so. I shall learn,Julia, and you shall help me—you two people. I want him to be myfriend. I respect him. I love you both. Oh, Julia, how deeply, deeply Ihave loved you."

When Dudley had dispatched this letter he found himself liberated frommany obscure depressions that had been hampering his spirit. Theimportant thing in Julia's life was her relation to Laurence. He,Dudley, would accept the fact that he was only an incident in herstruggle to achieve herself.

Yet he was disconcerted by the premonition that her interpretation ofwhat he had done would not be his. He was in furtive terror of beingmade ridiculous.

Through the tall, open windows of the dining room, Julia, seated withsome mending, could see the dull line of the roofs in the next street,and the dreary sky shadowed with soiled milky-looking clouds. The grassin the back yard was a bright dead green. It had grown tall. Flurries ofmoist acrid wind swept across it, and it bent all at once with a long,undulant motion that was like voluptuous despair. The table cloth roseheavily and fell in a spent gesture against the legs under it. Julia'sblack muslin dress beat gently about her ankles.

Then the wind passed. The grass blades were fixed and still. In thesilent room the ticking of a small clock on a secrétaire soundedlabored and blatant. The odor of the cake that Nellie was baking filledthe warm air.

Julia heard the postman's whistle and Nellie's heavy step in the hall.Julia thought of Nellie, of the old woman's sureness and silence—a leanold savage woman of many lovers. In all the years that the old Negresshad been there she had never showed the need of a confidant. Herchildren had abandoned her and she had no tie with any human creaturesave the old man whom she supported who came sometimes to do odd chores.

Julia wondered what had poisoned the white race and given it the need ofsanction from some outside source. She wanted a justification ofherself, but did not know from what quarter she should demand it.

Nellie entered with a letter and Julia, recognizing the handwriting atonce, left it on the table without opening it. As long as the letter layon the table unknown she controlled its contents.

She turned her back to it and watched the branches of the elm tree,which were stirring again, heavily and ceaselessly, against the fence.Her needle pricked her finger and a rust-colored stain spread in the bitof lace which she was mending. The sun burst through the clouds and theroom was filled with the shadowless glare, and with moist intense heat.

Julia suddenly took up the letter and tore it open with a nervous jerk.She dropped her needle. Where it fell on the polished floor it made atinkling sound like a falling splinter of glass.

She did not question or analyze Dudley's statement of his mood. All sheknew was that he was flinging her away from him into herself. There wassomething composed and final about the letter. When she reread it, itovercame her with helplessness. The lie she had lived in had burdenedher, and she could not justify her resentment of the suggestion that shetell the truth.

Later in the day Dudley called Julia on the telephone. He wanted toarrange a meeting with her. He refused to admit to himself that thestrained note he observed in her voice caused him uneasiness. He had toprove to himself his complete conviction of the righteousness of what hedemanded of her. He suggested a walk in the park, and Julia experienceda resentful pang of exultance because she imagined that he was notstrong enough to have her come to his rooms. She contemplated, as ameans of defiance, taking him too much at his word.

White clouds filled with gray-brown stains flowed over the hidden sky.Here and there the clouds broke and the aperture dilated until itdisclosed the deep angry blue behind it. In the center of the park thelake, cold and lustrous like congealing oil, swelled heavily in thewind, but now and again lapsed with the weight of a profound inertia.The trees, with tossing limbs, had the same oppressed and resisting lookas they swung toward the water above their dying reflections.

Julia, seated on a bench away from the path, waited for Dudley to come.When she saw him far off all of her rose against him. She could not hatehim enough. She subsided into herself like the cold lustrous water drawntoward its own depths. She felt bitter and shriveled by desperation. Shewas unhappy because she could not, at this moment, love herself.

Dudley was disconcerted by his own excitement as he approached her.There was something spiritually gauche in the exaggerated simplicityof his manner. He knew that his affectionate smile was an attempt todisarm her, and that his combative and questioning eyes showed hisuneasiness. It was hard for him to forgive her when she made him feelabsurd like this. A guilty sensation overpowered him. He considered theemotion unwarranted, attributed it to her suggestion, and held itagainst her as a grudge. At this instant he could allow her no equalityso he made himself feel kind. "Dear!" He took her cold fingers in hismoist plump hand. Their unresponsiveness pained him. He dropped them andwent on smiling at her interrogatively. "I had to talk to you," he saidat last. His voice was subdued. His smile disappeared. He recognizedthat he was depressed and wounded.

Julia wanted to ask him what he expected her to do with her life aftershe had told Laurence everything, and it was no longer possible for themto live in the same house. She had greeted Dudley. Now her mouth took asarcastic twist and she found herself unable to speak. She staredstraight at the lake, which was beginning to twinkle with cold lightsunder the gray luminous sky. She shivered when Dudley seated himselfbeside her.

Before he could tell her what was in him, he had to harden himself. "I'msuffering deeply, Julia. You are suffering. I see it. It is only thelittle person who doesn't suffer. Why do you resent me? Life is alwaysmaking patterns. It has thrown us three—you and me, and yourhusband—into a design—a relationship to each other. No matter whathappens we ought to be glad. We may come to mean terrific things toeach other, Julia—all three of us. This is a new experience. We mustn'tbe afraid of it." When he noted her set profile he felt querulous towardher, but he controlled himself and tried to take her hand again. If shehad protested in argument he might have talked to her about the strongsoul's right to truth, and made clearer to himself what, in the darknessof his own spirit, he had to confess was still a little vague.

Julia glanced at him. Her gaze was steady and bewildered. "Of course Iowe it to Laurence. I want to talk to Laurence. I would have done thisof my own free will. I loathe the lie I've been living!" She spokecoldly and vehemently. Tears came into her eyes and she averted herface.

Dudley was silent a moment. He twisted his mustache and one of his smallbright eyes squinted nervously. He could not bear the pride of hermouth. At the moment all pride seemed ugly to him. It was impossible tocall further attention to his pain in the contemplation of renouncingher while she continued to maintain, almost vindictively, it appeared,her readiness to abandon herself to him.

"I can't put what I feel into words, Julia, but it is something verybeautiful and deep. Come, sister, you're not angry with me?" Again hetook her stiff hand in his. She was humiliating him and he would notforget it.

Julia wished that she could hurt him in a way which would make itimpossible for him to talk to her so kindly. She did not understand whythe recognition of his absurdity made her suffer so much.

Dudley had been floundering inwardly through the attempt to avoid facingthe ridiculous. Watching the harsh bitter line of her lips, he noticedthe pulse that swelled and fluttered in her throat. The sight of herpain, for which he was responsible, made him feel all at once very sureand complete. He accepted no burden from it, for he told himself it wasa part of her awakening to detached and perfect understanding. He wasgrateful to himself that he had an ideal notion of what she might bethat held him cruelly and steadily against all that she was. He feltvoluptuously intimate with her emotions. He could not hurt her enough.He tried to shut out the recollection of her beautiful gaunt body in itsalmost tragic nakedness. "I don't expect you to understand me completelyyet, Julia. One's vision is so warped and tortured by one's desire. Allour terminology of good and bad we use in such a limited personalsense. We have to get away from that before we can even begin tofunction spiritually—to be spiritually at rest. I feel that there areclouds between us, Julia, but behind them is the great sun of yourunderstanding. I believe in that. Say something to me!"

Julia withdrew her hand. "What can I say to you? I am in the habit ofviewing problems very concretely. Let me go. I must go." She stood up,smiling at him desperately.

He wanted to destroy the smile behind which she was trying to hide, andto explain to her that the torture he caused her was the price of hisvery nearness. It had been almost a pleasure for him to feel her handtwitch with repugnance. It was sad that she comprehended so little ofhis nature. Yet he was sensible of the helplessness of hatred. Knowingthat she hated him, for the first time he ceased to fear her and couldgive himself to uncalculated reactions toward her. He thought that ifshe were to remain his mistress in a conventional relation he could notlove her like this. The artist was, after all, he told himself, like thepriest, the mediator between the life of mankind and its mysticalsource.

But Julia moved away without looking at him. He watched her pass alongthe edge of the lake, where threads of light as fine as hairs were drawnhot and trembling across the colorless water.

Dudley continued to feel embarrassment in his own soul, for he could notclearly explain to himself the impulses which were governing his acts.He decided that only through his art would he be able to justify allthat he was when, at the moment of giving Julia back to herself, he wasconscious of possessing her most intensely. He was at his ease only inthe midst of powerful abstractions. There was something elephantineabout his nature that prevented him from being simple or casual in hismoods. If he ever indulged in expressions that were light or commonplacehe was suspicious of his own appearance. He was startled sometimes whenhe had to admit the maliciousness of his reactions toward the smallersouls around him. If he laughed in a gay group his laughter soundedawkward and strained. Perhaps it was because of his small effeminatestature that he felt it necessary to hurt people before he could commandtheir respect.

At this moment the conviction of his power filled him with anintoxication of gentleness. He felt that he enveloped Laurence and Juliaas if in the same embrace. That he was beginning to have a peculiaraffection for Laurence proved to him the significance of his own uniquespirit. Realizing completely that neither Julia nor her husband couldapproach his understanding, he loved them for their inferiority. As hewalked along the path toward the blank glare where the sun was settingamong black branches, he noticed a terrier puppy rolling in the polishedgrass, and had for it something of the same emotion. He loved everythingin relation to which he found himself in a position of advantage.Approaching thus he believed he could preserve a philosophic detachmentwhile perceiving what Spinoza called "the objective essence ofthings."

PART II

May went to see her Grandmother Farley. May dreaded the visit. When shearrived there she sat in the dining room, smiling and listening to hergrandmother's talk, and feeling small and mindless as she had felt as achild. In the old Farley home May was always like that, like somethingasleep possessed by itself in a shining unbroken dream. She wanted toget back to Aunt Julia, who took her life out of her and showed it toher so that she knew the shape of its thoughts.

Old Mrs. Farley gave May cookies from the cake box, and GrandpapaFarley, who did not go to his office any longer, took his granddaughterinto the back yard and showed her his vegetable garden. He was kindlytoo, but, when this tall stooping elderly man with his handsome whitehead looked with vague eyes at her, she fancied that he also was asleepand could not see her. She was a little frightened of her silly thoughtsabout him. Aunt Julia could have told her what she wanted to say.

"And how is your father?" Grandmama Farley asked in a dry voice. "Wecan't expect him to come to see us very often. His wife is so busy withclubs and movements she has no time for us and I suppose he can't leaveher."

May was cautious and timid in the presence of her grandmother. There wassomething obscure and remote about the old woman's engrossed face, hersquinting eyes that gazed at one as from an infinitely projecteddistance, her puckered lips with their self-righteous twist. May smiledhelplessly, not knowing how to reply.

"I suppose Mrs. Julia is bringing you up to have the wider interests shetalks about when she is here. You want to vote, I suppose, don't you?"Mrs. Farley squinted a smile. Her humor had an acrid flavor.

May giggled apologetically. "I don't think I care much about voting,Grandmother. I don't think Aunt Julia is trying to make me like anythingin particular."

"I'm making bread. Your grandfather has to have his bread just right,"Mrs. Farley said. She went into the kitchen.

May hesitated, then followed her.

The clean room was full of sunlight. Mrs. Farley took down the breadpans and began to work the stiff dough on a floured board. Her knottedfingers sank tremulously into the bulging white stuff. The dough made asnapping noise when she turned it and patted it. "I suppose it would bea waste of time for you to learn to make bread, May."

Behind the old lady the stove was dazzling black with its brilliantnickel ornaments. The tin flour sifter on the table beside her wasfilled with fiery reflections. The stiff white muslin curtains beforethe open windows made lisping, scraping noises as the wind folded themover and brushed them along the lifted panes. Mrs. Farley glanced fromtime to time at May, and, with dim hostility, noted the slight angularlittle figure seated so ill-at-ease on the rush-bottomed chair, thedarkened eyes with their chronic expression of melancholy and elation,the heavy braid of flaxen hair that hung with a curious soft weightbetween the small stooping shoulders. Mrs. Farley found May's continualsmile, her sweet relaxed lips and the large uneven white teeth thatshowed between, peculiarly irritating. "You want another cake, eh?" sheflung out at last with an amused resigned air. Going back into thedining room, she brought a cake and presented it as though she werefeeding a hungry puppy.

May, trying to be grateful, munched the cake uncomfortably. She pulledfeebly at the hem of her skirt. Her grandmother made her ashamed of herlegs.

Grandpapa Farley came up the walk and halted in the back doorway,bareheaded in the warm sunshine. He was in his shirt sleeves. Beads ofperspiration stood on his high blank brow which might have been callednoble. His big hands, smeared with the earth of the garden, hung in ahelpless manner at his sides. He smiled uncomfortably at May. "Shall wesend your step-mother some lettuce?"

May rose and walked out to where he waited. His expression had grownsuddenly ruminant, and, as he stared away from her over the back fence,his eyes were cloudy and unseeing. "Well, May, I can't say she's doneher duty by your grandmother, but she's a fine woman—fine handsomewoman. Laurie was lucky to get her. She'll be able to do a lot for him."He sighed as though he were relinquishing a vision, and, glancing oncemore at May, became kindly aware of her again.

May had hoped that Aunt Alice would not come downstairs, but there shewas behind them. Grandpapa Farley was uncomfortable if Alice came into aroom when outsiders were present. He saw her now, and, with a guiltysmile, told May he would go to gather his little present. He shambleddown the walk. The sunshine made his bald head lustrous. There was aglinting fringe of white hair at its base.

"So it's you, May, is it? How are you? Does Madame Julia think you aresafe with us now?" There was queer hostile pleasure in Aunt Alice's fatface.

May's mouth bent with its usual smiling acceptance, but she could notkeep the solemn arrested look of wonder from her eyes. People said AuntAlice was odd. There was nothing so strange in what Aunt Alice said. Itwas more in something she didn't say but seemed always to have meant."I'm well." May squeezed her fingers nervously together.

Aunt Alice laid her hand on her niece's head and tilted it back. Mayshivered a little and her eyelids trembled against the light. "Supposeyou're living the larger life? Imbibing the fine flavor of contemporaryculture, are you?"

May giggled evasively and wagged her head under the heavy hand.

"Your step-mother can't stand this congenial atmosphere so she sendsyou. She's strong for the true, the beautiful, and the good. Developingyour father's character. Teaching him to flower, is she?"

May grew bewildered and rather sick. When she opened her eyes she caughtsuch a cruel secret expression in Aunt Alice's face. Why does Aunt Alicealways hate me? She moved her head from Aunt Alice's hand and gazed atthe burnt grass rocking in the sunshine. She tried to be happy andamused.

"Can't look at her, eh?" Aunt Alice said suddenly. "Don't wonder, May.Ugly old bitch. Did you ever hear of the power and the glory withoutend?"

There were tears trembling on May's lashes. She gave Aunt Alice a quickstare and laughed.

Aunt Alice was examining her cautiously. "You're something of a milksop,May. Keep on being a milksop. The Lord loveth a cheerful giver. But yourlegs are too thin. You'll never attain to joy without end with thoselegs."

May did not want to understand what this meant. Something inside herwas trembling and lacerated. She stared directly at Aunt Alice now,determined not to see her clearly. She could not bear to do so.

And Aunt Alice's face was calm and kind, resigned and humorous, her eyesas steady as May's. "Your old aunt is an eccentric creature, May."

"I don't think so," May said with confused well-meaning.

Grandpapa Farley was calling from the garden. May was glad to run awayto him.

It was a long way home—almost to the other end of town. May felt thedistance interminable.

When she reached the house she rushed upstairs to Aunt Julia's room.Aunt Julia was sitting there doing nothing at all. She glanced up with atired, distracted air as May came in. May smiled ecstatically, rushedover to Aunt Julia, threw her arms about her, and in a moment wasweeping with her head in Aunt Julia's lap.

Julia's fingers moved through May's soft hair that was so thick andbeautiful. She pitied herself that May was so young. May's youth seemedloathsome and repugnant to her. Because of her loathing, she made hervoice more gentle. "What's the matter, sweet? Did something unpleasanthappen at your grandmother's house?"

"N-no, nothing. Only I wanted to get away from there. I'm so glad to behere!"

Aunt Julia's fingers moved stiffly through May's hair. Why should Idislike this child! Oh, I'm dying of loneliness! Julia felt that shecould love no one and that she deserved endless commiseration for herlovelessness. "Don't cry, darling!" Aunt Julia's voice was harsh. "Ishould never have let you go there. I know how depressing it is. YourAunt Alice is such a pathetic person, isn't she? I know. I know. Sheisn't precisely mad, but so dreadfully unhappy. Such a morbid, isolatedlife."

"She makes me so—so—I don't know! Was she always like that? I used tobe afraid of her when I was small."

"Perhaps so. I don't know, dear. Some man she was in love with, theysay. We won't think about her. When I first married your father I triedto get her interested in some of the things I was doing at the time, butshe imagines that every one dislikes her. Now don't cry any more, May,child. You mustn't let your poor father see how your visit has upsetyou. He never wants us to go there, but I think we ought. Old Mr. Farleyis such a kind old man and your grandmother was so good to the littlebaby that died. Your father has often told me about it. He is gratefulto her for it, I'm sure, though she never understood him and when he wasthere with you children he was very miserable. That's one reason Iwanted him to move so far away. I hate for him to have that atmosphereabout him. It makes him think of your poor little mother, too. You knowshe was only a girl when she died. Not much more of a woman than youare, May. I don't think she understood your father very well either, buthe loved her very much. It was such a pity she died. Seemed so useless."Julia was pained by her own kind words. The malice in her heart hurther. She felt that if people were compassionate they could find theapology for her emotion which she was not able to discover.

May was gazing up solemnly with tear smudges on her face. Aunt Julia'sbeautiful long hand pushed the damp locks away from the girl's highpearl-smooth forehead. "Oh, Aunt Julia, I love you! I love you! I loveyou!"

"I'm glad, dear." Aunt Julia looked consciously sad and stared at thecarpet. Her fingers continued their half-mechanical caress.

Suddenly May sprang to her feet, clapped her palms together, and beganto pirouette. Then she ran to Aunt Julia and kissed her again. "I'm sohappy!" In herself she was still recalling Paul's kisses, and in themescaping the old terror that had possessed her again in hergrandmother's house.

Julia, convicted of her own brutality, regarded May pityingly.

The last semester was over. Paul, carrying his books under his arm,slouched out of the High School yard, his cap pulled over his face.

Hell! Those kids! What if he had flunked in several things! He had justleft a group who were betting on next year's football eleven. Next yearby mid-season it would be a college or a business school for him. Whenhe talked to those boys he tried to joke as they did about life and"smut". He was only really interested in what they said when they talked"smut". Then he looked at them curiously and wanted to be like them.

Like them! Good Lord! They were donkeys. Even the ones who sailed beyondhim in their classes. He wanted them to know what he was—that hisviews were outrageous. But there was Felix, a short brown little monkey,a Russian Jew with excited far-seeing eyes, who enjoyed debating. Hesaid Paul's vision was warped by his personal problem. Paul tried tomake Felix talk about women. Felix blushed slightly, while his eyes,bright and remote, remained fixed unwaveringly on Paul's face. Felixsaid he respected women as the mothers of the race. He thought the boysat school had cheap ideas about sexual laxity. That he never was soutterly strong and possessed of himself as when he put women out of hismind. Then he could give his whole soul to humanity.

Paul blushed, yet sneered. Felix! Women! That brat! "Is your father atailor or an undertaker, Felix?" Afterward it hurt Paul to remember thewrong idea of himself which he had been at such pains to impart. Itwould be nice to belong somewhere!

Away from the deserted schoolhouse, Paul strolled into the park. Againstthe gleaming afternoon sky that was a dim milky blue, the trees wereshivering. He watched whirling oak leaves that looked black on the highbranches. Stretched on the grass tops, silver spider threads twitchedwith reflections. The bright grass, bending, seemed to rush before himlike a blown cloud. Deep blots of shadow were on the lake, where, hereand there, taut strands of light sparkled and broke through the shakensurface.

May's step-mother. He kept trying to push that woman away, crowding upto him with her sanctimonious face. He wanted to do violence tosomething. He hated himself.

When he sat down on the grass and closed his eyes he thought again ofgoing away. Already he could feel himself inwardly small, like a speckin distance. The harshly coruscated sea made a boiling sound on thestern of the ship. Beyond the blue-black strip of water that made hiseyes ache there was a long thin beach with tiny houses on it. He couldhear the dry rustle of leaves and cocoanut fronds. There was rain in theair and huge masses of plum-colored cloud made a strange darkness faroff over the aching earth. A man in a red shirt ran along the shore,following, waving something. Then all in a moment it had become nightand there was nothing but the hiss of the sea in the quietness. The glowfrom a lamp made a yellow stain on the mist and showed a half-nakedsailor asleep on his side with his head thrown back.

When Paul saw things like this he was never certain where the visioncame from. He wondered if he had made it himself, or if it were onlysomething he had read about. The sharpness of his dream pleased andfrightened him.

He slung his books to one side and buried his face in his hands. He wasmiserably conscious of his big grotesque body which he wanted to forget.Saving the world. Karl Marx. Men that go down to the sea in ships.Shipped away from here. Shipped as a sailor. He shook himself withoutlifting his face. He did not want to hate May, so he hated Aunt Juliainstead.

White moon blown across his face. It was there when he glanced up. Itfloated down through the park trees. Why was it when he thought of Mayhe saw beautiful full breasts like moons in flower! They floated beforehim like lilies. They were in him like the vision of the ship.

A brown barefooted girl walked toward a hilltop, a water jar poised onher head. The sky into which she went was like a dove's wing. Sunsetalready. And the girl with the water jar kept mounting and going down,down, down into him, into darkness. He could hear the quiet grassparting against her feet. He could hear her going into the moon, intodarkness, into the vacant sky beyond the trees.

He took his hands away from his face and gathered up his books.

I must instinctively feel something rotten about that step-mother ofMay's or I wouldn't have this unreasoning antagonism. The brown girlpassed out of sight on the imaginary meadow. He stared at an overturnedpark bench, and at the lake water that made a stabbing spot of emptinessin the glowing twilight among the trees.

Julia's depression continued during the evening meal and Laurencenoticed her silence. In the hallway, as they went up to her sitting roomafter dinner, he surprised her by slipping his arm about her shoulders.

Julia glanced toward him swiftly. Her mouth was strained. She smiled andlowered her lids.

"Being married to me isn't a thrilling experience, Julia."

Julia tried to answer him, bit her lips, and said, "Dear!" in a chokedvoice.

He held her against him uneasily as they walked. Julia wished he wouldnot touch her as if he were afraid.

When they mounted the stairs they found her room dark. Laurence releasedher and she went ahead of him to find the light. The moon made a longblue shadow that lay alive on the floor. The bright windows of thehouses opposite seemed to flicker with the moving branches of the treesthat came between. The night air of the city flowed cold into the roomand had a dead smell. They heard the horn of a motor car and childrenwere laughing in the street. Julia was shivering, fumbling for theelectric lamp.

Laurence, though he barely saw the outline of her figure, was suddenlyaware of something confused and ominous in her delay. "What's thematter, Julia? Do you need my help?" His tone was very casual butgentle. He startled himself. She's unhappy. I need to be kind. He hadbeen restless, feeling something between them. She must come to me. Hehad a quick sense of relief and tenderness.

The light rushed out and bathed the indistinct walls. The carpet wasbleached with it. There was a circle of radiance low about the deskwhere the lamp stood. Julia had not answered. Her shoulders, turned tohim, resisted him. Her head was bent forward, away. She was moving somepapers under a book. Her bare hand and arm appeared startlingly alive,saffron-colored in the glow, trembling out of the dim blackness of hersleeve. There were blanched reflections in the lighted folds of her silkskirt.

Laurence was all at once afraid, as if he had never seen her before."Julia!" He moved a step toward her.

She turned to him, her hands behind her, palms downward on the deskagainst which she braced herself. Her face was old. Her eyes, staring athim, seemed blind.

Laurence frowned while his lips twitched in a queer smile. He tried tospeak, but could not. Without knowing why, he wanted to keep her fromspeaking.

She buried her face in her hands. "I have something horrible to tellyou, Laurence."

Her voice, unexpectedly calm, disconcerted him. Neither had she intendedto speak like that. She wanted her emotions to release her. She wantedto be confused. The clearness of the instant terrified her.

Laurence could not ask her what it was. Something hurt him at thatmoment more than she could ever hurt him afterward. He wanted thesilence, unendurable as it was, to go on forever.

Silence.

He came to her and took her hands from her eyes. It was hard for him totouch her. Her lids closed. She turned her head aside.

"What's the matter, Julia? What's happened? Have I done anything to hurtyou? Tell me."

He seemed to her so far away that she felt it useless to answer him.Everything that had happened was deep inside her. Neither Laurence norDudley had any relation to it. She knew herself too deeply. It was theunknown self from which gods were made. There was nothing to turn to.There was nothing more to know. She watched Laurence now and felt afoolish smile on her lips. Her hard, concentrated gaze noted nothingabout him. "I've behaved disgustingly, Laurence."

Laurence watched her. He let his hands fall away. He wanted never toknow what she was going to say. His eyes were on the soft hair againsther cheek. He had the impulse to kiss her there. He hated her alreadyfor the pain of what she was taking away from him. Some helpless thingin him wanted her and she was killing it cruelly and senselessly. It wasmonstrous to take her soft hair and her cheek away from him.

"I've deceived you, Laurence. I've been carrying on an intrigue withouttelling you." Her brows were painfully drawn above her blind hard gaze.Her smile suggested a sneer at its own agony. "I've had a lover."

Laurence flushed slowly and regarded her with a dim stare of sufferingand dislike. He could not conquer the impression that her manner wasvictorious. He felt that he must ask who her lover was. He thought thatshe was degrading him when she made him ask it. "Yes?" His voice soundedexcited, yet calm, almost elated. The voice came from a strange mouth.

"Dudley Allen," Julia said, and kept the same unhappy, irrational smile.

"How long did this go on before you made up your mind to tell me? I canforgive you everything but that, Julia. Why didn't you tell me? You're afree agent. I have nothing to say about your actions, but I don't thinkyou had any right to lie to me, Julia." He tried to keep his mind on thepoint of justice. He was utterly vanquished and weak. To touch her! Tobe near to her! He felt her putting things between them so that he couldnever touch her. His mouth was sweet. His suffused eyes had anexpression of stupidity and anguish.

Julia, observing him, all at once relaxed, and, with a bewildered air,began to weep, hiding her face again. He envied the sobs which shook herwith relief. She sank into a chair.

"Don't, Julia. You mustn't do this, Julia. Don't!" He came up to her,and, with an effort, touched her drooped head. The contact was gratefulto him. Her warm shuddering body reassured him against the dark theywere in. They were both in the same darkness. He wanted to know her init where her bright empty words had pierced and gone.

"How can you bear to touch me?" Julia said. She demanded nothing.Helpless and waiting, she was clinging to him. Her legs were warm andweak and tired. She was glad of the chair, and only in terror thatLaurence might go. "Don't leave me, Laurence! Please don't leave me!"

"I won't leave you, Julia." For a moment he pitied her, but suddenly heknew how much outside her he was. She was taking no account of him atall. He needed to resist her as if she were some awful weight. He was sotired. She was crushing him. He wanted to live. He wanted to be awayfrom her. "I want to go—not far—out somewhere. I want to be alone fora while. I have to think things out."

"I know, Laurence! You can't bear me! I've killed what you had for me!"

He was annoyed by her unthinking phrases, and that she showed noknowledge of the new emotion which pain had created in him. It was hardto leave her in distress, but he felt that he must go to save himself.

He left the room quietly, and went downstairs and into his study. Thehouse was still, perhaps empty, but he closed the door after him andlocked it. He was afraid of his own room with its unfamiliar walls.

He sat down awkwardly in the darkness, aware of his own movements as ofthe gestures of some one else. He conceived a peculiar disgust for theshort heavy man who was humped soddenly in the arm-chair. He dislikedthe man's clothes, expensive ill-fitting clothes draping a massive body.Most of all he hated the man's small delicate hands, ridiculous belowhis big sleeves.

Laurence, out of his own fatigue, had abandoned the moral idea, and hepleased himself now with the bitter lenience of his judgment. He hadknown for a long time that Julia was dissatisfied and had even sensedthe pathos in her passing enthusiasms with their glamour of profundity.He had seen her young and lovely, futile except to him, and, when he hadpitied her passion for the sublime, it had only added a paternal qualityto his feeling for her, so that he loved her more inwardly and quietly.His unshaken pessimism regarding life had made him more and more gentleof her when he saw that she yet clung to the things which, for him, hadfailed. He perceived now that his very disbelief had been the symbol ofa too complete faith which she had made grotesque. If he had been ableto condemn her, the moral justification would have afforded him anemotional outlet. He was helpless with a hurt that was his alone.

Who was he, he said ironically to himself, that he should refuse the liewith which humanity sustains itself.

Dudley wrote Julia that he was grieved that she excluded him from herconfidence. He was suffering deeply and he wanted to be a friend to bothher and Laurence. He had not anticipated anything like her silence.

When his vanity was wounded he made a fetish of his isolation. He toldhimself that he had no place in the superficiality of modern life. Hetook a train away from the city and walked along the beach under the hotgray sky beneath clouds like glaring water. He wanted to avoid hisartist friends. He wished to imagine that they could never understandhim. He was acute in his perception of their weaknesses and was alwaysdefending himself inwardly against discovering their defects in himself.

He tired himself out and, taking off his coat, sat down on somedriftwood to rest. His black hair clung in sweated curls to his flushedforehead. The pine boughs above him rocked secretly against the glowingblindness of the clouds. The bunches of needles, lustrous on the tips ofthe branches, were like black stars. The sea was a moving hill going upagainst the horizon. It made a slow heavy sound. The small waves sidledalong the shore, opened their fluted edges a little, fan-wise, thenflattened themselves and sank away with lisping noises.

Dudley was more and more depressed by the constant terrible fear ofhaving made himself ludicrous. He said to himself that neither Julia norher husband would understand him, and he must suffer themiscomprehension of his motives which would inevitably result from theirlesser experience. The most disconcerting thing was the suddenretrospective vividness of his physical intimacy with Julia. She seemedto have become a part of all the abhorrent elements that werecommonplace in his past, elements against which his romantic conceptionof his destiny led him to rebel.

His full lips pouted despairingly beneath his neat mustache shining inthe glare, and there was an aggrieved expression in his small sparklingeyes. His plump, pretty body made him unhappy. He tried to exclude it.It was terrible for him to realize ugliness or physical deficiency ofany sort. He never associated this with his weak childhood and thesemi-invalidism which he but vaguely remembered. He had begun so earlyto detach his experiences from those of other beings, that it neveroccurred to him. Yet if he came in contact with disease in anothercreature it left him mentally ill. He never made any attempt to analyzethe violence of his reaction against the sight of sickness. At any rate,his theory was of a Golden Age and a primitive man who had fallenthrough admitting weakness into his psychical life.

Dudley did not explain the fact to himself, but he knew that his dignitysurvived only in his capacity for pain of the spirit. When he was inagony of mind he never really doubted that his condition was a superiorone, the travail in which the great soul gave birth to its perfection.At twenty-seven his hair was turning gray and there were lines ofexhaustion and disillusionment about his eyes and mouth. He demanded somuch of himself that it allowed him no spiritual quiet.

To avoid recognizing the platitudinous details of his love affairs hesubmitted himself to mystical tortures. He wanted to leave each incidentof his existence finished and perfect as he passed through it. As muchas he craved admiration, he needed gentleness, but he could not ask forit.

He remained on the beach until nightfall. He could not discover inhimself enough grief to release him from the cold misery and absurdityof everyday human affairs.

Between Julia and Laurence, the reflex of their emotional fatigueexpressed itself in a mutual inertia. Except that Laurence showed hisdesire to be alone by moving his bed into a small isolated room at theback of the house, nothing in the order of existence was changed.

Before the children, Julia spoke to him gently, almost pathetically, andonly now and then dared look at his face. He tried to avoid her guiltyand demanding gaze. If she caught his eyes he would glance quickly anddefensively away with a contraction of his features that he could notcontrol.

School was over. "You and the children might go for a month on thebeach," Laurence said.

And Julia said, "Yes." But she did not make any definite plans. She waswaiting for something which she had never named to herself.

When she was away from him in her room she went over and over thesuccession of events, and wondered if she should leave the house to goout and earn her living, since she had betrayed Laurence's confidenceand no longer deserved anything at his hands. She sustained the ideas ofconscience to the point of applying for employment with the City Boardof Health, and, some weeks after, a position was given her. But itseemed an irrelevant incident which resolved nothing.

If Laurence had imposed difficulties on her she would have justifiedherself in facing them. What seemed most horrible now was thateverything was in suspense, and she was cheated of the emotionalcleansing which relieved her in a crisis even where there were ominousconsequences to follow.

Laurence made a constant effort to escape the atmosphere of anticipationwhich her manner created. When he was not with her he fancied he saweverything clearly. She had always been searching for something apartfrom him and she had found it. He decided that it was the clearness andfinality of his vision of her and of himself that left him unable tocreate a future. Laurence thought, in language different from Julia's,that a man comes to the end of his life when he knows himself entirely.Emotion can only build on the vagueness of expectation. His completeawareness of the causes of his state allowed him no resentments. Heimagined that he could no longer feel anything toward Julia. He wasconscious of the broken thing in himself. He could not feel himselfgoing on. There was nothing but annihilating space around him. Hereflected that Julia could intoxicate herself with death, and that hehad no such autoerotic sense.

One evening, after an early dinner, May and Bobby ran out, bent on theirown affairs, and left Julia and Laurence in the dining room alone.Without looking at Julia, Laurence rose. She recognized, beneath hisquiet manner, the furtive haste with which she had become so painfullyfamiliar.

She touched his coat. "Laurence?" She picked up some embroidery whichlay on a chair near the table and began to thrust the needle, which hadlain on it, in and out of the coarse-woven brown cloth. She stared downat her trembling fingers—at the long third finger where the thimbleshould be.

Laurence waited without speaking. When she touched him like that hecould scarcely bear it. Her long hands and her aching, droopingshoulders were a part of him. Even the sound of her voice was somethingthat she dragged out of him that he found it hard to endure. He kept hishead bent away from her. His mouth contorted. Frowning, he passed hisfingers slowly across his face and covered his lips.

"Dudley Allen and I have separated. Everything between us seems to havebeen a mistake. I didn't know whether I had made you understand that."Her voice was weak, almost whispering. As she watched her needle shepricked herself and a drop of blood welled, slowly crimson, from thehand that held the cloth. She went on pushing the needle jerkily throughsome yellow cotton flowers. The late sunshine was pale in the room.Nellie was singing in the kitchen.

Laurence saw the blood spread on the embroidery and make a stain. He wasall at once insanely amused. What she was saying seemed an absurdrevelation of their distance from each other. She never considered himas distinct from herself. He found it ludicrous.

His finger tips moved along the edge of the table. He picked up a dishand set it down. In his heart he knew that Dudley was her only lover,but he was jealous of his right to suspect that it was otherwise. Itmade him cruel toward her when he realized how seldom it occurred to herthat he might disbelieve what she said. "That is your affair—betweenyou and him, Julia. I'm not interested in it."

She watched him helplessly. "Laurence, why is it always like this?"

He saw her hands shaking. He wanted them to shake. All grew dim beforehis eyes. He turned quickly from her and walked out of the room. Hecould not hurt her. It was terrible not to be able to hurt her. Hefancied that he hated her more because he was so unable to revengehimself for her manner of ignoring him.

He went on through the hall into the street. He knew that Julia wasrobbing him of the detachment in which he had taken refuge from earliersuffering. He no longer possessed himself. Not even his own painbelonged to him.

He's cast her off so she comes to me. He did not think so, but he wantedto indulge himself in this belief. He had hitherto controlled a loathingfor Dudley which was unreasoning. Now he resented Dudley for Julia'ssake and could despise her through this very resentment.

Julia's isolation was pathetic, yet Laurence had only to recall thephysical nature of his emotion when they were together to know that hecould not express his pity for her. He tried to force all intimate senseof her out of his mind. When he actually considered himself rid of herhe was conscious of being bright and blank like a mirror from which thereflections are withdrawn, and there was a crazy stirring of laughterthrough the emptiness in him.

He passed along the neat sidewalks, his head bowed. His air ofabstraction was ostentatious. He wanted to enjoy uninterruptedly therelaxation of self-loathing. There were deep, violet-red shadows on thenewly-washed asphalt street. The treetops were still and glisteningagainst the line of faintly gilded roofs. The grass blades on theordered lawns were green glass along which the quiet light trickled.Well-dressed children played under the eyes of nurse maids. A limousinewas drawn up in the shrubbery that surrounded a Georgian portico.Laurence decided that he was relieved by the failure which separated himfrom the pretensions of success.

He recalled the unhappiness of his first marriage, and the depressionhe had experienced with his baby's death. It pleased him that he seemeddoomed to fail in every relationship.

Alice and I are strangely alike after all. He took a grandiosesatisfaction in the delayed admittance that he and Alice were alike.Wondering if Julia would ultimately leave him, he told himself that hewas the one who ought to go away to save Bobby from the contamination ofsuch bitterness.

Of May he somehow did not wish to think.

When Dudley communicated with Julia over the telephone her manner wasstrained and resentful, and when he wrote her notes she replied to himwith a reserve that showed her antagonism. His curiosity concerning herand Laurence was becoming painful. He guessed that she was in spiritualturmoil and he could not bear to be excluded from the consequences of asituation which he himself had brought about. If he could imaginehimself dictating the course of her life, and of her husband's, it wouldnot be so hard to forego that physical pleasure in her which had madehim resentful of her, as of all other women. At the same time he foughtoff relinquishing any of himself to her necessities. She needed togrow. She did not belong in her bourgeois environment but she mustescape it alone. He told himself that later she would thank him that hehad been strong for both of them.

Dudley was utterly miserable in his exclusion. He needed to appear noblein his own eyes, and to assert his superiority with all those with whomhe came in contact. And this in a world which he knew had become toosophisticated to believe any longer in the sincerity of the noblegesture. In a letter to Julia he said, "Spiritually, I too am not well.My life is not yet right. I can no longer avoid the conviction that Ishould live alone. I am meant to have friends, but not to live with anyof them. And against this hold the numberless ways in which my life islinked with the lives of others. I am in conflict and here goes much ofthe energy which should pour into my projected and incompleted works.

"I find that in several countries of Europe there are conscious groupsof men who feel that I am doing an important work, and that there issignificance in my life and thought. Is that not strange? Is it so, oris it a freak of the pathos of distance?

"If I could only resolve this endless conflict within myself! Thisrending and spilling of myself in the battle of my wills to be alone andto live as others do: to be out of the world, and to be normally in it!It is a classic conflict, but no less mortal for that."

After he had sent the letter he was uncomfortable because he had writtenonly of himself, but he dared not consider Julia's attitude. She mustaccept his own definition of himself and his acts.

Dudley was ashamed of the strength of his interest in the Farleys. Whenhe was most in love with Julia he did not admit to his friends that shehad any part in his life. Now he was determined to initiate her andLaurence into his environment. As a protest against theirmisunderstanding, he must force them to live through his experiences.Dudley even decided that when Julia became a part of his world it woulddo no harm if it became known that she had been his mistress. Before helet her go he wished the world to see her with some ineradicable markof himself upon her. She must accept his permanent significance in herlife without wanting to be paid for it by some symbol of sexualpossession. He insisted on a meeting with her. They saw each other againin the park.

The park on this damp day looked vast and abandoned. The tall buildings,visible beyond the trees, were far off, strange with mist, as if inanother world. A few drops of rain fell occasionally on the heavysurface of the lake and the water flickered like gray light. The grassand the bushes around were vividly still.

Dudley walked about nervously waiting for Julia to come. He would admitno fault in his view of her and he could not explain his uneasiness. Ata recent exhibition his pictures had been unfavorably criticized. Hedecided that he had not yet accepted the inevitableness of a life ofisolation.

When he saw Julia coming along the path his eyes filled with tears. Itwas cruel that a woman to whom he had opened his heart had closedherself against him in enmity. He loved her as he loved everything whichhad been a part of himself. She was yet a part of him, though sherefused to understand it. She wounded him unmercifully. When she haltedbefore him and looked at him he tried to forgive her. He fought back toomuch consciousness of his small undignified body. "Julia! Aren't youglad to see me?"

She allowed him to press her hand. They went on together, side by side.Dudley was afraid of her cold face. It made him the more determined tobe generous to her and rise above what she was feeling. Psychically hewanted to touch her with himself. There was a kind of pagan chastity inher reserved suffering. Such a thing he had never been able to achieveand he could not bear it in others. "How does your husband feel aboutwhat you have told him, Julia?" His voice shook.

Julia said, "I think he's too big for both of us. He understands thingsthat neither of us know."

Dudley would not allow himself to be jealous. He knew that he mustembrace Laurence's experience in order to rise above it. "If he had thenarrow outlook of the average man of his class he would condemn us both.Does he condemn me?"

"I'm sure he condemns neither of us in the sense you mean."

"I want to see him and talk to him," Dudley said. "I want to be thefriend of both of you, Julia, in a deep true sense. Will he meet me?Will he talk to me?"

With a curious shock of astonishment Julia found herself ignored again."I don't know. Yes, I think he'll talk to you." Her white throatstrained so that it was corded with tension. She bit her lips.

Dudley observed this and became elated. He told himself that sympathydrew him to her, and he wanted to kiss her. But he withheld the kiss. Hecould not accept the burden of Julia's deficiencies. If he made a friendof Laurence Farley it would frustrate her in her undeveloped impulses.Dudley tried to admire himself for being strong enough to resist her forthe sake of something she did not comprehend and might never appreciate.

He placed his hand on her arm. "Julia, how do you feel—now—abouthim—about you and me?" When she met his eyes, she noted in them the oldexpression of impersonal intimacy which ignored all of her but what hewanted for himself. He could endure everything but her reserve. He knewthat she despised him for not allowing her to suffer alone. He had torisk that. It was preferable to being excluded from a life which hadbelonged to him entirely. He could not bear to return the privacy ofemotion to any one who had appeared to him in spiritual nakedness.

Julia shivered under his touch. "Why do you oblige me to go through thehumiliation of telling you things about myself that you already see?"

"You do love me a little, Julia?"

Julia would not look at him. "You know I love you."

He was disconcerted for the moment, resenting the mysterious implicationof obligation which he always found in such words. "Sister. Julia. Inthe environment where I met you, I never expected to meet a woman whohad your deep reality. We must all go through terrible things to come toa true understanding of ourselves in the universe. I have been throughjust what you are passing through now, Julia. Let me be your friend andyour husband's friend as no one else has ever been?"

Julia clasped her hands and pressed the palms together. "Of course youare my friend." She wondered if her feeling of amusem*nt were insane.

Dudley was unhappy with himself but her visible misery stimulated him ina way he dared not explain.

The windows of Dudley's studio were open against the hot purplish night.Large, fixed stars shuddered above the factory roofs and the confusionof tenements. The still room seemed a vortex for the distant noises ofthe street. A fire gong clanged alarmingly. Some one whistled. Somewherefeet were shuffling and the rhythm of a bass viol marked jazz time withthe savage monotony of a tom-tom's beat. There was a sinister harmony inthe discordant blending of sound.

Dudley, when he opened his door to Laurence, was relieved by a suddensense of intimate affection for the man before him.

Laurence said, "I lost my way. Have I disturbed you by coming so late?"He held out his hand with a slight air of reluctance.

Dudley was pained and rebuffed by the pleasant casual manner of hisguest. He would have held Laurence's hand but that Laurence withdrew it."I had nothing to do but wait for you," Dudley said. He took Laurence'shat and stick and drew forward a chair.

Laurence seated himself with strained ease, and scrutinized ahalf-finished picture that leaned on the mantel shelf opposite. "I'vebeen reading some references to your work lately." As he glanced awayfrom the study, his mouth twitched slightly and his hard smiling eyeswere full of an instinctive defiance.

Dudley's inquisitive imagination was fired by the recognition of thesecret voluptuous relationship between them. He held Laurence's gazewith a passionate expression of understanding which to Laurence waspeculiarly offensive and disturbing. "Inspired idiocy," Dudley said. "Ihope you won't judge me by the banal standards which govern my othercritics." His light tone, as usual, was awkwardly assumed.

"My unfailing refuge." Laurence reached in his pocket and took out hispipe. Dudley observed the tension of Laurence's hands that were toosteady.

A pause.

Laurence said, "Well—your pictures are interesting. I like them. Iwon't subject you to my bromidic attempts at analysis. My appreciationof art is limited by my training. I'm too factual in my approach tofollow the ebullitions of the modern consciousness." He glanced aboutthe room again.

Dudley was disappointed in him, and unhappy in the way a child may be.It wounded him, that Laurence, like Julia, persisted in excluding himby means of a false pride. "It is a great deal to me that you are readyto be my friend. Julia told me." Dudley's eyes were oppressively gentle.

Laurence did not reply at once. He looked about the room. His glance wasbright with uneasiness. He pressed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.His knuckles were white. This visit was an ordeal which the bitternessof his pride had forced him to accept. He wondered what he must do toprevent talk of Julia which he could not endure.

"It seems to me it would have been very absurd if I had refused to beyour friend." He made his gaze steady as he turned to watch Dudley.

Dudley's negligee shirt was open over his chest which was beaded withsweat. His face was flushed and his hair clung darkly to his moisttemples. His lips pouted slightly beneath his small glistening mustache.The expression of his eyes suggested a domineering desire for openness.He felt that already through Julia's body he knew Laurence's life. Thesame virginal pagan quality of pride that had to be overcome in Juliawas in Laurence too. Dudley wanted to perpetrate an outrage ofcompassion upon it. "I realized before Julia told me that there was aside to you altogether different from the one you show to the world."

Without knowing how to put an end to his humiliation, Laurence said, "Isuppose there is in all of us. You artists have a peculiar advantage inbeing able to express yourselves." He put a light to his pipe, blew thesmoke out, and stared at the ceiling. Whenever Dudley mentioned Julia'sname Laurence wanted to repudiate the significance which it held incommon for Dudley and himself. Rather than be included here, hepreferred to think of Dudley and Julia together and himself as separate.

Dudley was wrapt in the conviction of a dark, almost fleshly, knowledgeof Laurence, and his determination to love was as ruthless as anyhatred. He never had the intimate experience of a personality withoutwanting, in a sense, to defile it by drawing it utterly to himself. Hesmiled apologetically. "We should never refuse any experience."

Laurence felt as if he were a woman whose body was being taken. Hesucked at his dry pipe which was extinguished. "Perhaps it is mylimitation which makes it impossible for me to receive everything sounquestioningly."

"But you do accept things."

"Not emotionally. Not in the way you mean."

Dudley realized that Julia had gone from him. His sense of loss was notmerely in the loss of physical domination. Laurence was as precious asJulia had been. What was needed was a spiritual possession. Dudley'smethod of self-enlargement was through the absorption of others, but hehad a theory of equality. His tyrannous impulses rarely persisted whenequality was disproven. Without admitting it himself, he wanted toreduce his peers through his understanding of them. Then, too, on thisoccasion, his superior comprehension of Laurence might be proof tohimself of Julia's inadequacy.

Laurence felt nothing but blind proud protest against invasion, and,when Dudley attempted to discuss their mutual interests, was furtive andadroit in defense.

May told Paul that she believed Aunt Julia was unhappy. He had toconfess to himself that he disapproved of Aunt Julia too much to keepaway from her. He wanted to go to the house where she was. But he hadforgotten her work with the Board of Health, and arrived on an afternoonwhen she was not at home.

May took him to Aunt Julia's sitting room. He loathed the place. Hedisliked May when he saw her in it. And when he disliked May it made himdespair. He thought that he had never in his life been so depressed.

"Aunt Julia's things are so lovely I'm always afraid of spoiling them."May sat down on the couch among the batik pillows and made a place forhim beside her. Her face was blanched by the bright colors. Her shortskirts drew up and showed her thin legs above her untidy shoes.

Paul seated himself at the other end and rested his head uncomfortablyagainst the wall. "I suppose your Aunt Julia calls all these gew-gawsart." Whenever he tried to be superior some external force of evilseemed to frustrate his effort.

"Now, Paul, they're lovely!"

"I wonder how Aunt Julia relates this fol-de-rol to her soulful interestin the working class."

"But some of it's only tie dye, Paul. She did it herself out of an olddress."

Paul was baffled, but he preserved the sneer on his lips. Humming underhis breath, he tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling.

"I hope you've decided not to go 'way, Paul, like you told me lasttime. If you go away without telling them—your uncle and aunt—you'reonly eighteen—it will hurt them so." She could not look at him, for hereyes were full of tears.

Paul knew that she was suffering. Silly little thing! He went onhumming, but interrupted himself to say, "Nothing but their vanity hasever been hurt by anything I've done. They want me to go on and studymedicine—or law. What for? I don't care what becomes of me."

May bit her lips and twisted her fingers together. When Paul talkedrecklessly she knew that it was wicked because it hurt so much. It madeher unhappy to be told that one needed to explain what one felt. Shecould not understand the thing that was good if it did not make oneglad. It never occurred to her to try to justify herself before someobscure principle. Yet others had convinced her of her lack and she wasin a continual state of apology toward them because so much was beyondher. She loved Aunt Julia. She wanted Paul to love her.

May wondered if Paul despised her because she never resented it when hekissed her. But the suspicion of his contempt, while it confused her,did no more than emphasize her conviction of helplessness.

Suddenly Paul ceased humming. He leaned toward her and took her hand.She pretended not to notice, but she was happy. Her fingers in his grewcold and covered with sweat. "I think you're unkind to them, Paul." Hervoice shook. There was a waiting feeling in her when he touched her.

She made him sick of himself. Silly little thing! He dropped her hand asif he had forgotten it. He was hunched forward now with his kneescrossed. He watched the floor where, in the bright afternoon light, darkpatches were moving. There was a curious evil expression in his furtiveeyes. His hair was rumpled in a colorless thatch across his head. Hismouth was babyish. "That reminds me of a story—" Paul began. He pauseda moment with a flickering sneer on his lips. Aunt Julia, damn her! Allof him was against May. In spite of his ugly look, his rumpled hair andchildish mouth were disarming.

May was uncomfortable. She did not understand why he hesitated. "Go on."

He glanced at her and was irritated by the air of uneasiness which cameto her whenever she was uncertain. Why couldn't she laugh! Aunt Julia'sbrat! He wanted to punish her. She saw his uneven blush of defiance.

He began to speak quickly. "Oh, a story—about a woman and a monkey." Hewent on. His eyes were wicked and amused. When he had finished hewhistled and gazed at the ceiling again.

May did not understand the story, but she felt that he told it toembarrass her and make her sad.

There was silence when he had done, until, with white face and strainedlips, he resumed his whistling. In his irritation with her he wanted tocry. "Why don't you laugh?" he asked finally.

May blushed. Her lashes were still wet, her lips tremulous. Shestuttered, "I—I can't."

He jumped to his feet and jerked up the cap he had thrown aside."Good-by."

"Why, Paul, what's the matter? You're not going? What for?" He washalfway to the door before May recovered herself and stood up.

"I was going to meet a fellow this afternoon. I'll let you pursue yourjuvenile way undefiled." He hesitated, sneering, not seeing her.

May could not speak at once. "Please don't go."

When at last he glanced at her there was mist in his eyes. "Why not?" Hesaw that she was smiling as if across the fear that was in her look. Heresented her fear and he loved her for it. Oh, little May! He loved her.

"Because—because! You were angry with me when I didn't laugh." Sheaccused him. Why did he watch her so intently yet unseeingly? She felthis look as something which drew her inward, into herself, too deep.

"I'm not angry with you, May. Honestly, I'm not." In a dream he camenear her: her thin small figure, her pointed face, her bright blankeyes, frightened and sweet. He came near her pale thick hair where itwas caught away from her temples. As she turned to him he could see theend of her braid swinging below her waist. He was aware of her legs,with the straight calves that showed below her skirt, and of her breastspointed separately through her sailor blouse. Everything that he saw wasa part of something that was killing him. That was why he did not loveher. She was too young. Because of this he hated her. She was likehimself. He had to hate her. To save himself from the sense of dyingand being utterly lost, he had to hate her. Though it was Aunt Julia'sfault. He knew that.

All those books! He had tormented himself trying to understand them. Twoyears ago he hid under the mattress the picture of the fat woman.Childish. He abhorred the picture of the naked woman as he abhorred hisAunt with her filthy priggishness. He remembered that long ago when heasked her something he wanted to know she called him a dirty little boy.Poor kid! He was sorry for himself. It was all a part of Julia and theworld and something that was killing him because there was no truth orbeauty in life. They went on smiling in their ugliness, torturing thebeautiful things and making them ugly like themselves. He would killhimself. He did not belong in this ugly cruel world.

White little May, white like a moon. Like snow and silence under thetrees. Snow and silence and rest forever and ever. Forever and ever.Rest! Rest!

May let him touch her. For a moment she was happy in a bright blanketernal happiness that was an instant only. Then she was cold and aloneand afraid of him: of his face so hot and close, the queer look in hiseyes, and of his hands that she could not stop.

"Oh, Paul," she kept saying, half sobbing. "Please, Paul! Don't. Oh,don't, don't! Please, Paul, don't!"

When he drew her down beside him and they rested together on the couchshe felt the hot nap of the cloth cover, stiff against her cheek. Itseemed to her that the afternoon light was terrible in the still room.Bobby had a new canary bird and Aunt Julia had hung the cage inside thewindow. The bird hopped from the perch to the cage floor, from the floorto the perch, and the thud of its descent was monotonously reiterated.Occasionally seeds fell in a series of ticks against the polishedwainscot. Beyond Paul's head, May looked into the pane above the birdcage, and the glass was like a melted sun. On either side of the glowingtransparent squares, the yellow curtains were slack. May fancied thatBobby was on the stairs and that she could hear old Nellie moving aboutin the kitchen below.

The heat in the room made May cold. Paul's hot face against her cheekburnt like ice. She was dead already, shriveled in the cold heat. Shepushed at him feebly. She could scarcely hear her own words that toldhim to stop. They were just a low buzzing from her cold dead lips. Paulwas making her aware of herself, of her body that she did not know, thatnow she could never forget.

He was crying. It astonished her that he was crying, but she feltnothing except a cold burning sensation that came from the warmth of histears slipping across her face. She was surprised that he cried sosilently. Now he lay still against her with his face in her hair. Hisstillness was too deep. She could not bear it. Her body was cramped andstiff. She felt his heart beating against her like an echo of her own,and above it she heard the clicking of the traveling clock on AuntJulia's desk, and the creaks of the woodwork on the stairway and in thehall.

If somebody came she would lie there forever. She was dead. She wantedto think she was dead.

But nobody came.

She shut her eyes again, and after what seemed a long time she knew thatPaul was getting up and going away from her. She closed her eyes tighterso that she might not see him.

When he tip-toed across the room he made the floor shake. May's shuteyes with the sun on them were sightless flaming lead under her lids.She turned a little and hid her face in a pillow, wondering where Paulwas, waiting for him to go so that she could bear it. All at once sheknew that he had come out of somewhere and was standing beside her inthe light looking down.

He leaned over and whispered, "Get up, May! Somebody 'ull come in andfind you lying there!"

His voice was frightened. She wondered why he was afraid. It made hersick with his fright. He added, "I love you."

When he said, "I love you," she was, without explaining it to herself,ashamed for him. She did not answer. She was conscious of hisstealthiness. It oppressed her. She would not let him see her face. Whenthe floor shook again she knew he was going out. She waited to hear hisfootsteps on the stairs and the slam of the front door. Then she pushedherself to her elbow and glanced about. In her new body she was strangewith herself. She stood up and smoothed her rumpled dress quickly andguiltily. Then she ran out of the room and upstairs to her own garret.

When the door was locked she threw herself on the bed on her face. Thedarkness of the pillow was cool to her eyes and to her whole soul. Shewanted her throbbing body to lie still in the cool dark. She felt thatshe was ugly and terrible in her disgrace. She wanted to ask Paul toforgive her because she had behaved as she had. Sobbing into thebedclothes, she kept murmuring to herself, "I love him! I love him! Oh,I love him!"

To defend his vanity, Paul thought of himself as outcast and desperate.He wanted to invite the sense of tragedy in himself. He felt numb anddespoiled. In the intensity of his misery earlier in the day there hadbeen, after all, a kind of promise. Now May had gone away from him as ifshe were dead. The thought of Aunt Julia gave him only dull repugnance.He hoped doggedly that no one had known about it when he was with May.Beyond that he could not care.

When he reached home he went up to his room and, though it was yetafternoon, he fell asleep soddenly without a dream. Before, his fatiguehad been sharp and hungry. Now he was only tired of his own emptinessand stupidity.

At the dinner hour he was called downstairs. Blaming his aunt and unclefor his own fears, he entered the dining room with a hang-dog air. Hisfood was tasteless. There seemed nothing to think about until his uncleglanced at him. Guilt permeated Paul. He was hot and angry.

After the meal he went upstairs and hid himself in the dark. He wonderedif any of the beautiful things he had dreamed about existed. Everywherewas inflated dullness. He dwelt on this until he astonished himself byfinding a faint pleasure in his reflections. He decided that the starshe saw through the window were burning nettles, and that they prickedhis glance when he looked at them. Suddenly there was somethingsubstantial and satisfying in his very self-contempt. He decided that hewas no better than Julia, and that he detested her and himself for thesame reason. It was peculiarly soothing to perceive his own courage inself-condemnation. In despising himself he unclothed himself and he waswith her in spiritual nakedness, which somehow took on a fleshly imageso that he dared not think of it too clearly.

Laurence forced himself to be alone with Julia. He went into her sittingroom casually and took up a book, but when he was seated he did notread. His elbow rested on the arm of the chair and he held his head toone side with his brow laid against his palm.

It was Sunday. Dry hot air blew into the room from the almost desertedstreet. Now and then the window curtains swelled slightly with thebreeze. The canary's cage hung in the light near the ceiling. Thesunshine slipped in wavering lines across the gilded bars. The birdtapped with its beak on the sides of the cage which oscillated with itsquick motions. Sometimes it flew to its swing that moved with a jerk,and a shower of seeds rattled lightly against the sill below.

Julia had drawn a chair up to her desk and spread before her thematerials for letter writing. The pen lay idle in her relaxed fingers.Laurence tried to be unaware that she was watching him. "Laurence."

He stirred a little. It was hard to look at her. "Yes?" His smile wascold and uneasy. He was not ready to talk with her about himself.

Julia rose and came toward him. He glanced away.

When she stood by him she placed her hand on his. He made an effort notto withdraw his fingers. When he lifted his face to her his expressionwas kind and obscure. He seemed to draw a veil across himself.

"I can't bear it, Laurence!" She knelt down beside him. She wanted himto hurt her against his will. If she could rouse him against her shecould endure it.

Laurence cleared his throat. He knew that he cringed when she touchedhis sleeve. He thought her voice sounded rich and strong with pain.Women were like that. "Can't bear what?" He realized that his subterfugewas absurd, but he smiled at her again.

She did not answer. Her eyes were steady with reproach. Her throatswelled with repressed sobs. "Why can't we be frank about things,Laurence? We can't go on like this always. I know I have no right here.I ought to go away! I know I ought. Somehow I haven't the courage."

He moved his arm away and stared out of the window. The smile went fromhis eyes. His gaze was vacant and fixed. "I don't ask you to go, Julia."His face twitched. His whole body showed his breaking resistance. Yetshe knew that he would not relent.

"But you don't ask me to stay. It is painful to you to have me here,Laurence."

For a moment he compressed his lips without answering her. "I think youmust decide everything for yourself. Your life is your own. You havetold me that one of my mistakes in the past was in condescending to youand attempting to impose my own negative views upon you."

"But, Laurence, how can I decide a thing like this as if it wereunrelated to you? If you would only talk to me! If you didn't considereverything that happens between us as if it were irrevocable!"

Laurence's expression softened. He turned his head so that she could notsee his eyes. "I react slowly, Julia. I can't arrive at a set ofdifficult conclusions and then upset them in a moment." He sat stiffly,looking straight before him.

Julia got up and began to walk about, pressing the fingers of one handabout the knuckles of the other. "It's killing me!" she said. "It'skilling me!"

Laurence suffered. He stood up like an old man. "In a few weeks thechildren are going off to school. Don't you think it would be better fortheir sakes if we waited until then to untangle our affairs?"

Julia came to him again. She saw that his eyes swam in a dull moistlight. Self-reproach made her giddy. In condemning herself she wasalmost happy. She observed how, involuntarily, he drew away from her. "Iwon't touch you, Laurence." She was aware of the injustice and crueltyof what she said. No suffering but her own seemed of any consequence toher.

"You have no right to say that, Julia."

"I know it. Kiss me, Laurence. Say that you forgive me."

"How can I? What is there to forgive?" He kissed her. His lips were hardwith repugnance. She welcomed the bitterness that was in his kiss. Hesaid, "I have to think of myself, Julia."

She did not know how to reply. He went out of the room, not looking ather again.

She felt naked and outrageous. She wanted to fling away what she thoughthe did not treasure. When the pulse pounded in her wrists and templesshe fancied that her horror could not burst free from itself.

Her sick mind found pleasure in destroying its own illusions. It seemedabsurd that, having rejected so many gods, she had made a god ofherself. When her reflections became most bitter she grew calm andexalted. Her blood ran light. Having destroyed her world, her disbeliefsomehow survived as if on an eminence.

However, her emotions rejected their own finality. She felt that she hadto go on somewhere outside herself.

May waited in vain for Paul to come back. She convinced herself that shewas not good. When she believed in her own humility she was not afraidto admit that she wanted to see him. She was unhappy now with her ownbody. As soon as she saw her little breasts uncovered she feltfrightened and ashamed and wanted to hide herself. When she was alone inher room she cried miserably, but as soon as her tears ceased to flowshe lay on her bed in an empty waiting happiness, thinking of Paul. Sherecalled all that related to him since she had first known him. It gaveher a beautiful happy sense of want to remember him so distinctly.However, when her thoughts arrived at the memory of the last thing thathad occurred between them she imagined that she wished him to kill herso that she need no longer be ashamed.

I want to be dead! I want to be dead! She said this over and over intoher pillow. Her beautiful pale braid of hair was in disorder. Her thinlegs protruded from her wrinkled skirts. She lifted her smalltear-smudged face with her eyes tight shut.

May wanted to tell Aunt Julia, but dared not. She knew Aunt Julia wassad, though she did not know why. Aunt Julia, however, resistedconfidences. When she came in from work and found May waiting for her inthe hall or on the stairs Aunt Julia made herself look tired and kind."Well, May, dear, how are you? You seem to be a very bored young ladythese days. Your father is thinking of sending you away to school whenBobby goes. How would you like that?" And she smiled in a perfunctoryfar-away fashion.

May saw that Aunt Julia was in another world and did not want her. "Idon't care. Whatever you and Papa decide. I'm an awful ninny and shouldbe terribly homesick."

"That would be good for you. You must learn to be self-reliant." Withoutglancing behind her, Aunt Julia passed quickly up the stairs anddisappeared into her room. The door shut.

To May it was as if Aunt Julia knew everything already and put heraside because of what she had done. She was dead and corroded withshame. Lonely, she wandered out into the back yard. The sky, in the latesunshine, was covered with a pale haze like faint blue dust. A shiningwind blew May's hair about her face and swirled the long stems of uncutgrass. The seeded tops were like brown-violet feathers. Beyond the roofsand fences the horizon towered, vast and cold looking.

May wanted it to be night so that she could hide herself. She knewNellie was in the kitchen doorway watching her. She wanted to avoid theeyes of the old woman. Paul could not love her while she was despised.

White clothes on a line were stretched between the windows of theapartment houses that overhung the alley. The bleached garments, soakedwith blue shadow, made a thick flapping sound as the wind jerked themabout. When the sun sank the grass was an ache of green in the emptytwilight. May thought it was like a painful dream coming out of theearth. She was afraid of the fixity of the white sky that stared at herlike a madness. She knew herself small and ugly when she wanted to feelbeautiful. If she were only like Aunt Julia she would not be ashamed.

It grew dark. She loved the dark. There was a black glow through thebranches of the elm tree against the fence. The large stars, unfoldinglike flowers, were warm and strange. In the enormous evening only alittle shiver of self-awareness was left to her. She tried to imaginethat, because she was ugly and impure, Paul had already killed her. Thestrangeness and exaltation she felt came to her because she was dead.She loved him for destroying her.

Dudley gave up the attempt to take Laurence into his life. Dudley hadinsisted on seeing the Farleys several times, but the result of thesemeetings was always disappointing. What he considered their small hardpride erected about them a wall of impenetrable reserves. He pitied themin their conventionality. They regard me, he thought, as a wrecker ofhomes, and the fact that I have been Julia's lover prevents them fromrecognizing me in any other guise.

He felt that he was learning a lesson. He must avoid destructiveintimacies. If he gave, even to small souls, he had to give everything.In order to save himself for his art he must learn to refuse. He was interror of love, in terror of his own necessities, and afraid of meetingacquaintances who, with the brutality of casual minds, could shake hisconfidence in himself by uncomprehending statements regarding his work.

He grew morbid, shut himself up in his studio, and refused to admit anyvalidity in the art of painters of his own generation. He persuadedhimself that he was the successor of El Greco and that since El Greco nopainter had done anything which could be considered of significance tothe human race. He would not even admit that Cézanne (whom he hadformerly admired) was a man of the first order. He was a painter, to besure, but Dudley could ally himself only with those whose gifts wereprophetic.

His imaginings about himself assumed such grandiose proportions that hescarcely dared to believe in them. To avoid any responsibility for hisconception of himself he was persuaded that there was a taint of madnessin him. Rather than awaken from a dream and find everything a delusion,he would take his own life. He lay all day in his room and kept theblinds drawn, and was tortured with pessimistic thoughts, until, by thevery blankness of his misery, he was able to overcome the criticalconclusions of his intelligence. He did not eat enough and his healthbegan to suffer. His absorption in death drew him to concrete visions ofwhat would follow his suicide. He was unable to close his eyes withoutconfronting the vision of his own putrid disintegrating flesh. In hisbody he found infinite pathos. As much as he wanted to escape hisphysical self, it was sickening to think of leaving it to theindignities of burial at the hands of its enemies.

The idea of suicide, haunting him persistently, aroused a resistantspirit in him. He exaggerated the envies of his contemporaries. Hefancied that they feared him far more than they actually did and werelonging for his annihilation. He decided that something occult whichoriginated outside him was impelling him toward self-destruction. Inrefusing to kill himself he was combating evil suggestions rather thansuccumbing to his own repugnance to suffering and ugliness.

While he was in this frame of mind some one sent him a German paper thatwas the organ of an obscure artistic group. In this journal,insignificantly printed, was a flattering reference to Dudley. He wascalled one of the leaders of a new movement in America. He read thearticle twice and was ashamed of the elation it afforded him. He couldnot admit his deep satisfaction in such a remote triumph. With a senseof release, he indulged to the full the vindictiveness of his emotionstoward his own countrymen—those who were fond of dismissing him asmerely one of the younger painters of misguided promise.

However, the praise from men as unrecognized as himself encouraged hisdefiance to such a point that he resumed work on a canvas which he hadthrown aside. His own efforts intoxicated him. He refused to doubthimself. Life once more had the inevitability of sleep. He knew that hewas living in a dream and only asked that he should not be disturbed.

He needed to run away from the suggestion of familiar things. He decidedto go abroad again and wrote to borrow money of his father. Dudley madeup his mind to avoid Paris where, as he expressed it, the professionalartist was rampant. He wanted to visit the birthplace of a Huguenotancestor who had suffered martyrdom for his religion. It stimulated himto think of himself as the last of a line whose representatives had,from time to time, been crucified for their beliefs.

Two endless streams of people moved, particolored, in oppositedirections along the narrow street. The high stone buildings were tingedwith the red of the low sunshine. Hundreds of windows, far up, catchingthe glare, twinkled with the harsh fixity of gorgon's eyes. Beyondeverything floated the pale brilliant September sky overcast by thebroad rays which stretched upward from the invisible sun.

Julia, returning from the laboratory, hesitated at a crowded corner andfound Dudley beside her.

"This is pleasant, Julia. I've been wanting to see you and LaurenceFarley. I'm sailing for Europe next week, and I should have been verymuch disappointed if I had been obliged to go off without meeting youagain." He tried to speak easily while he looked at her with anexpression of reproach. Julia smiled and held out her hand. There was adefensive light in her eyes which he interpreted as a symptom ofdislike. He wanted to convince himself that every one, even she, wascompletely alienated from him. All that fed his pain strengthened hisvacillating egotism.

Julia noted the familiar details of his appearance: his short arms inthe sleeves of a perfectly fitting coat; the plump hairy white handwhich reached to hers a trifle unsteadily; his short well-made littlebody that he held absurdly erect; the wide felt hat that he tried towear carelessly, which, in consequence, was slightly to one side on theback of his head and showed his dark curls; the childishly fresh colorwhich glowed through the beard in his carefully shaven cheeks; his smallfull mouth that sulked in repose but when he smiled displayedexaggeratedly all of his little even teeth; his prettily modeled,womanish nose; the silky reddish mustache on his short lip; and hissoft, ingratiating, long-lashed eyes. Everything in his appearancedisarmed her resentment of him. Yet she knew that if she expressedanything of her state of mind he would take advantage of hervulnerability. She was prepared to see his gaze harden toward her andhis demeanor, puerile now, become ruthless and commanding. She could notanalyze the thing in herself that made her so helpless before him. Shewas able, she thought, to observe him coldly. She withdrew her handfrom his and said, "So you are going away again? I am glad for yoursake. I know how America must irk you. Even from my viewpoint I can seethat it is the last country for an artist." At the same moment her heartcontracted and she told herself that there was something false andmonstrous in Dudley which suppressed her natural impulse to be frank instating what she felt for him.

Dudley walked beside her. She wants me to go away! He insisted onbelieving this. To know that she continued to suffer, however, comfortedhim as much now as it had in the past. He sensed that she had, in someremote way, remained subject to him. Because of this she was dear. Whenhe remembered that, but for this accidental meeting, he would not havecommunicated his departure to her he was momentarily panic-stricken. Heno longer wished to detach himself from her.

"Tell me about your work. What are you doing now?"

He took her arm. "I can't talk about my work, Julia. Something goes outof me that ought to go into the work when I talk about it too much.That's my struggle—my fight. It's terrifying at times. I know all thehounds are baying at my heels. When I go abroad this time I am going toavoid Paris. I know dozens of cities. Paris is the only one which is awork of art. That's why I am going to keep away. I am through with thefinality of that kind of art. I am going abroad to feel how much of anAmerican I am. That's why I hate it so. It's in me—a part of me. Ican't escape it. I must express it. That is my salvation—in belongingto America." It was almost irresistible to tell her some of theconclusions he had arrived at to comfort himself, but he knew that Julianever approached a subject from a cosmic angle. She made him feel smalland unhappy and full of a homesickness for understanding. In her verycrudity she was the life he had to face. "I want to talk to you aboutyourself, Julia. There are clouds of misunderstanding between us. Wemustn't leave things like this." He pressed her arm against his side.

She was ashamed before a stout woman who was passing who showed, by theexpression of dull attention in her eyes, that she had overheard hisremark. In this atmosphere of public intimacy Julia felt grotesque. "Ican't talk about myself, Dudley. Don't ask me. You've put me out ofyour life. Why should you be interested?"

He was conscious of the stiffening of her body as she walked beside himand observed the forced immobility of her face. Emerging from theself-loathing which was an undercurrent to his vanity, he was gratefulto her for allowing him to hurt her. He began to wonder if he were not,at this instant, realizing for the first time the significance of hisrelationship to her—not its significance in her life, but itssignificance in his own. He admitted to himself the cruelty of hisfeeling for her. He wanted to torture her, to annihilate her even. Itpleased him to discover in himself enormous capacities for all thingsthat, to the timid-minded, constitute sin. He must embrace life withoutmoral limitations. "Julia, my dear—you must not misunderstand myfeeling for you. I want you—want you even physically—as much as I everdid." His voice shook a little. "It is only because I understand nowthat I must refuse myself much. I have found just this last month amarvelous spiritual rest which makes living deeply more acceptable."

Julia had never felt more contemptuous of him. "What I have to saywould only convince you of my limitations."

"Don't be childish, Julia. You don't want to understand me. We can'ttalk in the street. Come to my studio for half an hour." He could notlet her go away from him yet.

Julia's pride would not allow her to object.

On the way they passed an acquaintance of Dudley's. Dudley could notexplain to himself why he was ashamed of being seen with Julia. Hewanted to hurry her through the street.

In the oncoming twilight the brilliant shop fronts were vague withglitter and color. Above the glowering tower of an office building ablanched star twinkled among faded clouds. When they reached Dudley'sdoorstep Julia began to feel morally ill and to wonder why she had come.As Dudley watched her mount the long green-carpeted stairs before him hewas suddenly afraid of her.

They entered the studio. It was almost dark in the big room. The canvasthat Dudley was working on stood out conspicuously in the translucentgloom that filtered through the skylight. He crossed the floor andfurtively threw an old dressing gown over the painting.

Julia found herself unable to speak. When she discerned the lounge shesat down weakly upon it.

Dudley stumbled over the furniture. He wanted to evade the moment whenhe must find the lamp. "Take off your wrap, Julia. I can't find matches.I seem to have mislaid everything. I am a graceless host." His own voicesounded strange to him.

When at last he struck a match, Julia said, "Don't!" and put her handsto her eyes. The flame, which, for an instant, had blindly illumined hisface, went out. Dudley could not bring himself to move. The evening sky,dim with color, was visible through the windows behind him, and abovethe sombre roof of the factory that rose from the courtyard his figurewas thrown into relief. Objects over which there seemed to brood apeculiar stillness loomed about the room.

The tension was intolerable to them both. They were experiencing thesame nausea and disgust of their emotions—emotions which seemedinevitable for such a moment and so meaningless. Dudley said, "Where areyou? I'm afraid of stumbling over you."

Julia, a hysterical note in her voice, answered, "Here I am, Dudley."She knew that he was coming toward her. She wanted to die to escape thething in herself which would yield to him. But at this instant the lightflashed on and everything that she was feeling appeared to her asunjustifiable and ridiculous.

To Dudley, Julia's body represented all the darkness of self-distrustand the coldness of his own worldly mind. He wished that her personalitywere more bizarre so that he might regard his past acts as mad ratherthan commonplace. He did not know why he had brought her to the studioand was ashamed to look at her. There was nothing for it but to admitthe duality of his nature, and that half of it was weak. He longed tohasten the time of sailing when he would begin completely his life alonein which nothing but the artist in him would be permitted to survive. Hesaid, "Is it too late for me to make you some tea? Let me take yourwrap." When he approached her he averted his gaze.

"I can't stay long, Dudley. It is better that I shouldn't." She wantedto force on him an admission of her defeat. If she could only reproachhim by showing him the destruction of her self-respect! Her eyes werepurposely open to him. He would not see her. She resented hisobliviousness. "You seem to me a master of evasion."

When he sat down near her, he said, "Let it suffice, Julia, that I takethe hard things you want to say to me as coming from a human being whomI respect and care for enormously—and I still think everything finepossible between us provided you accept in me what I have never doubtedin you—my absolute good faith, and my absolute desire, to the best ofmy powers, to be honest and sincere in every moment of our relationship,past and present."

Julia gave him a long look which he obliged himself to meet. Then shegot up. "I can't stay, Dudley. You won't understand." She turned herhead aside. Her voice trembled. "It's painful to me."

He rose also, helplessly. He wanted to wring a last response from her.It was impossible. Everything seemed dark. He would not forgive her forgoing away.

Julia took up her wrap from a chair and went out hastily without lookingback.

Dudley felt a swift pang of despair. Not because she was gone, butbecause her going left him again with the problem of reviving thehallucinations of greatness. It was not easy for him to deceivehimself. He could do so only in the throes of emotions which exhaustedhim. In moments of unusual detachment he perceived the faults in himselfas apart from the real elements of genius that existed in his work. Buthe was not strong enough to continue his efforts for the sake of animperfect loveliness. Only in spiritual drunkenness could he conquer hissusceptibility to the nihilistic suggestions of complacent andunimaginative beings.

PART III

Julia and Laurence were to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Hurst. Of lateLaurence had shown an unusual measure of social punctiliousness. Juliarealized that his new determination to see and be with people was a partof his resistance to suffering. She thought bitterly that his regard forthe opinions of others was greater than his regard for her.

Julia put on a thin summer gown, very simply made, a light green sash,and a large black hat. Her misery had pride in itself, but when shelooked in the glass she was pleased, and it was difficult to preservethe purity of her unhappiness. As she descended the stairs at Laurence'sside she felt guiltily the trivial effect of her becoming dress. Shewanted him to notice her. "I'm afraid we are late."

His fine eyes, with their sharp far-away expression, rested on herwithout seeming to take cognizance of her. "I hope not. Mrs. Hurst is ahostess who demands punctuality." He spoke to her as to a child. Therewas something cruel in his kindness. For fear of exposing himself herefused her equality.

If he would only love her—that is to say, desire her—Julia knew thatshe would be willing to make herself even more abject than she had been,and that it would hurt her less than his considerate obliviousness.Laurence had ordered a taxi-cab. The driver waited at the curbstone inthe twilight. He turned to open the door for the two as they came out.Julia was avidly, yet resentfully, aware of his surreptitiousadmiration. She told herself that her sex was so beggared that sheaccepted without pride its recognition by a strange menial.

It was a beautiful cool evening. The glass in the taxi-cab was down. Thecold stale smell of the city, blowing in their faces, was mingled withthe perfume of the fading flowers in the park through which they passed.The trees rose strangely from the long dim drives. Here and therelights, surrounded by trembling auras, burst from the foliage. Far offwere tall illuminated buildings, and, about them, in the deep sky, thereflection was like a glowing silence. The wall of buildings had theappearance of retreating continually while the cab approached, as if thehuge blank bulks of hotels and apartment houses, withdrawing, held anescaping mystery.

Laurence scarcely spoke. Julia's sick nerves responded, with a feelingof expectation, to the vagueness of her surroundings. Her heart, beatingterrifically in her breast, seemed to exist apart from her, unaffectedby her depression and fatigue. It was too alive. She cried inwardly formercy from it.

Mrs. Hurst's home was a narrow, semi-detached house with a brown-stonefront and a bow window. From the upper floor it had a view of the park.When Julia and Laurence arrived, a limousine and Mr. Hurst's racer werealready drawn up before the place. There were lights in one of the roomsat the right, and, between the heavy hangings that shrouded its windows,one had glimpses of figures.

Laurence said sneeringly, "Hurst has arrived, hasn't he! Affluentsimplicity in a brown-stone front. You are honored that Mrs. Hurst iscarrying you to glory with her."

Julia said, "But they really are quite helpless with their money,Laurence. Mrs. Hurst has a genuine instinct for something better."

"How ceremonious is this occasion anyway? I don't know whether I amequal to the frame of mind that should accompany evening dress."

"There will only be one or two people. Mrs. Hurst knows how we dislikeformal parties."

Mr. Hurst, waving the servant back, opened the front door himself. Hewas a tall, narrow-shouldered man with a thin florid face. His palehumorous blue eyes had a furtive expression of defense. His mouth wasthin and weak. His manner suggested a mixture of braggadocio andself-distrust. He dressed very expensively and correctly, but there wasthat in his air which somehow deprecated the success of his appearance.His sandy hair, growing thin on top, was brushed carefully away from hishigh hollow temples. The hand he held out, with its carefully manicurednails, was stubby-fingered and shapeless. "Well, well, Farley! How goesit? I've been trying to get hold of you. Want to go for a little fishingtrip?" He was confused because he had not spoken to Julia first. "Howd'ye do, Mrs. Farley? Think you could spare him for a few days?" Mr.Hurst's greeting of Laurence was a combination of bluff familiarity andresentful respect. When he looked at Julia his eyes held hers inbullying admiration.

Julia had never been able to say just where his elusive intimacy vergedon presumption. Feeling irritated and helpless and sweetly sorry forherself, she lowered her lids.

"My—dear!" Mrs. Hurst kissed Julia. "How sweet you look! How do you do,Mr. Farley? It was nice of you to let Julia persuade you to come to us.We really feel you are showing your confidence in us. Julia, dear girl,tells me you have as much of an aversion to parties as Charles and Ihave. This will be a homely evening. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are here, andthere is a young Hindoo who has been giving some charming talks at theSettlement House. He speaks very poor English but he's so interested inAmerica. He's only become acquainted with a few American women. I wanthim to meet Julia. I think he'll amuse her too." Mrs. Hurst's shortlittle person was draped in a black lace robe embroidered with jet. Shesquinted when she smiled. Minute creases appeared about her bright eyes.Her expression was gentle and deceitful. Her arms, protruding from hersleeve draperies, were thin, and their movements weak. Her wedding ringand one large diamond-encircled turquoise hung loosely on the thirdfinger of her left hand. Her hands were meager and showed that herbones were very small and delicate. About her hollow throat she wore ablack velvet band, and her cheeks, no longer firm, were, nevertheless,childishly full above it. Though she said nothing that justified it, onefelt in her a sort of affectionate malice toward those with whom shespoke. In her flattering acknowledgment of Julia's appearance there wassomething insidiously contemptuous. "Come away with me, child, and we'lldispose of that hat. Williams!" She turned to the Negro servant whom Mr.Hurst had intercepted at the door. She nodded toward Mr. Farley. TheNegro went forward obsequiously.

"Yes, Williams, take Mr. Farley's hat," Mr. Hurst said. Then, inhumorous confidence, sotto voce, "How about a drink, Farley? My wifehas that young Hindoo here. This is likely to be a dry intellectualevening. That may suit you, but I have to resort to first aid. Want totalk to you about that fishing trip. Come on to my den with me."

Shortly after this, Julia, descending the stairs with her hostess, foundLaurence and Mr. Hurst in the hall again. Laurence, his lips twisteddisagreeably, was listening with polite but irritating quiescence toMr. Hurst's incessant high-pitched talk. Mr. Hurst, who had beensurreptitiously glancing toward the shadowy staircase that hung abovehis guest's head, was quick to observe the approach of the women. He hadalways found fault with what he considered to be Julia's coldness, buthe admired her tall figure and her fine shoulders. "Hello, hello! Herethey are!"

"Charles!" Mrs. Hurst was whimsically disapproving. "Why haven't youtaken Mr. Farley in to meet our guests? You are an erratic host."

Mr. Hurst moved forward. "That's all right! That's all right! Farley andI had some strategic confidences. You take him off and show him yourHindoo. I want Mrs. Farley to come out and see my rose garden, out inthe court. I'm going to have a few minutes alone with her before youconduct her to the higher spheres and leave me struggling in my naturalearthly environment. I won't be robbed of a little tête-à-tête with apretty woman, just because there's an Oriental gentleman in the housewho can tell her all about her astral body. Did you ever see your astralbody, Mrs. Farley?"

"Boo!" Mrs. Hurst waved him off and pushed Julia toward him. "Go on, ifshe has patience with you. But mind you only keep her there a moment.I've told Mr. Vakanda she was coming and I'm sure he's already uneasy.Rose garden, indeed! It's quite dark, Charles! Come, Mr. Farley. Putthis scarf about you, dear." She took a scarf up and threw it aroundJulia's shoulders.

"Ta-ta!" Mr. Hurst came confidently to Julia, and they walked outtogether across a glass-enclosed veranda that was brilliantly lit.Descending a few steps they were among the roses. "Autumn roses," saidMr. Hurst. The bushes drooped in vague masses about them. Here and therea blossom made a pale spot among the obscure leaves. Where the glow fromthe veranda stretched along the paths, the grass showed like a blue mistover the earth, and clusters of foliage had a carven look. The dark wallof the next house, in which the lighted windows were like wounds,towered above them. Over it hung the black sky covered with an infiniteflashing dust of stars. Julia's face was in shadow, but her hairglistened on the white nape of her neck where the black lace scarf hadfallen away.

Mr. Hurst had made a large sum of money from small beginnings. He wouldhave enjoyed in peace the sense of power it gave him, and theindulgence in fine wines and foods and expensive surroundings for whichhe lived, but his wife prevented it. He had married her when they wereboth young and impecunious. She had been a school teacher in amid-western city. She had managed to convince him that in marrying himshe conferred an honor upon him, and she succeeded now in making himfeel out of place and absurd in the environment which his efforts hadcreated, which she, however, turned to her own use. Instead of flauntinghis success in boastful generosity, according to his inclination, hefound himself compelled to deprecate it. He had a secret conviction thathe was a man to be reckoned with, but openly, and especially before hiswife's friends, he ridiculed himself, perpetrating laborious andrepetitious jokes at his own expense, just as she ridiculed him whenthey were alone.

Mrs. Hurst was chiefly interested in what she considered culture, and inwelfare work, and among her acquaintances referred to her husbandaffectionately as if he were a child. She had no connection which wouldgive her the entrée to socially exclusive circles, and she was wiseenough not to attempt pretenses which it would have been impossible forher to sustain. Her husband's friends were mostly selfmade and newlyrich. She was affable to them but maintained toward them a mild butsuperior reserve. She expressed tolerantly her contempt of socialostentation and suggested that among Mr. Hurst's play-fellows she wascondescending from her more vital and intellectual pursuits. Men whodrank and played golf or poker between the hours of business consideredher "brainy," but "a damned nice woman". She was generous to impecuniouscelebrities of whom she had been told to expect success. On one occasionwhen she and Mr. Hurst were sailing for England she was photographed onshipboard in the company of a popular novelist. The picture of thenovelist, showing Mrs. Hurst beside him in expensive furs, appeared in awoman's magazine. She had never seen the man since, but she alwaysreferred to him as "a charming person". She was frequently called uponto conduct "drives" for charity funds. At masquerade balls organized forsimilar purposes her name appeared with others better known and shecould honestly claim acquaintance with women whose frivolous occupationsshe professed to despise. She was an assiduous attendant at concerts andthe public lectures which were given from time to time by men of lettersor exponents of the arts. References to sex annoyed her. The vaguenessof her aspirations sometimes led her into fits of depression anddiscouragement, but she had a small crabbed pride that prevented herfrom allowing any one—least of all, perhaps, her husband—to see whatshe felt. She was conscientiously attentive to children, but actuallybored by them. She seldom thought of her own childhood, and shesentimentalized her past only when she reflected on her early girlhoodand the instinctive longing for withheld refinements which had led heraway from a sordid uncultured home into the profession of a teacher.Often her husband irritated her almost uncontrollably, but she neveradmitted that the moods he aroused in her had any significance. She wasashamed of him and called the feeling by other names.

Mr. Hurst's frustrated vanity consoled itself somewhat when he was alonebefore his mirror, for even his wife admitted that he was distinguishedlooking. He consumed bottle after bottle of a prescription which, so aspecialist assured him, would make his hair come back. Always gay andaffectionate and generally liked, he had a secret sensitiveness that hehimself was but half aware of, and which no one who knew him suspected.He had never abandoned the romantic hope that some day he would meet awoman who would understand him. It was his unacknowledged desire to havehis wife's opinion of him repudiated that made him perpetuallyunfaithful to her. Years ago he had been astonished to discover thateven the women whom his wife introduced him to, who looked down on hisabsence of culture, and whose intellectual earnestness really seemed tohim grotesque, were quite willing to take him seriously when he madelove to them. He was bewildered but elated in perceiving thevulnerability of those he was invited to revere. Once he learned this itawakened something subtle and feminine in his nature and tempted him tounpremeditated cruelties. Though his sex entanglements were, as a rule,gross and banal enough, and quickly succeeded one another, he treasuredat intervals a plaintive conviction that some day he would meet thewoman who had, as he expressed it, "the guts to love him". Musing onthis, he found in it the excuse for all the unpleasing episodes in whichhe took part. Outwardly cynical, he was sentimental to the point ofbathos. He had one fear that obsessed him, the fear of growing old, sothat the woman, when she met him, might not be able to recognize him.

He had always been a little afraid of Julia and had a secret desire, onthe rare occasions when they met, to hurt her in some way that mightforce her to concede their equality. He called himself a mixture of pigand child and when he met any of his wife's "high-brow" friends heenvied them and wanted to trick them into exhibiting something of thepig also. Julia was young and pretty. He sighed and wished her more"human". He had never found her so charming as she seemed to-night.Under the accustomed stimulus of alcohol he relaxed most easily into amood of affectionate self-pity. Without being drunk in any perceptibleway, he loved himself and he loved every one, and his conviction ofhuman pathos was strong. Julia's tense yet curiously subdued mannershowed him that she was no longer oblivious to him. He fancied thatthere was already between them that sudden rapport which came betweenhim and women who were sexually sensible of his personality. "You aren'tangry with me for taking you away like this?"

Julia said, "How could I be? I wish all social gatherings were in theopen. It seems terrible to shut one's self indoors on these beautifulnights."

Charles Hurst was impelled to talk about himself. He did not know how tobegin, and coughed embarrassedly. He imagined that Julia was ready tohear, and already he was grateful for the regard he anticipated. "Don'tmind if I light a cigar?"

"I should like it."

"Don't smoke cigarettes, do you? Some of the ladies who come hereshedding sweetness and light are hard smokers."

Julia shook her head negatively. "I don't. But you surely can't object,as a principle, to women smoking?"

"No. I think my objections are chiefly—chiefly what my wife—whatCatherine would call esthetic. I'm not strong on principles of any sort.Don't take myself seriously enough."

Julia could make out his nonchalant angular pose as he stood lookingdown at her. As he held a match to his cigar the glow on his face showedhis narrow regular features, his humorously ridiculing mouth, and hispale eyes caught in an unconscious expression of fright.

Julia said, "I'm afraid you take yourself very seriously indeed, or youwouldn't be so perpetually on the defensive." Poor Mr. Hurst! Thisevening she could not bear to be isolated by conventional reserves, evenwith him. It flattered her unhappiness to feel that he was a child. Andthis evening it seemed to her desperately necessary that she touchsomething living which would respond involuntarily to the contact.

Mr. Hurst was disconcerted. He took the cigar out of his mouth andexamined the glowing tip which dilated in the dark as he stared at it.Tears had all at once come to his eyes. He wondered if he were drunkerthan he had imagined. The moment he suspected any one of a seriousinterest in him it robbed him of his aplomb. "Don't read me too well,Mrs. Farley. You know I'm not really much of a person. Coarse-fiberedAmerican type. No interests beyond business and all that. Good pokerplayer. Hell of a good friend—when you let him. But commonplace. Damncommonplace. Nothing worth while at all from your point of view."

They strolled along the path further into the shadows. Julia wasastonished by the ill-concealed emotion in Mr. Hurst's humorous voice.His transparency momentarily assuaged the tortures of herself-distrust. "How can you say that? My human predilections are notnarrowed down to any particular type, I hope."

"Oh, well, I know—you and Catherine—miles over my head, all of it.Lectures on the Fourth Dimension. Some girl with adenoids here the othernight been studying 'Einstein'. Damned if it had done her any good. Yes,what that gal needed was somebody to hug her." Julia was conscious thathe was turning toward her. "Crass outlook, eh?" He laughedapologetically.

"She probably did," Julia said. They laughed together.

Mr. Hurst felt all at once unreasoningly depressed. He wanted to touchher as a child wants to touch the person who pleases it. But thesophisticated element in his nature intervened. He despised his ownsimplicity. "Do you find yourself getting anywhere in the pursuit of thegood, the true, and the beautiful? Honestly now, Mrs. Farley. I've hadthe whole program shoved at me—not that Catherine isn't the best ofwomen, bless her little soul. You know the life we tired business menlead pretty much resembles that of the good old steady pack horse thatdoes the work. We dream about green pastures and all that, but neverget much closer to it. And when you get to the end of things you beginto wonder if your plodding did anybody any good—if anything ever didanybody any good. I've got no use for cynicism—consider it damn cheap.Wish some time I was a little bit more of a cynic. But I'm lost.Hopelessly lost. I take a highball every now and then because my—Ithink my mind hurts." He halted suddenly and they were looking into eachother's vague faces. "This talk getting too damn serious, eh? Somethingabout you to-night that invites a fellow to make a fool of himself."

"I hope not," Julia said. "I like you for talking frankly."

"Oh, I'm not too damn frank. We can't afford it in this world of hardknocks. Now to you, now, I'm not saying all that I'd like to, by ajugful."

"Then you don't make as much of a distinction between me and the crowdas I hoped."

Charles had let his cigar go out. He kept turning it over and over inhis stiff fingers that she could not see. He felt that only when he helda woman in his arms and she was robbed of her conventional defensescould he speak openly to her. With other attractive women he had comequickly to a point like this where he wanted to talk of his inner life.He imagined it would give him relief if he could touch Julia's dress andput his head in her lap. The terrible fear of revealing himself beforehis wife and her friends had stimulated his imagination toward abandon.When he was a child his mother had not loved him. She was a defiantperson. She was ashamed of him because he allowed himself to bevictimized by all the things against which she had futilely rebelled. Hehad felt himself despised though he had never understood the reason. Hismother found continual fault with him and never petted him. One day agirl cousin much older than he had discovered him in a corner crying andhad comforted him, and had allowed him to put his head in her lap. As hehad never gotten over considering himself from a child's standpoint, hisadult visions always culminated in a similar moment of release. Wheneverhe became sentimental about a woman he imagined that he would some dayput his head in her lap. He had been, in his own mind, so thoroughlyconvicted of weakness that the development of strength no longerappealed to him as a means of self-fulfilment. He abandoned himself toan incurable dependence for which he had not as yet found a permanentobject. It eased him when he could evoke the maternal in a mistress."Aren't we all—somewhat on the defensive toward each other?" he saidafter a minute.

Julia was reminded again of what she thought to be her own tragedy. Shefelt reckless and wanted some one into whom to pour herself. Sheimagined herself lost in the dark garden, crushed between the walls andbright windows of the houses. In some indefinable way she identifiedherself with the million stars, flashing and remote in the blackdistance of the sky that showed narrowly above the roofs. "Yes," shesaid. "And so uselessly. People are so pathetic in their determinationnot to recognize what they are. If we ever had the courage to stopdefending ourselves for a moment—But none of us have, I'm afraid." Shecarried the pity which she had for herself over to him. She had noticedhow thin his face was, that the bold gaze with which he looked at herwas only an expression of concealment, and that there were strainedlines at the corners of his good-tempered mouth. Yes, in the depths ofhis pale eyes with their conscious glint of humor there was undoubtedlysomething eager and almost blankly disconcerted.

Charles could not answer her at once. He threw his cigar aside. His handtrembled a little. I wonder how drunk I am, he said to himself. Hedecided that he was helpless in the clutch of his own impulses. Hethought, A damn fool now as always. Have I got this woman sized upwrong? She's a dear. Here goes. Poor little thing! Gosh, I know shecan't be happy with that self-engrossed ass she's married to! In hismore secret nature he was proud of his own temerity. "Damn it all, Mrs.Farley—Julia—" He hesitated. "I've queered myself right off by callingyou Julia, haven't I?" His laugh was forced and unhappy. He glanced overhis shoulder toward the house.

Julia was alarmed by the unexpected immanence of something she wastrying to ignore. She kept repeating to herself, He's a child! Herthoughts grew more disconnected each instant. She wanted to go away, yetshe half knew that she was demanding of Charles the very thing thatterrified her. "Of course not. Mrs. Hurst calls me Julia, why shouldn'tyou?" Her tone was intended to lift their talk to a plane of unsexednaturalness.

"Yes, by George, why shouldn't I! She calls you that a good deal as ifshe were your mother." He paused. "Did you know I'd reached the ripeold age of forty-one?" (He was really forty-two.)

"It doesn't shock me."

"Well, I wish it did. I don't like to be taken so damn much forgranted." (He wanted to tell her that Catherine was three years olderthan he, but his sense of fair play withheld him.) "An old man of my agehas no right to go around looking for some one to understand him, hashe?"

"Why not? I'm afraid we do that to the end of time, Mr. Hurst."

"Say, now, honestly, Mrs. Farley—Julia—I can't lay myself wide open toanybody who insists on calling me Mr. Hurst. I feel as if I were ahundred and seven." He tried to ingratiate himself with his boyishness.

"I haven't any objection to calling you Charles." (Julia thoughtuncomfortably of Mrs. Hurst and, remembering her, was embarrassed.)"Don't feel hurt if I'm not able to do it at once. Certain habits ofthought are very hard to get rid of."

"And I suppose you've been in the habit of considering me in the sexlessantediluvian class!"

"You've forgotten that Laurence—that my husband is as old as you are."

When Julia mentioned her husband, Charles's impetuosity was dampened. Itupset him and made him unhappy. However, he was determined to sustainhis impulses. "Yes, I had."

Silence.

Charles wanted to cry. "You know I appreciate it awfully that you arewilling to enter into the holy state of friendship with an obviouscreature like myself. Catherine says you're a wonderful woman, and she'sa damned good judge—of her own kind, that is."

"I'm afraid she's flattered me. I wish you weren't so humble about ourfriendship. I am as grateful as you are for anything genuine."

"Yes, I'm too confounded humble. I know I am. Always was. You know I'mnot really lacking in self-respect, Miss Julia."

"Of course you aren't. You seem to me one of the most self-respectingpeople I know."

Charles was silent a long time. He knew that he was being carried awayon a familiar current. By God, she means it! he said to himself. Hewould refuse to regard anything but the present moment. "How does ithappen you and I never came together like this before? I'd got into thehabit of thinking you were one of these icy Dianas that had an almightycontempt for any one as well rooted in Mother Earth as I am."

Julia laughed uncomfortably. "That's a mixed metaphor." Then she saidseriously, "I want to understand things—not to try to escape. It seemsto me we must all go back to Mother Earth if we try to do that." Sheadded, "I'm afraid we are making ourselves delinquent. We mustn'tabandon Mrs. Hurst and her guests altogether."

They turned toward the veranda. They were walking side by side andinadvertently Charles's hand brushed Julia's. He caught her fingers. Shemade a slight gesture of repulsion which he scarcely observed. Then herhand was relinquished to him. "Confound these social amenities! Ithought you were going to be my mother-confessor, Miss Julia." Until hetouched her hand he had been conscious of their human separateness andhis sensuous impulses had been in abeyance. With the feel of her flesh,she became simply the woman he wanted to kiss, the possessor of abeautiful throat, and of mysterious breasts that compelled himfamiliarly through the dim folds of her white dress. His acquisitiveemotion was savage and childlike. Here was a strange thing whichmenaced and invited him. He wanted to know it, to tear it apart so thathe need no longer be afraid of it. Already he annihilated it and lovedit for being subject to him. He leaned toward her and when she liftedher face to him he kissed her. He felt the shudder of surprise thatpassed over her. "Julia—don't hate me. Child, I'm going to fall in lovewith you! I know it!" His voice was smothered in her hair. He kissed hereyes and her mouth again. Trembling, Julia was silent. He wonderedrecklessly if she despised him, but while he wondered he could not leaveher. He felt embittered toward her because she awakened his dormantsensuality and he supposed that women like her were superior to thenecessities that left him helpless.

"Please!" Julia said. When his mouth was pressed against hers she wassuffocated by the same thrill of astonishment and despair which she hadexperienced when she first allowed Dudley Allen to take her. When shewas able to speak she said, "Oh, we are so pathetic and absurd—both ofus! It's so hopelessly meaningless."

He was excited and elated. In a broken voice, he said, "So you think Iam pathetic and absurd? I am, child. I don't care! I don't care!" Hethought that she was referring to the general opinion of him. Hehardened toward her, while, at the same moment, a wave of physicaltenderness enveloped him. Stealthily, he exulted in the capacity hepossessed for sexual ruthlessness. He knew she could not suspect it. Hewould be honest with her only when it became impossible for her to evadehim.

They heard footsteps and turned from each other with a common instinctof defense. Mrs. Hurst was descending the steps from the lighted porch."I have a bone to pick with that spouse of mine," she called pleasantlywhen she could see them. Charles had taken out a fresh cigar and waslighting a match.

"Hello, hello! Am I in trouble again?" Charles fumbled for Julia's hand,and gave it a squeeze, but dropped it as his wife drew near.

Mrs. Hurst's figure was in silhouette before them. "You'll spoil mydinner party, Charles! Julia, child, I'm afraid you need reprimandingtoo. You have to be stern with Charles." Her tone was truly vexed, butso frankly so that it was evident she suspected nothing amiss.

"I'm sorry if I am in disfavor." Julia's voice was cold. In hernihilistic frame of mind she wished that her hostess had discovered thecompromising situation.

Julia's reply was irritating and Mrs. Hurst's displeasure inwardlydeepened. She felt stirring in her a chronic distrust and animositytoward other women, but would give no credence to her own emotion."Come, child, don't be ridiculous! I suppose I can't blame Charles fortrying to steal you from me. I'm sure he wanted to talk to you abouthimself. It's the one thing he cannot resist." She laughed, a forcedpleasant little laugh, and caught Julia's arm in a determined caressingpressure. "Come. We're all going to be good. Mr. Vakanda is waiting totake you in to dinner." Julia followed her toward the house. "Come,Charles!" Mrs. Hurst commanded him abruptly over her shoulder. Themanner in which she spoke to him suggested strained tolerance.

Charles's immediate relief at not having been seen was succeeded bycomplacency. To deceive his wife was for him to experience a naïve senseof triumph. Poor little Kate! He could even be sorry for her.

Julia more than ever wanted to feel that Laurence's refusal of her wasforcing upon her a promiscuous and degrading attitude toward sex. Shesaid, "I'm sure the fault is mine. I couldn't resist the night and theroses."

"Now don't try to defend him. The roses were his excuse, not yours."Mrs. Hurst wondered how they had been able to see anything of the rosesin such a light. She wished to forget about it. "Mollie Wilson has beentelling us how difficult the role of a mother is these days. She saysshe envies you May with her amenability. Lucy has some of the moststartlingly advanced conceptions of what her mother should let her do."

Charles, walking almost on their heels, interrupted them. "It would bean insult to Ju—to Mrs. Farley if I needed an excuse for carrying heroff for a minute." He cleared his throat. "Say, Kate, damn it all, willyou and she be upset if I call her Julia? I like her as well as you do."

Again Mrs. Hurst was irritated and inexplicably disturbed. It wasCharles—not Julia—of course. Any woman. He's always like that! "Then Ishall expect to begin calling Mr. Farley Laurence," she said acidly. Shespoke confidentially to Julia. "He can't resist them, dear—any of them.Pretty women. You'll have to put up with his admiration. All my nicestfriends do."

"The dickens they do!" Charles grumbled jocosely. His wife's tone madehim nervous. He was suspicious of her.

When they came up on the lighted veranda a maid passed them, a neatgood-looking young woman in black with inquisitive eyes. Julia caught onthe servant's face what seemed an expression of inquiry and amusem*nt.Charles, who had often tried to flirt with the girl, glanced at hershamefacedly and immediately lowered his gaze. Damn these women! Julia,feeling guilty and antagonistic, observed Mrs. Hurst, but found that sheappeared as usual, sweet and negatively self-contained, yet suggestingfaintly a hidden malice.

They walked through a long over-furnished hall and entered the drawingroom. The men rose: the Hindoo, good-looking but with a softness thatwould inevitably repel the Anglo-Saxon; Mr. Wilson, stout and jovial,his small eyes twinkling between creases of flesh, the bosom of hisshirt bulging over his low-cut vest; Laurence, clumsy in gesture, kind,but almost insulting in his composure.

During the evening Julia could not bring herself to meet Laurence'sregard, nor did she again look directly at Mr. Hurst. Charles, aftersome initial moments of readjustment when he found it difficult to joinin the general talk, recovered himself with peculiar ease. Indeed hislater manner showed such pronounced elation that Julia wondered if itwere not eliciting some unspoken comment. When he turned toward her shewas aware of the furtive daring of his expression, though she refused tomake any acknowledgment of it. He laughed a great deal, made boisterousjokes uttered in the falsetto voice he affected when he was inclined tocomicality, and, when his jests were turned upon himself, chuckledimmoderately in appreciation of his own discomfiture. The Hindoo, whosebearing displayed extraordinary breeding, had opaque eyes full ofdistrust. His good nature under Charles's jibes was assumed with obviouseffort and did not conceal his polite contempt. During dinner andafterward Charles plied every one, and particularly the men, with drink.Mrs. Hurst had always been divided between the attractions of theelegance which demanded a fine taste in wines and liqueurs, and hermoral aversion to alcohol. She never served wines when she and Charleswere alone, and to-night she was provoked by his ill-bred insistencethat the glasses of her guests be refilled.

When the meal was over and the men had returned to the drawing room,Charles seemed to be in a state of fidgets. His face and even hishelpless-looking hands were flushed. He walked about continually, andwas perpetually smoothing his carefully combed hair over the baldishspot on the top of his head. Mrs. Wilson, who was florid and coarselygood-looking, with her iron-gray hair, admired his distinguished figurein its well-cut clothes. His flattering manner when he talked to hermade her feel self-satisfied. Julia, though she had honestly protestedto Charles that she did not smoke, indulged in a cigarette. Mrs. Wilsonalso lit one and expelled the smoke from her pursed mouth in jerkyunaccustomed puffs. Mrs. Hurst's dislike of tobacco was equal to herrepugnance to alcohol. She refused to smoke but was careful to show thather distaste for cigarettes was a personal idiosyncrasy. She made littleamused grimaces at the smokers and treated them as if they wereirresponsible children. Mrs. Wilson, in talking to Mr. Vakanda,contrived many casual and contemptuous references to her recentexperiences in Europe. She was divided between her genuine boredom withEuropean culture and her pride in her acquaintance with it.

Charles, observing Julia in this group, appreciated the distinction ofher simpler, more aristocratic manner; and the clarity and frankness ofher statements seemed to him to place her as a being from another world.Damn me, she's a thoroughbred! Makes me ashamed of myself, bless hersoul! His emotions were too much for him. He went into his "den," whichwas across the hall, and poured himself a drink. Fragments of theevening's conversation buzzed in his head. Julia and Mr. Wilson haddisagreed as to the validity of certain phases of the newer movements inart. Mr. Wilson scoffed blatantly at all of them. Mr. Vakanda was morereserved, but one suspected that he looked upon Westerners as adolescentand treated their art accordingly. Charles, without knowing what he wastalking about, had come jestingly to Julia's rescue. When he rememberedhow often he had joined Mr. Wilson in ribald comment on subjects whichshe treated as serious, he felt he had been a traitor to her. Damn mysoul, I'm hard hit! I never half appreciated that girl until to-night!Don't know what the hell's been the matter with me! Overcome by hisreflections, he walked to a window and stared out into the quiet dimlylit street. His suddenly aroused sensual longing for Julia returned andmade him embarrassed and unhappy. He set his glass down on the windowledge and passed a hand across each eye as if he were wiping somethingaway. Damn it all, I'm in love with her all right.

When the time for the Farleys' departure arrived Charles was talkativeand uneasy. He clapped his hand on Laurence's shoulder. "You're one ofthe few men who's fit to fish with, Farley. Most of 'em are too damnedloud for the fish. We'll fix that little trip up yet. I suspect you ofbeing the philosopher of this bunch anyway."

"I can furnish the requisite of silence, but I'm afraid it requires somepeculiar psychic influence to attract fish. I haven't got it."

Charles's manner was self-conscious to a degree. He spoke rapidly andunnecessarily lifted his voice. His wife watched him with a cold kindlittle smile of disgust. She wanted to create the impression that sheunderstood him, but her resentment of him rose chiefly from the factthat he was incomprehensible to her. "That's all right. I'll catch thefish. I'll catch the fish. Damned if I haven't enjoyed the evening. Say,Farley, Kate and I are coming over some evening and I'm going to talkto your wife. I believe she's just plain folks even if she can chantSchopenhauer and the rest of those cranks. You know I admire yourbrains, Miss Julia. By Jove, I do. You can give me some of the line ofpatter I've missed. Kate, now—Kate's got it all at her finger tips, butshe's given me up long ago. Have a drink before you go, Farley? No! Youknow I'm a great admirer of Omar Khayyám's, Miss Julia. The rest of youhigh-brows seem to have put the kibosh on the old boy. He's the fellowthat had some bowels of compassion in him. Knew what it was like to wanta drink and be dry." Charles smoothed back his hair. His hand wastrembling slightly. He looked at Julia now and then but allowed no oneelse to catch his eyes.

Laurence, holding his silk hat stiffly in his fingers, moveddeterminedly toward the front door. His smile was enigmatic but hisdesire for escape was evident.

Julia said, "I'll talk to you about Schopenhauer, Mr. Hurst, andconvince you that he was very far from a crank." She smiled.

"Yep? Well, guess I'm jealous of him. I'm willing to be taught. Thisbusiness grind I'm in is converting me into pretty poor company. Notmuch use for a meditative mind in the stock market. Eh, Farley? Thewomen have got it all over us when it comes to refining life."

Laurence said, "I imagine I know as little of the stock market as mywife, Hurst."

"And you must remember I'm a business woman, too."

"So you are. Working in that confounded laboratory. Well, I've got noexcuse then."

"Know thyself, Charles!" Mrs. Hurst shook her finger playfully.

"Yep. Constitutional aversion to knowing myself—knowing anything else.Looks to me as if you had picked a lemon, Kate."

"We must really go." Julia held out her hand.

Mrs. Hurst shook hands with Julia. "So delightful to have had you. I'mglad you impressed Mr. Vakanda with the significance of America in theworld of art, dear." Mrs. Hurst, at that instant, disliked her guestintensely, but she preserved her smile and her delicate tactful air.Laurence shook hands with her also. His reserve appealed to her. Shecould be more frankly gracious with him.

Charles pressed Julia's fingers lingeringly, in spite of her efforts towithdraw them. He was suddenly depressed and gazed at her with an openalmost despairingly interrogative expression. "Yep, damn me, Kate'sright. You put the Far East in its place, Miss Julia. Did me good to seeit." He giggled nervously, but his face immediately grew serious. Seeingher go away into her own strange world depleted the confidence heexperienced while with her. He was oppressed by the company of his wife,and his pathetic feeling about himself returned. For the moment the hopethat Julia would understand him—like him and exculpate hisdeficiencies, even see in him that which was admirable—was morepoignant than the passing desire to touch and dominate her body. Therewas a helpless unreserve in his eyes.

Julia could see the tired lines in his face all at once peculiarlyemphasized. His lips quivered. She thought he looked old but for somereason all the more childlike. She could not resist his need for her.

It was with an acute sense of disgust that Laurence left the house.

Mr. Hurst did not communicate with Laurence in regard to the fishingtrip, but one morning soon after the dinner party Mrs. Hurst calledJulia on the telephone and invited her to come with Laurence to anall-day picnic in the country. "This is just the sort of thing Charlesdelights in," Mrs. Hurst explained, in her hard pleasant light-timbredvoice. Julia heard her polite laugh over the wire. "I shan't blame youif you refuse us. It's really too absurd. We shall probably be consumedby mosquitoes."

"Why, I'm afraid we can't go," Julia said. "Laurence is very busy andyou know I have my work, too."

"I suppose you can't get off for a day—either of you? Charles is quitedetermined to see you and your husband again."

"It wouldn't be possible. It's nice of you. I really would enjoy it butit wouldn't be possible for either of us."

Again Mrs. Hurst's confidential amusem*nt. "Well, I'm sorry. Though foryour own sake I'm glad. Charles has rather a boy's idea of fun.Well—don't be surprised if we arrive at your front door some evening inthe near future."

"I shall be very glad," Julia said.

On a Monday evening while the Farley family were at an early dinner theyheard a laboring motor in the street. Bobby, who could not be restrainedwhen the prospect of diversion was at hand, ran out to see what it wasand, on his return, reported that Mr. and Mrs. Hurst were at the frontdoor.

Laurence laid his napkin wearily aside. "To what do we owe the honor?Have you been to see them since the other night?"

Julia said she had not.

When Julia arrived in the hallway Mr. and Mrs. Hurst were already there,having been admitted by Bobby. Julia could not look at Charles's face.With an effort she smiled at his wife.

Mrs. Hurst, with one of her pleasant, mildly reducing grimaces, said,"How are you? You were dining? There! I told you so, Charles!"

Julia imagined that there was constraint in Mrs. Hurst's manner. Theirhands barely touched.

"How do you do? How do you do, Mrs. Hurst?" Laurence's expression waspolite but not agreeable. For some reason he spoke to Charles with morecordiality.

"How d'ye do, Farley? How d'ye do, Miss Julia! Bless my soul, I'm gladto see you! Kate couldn't keep me away from here. Yes, I confess it. Allmy fault." He was uneasy as before, and adopted the falsetto tone of hiscomic moods. He wrung Julia's hand for an instant and looked greedilyinto her face. But he could not sustain the gaze. He turned to Laurenceand began to joke about the speed of his motor car.

"Please go on to your dinner. I'm really ashamed that I allowed Charlesto bring me here now." Mrs. Hurst, smiling, preserved theinconsequential atmosphere of the group. At the same time she felt arepugnance to Julia which she had never experienced until recently.

Julia, also, disliked the furtive intentness with which Mrs. Hurst,continuing to smile, occasionally scrutinized her.

"We dine so much later."

"But we've quite finished—unless you will have a cup of coffee withus?"

"Coffee? What say, coffee?" Charles could not keep from listening towhat Julia and his wife were saying, though he was trying, at the sametime, to talk to Laurence. Now he interrupted himself. "Shall we havesome coffee with them, Kate?" Just then he caught Julia's eyes and aflush spread over his face. "I think we'd better forego the coffee andtake these people for a little ride. That's what we came for." He kepton gazing steadily and sentimentally at Julia who was embarrassed bythis too open regard.

"Shall we? Perhaps we had. Our own dinner hour will come all too soon,"Mrs. Hurst said.

"Won't you come in here?" Laurence motioned toward an open door.

Julia was vexed by her own mingled depression and agitation. Frowningand smiling at the same time, she added abstractedly, "Yes. Howridiculous we are—standing here in this chilly hall. Please come inhere. I will have Nellie make a fire for you."

"Who wants a fire this time of year!" Charles followed his wife, whoentered the half-darkened room with Julia. "Farley, you and Miss Juliaget your wraps and we'll wait for you. Don't waste your time makingyourself lovely, Miss Julia."

After Laurence had turned up the lights he and Julia went out. Charlesand his wife, who had seated themselves, waited in silence. Charlesstretched out his long legs in checked trousers and crossed them overone another. He stared up at the ceiling and pursed his mouth in asoundless whistle.

Catherine said, "We can't stay with these people long. You know theGoodes are coming over after dinner."

Charles started. "What's that?" He sat bolt upright. "Goodes, eh? No.All right. Plenty of time." He did not relax his posture again, butdrummed on the arm of his chair, tapped his feet, and for a few momentshalf hid his face in the cupped palm of his hand.

Mrs. Hurst looked bored and tired. Her small sardonic mouth was veryprecisely set. Her gaze was both humorous and weary. Now and then sheglanced at Charles and forced a twinkle to her eyes, while, at the samemoment, her features showed her repressed irritation. Mrs. Hurst hadsuspected, after the previous meeting with the Farleys, that Charles wasinterested in Julia. Suspicion sharpened her observation of him but herpolicy toward him demanded of her that she be amused by all he did.Otherwise the situation between them might long ago have precipitated acrisis which she, at least, was not ready to face. In a moment ofimpetuosity Charles would be capable of heaven-knows-what regrettableand irretrievable resolution. He had so often shown the same kind offrank admiration for a pretty woman that she made the best of things byappearing to tolerate, if not to encourage, his folly. She was certainthat his infatuations were so illusory that a little enforcedacquaintance with the intimate personalities of her successive rivalswould dissipate his regard for them. In this case, too, she had no fearthat a woman of Julia's poise and enlightenment would make any seriousresponse to Charles's naïve overtures. If Mrs. Hurst could convinceherself that a situation was sufficiently grotesque (viewed, of course,from the standpoint of manners) it became unreal to her, and she couldno longer believe that such a vague and ridiculous cause would produceany effect in actuality.

Waiting for Laurence and Julia to appear, Charles, even when he was notlooking at her, was conscious of his wife's personality. Though he couldnot analyze the impression, he was, as he had been repeatedly before,disconcerted by the cold understanding which he saw in her small,humorously lined face. He was startled by the boldness of her evasions.All his mental attempts to capture a grievance were diverted when heconsidered her demure gentleness and good breeding. He had, at theoutset, to accept the fact of his inferiority. Now his pale eyes, fixedintermittently in an upward gaze, were startled and perturbed. His mouthtwitched. He felt boisterous, and suppressed his laughter, though he didnot know whether he should direct it against her or against himself. Shewas so visually real to him: her withered small hands, the flesh underher plump throat—flesh that fell away and somehow failed to soften thecontour of her little chin. At these moments when she connived, or so itmight almost seem, to further his betrayal of her he felt a sentimentalaffection for her, and decided that it was only because of the physicalrepulsion which her ageing gave him that he did not love her completelyand lead an ideal life. He was sorry for himself and for her too becausehe could not conquer his aversion.

Catherine said, "Julia is particularly handsome to-night."

Charles, with the blank innocence of a self-conscious child, glanced athis wife. "You're right. She is. You dare me to fall in love with her,do you? Think when she gets a good dose of me—"

"Sh-h!"

Charles eyed the door. "Somebody 'ull hear me? Say, Kate, for amanhandler I've never seen your equal." He jumped up, walked twicearound the room, and stopped, gazing down at Catherine with a vacantdeliberate amusem*nt. Each felt the other the victor in some stealthyunconfessed combat. "All the spice goes out of forbidden fruit when yourwife hands it to you on a gold platter with her compliments. That it?"Charles asked. He was wondering if his presentment about Julia as thegreat thing in his life had been an illusion. He would accept his wife'sjoke recklessly but that did not prevent his timidity in regard tohimself from returning and influencing his acts.

Julia sat beside Charles while he drove. Laurence and Mrs. Hurst were onthe back seat. Julia listened to what Charles said, but halfunderstanding him. Nothing was real to her but the self from which shewanted to escape, this self which she knew would always deceive her.When the car veered at a corner Charles and she were thrown together sothat their shoulders touched. She knew that he leaned toward her toprolong the contact. The warmth of his body gave her no clearconsciousness of him, and was a sustained reminder of inscrutable thingswith which he was not concerned. She despised the humility of hisintellect. What attracted her was a kind of primitive cruelty which hetried to hide. She wanted to be consumed by his weakness, to be leftnothing of herself. His lovemaking repelled her. She perceived hissentimentality toward womankind. All that he said was false becauseunrelated to his fundamental impulse which was to take without givinganything equivalent. She had somehow arrived at the conviction that onlythe things which hurt her were true. Charles's conception of beauty waschildish. But she would not be afraid to abandon herself to the thingsin him he was ashamed of, which he could not control. When he wasconquered, as she was, by the desires his intellect sought to evade, hewould be caught in actuality. Neither of them could be deceived. She wasimpatient with Charles's deference to what he considered her finerfeelings. There she found herself insulted by the shallowness of hisrespect.

Charles made the drive as long as he could, though he knew that hiswife, with her prospect of guests at home, must be growing impatient.He kept, for the most part, in the park where it was easier to imaginethat he and Julia were alone. In one place a hill cut off the city anddry grass rushed up before them against the cloudy sunset. Then therewere masses of trees, green yet in the half darkness. The branchesstirred their blackish foliage, and the copse had a breathing look. Thelast light broke through the shadowy clouds in metallic flames. When thecity came into view again Julia thought that the tall houses were likethe walls of a garden flowering with stars.

Every one but Charles was glad when the drive came to an end.

Under her large black hat the strange girl's eyes, deep with a shiningemptiness, gazed into Paul's. Paul, glancing at her cautiously, feltthat the eyes were filled with a velvet dust into which he sank withoutfinding anything. It was as if he were falling, leaden and meaningless,through them.

She had a snub nose with coarse wide nostrils. Her mouth wasthick-lipped and over red. She was given to abrupt hilarity when sheshowed her strong teeth in a peculiarly irrelevant laugh. Her voice washoarse. When she threw back her head her amusem*nt made her broad whitethroat quiver. Then her prominent breasts shook heavily. Her arms, barebelow the elbow, looked as though they were meant to be powerful but hadgrown useless. Her insolence was stupid, but Paul envied it—even thoughit irritated him that she was so bored with him. They had sat on thesame bench in a public square, and after they had fallen intoconversation he had asked her to go to dinner with him. Her name wasCarrie. She called him "son". She was "out for a good time," she said,but she was "broke".

Paul invited her to the working men's restaurant where he was goinghimself. To dramatize his isolation from his own group, he wore oldclothes, brogans, and his school cap. His appearance suggested amechanic's assistant. He was ashamed of his secret desire to admit hisdisguise to her. His uncle was a corporation lawyer who was becomingprominent. Paul had constantly to fight against an ingrained classvanity. Petty bourgeois! Not even snobbishness of the first order! Whenhe had to face it in himself he wanted to die. No use! Hell of a world!Any disillusionment with himself strengthened his bitterness towardthose of his own kind.

When Paul left Carrie he walked into the dark park and seated himself ona bench. The city seemed miles away, sunk in light. There was an ironstillness in the black trunks of the trees that rose about him. Over himthe thick foliage hung oppressively in dark arrested clouds.

Despair. He wanted Carrie to admire him. He saw himself strong andbitter in the possession of all that Carries understand. He wanted to bekind. He was a great man, alone, a little proud of his madness. Child!He wanted to go far away—to die. Hate. I can't die! His heart beatloudly and the memory of Carrie was remote again.

In the hidden street Salvationists were passing. He heard hymn tunes andthe beat of drums.

Dark angel. I want to save men. He thought of the women, strange intheir tight dark dresses. He wanted to save them. Emotionalism. Rot. Hetried to remember the working class and economic determinism. Facts.They kept things out. There was a dramatic pride in being outcast, infeeling himself definitely against his aunt and Uncle Archie. That kid,May. Dead. He gave himself to a sense of loathing that was gorgeous andabsolute. His relaxation was drunken—like a dream.

Once more, when he could not but remember May, he recalled Juliainstead. He did not explain to himself why he hated her so. It was asthough she had done the world some terrible hurt and his was thearrogance of justice in leaving to her nothing of the self she wantedhim to believe in. Whenever he saw falseness in women, he felt that hewas seeing Julia at last. He wanted his thoughts to destroy her, or atleast to leave her utterly beggared. He must prove to himself that itwas women like Julia, women of the upper classes, that he had to fight.He could no longer bear the recollection of May going before him throughthe park in her short dress with her hair a silver paleness over hershoulders. Because of Julia, everything wounded him. He conceived aphysical image of Julia in her ultimate day of degradation. When hethought of stripping everything away from her, it was to show a physicalugliness to a deceived world. In anticipation he purged his own soul ofall that horrified and confused it. Then he saw her body—that he hadnever seen—lie before him like a beaten thing with used maternalbreasts, and knew that he had destroyed forever the virginal falsehoodof her face. No woman who belonged to a man as Julia belonged toLaurence had the right to a face like hers. He despised his aunt, butshe was frankly a part of the hideousness of sex and his contempt forher was negative. Toward Julia he was positive, for he felt that when hehad proved everything against her he would not be burdened with May.When he imagined Julia lean and hideous of body, the sense of intimacywith her made him gentle. He was strong and liberated.

However, when actuality presented itself, and he realized that if he mether she would be as he had always known her, kind and a little motherlytoward him, his heart grew sullen, and, again, he was helplesslyconvicted of his youth. His defiance was so acute that he wanted towrite her an obscene letter and tell her of what he had done and thewomen he knew. But he was trapped, as always, in the fear of appearingridiculous.

It was difficult for him to justify his certainty that she was so muchin need of the cleansing fire of truth; yet he would not abandon hisconviction. When he had not dared to hate her he had been at lossbefore her. Now his hate permitted his imagination complete and unafraidabandon. He dared to relax in the intimacy of dislike because he fanciedthat he saw her clearly at last.

At times his hate grew too heavy for him, and he could have cried forrelief in admitting his childishness to some one. He was shut intohimself by that horrible laugh which surrounded him, which he seemed tohear from all sides.

It was a cool afternoon in September. May walked through the parkbetween rows of flowering shrubs. Here the grass had died and the petalsof fallen blossoms were shriveled ivory on the black loam. Overhead thetreetops swung with a rotary motion against the rain-choked heavens. Theheat of the clouds gathered in a blank stain of brilliance where theswollen sun half burst from its swathings of mist. The wind ceased for amoment. A clump of still pine tops glinted with a black fire, and behindthem the sun became a chasm of glowing emptiness, like a hole in thesky, from which the glare poured itself in a diffusing torrent.

For a long time May had not dared to walk in the park. When she did go,at last, she told herself that she was sure Paul would not come. Shefelt herself inwardly lost in still bright emptiness. Cold far-off heat.She was a tiny frozen speck, hardly conscious of itself on the burntgrass, walking toward the tall buildings that receded before her. Tallroofs were like iron clouds in the low sky. She wanted to be lost, goingfarther and farther into emptiness. Now when she said Paul it was nolonger Paul she meant. She would have been ashamed before him, tall,looking down at her. Paul was something else, something in which onewent out of one's self into infinite distance. Where one went forever,never afraid. Where one ceased to be.

She passed women and children. A child stumbled uncertainly toward her,jam on its face, its dress torn. May was conscious of a part of herselfleft behind that could see the child running to its mother, the whitedress brilliant, fluttering victorious. She knew how her own hair blewout in separate strands from the loosened ends of her braid, and howsoft separate strands clung drily against her moist brow under her redcap. Going out of herself, it was as if her blood flowed coldly out ofher into the cold sunlight, cold and away from her body. She was happy.There were tears in her eyes. She wanted to go on forever saying Pauland not thinking what it meant.

The sun went out of sight. The wind lifted the pine boughs and theymoved as if in terror against the torn clouds. The sound that wentthrough them died away in peace, in the happiness of being lost. Mayfelt as if something of her had gone forever into the wide still sky andthe dead shadowless park. She wanted to feel, not to think. When shethought, she was caught in her body as in a net. The separate parts ofher were like pains where she thought Aunt Julia would loathe her.

When Laurence was apart from Julia and remembered her look of humilitythat asked for something she dared not state, he experienced an almostsickening pity for her. There was something in her suffering which heidentified with his own. Yet he did not feel nearer to her inattributing their unhappiness in common to the futile and inevitablecirc*mstances of human life. The pain of each of them, he told himself,was in realizing the isolation in which every human ultimately findshimself when he recognizes that his inner life cannot be shared.Laurence somehow exulted in seeing Julia forced to accept a condition ofexistence which had been plain to him for a long time. His despair wasso complete that he imagined himself ready to abandon his defensesbefore her. But when he was actually in her presence she was only thething that hurt him, and he was against her in spite of himself. Thenher cruelty seemed monstrous, because she appeared to understand solittle of what she had done. He knew that he bewildered her by showingno resentment toward Dudley Allen. Laurence despised her when she couldnot see the working of his pride that forced him to be superior to herlover's influence.

Often he said to himself, I'll go away. I can't bear it! But, while hebelieved in nothing outside himself, what was there to seek? He visitedhis parents more frequently. To be with them was a fulfilment of hishumiliation. He would end where he was born, as every one else did.

Though he was certain that everything which developed through initiativewas foredoomed to failure, his pride in Bobby increased. He wanted tokeep his pessimism from contaminating his son. Bobby knew his power.When he encountered his father coming in from the laboratory alone itwas a time to make a demand. "Hello, Dad! Say, Dad, am I too much of akid to run a motor cycle? Jack Wilson says I can't run his motor cyclebecause I'm too much of a kid! Say, Dad, I've got some money saved up.Can't I buy me a motor cycle? I can run it. Honest, I can!" He had beenplaying in the street, his face dirty and smeared with sweat, his shirttorn in front, and his collar askew. His look was rapt and self-intent.He had the air of pushing his father aside to reach some hiddendetermination.

Laurence was self-conscious when talking to Bobby. He lowered his lidsto conceal the too lenient expression of his eyes. "You're not anexperienced mechanic, you know. Only have one life to lose. Better waita while before you risk it."

Bobby stared with an intentness that obliterated his father's pretense."Aw, say, Dad, honest, now! I've taken Jack Wilson's machine to pieces.I can run a motor cycle all right. Go on and say I can get it!"

Laurence glanced up, and his smile was hard and cautious, but when hisface was averted his features softened immediately. "We'll see, son. Idon't think a brat like you could get a license. Time to talk about itlater." He put his hat on a hook and, turning aside, began to mount thestairs.

Bobby, vexed and excited, gazed after his father, regarding Laurence'shesitation as an annoying but inevitable formula which had to be gonethrough before one could get what one wanted. "Oh, gol darn it!" hesaid, and ran out into the street again. He tolerated his father.

Laurence wished that he had sent May away with Mr. and Mrs. Price, theparents of his first wife. They had recently gone on a trip to Europe.When they had asked to take Bobby with them, Laurence had resented it.

Julia met Laurence in the upper hall. "Did you tell Bobby to come in anddress for dinner? Isn't he a ragamuffin!" She smiled, imagining that herpleasure in Bobby pleased her husband.

Laurence smiled also, but coldly. He would have preferred to ignore herrelationship to Bobby. It had come over him strongly of late that hemust take Bobby away from the home environment. "I'm afraid I encouragehim in the spontaneity of bad manners." He walked past her with anagreeable but remote expression that put her away from him.

Julia experienced a familiar pang which contracted her breast with analmost physical surprise. It was as if a touch had made her guilty. Why,she could not say. He doesn't want me to show an interest in Bobby! Shewas robbed of another—almost her last—certainty.

At dinner she watched the father and son stealthily. Their attitudetoward each other seemed to confirm her unknown guilt.

"I've sent off your first quarter's tuition at Mount Harrod, young man.You haven't much time left with us."

Bobby was secretly resigned but confident in his petulance. "Gee, Dad, Idon't want to go to that place!"

"It's about time you began your initiation in the subtler forms ofself-defense," Laurence said sardonically.

May, ignored by everybody, sat very straight in her chair and was overdainty with her food, as if timid of her enjoyment of it. Julia,withdrawing all attempt at contact with Laurence and Bobby, could notbear to look at the girl.

Laurence was uncomfortably admitting to himself that, in some subtleway, his desire to have Bobby out of the house was directed by a feelingagainst Julia. He wondered how much of his motive she had perceived. Thesooner he gets away from the hoax of home, the better, Laurence toldhimself. He tried to exculpate himself by a generalization. It was thefalse ideal he wanted to destroy for Bobby. Julia was a part of themyth, though she had not created it.

Julia was wounded without knowing just what her wound was. She said toherself, unexpectedly, If I had a child! My God, if I had a child! Thethought, which had been strange to her for a long time, seemed toillumine all of her being. It was as if something warm and secret werealready her own. She was on the point of weeping with terror of herlonging for the child that did not exist. It was something she wanted totake away to herself which no one else should know of. She consideredhow she might get herself with child without any one becoming aware ofit. She wanted a child that would be helpless with her, that she couldgive everything to.

But she could not bear the thought of definite responsibilitiesconnected with a child. It was wrong to want a child like that. It waslike robbing a thing of its life to want it so completely. It had aright to itself. She felt virtuously bereaved already, as if the childthat had never been born had grown to manhood and she had given it up.

There was no peace except in the abnegation of all positive desire. Sheinvited the peace of helplessness. When her emotions were formless shefelt immense and lost in a waking sleep. The whole world was her owndream. She could feel her physical life fade out of her and imaginedthat her hair was growing white.

Charles Hurst had not been so happy for a long time. To evoke one of hismoods of glowing pathos, he had only to gaze at himself in a mirror andthink of Julia. She had committed herself but very little, yet he wasmystical in his certainty of their future relationship. When he recalledthe way she looked at him as if asking him not to hurt her too much hewas confirmed in his belief that she had laid aside the subterfuges ofmore commonplace and less courageous women. "Damned if I look as youngas I did!" He studied his reflection ruefully. He had a hazy perceptionof his outward defects and regretted them. "Growing old's hell allright! Poor little Kate!" He was ashamed of the comfort of seeming lesshis age than she. His sense of advantage made him tenderly apologetic.When he was near her he wanted to pet her. "Rum deal women get. Lifeafter forty-five not worth much." He almost wished it possible for herto console herself as he did, but he could not quite bring himself toaccept the logic of his imagining. Catherine with a lover! Women not thesame as we are. Men are a lot of —— donkeys. Pity the girl never had akid.

His pale eyes grew grave and retrospective again, and he seated himselfon the edge of his bed just as he was, in socks and trousers andundershirt, burying his face in his curiously formless hands. "By God, Ilove that girl!" He threw his head up and shrugged his shoulders with ashivering motion, as if what he felt were almost too much for him. "Shemay think I'm a senile idiot and a damn fool—all the things Catherinedoes." He smiled, talking aloud. "But she loves me! She loves me! ByGod, she loves me! She's got to!" He ended on a playfully emphatic noteas though he were disposing of an invisible argumentator. When he wentinto his bathroom to shave he whistled Musetta's Waltz from La Boheme.There was an expression of innocent complacency on his thin good-humoredface. For a time he was absorbed in his music and his sense ofcompleteness and well-being.

Julia Farley. Too good. That Goode family. Bills. Fellow runs a carlike—Fast. Fast women. I hold her fast. I—

When his jumbled thoughts had proceeded to I-hold-her-fast, somethingwelled up as if from the depths of him, and he was physically blinded bythe dim intensity of his emotion. He frowned painfully. He began tospeak aloud again. "Too much, Charles, my boy. Too old for this kind ofthing. Damn! She's too good—too lovely—"

There was a knock at the door. Johnson, Mr. Hurst's man, was neverallowed in the room while his master was dressing, since Charles wasfrankly embarrassed by the presence of a valet.

"Hello! Hello, Johnson."

"Telephone, sir. Mrs. Hurst wanted me to ask if you'd like to come, orif I was to tell them to call later."

Julia! The mad hope that it was Julia.

"It's Mr. Goode, sir. He says he can't give me the message."

God, but I'm ridiculous! "Mr. Goode, eh?" Charles, very abstracted,buttoned on his shirt. "Well, you tell Goode I'll call him later,Johnson." As Johnson, assenting in his delicately servile manner, wasturning away, Charles beckoned him back. "Eh, Johnson, just between youand me, while the madam isn't looking. Suppose you bring me up—just alittle, you know—Old Scotch. God damn this collar button!"

Johnson, who was a blond young man with a wise subdued air, smiled alittle. Finding it flattered his employers, he had cultivated the sadmanner of a professional mourner. "Very good, sir."

As Johnson disappeared, Charles's ruminations broke forth afresh. "'Verygood, sir!' Damn little son-of-a-gun! He'd do well in a play. Got a finecontempt for the old man, Johnson has. Yep, by God, Catherine has got meon breeding. Servants never bat an eye at her. Might have been born witha gold spoon in her mouth. Well, she's a pink-face and the old boy's arough-neck. Tra-la-la—" He resumed Musetta's Waltz.

"That Blanche—that damned little hyper-sexed, hyper-sophisticated,hyper-everything—By Jove, she'd pinch the gold plate out of a mummy'stooth!" When Charles talked he allowed his voice gradually to mount thescales until it broke on a falsetto note. It was part of the horseplaywith which his dramatic sense responded, in self-derision, to theattitude of those about him. Catherine insisted on his occasionalattendance at the opera, and Pagliacci, which he heard first, was hisfavorite piece. He identified himself with the title part, though it wasa little confusing for him to imagine himself a deceived husband. Hefelt that the author of the libretto had confused the issue. "Blanche,by God, that Blanche!" He referred to a young woman who took minor partsin cinema plays. He wanted to be rid of her. She was statuesque andtheatric, but as his intimacy with her had grown she had relapsed intohabitual vulgarities which grated on him. Charles revered a lady.Besides, since becoming interested in Julia he wanted to forgeteverything else. Blanche was realizing that she had destroyed anillusion through which she might have furthered her ambition, and shewas growing recklessly spiteful and crude. Only the day before Charleshad sent her money which she had kept, though she reviled him forsending it. His humility made it impossible for him to condemn any one,except in extreme moments of self-defense. "Poor little girl! By Jove, Iwonder if she did love me a little after all!" He shook his head, andsmiled with an expression of sentimental weariness. He put Blanche awayas incongruous with the thought of Julia which filled him withhappiness.

"Sick o' the whole mess of 'em. That fellow, Goode, making a damnjackass of himself every time a chorus girl winks at him. The whole damncheap, sporting, booze-fighting lot of nincompoops. Goode's agrandfather and he looks it."

The door moved softly, there was a light rap, and Johnson re-enteredwith a tray. Charles laid his hair brushes down. "Looks good to me,Johnson." Johnson smiled his sad, half-perceptible smile. "Shall I mixit, sir?"

"No—Johnson. No." With an air of ostentatious casualness, Charlespoured whisky into a glass and held it up to the light. "Good stuff."Johnson kept his still smile, but did not speak.

Charles drank with deliberate noisiness. When he set the glass down hedrew a deep theatric sigh. His face was solemn. "Better try some,Johnson."

The man flushed slightly. "Anything else?"

"No, no. Coming downstairs. The madam had her breakfast yet?"

"I don't know, sir. That is, I think so, sir." Johnson turned away andthe door swung soundlessly across his rigid back.

Charles gave himself a little more whisky that brought the tears ofrelaxation to his eyes. He wondered if he were mistaken about Julia. Hedared not consider future potentialities too definitely, though he toldhimself that, whatever came, he was ready for it. Would she ever let himput his head in her lap? He felt good and complacent when he imaginedit. The pose it represented was assumed with such sincerity and was soremote from the aspect of him with which his wife was acquainted, oreven the guise he bore to his sporting friends. It was pleasant to himto recognize this secret and not too obvious self. "Well, Charles, youold rooster, you may have broken most of the commandments, and you can'ttalk Maeterlinck and Tagore with the old lady, but there's something toyou they all miss. The dear!" he added, thinking of Julia.

It was Saturday afternoon. The holiday crowd moved in endless doublelines along an endless street. As Julia walked with it there was a hillbefore her and the stream of motor cars floated over the crest against apale sky hazy with dust. Men stared at her and, feeling naked andunpossessed, she demanded their look.

"Miss Julia!" She glanced up, hearing a car whirr to a standstill besideher. Mr. Hurst was driving a gray racer. He was bareheaded. The wind haddisarranged his sleek hair, revealing his baldness. He smoothed back thelocks. He gazed at her a little fearfully, but his face was happy andintent. "I've caught you. Going anywhere? Let me take you for a ride?"He saw her eyes, the outline of her breasts, her cloth dress blownagainst her long legs, her ungloved hands with their beautiful helplesslook. "You are tired." Tender of her fatigue, he was grateful to herbecause she allowed him this tenderness. His heart beat so heavily thathe fancied it must be fluttering the breast of his silk shirt. She mustthink me a fool, dear girl! I love her! He was conscious of being alittle mad in his delight, and wanted to lay his faults before her."How's this? I'm going to run away with you—take you off to thecountry." Julia was beside him. The car glided on.

"I can't be long." Julia stared into his eyes with a calm smile, andtried to be simple and detached. She told herself that she could donothing for him, but that she wanted him to understand her loneliness.

"Well, we're going to be long—ever so long." Her hair is all in amess—clouds about her eyes. Her little feet walking on clouds. Oh,Julia, my darling, I love you! She's not like other women I have known.If she gives herself to a caress it means something to her. "I've beenlooking forward to this—longing for it," he said. "You know that eversince that night I kissed you I've thought of almost nothing but you?"

Julia said, "I'm sorry."

"Why?" All at once everything confusing was being swept away in thenakedness of the wind they rode against. "Going too fast for you—dear?"

"No. But you mustn't think of me so much."

"Why?"

"Because—I'm not worth it." Hypocrite. She wanted to be beautiful. Shehad a horrible sense of her own spiritual leanness and ugliness. If hewould take me away—kiss me—anywhere—in darkness. She wanted to belongto some one so utterly as to make her oblivious of herself.

They turned a sharp corner. They were in the park now. Pale leaves,yellow against the light, floated, and fell upon them in a shower ofsilk. "I'm in love with you, Julia."

"Are you?"

"Don't ask. You know it. Don't you want me to be?" Goode—too good.Hadn't meant to say that yet!

"I don't know. I'm afraid I'm a disillusioned person. I'm tired watchingpeople try to live through others. It can't be done."

"I think I could live in you—through you—if you'd let me, Julia."

"You don't know me."

"How can I if you won't let me, Julia?" He drew the car nearly to astandstill. He grasped her fingers with his free hand. "I'm going tokiss you, dear." It was lonely here. She felt his mouth over her faceand was ashamed of her distaste for him. "You're unhappy, Julia. Why areyou unhappy?"

She withdrew herself. "I am—horribly."

Charles, hardening, felt relieved, and imagined himself stronger.Farley don't treat her well, he said to himself. In his mind was afurtive expectation, with which was mingled an unadmitted thought ofdivorce. "Don't be, darling. You make me too happy. It's not fair. Can'tI be anything to you—even a little?"

Julia laughed pathetically. "You must be. I'm here."

"Yes, thank God, you are. And you're not going to be disgusted with mebecause I'm such an unpretentious human animal? My taste in music runsabout as high as The Old Oaken Bucket, and I suppose if I'd been left tomyself I'd have canned those Dudley Allen productions you persuadedCatherine to buy, and hung up Breaking The Home Ties instead. You knowall this new art stuff goes over my head, child. Hate me for it?"

"Not very much. Perhaps it goes over my head too."

"Wish it did, but Kate's told me all about you. You're so damnedclever." He wanted her, yet, even if she offered herself to him now, hecould not touch her. Her little feet. As a matter of fact they weren'tsmall. Little feet just the same. Must be white. White feet. Lovelythings walking over his heart. Beautiful things hurt him with theirpride. He had felt this before about women. It was always wrong.Afterward only the pain and the longing remained. She's different. Mine.I can't have her. "You won't hate me when—" His eyes misted. He gaveher a blurred look. His lips were humorous and self-contemptuous.

"Won't hate you when?" Julia was still motherly.

It hurt him to speak. His face was flushed. He stared at her fixedly aninstant, as if something stood between them. She observed his unsteadymouth, that was weakly unconscious of itself like a desperate child's."Am I going to have you, Julia? Are you disgusted with me, child?"

She would not consider clearly what he meant, but she wanted him to shutLaurence out of her mind. "Yes. I think so." Her voice was unsteady.

The car went on, they were out of town among suburban roads and vacantlots. Charles drew up again. "Let's get out and walk a bit."

The dry pinkish grass moved before them like a cloud over the field. Itrustled stiffly about their ankles. The low sun was in their eyes.Double lines of gnats rose into the light. They passed an empty housewith glaring uncovered windows.

White feet that hurt. Charles was afraid of her. He imagined her handstouching him. Oh, my dear! He said, "We must find a way to see eachother."

Julia said nothing. He took hold of her arms hesitatingly. "Look at me!"

She was ashamed for him. When their eyes met, hers filled with tears.She seemed to herself dead, and wanted him to be sorry for her. I can'tlive. I'm dead already. No use. I'm dead! I'm dead! She wanted to bedead. Something kept alive, torturing her.

"Take your hat off, won't you?" She took her hat off. Clouds. "Now I canlook at you." She wondered if she looked ill. She was ashamed for himwhen he trembled. Her eyes were gentle, and at the same time there wassomething desperate in them. It seemed to him that she was asking him tohurt her, and he wanted to say, Don't, don't! Her face, that he couldnot bear to understand, was just a blur of sweetness. He believed thather tenderness for him was something which must be tried by thegrossness of his pleasure in physical contact with her. He thought hispleasure in her body would make her suffer. Afterward he meant to showher how little that was, and that what he was giving her—what he wasasking of her—was really something else. "I want to be your lover,child." It was done. He was conscious of desperation and relief. She'sdifferent! My God, she's different! Blanche. All of them. He pitiedhimself with them.

Julia said, "I know it."

Why does she smile like that? Forgive me. He felt their two bodies, hersand his, pitiful helpless things. His shame was for her too. "Life,child! It's got us," he said. "Now I'll kiss you just once." He gatheredher up in his arms. She's trembling too. She loves me! I want to makeher happy. He wondered why everything hurt so. She's too fine.

Julia was cold. Frozen all over. It seemed he would never be donekissing her. She despised him, and enjoyed the bitterness of hergratitude in being loved. When she could speak she said, smiling yet,"We'd better be starting back. It's late. Look at the sun." The meadowwas filled with cold light that lay on the grass tops and made themburning and colorless. The sun, as if dissolving, was formless andbrilliant on the horizon.

"Have you had enough of me? Do you want to leave me, Julia?"

"No. It's only that when I left home it was for a little while."

As they walked back to the car, Charles, holding Julia's hand, pressedit apologetically. "I want to take you to a place I have, Julia—a cabinI go to sometimes for fishing trips. We could motor there and picnic fora day. Could you be with me as long as that without becoming moredisillusioned?" He tried to joke. His thin face jested, but his paleeyes were anxious.

Julia said, in a smothered voice, "You mustn't love me too much. You arethe one who will be disillusioned."

He wanted to talk to her about Laurence, but as yet did not dare; so hepressed her hand again. "Darling!" She returned the pressure and waspiqued by his abstracted glance. I'm alone, she said to herself.

On the following Saturday Julia went with Charles to the cabin he hadspoken of. It was on the shore of a small lake, only a few feet removedfrom the water's edge. It was a still cloudy day, and the lake, chokedwith sedges, had a heavy look, like a mirror coated with grease. Therewere pine woods all around that, without undergrowth, seemed empty. Thestill trees were like things walking in a dream. Julia felt them, notmoving, going on relentlessly and spurning the earth. It seemed as ifeverything in the landscape had been forgotten. It was a memory heldintact that no one ever recalled. A little group of scrub oaks wereturning scarlet. They were like colored shadows.

Charles drew up his motor car in the half-obliterated roadway, andhelped Julia to alight. He felt sinful, as he always did when he wasabout to enjoy anything. He wished that he might beg Julia to condescendto him as to an inferior being. He would be grateful for her contemptwhich, if it were tempered by affection, would allow him to be himself.

She went ahead of him, and waited in the dusty portico of the smallhouse while he covered some cushions that might be wet if it rained.When he came toward her his eyes were uncertain. "Here we are. Damn it,Julia, I'm so happy I'm afraid! You aren't going to mind being here?"He carried a picnic basket.

"Of course not. Why should I have come?"

He set the basket down. "Hands all grimy. Why should you! God, I don'tknow. I'm going to love you." He swung her hands in his delightedly, butthere was something stealthy and embarrassed in his manner. He could notbring himself to kiss her. "At least you're not going to try to make anew man of me!"

"I know my limitations."

"You haven't any, darling."

Julia's mouth was happy, but her eyes were dark and unkind. "It makesone uncomfortable to be thought too well of." She knew that she wasabout to give herself to him and resented his confidence. He was a crudechildlike man. At the same time, she sensed a simplicity in him that wasalmost noble. Her self-esteem could not endure thinking of a possibledebt to him.

"Shall we go in?" He opened the door and went in ahead of her. The placewas crowded with camp beds, piled one on top of the other, and numbersof more or less dilapidated chairs. There was a thick coating of dustover everything, and films of spider web across the window panesyellowed the light. "Isn't this a disgrace, child? I ought to have had ahouse-cleaning before we came out."

"I like work. We'll clean up together." She removed her hat and laid iton a table. Charles took off his coat. He found an old broom, swept upthe trash that littered the floor, and began to pull the furniture intoplace. Julia discovered a torn shirt and used it to clean the windowglass. Charles felt the morning was passing grotesquely. I love her.What shall I do! "Jove, I wish we lived here!" he said. When he had laida fire in the stone chimney, he pulled out one of the camp beds and madea divan with blankets and pillows. "Come sit down here and warmyourself, child." He turned his back to her and began warming his hands."It's damp in here."

Julia came to the fire. She did not seat herself. He knew she was besidehim. He put off the moment when he must look at her. As he finallyturned, his suffused eyes avoided hers. He was smiling miserably. "HaveI made a mistake?"

Julia felt blind inside herself. "Mistake?" She laughed nervously.

He fumbled for her hands. "Julia!" His emotion could no longerdistinguish between her and himself. His face was in her hair. "I can'thelp it, child! I can't help it!"

Finding herself futile and inadequate, it seemed to Julia that her pityfor herself must include all the things that surrounded her, and thatshe must embrace them in the mingled agony of self-contempt and pride.It was because she did not love him that it liberated her so completelyto give herself to him. She tried to abase herself utterly so that shemight experience the joy of rising above her own needs.

Her tears were on his hands and he was bewildered. The contagion of heremotion overpowered him. He was equally astonished at her and athimself. For a moment he was unable to speak. "Oh, Julia—my Julia—Ilove you!" He could not comprehend himself. Why was it that even now,when she surrendered herself to him, he continued to feel helpless andalmost terrified. He had not imagined that she loved him as deeply asthis. His desire to abase himself, though it arose from a differentmotive, was as complete as hers. "Julia," he kept repeating, "don't!What is it, Julia? Don't!" He wanted to kiss her feet. What is it? Whathave I done? He found himself at the mercy of something unknown that wascheating them when they should have had happiness. "Do you love me,Julia?" He observed her expression of tenderness and suffering. Yet,while she was telling him that she loved him, it seemed to him that hewas ignored and obliterated by what she was feeling.

Julia sat on the camp bed and, as he had promised himself, he kneltbeside her and buried his face in her lap. Still, though he did notadmit it, he knew the gesture was false. He was embarrassed by hishostility to her pity. He believed now that he loved her far more thanhe had loved her before. He could no longer articulate his situation orhis intentions, or anything practical connected with his life. Hedecided that, though she made him unhappy, life would only be endurableif he saw her more frequently and in a franker relationship. How thiswas to be brought about he dared not reflect. When Laurence's name wason his lips he recalled Catherine and the pain of indecision made himdumb.

Julia felt that even this last attempt to lose herself was a failure.While she stroked his hair, she was furtively considering whether or notshe dared see him again.

Laurence knew now that his attitude regarding Bobby was apparent toJulia, and that it caused her pain. Why he punished her by keeping herapart from his son and making her ill at ease when the child was presenthe could not have said. However, though he realized absurdities inhimself, he would not renounce his sense of righteousness. What hesuffered through compunction was to him the pain of virtue. He hurtJulia in order to convince himself of her depth of feeling. While heobserved her misery, he could believe that she would not betray himagain. Her agony was his, but it showed him that she was not callous andindifferent to the consequences of her acts. He could not yet allowhimself to express any love for her. He would not even admit his desireto do so. In the meantime, without understanding his expectation, hewaited and withheld himself. When she looked at him there was always inher eyes the demand of self-pity. When she would accept, as he did, therecognition that there was nothing, that there could be nothing, hewould not be afraid to give himself. He struggled with his tendernessfor her. It was always tearing at him. He was never at rest. Because heput the thought of her out of his mind, he seemed to have no thoughts atall—only an emptiness consuming him. He tried to comfort himself withgeneralities and reverted to the illusory finality of the positivistphilosophy which he had at one time professed.

Julia decided that self-loathing was the inevitable outgrowth ofprofound experience. Others, who were as fully self-aware as she, werefilled with the same nausea of futility. She had several times talked toCharles Hurst on the telephone, and the sound of his voice alwaysexhilarated her. When she sensed his emotion in speaking with her, akind of iron seemed to enter into her despair. Her distaste for contactwith him only convinced her of the pride of her recklessness. The moreintimate their relationship became, the more voluptuously she scourgedherself by her accurate perceptions of his deficiencies. Only by seeinghim at his worst could she preserve her gratification in being tender tohim and careless of her own interest.

Julia was continually irritated by the trivial routine of dailyexistence. The banality of life was humiliating to her. Always, beforeshe went to the laboratory, she stopped in the kitchen to give Nelliethe orders for the day. The poised indifference of the old woman'smanner never failed to have an almost maddening effect. "Is the butterout, Nellie? Shall I order any sugar this week?" Nellie's opaque,self-engrossed eyes were continually fixed on some distant object."Yas'm. I reckon you bettah odah sugah. Dey's plenty o' buttah." Juliasmiled and tapped her foot on the bare, clean-scrubbed boards. "You'refrightfully inattentive, Nellie." Nellie's full purplish lips poutedruminatively. Her face was like a stone. "I always tends to what's mahbusiness, Miss Julia. You has yo' ways an' I has mine." And Julia, inpuzzled defeat, invariably left the kitchen.

When she encountered May, it was as bad. The girl's vapid, apologeticsmile suggested the stubborn resistances of weakness. "Do you love yournegligent Aunt Julia, May?" May would give a sidewise glance from softprotesting eyes. Then Julia, realizing that she should be touched byMay's affection, would put her arms about the girl.

But Julia found herself actively disliking the child who forced upon heran undefined sense of responsibility, elicited by the exhibition ofunhappiness. "Now, May, dear, I know you love me—you funny, sensitivelittle thing!" Julia's perfunctory tone was a subtle and deliberaterepulse.

May, wanting to hide herself, pressed her forehead against her sleeve.Julia tried to pull May's arms apart, and wondered at her ownsatisfaction in the brutality of the gesture. It seemed to May that AuntJulia's hands were about to tear open her heart. "Angry with me, May?This is so silly."

With an effort, May lifted her quivering face to Aunt Julia's cold eyes,and giggled. "Of course not." She wanted to keep Aunt Julia from lookingat her and knowing her.

"You aren't, eh? Well, be a good girl. There!" A kiss, meekly accepted.How Julia abhorred that meekness! "Where's Paul these days? He hasn'trun away to the South Seas or some such place without telling usgood-by?" Julia felt guilty when she referred to him. But Paul and Maywere children. That explained away an unnamed thing.

"I—I don't know." Again May giggled.

"Why don't you go to see Lucy Wilson?"

"I don't know. I don't care much about going anywhere."

My God, what's to become of the girl! Why should she live, Juliathought.

Mrs. Hurst was finding it more and more difficult to face her husband.Something which was becoming chronic in his manner aroused a suspiciousprotest in her. When, in the morning, he entered the breakfast room andfound her already seated at the table, she bit her lips, and between herbrows appeared a little invariable frown. Charles was a mystery to her.She wanted him to be a mystery. The thing she had to fight against mostwas the recognition of his obviousness. A child! A ridiculous grown-upchild! Quite incomprehensible. And when her reflections culminated toologically she put them aside with an emphasis on "the sacredness ofsex". There were flirtations, trivial improprieties, she knew, and sheadmitted them. Perhaps all men were like that, spiritually so immature.But where the flesh impinged upon her dream there was only an exciteddarkness in which she defiantly closed her eyes.

"Mrs. Wilson is going out to Marburne this week, Charles. She'sorganizing a distributing center for the country women. They are quiteout of touch with the city markets and some of them make such wonderfulthings—jams and embroideries, needlework and the like. She's trying toget coöperation from other people who summer there. She wants to buildan industrial school for the girls, and is willing to put up a third ofthe necessary money if others will contribute the rest. She wants me togo out there with her and speak in various country schools." Catherinewas resisting the conviction that something critical was occurring inher husband's inner life. The idea of going away from the city, andleaving him, in such a state, to his own devices, frightened her. Toadmit the necessity of remaining, however, was to concede the existenceof an issue. When he looked at her, it was as if he said, I'm like this,but I can't help it, so forgive me. She did not wish to know what thatlook meant. For years she had warded off crises by merely ignoring theirimminence. She dared not abandon the serviceable belief that thedisturbing elements of life cease to confuse us if we refuse to admitthat they exist. She called this, Rising above our lower selves. Thereis so much truth, you know, in the religions of the Orient. At the sametime, Catherine's transcendental generalizations did not save her frombitterness. Life was difficult, and Charles had left her more than hershare of responsibility for its solution.

Charles regarded his wife wistfully, almost sentimentally. He made agood-humored grimace. "Mrs. Wilson going to carry sweetness and light toMarburne, is she?" He was crumbling bread between his blunt unsteadyfingers, and scattering it on the table cloth. What was he thinking of?

Catherine smiled at him, a perplexed resentful smile, a trifle hard. Hewas unhappy before her. There was something cold and watchfulhalf-hidden in her eyes beneath her pleasantly wrinkled lids. "Mrs.Wilson is a very valuable, capable woman."

Charles grimaced gallantly but derisively. He was leaning one elbow onthe table, and now he caught the flesh above his nose and pinched itwith his thumb and forefinger as if to still a hurt. "Yes," he agreedwith light absence. "By Jove, I know it! Every time I see poor old JackWilson it reminds me of how capable she is."

Catherine agreed to be amused, though her mouth was severe. "Ridiculeis an easy way out of difficulty, Charles."

"Difficulty? Is it? Damn me, I wish it was!" He pushed his plate asideand pressed the fingers of both hands against his lowered brow.

Catherine, determinedly complacent, tapped her foot under the table andate daintily. The nervous frown reasserted itself and she smoothed itaway with an effort.

Charles lifted his head, as with a sudden sweetly-depressing resolution."So you're going away. When?"

Catherine was diligently attentive to her food. "Perhaps I may not beable to go. I have so many important things—" She hesitated.

Charles rose, as if imperatively desirous of physical expression. Hehalted a moment by the table. Catherine had no name for his saccharinemelancholy, but she detested it. "I haven't been such a hell of ahusband, have I, Kate?" Ridiculous, she thought. She saw his mouthtwitch. She was afraid. He touched her hair and she bore it. "Thingsmight have been worse for you, Kate."

She sensed in his pity for her a phase of the pity for himself whichsupplied the excuse for all his shortcomings. "You'll muss my hair,Charles. I think life has treated me very well indeed—both of us, Ishould say."

"We men are a rough lot, but we mean well. Time for me to get down tothe dirty world of commerce." His hand dropped away from her. He tookout his watch.

White feet—he was tired.

Catherine did not glance up as he went out. She was hostile toward hisdisappearing back that was invisible to her. She laid her knife and forkvery precisely on her plate. When she spoke to the servant who came toclear away the dishes, her manner, though kind, was peculiarly severe.

Charles had long ago definitely decided, though on no more thancirc*mstantial evidence, that Julia had no life with her husband, andnow he wanted her to the point of divorcing Catherine. Of course he hadas yet said nothing decisive to either Julia or his wife. Until he wasprepared to act it seemed to him unnecessary to speak.

It was night. He was in his room alone. Without removing his clothes hethrew himself on the bed, soiling the handsome counterpane with hispolished shoes. Mentally he reviewed the histories of those of hisfriends who had taken some such steps as he was contemplating. The morehe thought about the domestic upheavals which he had noted from a safedistance, the more it was borne in upon him that, no matter how greathis desire to avoid causing suffering, the moment he began to actpositively, suffering for others would result from anything that he did.

Charles had never found himself able to inflict even a just punishment.Wherever possible he avoided the sight of pain. In the street he wouldgo a block out of his intended way to evade the familiar spectacle ofsome wretched beggar. In doing so, his relief in escape was greater thanhis sense of guilt. If he was approached directly for whatever patheticcause he always gave away everything that was in his pocket, and onlyasked that no one remind him of the occasion of his generosity. His wifewas an efficient charity worker. Every quarter year he allowed her asum—always above what her practical nature would have dictated—todispose of in the alleviation of physical distress. He deferred to hercommon sense, and was glad to be relieved of the depressing knowledgeof particular cases. As regarded legislative remedies for wrongs, he wasconservative where his business dealings were affected, but had an opensympathy with revolutionary protests on the part of oppressed peoples inany far-off European or Asiatic state. He had persuaded himself thatextreme measures were needed to compel fair play from the ancientorthodoxies abroad, while reformatory methods could achieve everythingat home.

He decried the prevalence of divorce, and the disintegration of thehome. Yet never, in a given instance, had he been able to condemn thefriend or acquaintance who had become dissatisfied with his wife andsought happiness by forming new ties. Maternity in the abstractrepresented to him a confused and embarrassing ideal. But he recalledhis own mother, who had never loved him, with a pain he did not attemptto analyze.

He was thinking now of young Goode's wife, who, before her marriage wasa year old, had run away with another man. Two days previously Charleshad met young Goode in the street. To keep from listening to anyreminiscence of the affair, Charles had talked to him rapidly in ajocular voice and taken him off to his club to give him a drink.

Charles turned in the bed, groaned, and hid his face. If only Catherinewere far away! Had gone abroad for a trip, or something like that! Hebelieved that the emotion he experienced when he held Julia in his armsor knelt with his head in her lap was unlike anything that had everbefore come to him. He felt that through Julia he had discoveredqualities in himself by which he could lift himself from the banal planewhere he had been placed by others. The imposed acceptance oflimitations had humiliated him. It was not so much Julia that he wasafraid of losing, as the quality within him which he felt she alonecould evoke. He knew his own weakness too well. If, at this crisis, hecould not bring himself to initiate a change, the miracle which waspresent would lose its potency, and he would be convicted forever of thetriviality which his friends saw in him.

Charles rose to a sitting posture and threw off his coat. When he laydown again he covered his eyes with his stubby fingers. The revealedlower portion of his florid face was harsh and drawn. He could count thepulse jumping in his temples where his hands pressed. His weak lips,unconscious of themselves, looked shriveled with unhappiness. As thetears came under his lids and slipped down his cheeks, his chin shook,and he made a grimace like a contorted smile. All his gestures werecumbersome and pathetic. He wanted the love that would not despise hisindecisions. At this moment he feared that even Julia might not be equalto it.

He despised his cowardice, yet had a certain pride in the frankness ofhis self-confession. Christianity, in his mind, had to do withsanctimonious Puritanism. He resisted with disgust what he understood tobe the Christian conception of humility. But he wanted to trust peopleand lay himself at their feet. Not all—one woman's feet.

There was nothing else for it! His thoughts were betraying him. He hadto have alcohol. He rolled to one side of the bed, tore his collar open,and staggered to his feet. Already, the resolution to indulge himselfsoftened the clash of uncertainties. When he had gone to a cellarette,and taken a drink from a decanter there, his misery grew warm and sweet.His body was inundated in the hot painful essence of his own soul. Hewas helpless and at ease, bathed in himself.

Standing by the window, he watched the cold small moon rising above thehouses on the other side of the street. Strange and alone in whiteness,it flashed above the dark roofs that glistened with a purplish light.Charles, startled by the poesy of his own mood, compared it to a pieceof shattered mirror reflecting emptiness. He was ingenuously surprisedby his imaginings. Staring, with his large naïve eyes, at the glowingmoon in the profound starless sky, he was convinced of an incrediblebeauty in everything, but particularly in himself.

Paul knew that in a fortnight he was expected to be away at college.Without having spoken to any one of his resolve, he had decided onrebellion. Of late he had been a regular attendant at industrialgatherings. When he talked to Socialists, Communists, or even peoplewith anarchistic leanings, he was conscious of making himself absurdwith the illogical violence of his remarks. He felt that he wascontinually doing himself an injustice, for almost everything he saidsuggested that he was taking the side of the oppressed only to gratify apersonal spite. At the same time, he confessed to himself that therevolution pleased him doubly when it emphasized the triviality andcomplacency of women like Julia and her friends, who titillated theirvanity by trifling with matters which concerned the actual life anddeath of a huge, semi-submerged class.

On one occasion he listened to the tempestuous speech of a youngRumanian Jewess, and was exalted by the mere passion of her words,irrespective of their content. It seemed beautiful to him that thisyoung woman, under the suspicion of the police, was able to express herfaith with such utter recklessness. He wished that he too might endangerhimself. He hated the bourgeois comfort of his uncle's home. In order toachieve such righteous defiance it was necessary to suffer something atthe hands of the enemy. Instead of running away to sea, as he had atfirst planned, he decided that he ought to go into a factory to work,and live in a low quarter of the city. There was Byronic pleasure inimagining the loneliness that would be his lot. His desperation would bea rebuke to those who despised him as a credulous youth. Aboveeverything, he wanted to be poor and socially lost. When he was at home,his uncle nagged him and his aunt watched him continually withcuriosity and resentment. She thought he was lazy, that he lounged aboutthe streets and was untidy in his dress.

Paul haunted slums where sex in its crudest form was always manifest. Hetreasured his aversion to it. The deeper understanding of life hadlifted him above its necessities. He was never so much in the mood toenter the battle for industrial right, in utter disregard of selfishinterests, as after resisting an appeal to what he termed his elementalnature. Then he became impatient of his exclusion from present dangers.

At last he was introduced to the Rumanian Jewess he had so much admired.But when he saw that she was interested in men, and even something of acoquette, it filled him with repugnance. He observed much in her that hehad not taken account of before. There was something coarse and sensualin her heavy figure. Her skin, that was dark and oily, now appeared tohim unclean. And in her friendly eyes, with their look of frankinvitation, he discovered a secret depravity. This made him question theneed to merge his sense of self in the impersonal self of the workingclass. It seemed certain that, to remain pure for leadership, he mustlive apart.

In the vague morning street figures passed dimly on their way to work.The sun, half visible, melted in pale rays that trembled on the wetroofs of houses. The diffused shadows lay on the pavements intransparent veils. Julia, on her way to the laboratory, saw Paul walkingin front of her, stooping, a tall, awkward figure with a cap pulled overits face. She called, "Paul!" She noticed that he hesitated perceptiblybefore he glanced back. In her state of mind she felt rebuked foreverything that went wrong around her. Paul's hesitation challenged herconscience.

He turned and awaited her approach. She took his cold limp fingers. Heseemed shy—almost angry—and would not look at her. "May and I havemissed you, Paul. Were you trying to run away from me?" A moment beforehearing her voice he had felt worldly and old and self-possessed. Hehated himself because, at the time, she always obliged him to believe inher estimate of him rather than his own. He walked along beside her withhis hands in his pockets, his head lowered. "Until I met your aunt theother day I thought you had taken the long voyage you were alwaystalking about. We haven't been such bad friends that we deserve to beignored, have we?"

Paul said, "I haven't been to see anybody."

She thought his reserve sulky. "Aren't you going to college in a fewdays?"

Paul turned red. He was all against her. "I think a lot of college is awaste of time."

"I suppose it is, but one might waste time much more disastrously."

"I feel that going to college would be hypnotizing myself for four yearsso I wouldn't know what real people were doing."

"Surely there are some real people in college!"

"Well, they manage to hide themselves. No college professor would everlet you know that there was such a thing as a class struggle going on!"

Poor child! Why is he so angry! "I see you're still very much interestedin economics."

"Well, I haven't much use for the theoretical side of it."

"I thought economics was all theory."

Paul's intolerance scarcely permitted him to answer her. Most women,who go in for making the world right over a cup of tea, do! "If anythinggood comes to the working people of this country it will be throughdirect action." He could not go on. His words suffocated him. He knewthat she was cursing him once more with the sin of youth. "I can'texpect people who don't know anything about actual conditions to agreewith me." His trembling hands fumbled helplessly in his pockets. It wasall dim between them. Love. I must love the world. She has neversuffered. It was almost as if she must suffer before he could go on withwhat he believed. The world that was old seemed stronger and harder thanhe could bear. People work because they must starve otherwise. She goesto work that is only another diversion. They die. I could die. Deadbeast. Beauty and the beast. His heart was like a stone.

Julia, watching him as they walked, saw his gullet move in his longstooped neck. Poor awkward child! "I like you for feeling all this,Paul. I used to feel the same things."

"I suppose you don't believe in them now!"

"I'm afraid I don't, Paul—not entirely. So many people have tried." Shewas jealous of the child's illusion, but at the same time complacentlysad. He doesn't know me. The boy doesn't know me. Pity, baby, Dudley,Charles, Laurence.

"It wouldn't be hopeless if they didn't all pat themselves on the backfor being disillusioned."

"What would you think then if I said I envied you?" She loved him formisjudging her. It magnified the importance of her loneliness. They wereat a crossing where they must part. "Are you going this way?" What makesthe child look at me like that! He's unhappy. Paul said, "No." "Thenyou'll come to see us—come to see May and me?" His hand did not takehers, only permitted her grasp. She smiled and went on, feeling that shewas leaving something behind that she had meant to keep.

He remembered her eyes, proud and humble at the same time, that asked ofhim. As she left him it was as if he were dying. I must love some one!He thought of her soul, a physical soul, meager and abandoned. All atonce an unasked thing possessed him. I love her! He was sick with suddenterror and surprise. He walked blindly, jostling people he met. Shetakes everything beautiful out of my life! His hands clenched in hispockets. No. When he said love, he meant hate.

The Indian girl walked down the grass to the ship. The waves, pale andwhite-crested, parted before her. The waves were like white breastslying apart waiting for him. It was cold in the sea. She wants to killme. Now he knew what was meant by death—beautiful in coldness. Whitebreasts like sculptured things. They were so still he could lie in themforever. Death. The peace of perfection. In the cold pure sky quiveredthe thin rays of stars. The end of life. I love her, not beautiful—herweak body torn by life.

No, no, no! He could not endure it. Seas paler, and paler still. Notbeautiful. The water ran out forever. Dawn, and the empty sands likeglowing shadows of silk. A sandpiper flying overhead made dimreflections of himself. With flashings of heavy light, the waterunrolled, and sank back from the beach.

Charles made repeated unsuccessful efforts to see Julia. It was a longtime before he was willing to be convinced that she was avoiding him.When he finally realized it, he felt that he had been going toward aplace which seemed beautiful, but that when he stood in it there wasonly emptiness. The emptiness was in him, hard, like a light whichdisclosed nothing but its own brightness. He hated, but the emotion hadno particular object, for, by its very intensity, even Julia wasobliterated. There was nothing but himself, a thing frozen in abrilliance which blinded its own eyes. If he could have felt anythingdefinite against her it would have been easier. To stop hating theemptiness, he began to drink more heavily. If he permitted himself toseek an object through which his suffering could be expressed hereverted to Catherine. He must keep away from that. I mustn't hurt her.Poor old girl. It's not right.

He found that his repugnance to Catherine had become so acute that, tokeep himself from saying and doing irretrievable things, it wasnecessary to escape the house and her presence. By God, it's rotten!She's stood by me. I've got to be good to her.

In his rejuvenated conception of his wife he exaggerated both heracuteness and her capacity for suffering. It now appeared to him thatshe had immolated herself on the altar of an ideal of which he was theembodiment. She's loved me. She's always loved me. I don't know what'sthe matter with me. Christ, what a rotten world this is!

Then her small face rose up before him in all its evasive pleasantness.He hated the faded prettiness of it; the withered look of her throat;the velvet band she wore about her neck to make herself appear youngerwhen she was in evening dress. He hated her delicate characterless handsthat were less fresh than her face. The very memory of her ringsoppressed him. She was always so richly yet so discreetly dressed. Suchperfect taste. She had a way of seeming to call attention to otherpeople's bad breeding. He remembered the glasses she put on when sheread and hated the look of them on her small nose. The little grimaceshe made when she laughed. Her verbal insistence on sensible footgearand the feeling he always had that her shoes were too small for her. Thequizzical contempt with which she baffled him. Her sweet severe smilebehind which she concealed herself.

My God, I've got to. I've got to. When he realized that the recollectionof Julia was coming into his mind he went somewhere and took anotherdrink. It was hot and quieting. Warm sensual dark in which he couldhide himself. Julia was something bright and glassy that stabbed hiseyes. He put her out like a light. He held fast to his sense of sin. Hehad to torture himself with reproaches to make it seem worth while to goback to his wife.

Charles tried to immerse himself in business. This was the one provincein which he could act without hesitations. He called it, "playing thegame". The atmosphere of trade hardened him. He had unconsciouslyabsorbed some of his wife's contempt for the details of money making.Where he was not permitted to be sentimental, he luxuriated in acallousness of which he was incapable in his intimate life.

Day after day, scrupulously dressed, he sat in his office, an expensivecigar between his lips, preserving to his associates what would becalled a "poker face". If he were able to get the best of anyone—especially through doubtful and unanticipated means—it gave him anillusion of power which tempted him later to prolific benevolence. Hehad begun life as a telegraph operator in a small town. He deserted thisprofession to go into trade. At one time he was a small manufacturer.Later he sold mining stock, and promoted a company that ultimatelyfailed. His first success had come when he went into the lumberindustry, and he had recently become possessed of some oil fields thatwere making him rich.

Charles never felt pity for any one who was on a financial equality withhimself. He would fleece such a man without a qualm. He distrustedSocialists, tolerated trade unions with suspicion, but was sorry for"the rough necks". Poor devils! I know what it's like. We're all of uspoor devils. He loved to think of himself as one who, through sheerforce of initiative, had risen despite unusual handicaps. By gosh,before I get through I'm going to be quits with the world! At least wecan keep the women out of this—! Damned muck!

In the flush of unscrupulous conquest, his eyes glistened with triumph.His gestures were harshly confident. He looked young and happy. If, atsuch times, he encountered women, they found his mixture of simplicityand ruthlessness particularly ingratiating.

In the street Charles remembered a small niece whom he had not thoughtof for a long time. Brother's kid. I'll send her something. His brotherwas a poor man working on a small salary. Charles wanted to do somethinggenerous that would help him to think well of himself. God, what a foolI am! He walked along briskly with his hat off, looking insolent anddebonair. When an acquaintance passed in a motor car a jovial greetingwas exchanged. To make himself oblivious to the resentment which was inthe memory of Julia, Charles dwelt elaborately on the memory of otherwomen. Blanche, damn her! I'll have to go and see her again. One handaround the old boy's neck and the other in his pocket. He tried to keepaway from the center toward which his thoughts converged. What pricelife! Hell! (In the depths of me, this awful despair. Horror, horror,horror. Something clutched and dragged him into himself.) He stretchedhis neck above his collar and passed his finger along the edge. (Somewoman's throat white like that. Bent back. Lilies on a windy day. Ishall die.)

Young Goode coming toward him. Goode thinking, Here's that unmoralinnocent. He'll live forever. Hurst's a bounder. Damn well-meaning ass.

They stood on the street corner gossiping. Young Goode's brown eyesdesponded from boredom. Very handsome. A black mustache. His nose almostGreek. His head empty—only a few clever thoughts. "Hello, Hurst.""Hello, Goode, old chap. Yes, going out to Marburne to-morrow—Wilsonand his wife. How are you? What do you think of the election? Glad thatcrook, Hallowell, got kicked out."

Goode said he was thinking of turning Bolshevist. His smile wasself-appreciative. Ludicrous!

"Well, I hope not. Haven't come to that yet. But the patriotism of someof these ward heelers is pretty thin. Yes—hope we'll see you."

They moved apart. Young Goode grew small in distance. A dark vanishingspeck down the glaring street. Christ, what a hot day! Charles mumbledover some obscene expressions. I don't want to think. (Catherine,lilies, white and beautiful neck.)

Charles had gone all the way to town on foot. In front of the buildingwhere his office was located he encountered Mr. Wilson. "Hello! Hello!What do you think of this for the beginning of fall? Hot, eh? About timefor another drink? Yes, going out to your wife's new place. Kate saysit's quite a buy. Not yours? What's a husband now-a-days! Superfluouscritter. Endured but not wanted."

Mr. Wilson's eyes were twinklingly submerged between his fat cheeks andbulging brows. He hadn't time for a drink. He wanted to talk businessbefore he left town. He chuckled at everything Charles said. His fullcheeks quivered and his neat belly shook in the opening of his coat.Charles was wary of unqualified approbation, but the more suspicious hebecame the more easy and Rabelaisian was his conversation."Well—well—well, Hurst! I'll be—" Mr. Wilson actually suffered indelight.

They had seated themselves in Charles's inner room, a handsome heavydesk between them. Charles gazed with cold innocent eyes at the laughingfat man opposite.

When Mr. Wilson had gone Charles opened a cupboard and took out abottle. In business hours he was very moderate in his indulgence.

A long white road, just empty, going nowhere. The car jumped to histouch. How cool and still it had been in the woods at evening when heand Julia drove home. That's beautiful. Myself beautiful, wanting to beloved. Fat old fool. Little children, little children, come unto me.

My God, he said out loud, I'm getting a screw loose. Growing senile!Julia—that hurts. I can't think of that. Kate, poor girl!

All day he felt as though the memory of some pathetic death had made himkind.

At last Paul had made up his mind to run away. His interest in therevolution had waned. What do I think? May—that Farley woman. I don'tknow. His emotions had betrayed him. Where am I? I don't know anything.I don't know myself. He was unhappy, afraid that some one would discoverfor him that his unhappiness also was absurd. His aunt, and UncleArchie, were intimate with the things that made his thoughts. He wantedto go away, overseas, to know things which their recognitions had nevertouched. When he was a part of foreign life they would not be able toreach his thoughts. He wanted to put his wonder into things that weredark to them.

There were days when he spent all his free time among the docks. Heedged into the vast obscurity of warehouses. Red-necked men, halfdressed, were pushing trucks about. When they shouted orders to eachother their voices echoed in the twilight of dust and mingled odors inthe huge sheds. Through an opening, far off, Paul saw the side of aship, white, on which the sun struck a ray like light on another world.There was a porthole in the glaring fragment of hull. The portholeglittered. The strip of water below it was like twinkling oil.

He made friends with a petty officer of a Brazilian freight boat whotook him aboard for a visit. On the machine deck Paul saw sailors'clothes spread out to dry. With the smell of hot metal and grease wasmingled the odor of fresh paint. He leaned over one of the ventilatorsand the air that came out of it almost overpowered him.

From where he stood he could see the city distantly. Here and there atower radiated, or a gilded cornice on a high roof flashed through theopacity of smoke. When he faced the sun the glow was intolerable, but heturned another way and watched a world that looked drowned in light. Theships were crowded along the docks as if they were on dry land. Mastsand smoke stacks bristled together. The harbor, filled with tugs andbarges, seemed to have contracted so that the farthest line of shore wasonly a hand's throw away.

He listened to the creaking of hawsers and the shouts in foreigntongues. When the wind turned toward him, the strong oily fragrance ofthe sacks of coffee that were being unloaded over the gang plankpervaded everything. The wind touched him like the hand of a ghost.Gulls with bright wings darted through the haze to rest for an instantamidst the refuse that floated in the brown fiery water.

Down in the engine room something was burring and churning. The waterrose along the ship's side with a hiss of faint motion, and descendedagain as if in stealthy silence. Nothing but the lap, lap of tiny wavessucceeding one another. As if the sun's rays had woven a net about it,the water was caught again in stillness. It was a transfixed glory likethe end of the world.

I shall die. I shall never come back. Inside Paul was like a lightgrowing dim to itself, going on forever in invisible distance. When hecontemplated leaving everything he knew, he followed the disappearinglight, and when it died away he belonged to the strange lands whichwanted him like dreams. The river and the city, dim and harsh at thesame time, had the indefiniteness which allowed him to give himself tothem. He was in them, in smoke and endless distance. He listened to thehoarse startling whistles of tugs, the shrill whistles of factoriesblowing the noon hour on land, the confusion of voices that rose fromthe small boats clustered about the ship's stern.

Going away. Dying. I shall be dead of light, not known. Fear of theunknown. There is only fear of the known, he said to himself, the knownoutside. The unknown is in me. He wondered what he was saying, growingup. Mature. He felt as if he had already gone far, far away, beyond thetouch of the familiar things one never understood. The strange wasclose. It was his.

May felt herself lost in pale endless beauty of which Aunt Julia was apart. Love in the darkness. Love in her own room at night when she wasalone and hugged her pillow to her wet face. Through the window she sawthe trees in the street leaning together and mingling their odd shadows.An arc light was a blurred circle through the branches and the stiffleaves shaking and dropping occasionally to earth. When she was unseenshe could give herself. If they saw her, they shut her in. Now she waseverywhere, wanted, dark in the dark street. She could see a star abovethe roof and she was in the star filled with thin light. She felt as ifshe were dying of love, dying of happiness. Happy over a world which wasbeautiful because she loved it. She loved Paul, but he was only a partof the secret city—a part of everything. She did not want to think ofhim too much. Jesus, everything, she said. I'm Jesus. She shivered ather blasphemy, and was glad. I'm Jesus! I'm Jesus! The leaves rattledagainst the window pane and fell into the dark street. It was toobright. She drew herself up in a knot and hid her face.

It was a hot night. Bobby was excited and cross. He was going away toschool the next day. His two trunks stood open on the floor of his room.Outside the windows the dry leaves rustled in the murky night. Some raindrops splattered against the lifted glass. Then there was silence, savefor the occasional rattle of twigs in the darkness. An automobileslipped by with the long soft sound of rubber tires sucking dampasphalt. When the branches of the trees parted, the lights in the houseopposite seemed to draw nearer. Bobby disliked their spying.

He clattered up and down the stairs and through the halls in the stillhouse where one could hear the clocks tick.

Depressed and resentful, Julia had kept herself from the boy and hispreparations. He encountered her outside his door. She was passingquietly, trying not to be seen. "Gee whizz, Aunt Julia, I haven't gotanybody to help me!" Julia realized that she was hypocritical in herdetermination to keep away from him. "I don't see why you can't help me,Aunt Julia."

Julia clasped her long pale fingers together in front of her blackdress. She smiled. Bobby doesn't know! Oh, Laurence, how can you!"Hadn't you better do it alone, Bobby? Then you'll know where everythingis." She was thinking how proud his throat looked above his open collar.His sun-burned neck was full and slender like a flower calyx. She foundsomething pathetic in his small hard face: his short straight nose, hissulky mouth, his round chin, his eyes that saw nothing but their owndesires. She loved him. He hurt her so, hard beautiful little beast. Shewalked through the door, into his domain that recalled his schoolpennants and baseball bats. "What a trunk! You haven't left room forclothes, child."

"Well, gee whizz, Aunt Julia, I've got to take my boxing gloves and myhockey sticks, and there's not anything in yet." She crouched by thetrunk and began to lift his treasures from it. "I'm afraid this will allhave to be taken out."

Bobby stepped on her trailing skirt as he peered into the trunk. "Gosh,Aunt Julia, it's so long!" He added, "You're so darn slow."

"Have you asked May to help you?"

"Gosh, Aunt Julia, I don't want her! She never will help me anyway."

"I'm afraid you don't help her very much." Julia glanced over hershoulder. Her smile apologized for her severity.

"Well, gee, when she wants me to help her it's always some fool girl'sthing. She's not going away to school."

Laurence, climbing the stairs slowly, heard their talk. He had hiddenhimself for the evening, and was on his way to bed. He went to the doorand looked in. Julia saw him, and clambered to her feet, tripping overher skirt. Laurence concentrated his attention on Bobby. "Not throughyet?"

"Well, darn it, Dad, I've got to get everything in these two measlylittle trunks. I just can't do it."

Laurence came forward. "Oh, yes, you can." He squatted beside the heapof clothes. Julia stepped back like an intruder. She watched his hands,with their gestures of delicacy and tension, moving among the scatteredobjects. His sweet sneer seemed graven on his face. Everything abouthim, his clumsy humped shoulders, the spread of his hams straining thecloth of his trousers, was full of her knowledge of him that he wouldnot admit. Bobby ran about the room bringing things to his father. Rainfluttered out of the darkness and made threads of motion on the silveredglass. "You'd better shut that window, Bobby." Bobby struggled with thesash. "Gee whizz, Dad, it's so hot in here!"

Julia wanted to leave them, but could not. She felt blank, and excluded,as though they had thrust her out into the obliviousness of the night.She was tired of the disorder of her inner life, but there was anintoxication in desperation vivid enough to make remembered peace seemdead and unreal. The only peace she could look forward to would come ingoing on and on to the numbness of broken intensity. When one becameGod, one destroyed in order to accomplish one's godhead. By destructionone brought everything into one's self. But she was heavy with theeverything that she had become. It was too much. Only Laurence remainedoutside her. He would not have her. He was more than she, because hewould not take her and become her. Love could not annihilate him. Sheunderstood the strategy of crucifixion, but could not accomplish it.

Laurence was rising stiffly to his feet. "Better, eh?"

Bobby was grudgingly appreciative. "There's a lot more. I'm muchobliged. I guess it's all right."

Laurence settled his cuffs about his wrists and, drawing out a crumpledhandkerchief, brushed dust from his small hands. "Well, that will dountil morning anyway. Anything we can't find room for we'll send afteryou. You'd better get to bed now."

Julia said, "Good-night, Bobby, dear." "Good-night." Bobby did not seeher face. "Good-night, Robert." "'Night, Dad."

Julia followed Laurence out. Still he did not look at her. He wasrelieved by the certainty of Bobby's departure, and willing toacknowledge that he owed Julia some compensation. "Well, I suppose we'llmiss the kid."

"I shall." They were before Julia's door. She hesitated with her hand onthe knob. "Won't you come in and talk to me a minute, Laurence?" Heavoided her eyes again and stiffened weakly to resist her tone. "Prettylate, isn't it?" He noted her trembling lips. I can't bear that mouth."Isn't it time you got to sleep?" "I can't sleep."

Then he had to meet her gaze. He was lost in it. He smiled wryly. "Allright." With a sense of groping, he followed her in. He wanted thestrength to keep her out of his life forever. When she exposed hermisery to him, it was as if she were showing him breasts which he didnot desire.

Julia said, "Sit down, won't you, Laurence? I feel almost as if you hadnever been here." Why did she treat him like a guest! He knew hersuffering gaze was fixed on him steadily. Laurence, self-entangled, wasashamed to defend himself. He hated her because he loved her. He wasjealous of the virgin quality of his pain, and he must give it up forher to ravage in a shared emotion. It was as if her hands, sensuallyunderstanding, were reaching voluptuously for his heart.

"You've changed your furniture around." He fumbled in his pocket for acigar. Julia was closer. He could feel her movement closer to him. Hecould no longer hide himself.

Julia knelt by the side of his chair. "Are you sending Bobby off to gethim away from me, Laurie?"

I shall have to look at her. I can't! I can't! "What an idea, Julia!"

"Laurie, don't punish me! It's killing me to be shut out of your life."

His head was bent over his unlit cigar, as he rolled it endlessly in hisfingers. A tear splashed on his hand—his own tear. He wondered at it.He was helpless. "Laurie, my darling! I love you, whether you love me ornot!" She was pressing his head against her. His lost head. It lolled.It was hers. Everything was hers. She had taken him, and was exposinghis love for her. This would be the hardest thing to forget. Could heever forget? He gave himself limply to her exultance. "You've killed me,Julia. What is there to forgive? Yes, I love you. I love you." Theyleaned together. How easily she cries! They love each other. "Oh,Laurie, my darling, my darling! Thank you! Thank you!" She was kissinghis hands. He writhed inwardly. My God, not that! Even I can't bearit! "Don't, Julia. Please don't." "I want to be yours, Laurie—oh, won'tyou let me be yours?" "Julia, I'm anything. I'm broken. I don't know."He was weeping through his fingers. She pulled them apart, and pressedher lips to his face and his closed eyes.

After a time they were calm. She was tender to his humiliation. When helit the cigar which he had recovered from the floor, she sat at his feetand smiled. He recognized his need of her now. It was dull andpersistent. Yes, God forbid that I should judge anybody. I love her.

"Laurie?"

"Julia?" His furtive eyes admitted the sin she put on them.

"Dear Laurie! I love you so much."

Unacknowledged, each kept for himself a pain which the other could notheal. Each pitied the other's illusion, and was steadied by it intogentleness.

THE END

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