Chapter VIII: Part 8

But the incident had come during a curious crisis in Basine's life, a crisis that had piled up since his youth. A consciousness had been growing in him of his duplicity. He had been aware of it, but in a different way, during his youth and the early years of his marriage. It had not made him uncomfortable then. He had been able to lie with a clear conscience. Ruses by which he established himself in the eyes of others, not as he was but as he desired them to think him, had seemed to him then the product of a practical, superior nature.

Slowly, however, his poise in the face of his own duplicities had begun to crumble. He had begun to feel himself filled with the uncertainties of a man forced to conceal too many things from himself. Fitting his hypocricies and lies into worthy necessities had become too complex a business, demanding too much of his energies.

The inner situation in which Basine found himself as he matured had in no way changed his nature. He had gone ahead as always, stumbling finally into a climax of deceits in his relation with the young woman he had hired as his secretary.

In the five months she had worked for him he had been in love with her but had managed to withhold the fact from both of them. He had invented exhaustless explanations for his interest in her, for his desire to be near her, for the increased aversion that had grown in him toward Henrietta and his home.

The crisis had accumulated and reached a head during the services in the Gilchrist home. Here his pent-up self-repugnance, his growing impulse to expurgate the duplicities of his life, had found a minor outlet in the sudden religious faith that had possessed him after his half-hour of doubts. Ware's bribe had come opportunely. Basine's inexplicable anger on sensing the impending bribe, had been his self answer to the eager desire to comply that had struggled to assert itself in him.

And when the man had begun the actual words that meant bribe, he had seized on the situation as a vindication. Opportunity to rehabilitate himself, to wipe out with a single gesture the clutter of dishonesties which were beginning to inconvenience him. He had embraced it and emerged from the club a man, remade. No longer an inwardly shifty Basine able to rise to righteousness only by avoiding his memories. But a Basine with a platform inside him on which he might stand fearlessly. The platform--I am honest. I refused a bribe--had erected itself over the complex memories of himself. They were obliterated now.

He entered his chambers with a serious happiness in his heart. A miracle had happened and he had been given absolution--by himself.

16

Ruth Davis was at her desk. She looked up eagerly as he entered. Basine, hanging up his coat and hat, felt a businesslike desire to explain matters to her. He was an honest man, done with subterfuges.

He would explain to her that it was no longer possible for her to continue in his employ. Use correct but kindly words. He was an honest man. He wanted to impress himself and everybody else with this fact. Even Ruth. He had no thought of impressing it on Henrietta. Henrietta would only be surprised to hear he was an honest man. Because she had always believed it anyway.

But he would like to tell Ruth, because it would raise her opinion of him; fill her with a great pride. A sad pride, of course, since it meant their separation. But she would go away loving him even more because of his honesty that had put an end to his love for her.

The course, however, was impossible. It involved a ludicrous situation. Because he had never said he loved her and she had been as silent as he. And so telling her all these very fine things would make it necessary for him to say first, "I have loved you." And then to add, "But I don't love you any more. I can't."

It was two o'clock. Time for the Judge to take his place on the bench. Basine arose from behind his table with a sense of anti-climax. Nothing had happened. He was going back to his place on the bench again. Poor Gilchrist lay hidden forever and Ware had tried to bribe him and he had proven himself a man of astounding integrity. And he had overcome a growing infatuation for Ruth Davis. Yet nothing had happened.

"Shall I retype the Friday speech, Judge?" Ruth inquired as he hesitated before her desk. He looked at her as if it were difficult to focus his attention on her. He was preoccupied. A man of many preoccupations who found it hard to notice little things around him.

"Oh yes, the speech," he agreed. "Type it. And if there are any mistakes change them to suit yourself."

He walked out of chambers. Ruth turned to her typewriter and prepared to set to work. But as the door closed behind Basine she stopped. She removed a small mirror from a drawer and studied her face in it. She leaned back in her seat and sighed. She felt too restless to work.

With her white brows frowning, she sat looking at the keys of her machine. A miserable restlessness, this was, that never went away. At night she lay awake in the room she had chosen since becoming financially independent of her family. And a loneliness gnawed in her heart. It was because she loved him.

"Yes, I love him," she repeated to the keys of her machine.

He was not like other men. There was something intimidating about him. He had never spoken to her in a friendly tone. His eyes had never become intimate.

During the five months she had been his secretary he had kept aloof. A strange, unbending man consumed with ambition. His ambition was an awesome thing. There was a directness to it. He worked day and night, always planning for something. His engagements crowded each other. She hardly knew the man. She knew only an ambition that kept pushing tirelessly forward.

There had been no talk between them except business talk. And yet, somehow he had given himself to her. Despite his aloofness and the sternness of his manner, she had felt herself coming close to him, closer than to anybody else she had ever known. And men were no exciting novelty to her. They had held her hand and fumbled around with ambiguous words. They talked art, politics, women, not because they were interested in these things but because they wanted you to be interested in what they thought of them. She had kept her virginity without difficulty. The half-world of art and jobs enthused her. But it did not stampede. A practical side of her remained dubious about the groping ones she met in the studios. It was hard to pick out the real ones from the fourflushers. She had discovered this. Because the real ones didn't know they were real. Any more than the fourflushers knew they were spurious. They all gabbled and wrote, painted and gabbled, and there was no difference to them.

About the men she had noticed one thing. Their egoism was the egoism of ideas. They were better than others, they thought, because of the ideas in their heads. They were excitedly snobbish about these ideas as people are snobbish about clothes. But they weren't better than others because they were they. They were always leaning on things to make them feel superior. Radicalism was a series of ideas that they picked up because they felt a superior intellectualism in them.

Ruth had started thinking in this direction after listening to Levine, Doris' friend. She had felt something of the sort before. But Levine, with his almost oily pessimism, who talked always as if he were selling something, had made it clear.

"The women who go in for revolt," Levine had said, "Hm, that's another story. They're not interested in egoism. Because as yet there isn't a highly developed caste system among women. They still kind of herd together as a sex and they try to impress each other only with their superior artificialities--as to who has the most doting husband, the nicest times, the most accomplished servants.

"But men--there you have something else, don't you think? And the men we know--the hangers-on around here, comical, eh? You can almost see them bargain hunting for ideas. They don't stand up on their own feet and let out yaps. They keep crawling inside of new ideas. They keep using ideas as megaphones to proclaim their own superiorities. Little men playing hide and seek inside of big ideas. Using ideas about art and life as kids use pumpkin heads on Hallowe'en. To frighten and impress the neighbors. Another simile--borrowed finery, eh? Ah, they're all fools. It's hard to be much interested in people unless you're a poet. If you're a poet then what you do is ignore people and go down like a deep-sea diver to the bottoms of life. Down there it's interesting. Yes, growths like on the ocean floor."

As a contrast to these men, gabbling in her ear and fumbling with her hands, Basine had interested her at once. At first she had accepted the way he ignored her as a natural attitude. Later, he would become friendly and she looked forward to his friendship. It would be interesting to know what an egoist like Basine thought about things. His ideas were obviously rather stupid, but then--there was something else. Strength, determination. He wasn't like the intellectuals, continually losing themselves in new ideas and parading around like kids in their big brothers' pants. She disliked that kind of men. The longer you knew them the more unreal they became. Until finally, when you knew them through and through it was like knowing an inferior edition of an encyclopedia through and through. Everything was inside but it made no sense. It had no direction. A jumble of ideas and informations--but they formed no plot, no man. They weren't really egoists--the intellectuals. Men like Basine were.

But his aloofness seemed to increase with time. There had been no natural evolution of friendship. She thought then, "He acts artificially toward me. It's because he doesn't want anything to sidetrack him. Not even friendships. He isn't quite human. He's like a machine that's wound up. And he must run till he breaks down."

This image of Basine fascinated her. A man without heart, a cool will feeling its way tirelessly toward power, a thirst for power that increased rather than stated itself with success. When he'd been elected judge, he had surprised her by asking, "Would you like to come along with me to the County Building? The office doesn't include a secretary, but I need one on my own account."

During the months she had gained an almost embarrassing insight into the activities engulfing Basine. The man himself remained hidden, non-existent. But the world in which he had obliterated himself became vividly outlined for her. The intrigues, counter intrigues, the complexities of his climb, these were open secrets to her. He seemed shameless about them. Often when she watched him furtively as he wrote out political speeches should would think, "Is there a man there?"

It seemed to her there was not. Only an ambition tirelessly at work. An ambition with a keen, nervous face, sharp eyes, thin hands and an eloquent voice. But something more. A man who didn't hide inside ideas but who remained outside them, giving himself to nothing except his consuming desire to utilize ideas for his own end. He remained outside manipulating. He manipulated life. All for what?

Fascinated, she fell in love. When he came in where she was, her heart jumped. When he talked to her, something contracted in her throat, and frightened her. She had her day dreams. As the spring opened sunny mornings over the streets, she would sit gazing out of the tall windows and think of Basine. Her thoughts took an odd turn. They built up scenes in which Basine lay defeated. Accidents had maimed him. Political reversals had taken the heart out of him. He was ruined, poor, without employment. She pictured such situations with relish. In them she appeared as an understanding one. She would fancy herself coming to him and shaking her head sadly and saying, "Poor man. I'm so sorry. But you see ... you see where it all led? to this."

And she would fancy him smiling back with a romantic tiredness and reaching for her hand and answering as if he were an actor with a speech:

"Yes, my dear? I've been wrong. Ambition is wrong. I'm ruined. And it is only proof that I was wrong."

And then, in her fancies, he would look at her tenderly and raising her hand to his lips murmur, "Forgive me, Ruth."

The door of the chambers opened and Ruth looked up, startled. Paul Schroder strode in. He looked jaunty. She smiled. He was one of Basine's friends, and she liked him for that. He had been of the hard-working loyal ones during Basine's campaign.

"Oh, nothing in particular," he said. "Thought I'd just drop in for a smoke. How's his Honor, these days?"

"He's very fine," Ruth answered. Schroder shook his head.

"I'm afraid he's drying up," he grinned. "That's the trouble with men of his type. Get their noses down to a grindstone and never have time to look up."

Ruth blushed. That didn't sound like a loyal speech. She saw Schroder smiling broadly at her.

"You're quite a champion of his," he was saying. "Well, well. Maybe his Honor isn't as slow as I've been giving him credit for being."

From anyone else this would have been offensive, she thought. But there was something pleasing in the accusation. She hesitated and then returned his smile.

"You know as well as I, what kind of a man Judge Basine is," she answered. "He's the kind every woman respects at first sight."

"Loves, you mean," said Schroder.

"Oh no, I don't think a woman could really love Mr. Basine," she smiled. "He's too much wrapped up in himself."

"Well, I don't know then," said Schroder, "his wife puts up a pretty good bluff then."

Ruth's smile left her.

"Oh," she said, "of course."

Schroder laughed.

"Well, well," he went on, "so you'd forgotten he had a wife. That's a sweet kettle of fish. Such memory lapses are dangerous. Watch your step, young lady. Look out."

He stood up and approached her and wagged a finger mockingly. In a way Schroder annoyed her. He always made her feel juvenile. She could never use any of her sophisticated phrases on him. Because he laughed too loudly and if you retorted cleverly he always guffawed as if he had trapped you into having to be clever. His manner always seemed to say, "You can't put it over me. I know. I know...."

Ruth turned with relief at the sound of a door opening. Basine. This was one of his habits, to appear suddenly and for no reason at all and walk up and down the large room as if immersed in grave thought. She had often wondered why he did this. She thought it was because the work on the bench made him too nervous or because there were so many things weighing on his mind that he needed a few minutes now and then to straighten himself out.

But while thinking this she had always felt that his sudden appearances had something to do with her. It was perhaps only a part of her vanity, she mused, but she always had this impression--that despite his indifference and sternness he was curiously attentive. No matter how busy he was he never absented himself long. He was always returning and walking up and down. It was odd, but she felt at times that he walked up and down for her, to be near her.

"Hello Paul," Basine's eyes slanted up at him, his head slightly lowered. A pose which gave him a pugnaciously concentrated air such as a schoolmaster looking over the top of his glasses at an erring pupil might achieve. "What do you want?" A disconcerting directness he reserved for the embarrassment of his friends. He asked straightforward questions, point-blank questions. His questions always had the air of troops unafraid, wheeling in manoeuver to face the enemy.

"Nothing much, Judge. But your office is kind of restful."

Schroder rolled a kittenish eye toward Ruth.

"Oh!" Basine stiffened. "Hm."

Schroder winked at the girl. He came forward, and added, "All the comforts of home, eh?" And dropped into a chair beside her.

He had the faculty of boyishness, a talent for intimacies. His trick was a conscious thrust beneath the guard of women. He chose to ignore the delicate fol de rols of pursuit, the pretense of formality. He refused to recognize the barriers of dignity, strangeness, social poise--but stepped through them with an easy laugh as if perfectly aware of what lay beyond, and seated himself beside his quarry in the guise of a mischievous boy asking to be congratulated for his boldness.

Women succumbed to this gesture, disarmed by its frankness, its pretense to innocent juvenility. In this manner Schroder achieved within an hour intimacies which came to other men only after months of laborious toil. He threw a noise of laughter over the bantering innuendoes of his talk, disguising boldness in its own obviousness. His sallies seemed to say, "You have nothing to fear from us since we are not secretive. We are cards on the table."

Women thought of him, "He's lots of fun. You don't have to pretend with him. You can play and talk without feeling he's laying traps for you."

But despite the straightforwardness of the man they soon located the overtone in his conversation. It lay in his eyes. His eyes never gave themselves to his laughter. They seemed to watch avidly from behind something. It was as if they were independent of his characterization as a frankly mischievous overgrown boy. They were able to ask amazingly indecent questions in the midst of his frankest outbursts. Women invariably grew embarrassed under their stare. There was no defense against the inquisitive impudence with which they announced the male's concentration. Their gleam was like an unmistakable whisper--an invitation.

Basine admired the man. But he remained oblivious to this side of him. Schroder's female conquests had never interested the Judge. He had heard of them and forgotten immediately. Now, however, memories returned. Schroder was an unscrupulous animal. Basine looked at him with a hopeless misgiving.

He noticed as Schroder and Ruth talked that he seemed on far more intimate terms with her than he. There was an _esprit_ between the two as if they were comrades of long standing. His friend's familiarity was a shock--as if he had caught him undressed, unexpectedly. Basine listened to his talk with an aloof frown, as if he were unable to focus his attention on the scene. He was thinking of something else--far-away things, vast preoccupations.

"Loafing is an art. Don't you think so, Ruth?"

"I've never had time to find out."

"Hm. I'm teacher. Want me to be teacher?"

"Why yes, if you have time in your loafing."

"Time for you always, my dear." A contemplative stare at the girl. "What would you say, Judge, if I fall in love with your charming secretary." He laughed. Basine cleared his throat. He felt miserably out of this sort of thing. He was shocked to hear Ruth giggle.

"Yes sir," Schroder continued. "And what are you doing this evening?"

"Nothing, Mr. Schroder."

"Well, why waste time? How about dinner and a show?"

"Really?" She glanced at Basine as if to declare him in on this give and take. He was preoccupied, hardly observing what was happening. She pouted.

"Cross my heart," said Schroder.

"Thanks very much. A very generous, if general invitation."

"Discovered!" Schroder laughed. "All right then. Six o'clock at the Auditorium. Woman's entrance. I'll wear a red rose in my ear. Can't miss me."

Ruth nodded.

"There you are, George," Schroder cried. "All done in a minute. And tomorrow we'll be in love with each other. What'll you marry us for, your Honor? Remember I helped elect you." A boisterous laugh that seemed to mock the boastfulness and prophecies of the man and say of itself, "I'm joshing all of you including me...."

Basine left them. His heart was heavy, uncomfortable. He sat on the bench frowning at the scene. Eager lawyers whispering; a woman in a green hat holding a handkerchief to her eyes; a bald-headed man on the other side of the long mahogany table; faces for a background. A divorce case. The woman weeping was a wife. The bald-headed one with the air of a board of directors' meeting about him ogled his accusers with dignity. He was a husband. The jury sat dolorously inattentive in the box. A witness was testifying.

Other people's troubles. An interminable jawing back and forth--lawyers, defendants, witnesses and more lawyers. Basine frowned. Other people's troubles--and he had his own. This thing before him was an intrusion. At best he had no sympathy for the interminable jawing that went on under his eyes. He had grown passionately interested in what he called the people. But when he thought of the people he thought of them as a force, a group, an army standing with faces raised repeating certain slogans--a vision that Doris had bequeathed him. The interminable jawing, weeping, accusation and denial before him from day to day had nothing to do with the people. About these individuals he was cynical. And more, he was not interested.

The witness was testifying. The intimidating air of the judge seemed to confuse her. Her confusion irritated Basine. He turned indignantly and faced her with a bullying frown.

"What is it you're trying to say, madam? Did you see this man beat her?"

"Yes, your honor.... I.... I ... that is...."

Basine controlled his temper and grimaced humorously at the jurors whose faces at once lighted with an appreciative smile. A fearless man, Judge Basine, who couldn't tolerate the mumble mumble of legal technicalities and who struck at the roots of things when he took charge of a witness.

... They were in the room behind him. Alone. An intolerable thought. But, impossible to keep his thought away. His imagination like a merciless flagellate, belabored him with fancies. Paul would teach her. Lean over and kiss her. And she would kiss in return and whisper, "Paul...." He was unmarried and good looking. Perhaps she was heartbroken, too. He, Basine, had never spoken despite the light he had recognized of late in her eyes. She was in love with him and filled with despair because her love was useless. So now she would turn to Schroder in desperation. She would try to forget him, Basine. It was logical. Women forgot hurts in that way--by giving themselves to someone else.

The heaviness grew unbearable. Another man was touching Ruth. This was unbearable. He couldn't stand it. But why? What difference? He couldn't.... She was so beautiful. Another man's hands were desecration.

A weakness came to him. His heart darkened. What if she did, with Schroder? They were probably kissing now. It had been hard to imagine himself kissing her. To him she somehow seemed aloof, beyond possession. But it was easy to imagine Schroder. Men and women put their arms around each other and that was an end to aloofness.

He made an effort to pull himself together. Voices were droning around him--other people's troubles. Faces thrust themselves tactlessly at his eyes. He grew nauseated. He had never felt like this before. As if he must do something despite his will. His will said, "Sit there. Don't move. It's none of your business." But this other thing was pulling him out of his seat and moving his body for him.

He clenched his teeth and muttered to himself, "She's no good. Wasting my time on her!"

"That will be all for today," Basine muttered. He placed his hand wearily over his forehead. This would make them think he was ill. His clerk came forward.

"Anything wrong, Judge?" he asked with concern.

Basine shook his head with Spartan indifference to the mythical disease consuming him.

"No," he said, belying his answer in its tone, "court is adjourned until ten o'clock tomorrow."

He nodded briefly at the faces. The solicitous regard in the eyes of attorneys and jurors reassured him. He was ill, very ill--that was it. Of course, that was it. The eyes of the attorneys and jurors said, "You are working too hard. You must be careful of a nervous breakdown. In your prime too. Be careful."

He walked off the bench, his step unsteady. He was acting. But the fact that his step was not authenticly unsteady was an accident--and illogical. He felt it logical to walk unsteadily since everyone thought him ill and on the verge of a breakdown.

"You'd better go home, Judge."

Basine nodded gratefully to his clerk. He opened the door to his chambers. The sight of Schroder bewildered him. Schroder was still there. He had his hat in his hand, though. Basine stared at his friend. His heart contracted and his breath fluttered in his throat.

"What's wrong, George?"

"Nothing. Headache. Knocked off for the day."

Words were hard to speak. His eyes turned to Ruth. She was watching him. Frightenedly, he thought. Had she done something? Kissed? They looked guilty. He tried to find answers to the questions by staring at her. Was she the same as she had been? Or had she given her lips? A vital question. They were going out tonight together. Basine controlled himself. He sat down at his desk and ran his hand wearily over his head.

"Well, so long," Schroder spoke. "Hope you feel better, George." A pause. "See you later, Ruth."

See her later! They had no sympathy for his illness. They would go out and laugh, hold hands, make love--despite his trouble. He sat brooding over the cruelty of women. "Cruel. No finer feelings," he mumbled to himself.

They were alone. Was he ill? What was it that had lifted him off the bench? Nothing definite. A dark disorder in his mind, a heaviness in his heart that had seemed part of the room. He wanted to moan. Yes, he was sick.

"Can I do anything, Judge?"

He hated her. Her voice with its hypocritical concern. As if she cared for him. After what had happened between her and Schroder ... see you later ... and he called her Ruth.

"No, Miss Davis."

This was unbearable. He would insult her. There was relief in insulting her, making her suffer for something, too. But she might go away if he did. He couldn't go on with his work any more. Work was impossible. A disease was active in him sending out dark clouds that choked his thought and swelled his heart with pain. She might leave for good. Then what could he do? Nothing. But why all this make-believe? He would tell her he loved her. Simple. That would drain him of his pain. He stood up and paced. She was at her desk, he noticed, eyes large and excited.

But he could do nothing, say nothing. He was impotent. Good God! he must. How? No way he could think of. The thing was smothering him. Before--days and weeks before--he had kept it down. But now it had slid from underneath and was in his head. There was no outlet. He dared not talk.

No thoughts were in his mind. Henrietta, his children, home, morality, marriage, none of these was in his mind. But there was a restriction, a wall he could not pass. There were things holding him with merciless hands. They gripped at his body and thrust themselves like gags into his mouth.

She had risen and was standing near the window. If he kept to his pacing he must come near her. It was her fault. He was just pacing. She was in his path. If he walked straight to the end of the room she would be in his path. Why should he turn out for her?

He paused beside her. He must say nothing. It was talk that was impossible. He stood looking at her until his eyes grew bewildered. There was a moment in which he seemed to vanish from himself, as if he had stepped bodily out of himself. His thought paralyzed with a curious terror, he saw nothing. The moment of unconsciousness passed and he was still alive and still on his feet. His voice lay under control in his throat and the memory of his name sat like a perpetual visitor in his thought.

But there was a change. A miraculous thing had happened. He was no longer Basine. He was a stranger in a strange world. He was holding her in his arms. An impossible sensation was in him. This was something he couldn't believe. He wanted to look at himself. He had his arms around her. But there was no woman in the circle of his arms. He was holding something that let his delirium escape. Torments were emptying themselves in the embrace. The miseries that had accumulated under the surface of his months of resistance, were leaving him, flying from him. His heart was growing unbearably light.

"Oh!" he murmured. Her arms had tightened and he saw her eyes approach him. They were rapturous.

She was warm, intimate, close to him. Her lips, still piquantly strange, were offering themselves. She was unlike everything he knew. A startling vigor, as if he had been changed into a rampaging giant, swept him as they kissed. He was great, strong. He could walk over the heads of the world. He had no need for further embrace. He stepped away, his face radiant.

Ruth looked at him in confusion. This was a new Basine. He frightened. The mask was gone, the frown of preoccupation. She grew dizzy in the light of his eyes. He was a stranger. What should she call him? But he was talking to her in a voice that he seemed to have kept secret.... "I love you, Ruth. I love you."

He laughed. She smiled uncertainly and felt that her face looked awkward. She could see the lines of her cheeks bulging as she lowered her eyes. This confused her and made her feel stiff. There had been something of this sort a few minutes ago in Paul Schroder when he had tried to take her hand. But now the thing she had noted calmly in Schroder seemed a puny imitation. Here it was real. He was laughing, softly, joyously. He was like a boy. Her heart filled with panic. She put her arms quickly around his neck and pressed herself close to him. The panic went out of her deliciously.

"George, I love you. I'm so happy."

They sat looking at each other, an excited smile in Basine's eyes. His body was tingling. A new sense had come. It lived in his fingers. He was holding her hand. His fingers were charged with an amazing energy. They seemed to have become part of a different person. He was able to enjoy the ecstasy that confused his fingers as if it were an external emotion. The rest of him was clear, almost tranquil.

"Well," he said. It was still hard to talk. He was aware of incongruities. He was not Basine talking, not the new Basine, not the one whose fingers danced and throbbed. His voice belonged to other Basines--other characterizations whose awkward ghosts fluttered nervously in his thought. He would discuss this phenomenon. It was easy, after all. Be honest. She was one with whom he could be astonishingly honest. They were isolated. The world was a futility. There was an end to make-believe now. It was all honest, tranquil, joyous. He began again:

"Well, isn't it strange. I can hardly talk to you. I'm not used to us yet. This way. I've loved you since I first saw you. But I've told so many lies about that to both of us...." He paused to smile at her as if asking her not to believe him a liar, or if she must--a liar in a high cause--"that the things I want to say now seem like ... like the contradictions of something. Of old lies ... in a way."

She nodded.

"Oh, I know," she whispered. A preposterous admiration of her intelligence overcame him. Of course she understood! It was unnecessary to talk to her. She had kissed and embraced him. She had felt the same things he had. And now, their thoughts were alike. They were like one person, having shared something that filled them. It was unnecessary to talk. Because if he remained silent she knew he was thinking of her. A charming sense of comradeship came to him.

"I feel," he said, "as if we were too intimate for words."

She nodded again and smiled.

"We'll make a holiday," he added. "Come, we'll go for a drive."

They embraced. This time he thought of Henrietta. Ruth was different from his wife. Her shoulder blades felt different under his fingers. It was impossible to think they were both women. His arms around Henrietta meant nothing. His arms around Ruth now--he closed his eyes in order to closet himself with indefinable sensations.

They emerged from the traffic of the loop. Basine at the wheel of his newly purchased roadster dropped a hand on hers.

"I feel better like this," he said.

"Isn't it wonderful," she whispered.

He would have liked to tell her they were floating over buildings. But he kept silent. Words were still self-conscious interlopers. The houses moved away. A spring wind was in their faces. They were silent. The pavements ended. Basine brought the car to a stop.

"I don't know what to do," he said. "I'm so happy."

He placed his arms around her. The touch of her body through his clothes was a reminder of something. He gave it no words. They sat embraced, their faces together and an unspoken laugh in their hearts. The sun was high overhead. Basine tried to remember himself ... Henrietta, his home, his position. Ah, banalities. He was proud. He was above remorse, regret; above himself. There was nothing in the world as beautiful as the moment he commanded.

Ruth leaned avidly against him as if seeking refuge in his arms. He sat thinking. "It is right. Everything right. I've done nothing. No compromise. Nothing. I'm happy. There's nothing to frighten me."

He felt released.

17

Summer lay like a Mandarin coat over the city. It was June. Warm, sun-awninged streets glistened with ornamental colors. Women in gaudy fabrics, men in violent hat bands, straws, panamas, striped shirts, sun parasols like huge discs of confetti, freshly painted red and green street cars, pastel tinted automobiles--all these tumbled like a swarm of sprightly incoherent adjectives along the foot of the buildings.

The store windows like deaf and dumb hawkers grimaced at the crowds. Ice creams, silks, swimming suits, and sport paraphernalia; jaunty frocks, white trousers, candies, festive haberdashery, drugs, leather goods, wicker furniture and assortments of lingerie like the symbols of fastidious sins--all these grimaced behind plate glass.

The city was in bloom. People, perspiring and lightly dressed, sauntered by the plate glass orchards. Summer filled the city with reminiscent smells. Sky, water, grass scampered like merry ghosts through the carnival of the shopping center. Warm, sun-awninged streets; ornamental men and women--summer spread itself through the crowds, warmed the bargain hunters, loiterers, clerks, stenographers, business men and housewives into a half sleep.

They peered lazily at each other. Their mysterious preoccupations seemed to have subsided. The sun made holiday in the streets and the high, fluttering windows showered endless tiny suns on the air. The morning held the unreal soul of some forgotten picnic.

Ten o'clock. Fanny Gilchrist turned with an inward sigh and walked out of the crowded business street. This was LaSalle street and, concealed in the buildings around her, were people who knew her and might see her. Accidentally bump into her.

The crowds grew thinner and less familiar types of faces drifted by. This was better. She wasn't exactly afraid. But what if someone did bump into her accidentally? Then she would have to say where she was going and, if she lied, perhaps they would insist upon coming along and discover it. But that was foolishness. One never met people in streets like that.

Men looked at her with casual interest, with insignificant enthusiasm, as she walked by them. A bright-haired, shining-eyed young woman with a body undulating softly under a grey and green trimmed dress; she seemed to light up the dingy pavements. Other women passed lighting them up also. Each new female illuminant was welcomed with thankful, greedy eyes.

Her red sailor jauntily tilted and the silken gleam of her face were like part of a luscious mask. She was a woman hurrying somewhere and men, bored with other women, looked at her enthusiastically. She was one of the many enigmatic ones, one of the many gaudy colored masks behind which sex paraded its mystery through the sun-awninged streets. Eyes ennuied with the memory of sex lighted eagerly in the presence of its masks. The flash of ankles and the swell of thighs under pretty fabrics were diversions even for moralists.

Schroder waiting patiently on a street corner watched the warm crowd. She wouldn't come. Yes, she would. Well, another five minutes would tell.

He saw her and his excitement changed. A leisurely smile came to his face. His body relaxed. He was a connoisseur in rendezvous and his enjoyment of the moment which witnessed her approach was deliberate. Women in themselves did not interest him so much. Their bodies--pleasant, yes. But after all--a finale. And one does not applaud finales.

But now, watching her lithe figure hurrying toward him was a diversion to be sipped at, contemplated in all its emotional detail, and enjoyed. Later it would be this moment he remembered, if he remembered anything--which was uncertain. For his memories which had in his younger days glistened in his thought like a mosaic of eroticism, had of late blurred to a monotone. He could remember women, liaisons, passion phrases and great enthusiasms but, curiously, they seemed all identical. To recall how one woman had sighed in his arms was to recall the whole pack of them. As if the souls of his paramours and the manner of their surrenders were contained completely in the recollection of any one detail.

But despite his ennui, this moment of approach still delighted him. The woman hurrying to his side was not yet a woman. She was still a mystery whose inevitable and never varying sensualism was masked for a final instant behind unfamiliar fabrics. There was a piquant unreality, a diverting strangeness, as she smiled at him. She was somebody he did not know. He was authentically bored with women. But for the moment it was not a woman approaching--rather a new color of cloth, a new combination of dress, a new species of social poise and gesture were presenting themselves for ravishment. In these unfamiliar surfaces lay a tenuous mystery as if it were these externals he was about to embrace. And in the contemplation of this mystery, his interest revived itself. He sighed. It was a mystery which would vanish shortly.

"Hello, dearest."

He greeted her softly, with regret. A quixotic impulse to turn and walk away before she spoke had died in him.

Fanny was staring expectantly. He was familiar with the expression. Not in her, but in others. This took away its charms. Married women were nearly all alike. Full of distressing short cuts, with an irritating and incongruous professionalism behind their bewilderment. What dolts husbands must be to blunt women like that.

As he took her hand and felt her fingers clutch excitedly around his palm he remembered in an instant the predecessors of her type. Full of distressing short cuts. When they gave their hands they withheld nothing. They denuded themselves with a look, with a handclasp. And the subtlety of skirmishing seemed entirely foreign to them. When they embraced it was with an appalling directness. Yes, in intrigue they were all alike--all like precocious children; vague, bewildered children mimicking the precisions of their elders and exclaiming with distressful incongruity:

"Tut, tut. Let's come to the point. Let's get down to brass tacks and stop beating around the bush."

Well, here she was and the scene was on.

"Am I late?"

"No, dearest. I was just a little early so as to enjoy the impatience of waiting for you."

The nuance was lost upon her. Amorous women were a cold audience for technique.

"I'm so upset. Do you mind?"

"Not at all, Fanny. Of course you're upset. But it only adds to your charm."

He had long ago abandoned love-making tactics, sensing that women who came to him were not particularly interested in tender pretenses. They desired flattery, but direct and practical variants. This one was like the others, flushed, eager, frightened and gay. He felt an exhilaration as they walked toward the entrance of the unpretentious hotel around the corner. A sense of conquest. It was nothing to be enjoyed in itself. But if people knew, which they never could, alas, they would be awed by the ease with which he accomplished such things. One, two, three meetings and--here they were again. Paul Schroder entering a hotel with a woman at his side.

"This isn't a bad place," he whispered. "I've already registered. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Johnson. It's better if you know your name, of course."

Fanny stood tremblingly in front of the elevator cage as he walked to the desk. She noticed his carelessness, the unselfconscious way in which he smiled at the clerk and paused to buy some cigars. The fear that had grown in her since she left her home appeared to be reaching a climax. Her knees shivered under her dress and a catch in her throat made breathing difficult.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," she repeated silently to herself, and tried to understand the cause of her trembling. Even if there were consequences--there was Aubrey. She smiled nervously. It was his fault. He was a fool.

They entered the elevator. A sleepy boy shut the cage door after them. Schroder gripped her arm and his fingers caressed the soft flesh. She turned to him and smiled. She was no longer afraid. A shameless, exultant light kindled in her eyes. She leaned against him with a shiver as the elevator lifted slowly.

* * * * *

... They had decided to check out in time for her to return home for dinner.

"I don't have to go up to the desk with you, do I?" she asked.

Schroder smiled tiredly.

"Oh no," he said, "you wait at the entrance with the property suit case. Then we'll both take a cab and drive a few blocks. I'll get out with the bag and you drive on home. It's simple."

Nevertheless the fear she had experienced in the morning returned as she watched him go to the desk. In another minute it would be all over and everything would be all right. But now--what if someone saw them? Bumped into her accidentally. The lassitude which had filled her when she locked the tumbled hotel room behind her, gave way to a curious panic. Her tired nerves became unhappily alive.

"Why--hello, Mrs. Gilchrist."

She was unable to see the man for an instant. Her mind had darkened. "I mustn't faint," she murmured to herself. She was looking at an unshaven, dissipated face that smiled. As she looked her world seemed to be falling down. Everything gone--ruined. Because a face was smiling. Tom Ramsey. The man's name popped into her thought.

"Hello," she muttered.

Schroder approached and frowned. He took her arm and led her away. She began to cry in the cab.

"He saw us. He knows. He'll tell everybody. Oh my God! Why did you come up when you saw him? If you'd only realized. Oh, why did I do it? Now everything's ruined. I'm lost."

She wept, knowing the futility of tears. An accident that seemed provokingly unreal and soothingly unimportant--Tom Ramsey. Yet the name was like a guillotine block on which her head lay stretched.

Schroder, annoyed, tried to console her.

"Who was it? Listen, pull yourself together. People always imagine themselves guiltier looking than they are. He probably thought nothing wrong."

"Tom Ramsey. Didn't you see how he looked at me? Oh, God, I'm sick."

"Who is he?"

"He used to be my mother's friend. But he went to the dogs. He's just a tramp now. He isn't a gentleman."

Schroder sighed.

"Oh well," he said, "there's no use worrying. Come, put it out of your head."

"I can't. Oh, I can't. Why did I do it. I'll kill myself if ... if anything happens. Aubrey will.... Oh Paul, I feel sick."

He stared glumly at the back of the chauffeur's head. A nuisance. A damned nuisance. His mind played with contrasts. A few hours ago she had been shameless. Now she sat weeping. He thought of her as ungrateful and grew angry.

"I'll step out now," he whispered. "Call me up tomorrow at the office, will you? Nothing will happen. Please, be calm. It's all imagination."

He halted the cab and stepped out with the suitcase. She would feel better, he knew, as soon as he disappeared. She would be able to convince herself then that nothing had happened--that she was coming home from a shopping tour.

"Good-bye. Call me up, dearest."

Fanny sat weeping as the cab moved away. Ramsey had seen her. A misery too heavy for thought brought another burst of tears. She hated Schroder. And herself, too. But most of all the ragged looking, unshaven Ramsey in the lobby. Why had he come at just that moment? If they had left the room ten minutes earlier. It was Paul's fault. He insisted on combing his hair, and reading a story in the newspaper. If he hadn't sent down for the newspaper in the middle of the afternoon. He didn't love her or he wouldn't have thought of sending for it. She had laughed at the time but it was an insult. He was a brute. If he had loved her he wouldn't have wanted to read a newspaper and they wouldn't have met Ramsey. She sat conjuring up dozens of trifling incidents which, had they occurred, would have prevented the fatal meeting with Ramsey.

Then she smiled convulsively through her tears. It was about the story. They had laughed at it in the room. "Judge Basine Launches Vice Quiz. State to Investigate Problem of Immorality Among Women Wage Earners...."

"Why girls go wrong ... why girls go wrong," rumbled through her head now and she laughed hysterically. Oh, that tramp of a Ramsey had spoiled it all. Otherwise it would have been wonderful. And next week, too. But perhaps he hadn't noticed anything. Of course he hadn't. Paul was right.

She dried her tears and looked into the twilighted streets. She had planned her homecoming days ago. She would be ill, overcome by the heat and excuse herself from the dinner table. A final chill shot through her heart as the cab stopped.

She found herself entering her home with complete poise. It was almost as if nothing had happened. Here were the familiar things of life. Her home, Aubrey, the rows of books, the walnut library table. Nothing had happened. For a moment she was amazed at the complete unconsciousness of the day. Then smiling delightedly at her husband in a chair, a familiar husband in a familiar chair, she removed her hat and approached him.

Leaning over the back of his chair she kissed him tenderly on the cheek. He was her protector. Good old Aubrey, so familiar, so placid and unchanged. If it only hadn't been for Ramsey everything would be so nice now. But anyway, it wasn't so bad. She had been a bit hysterical.

"Where've you been, Fanny?"

She felt no twinge at the question. Instead an enthusiasm for the situation filled her.

"To the matinee," she laughed. "Oh, I saw the nicest show."

She leaned forward and took his hand. Aubrey regarded her with a petulant stare. Despite their years of marriage, she was still an animal, gross and irritating.

"And I'm just starved," she exclaimed. "I was never so hungry in my life."

She laughed, overjoyed at the truth of the statement and hurried upstairs to prepare for dinner.

18

The manuscript had been found in the drawer where William Gilchrist kept his collars. It lay underneath a number of loose collars.

With the death of his father a curious love for the man had come to Aubrey. He remembered from day to day things his father had said, or seemed to say. A sad, elderly man who lived secretly in his thoughts. That was his father.

Like him, Aubrey now had a secret life that he lived only in his thoughts, and this was slowly making him kin to the man who had died. In Aubrey's thoughts dwelt a dramatic, startling figure--a gleaming, hawk-faced thunderer; a lean Isaiah of burning phrases with an eagle-winged soul beating its way toward God. This was Aubrey Gilchrist. Not the Aubrey whom life had mysteriously deformed into an advertising man, but an Aubrey triumphant who had risen above the petty turns of Fate and burst upon a world--a voice crying forth astounding phrases against the evil of man's ways.

The inner characterization in which Aubrey was gradually immersing himself remained a vague though warm generality. He was able to visualize the Thunderer and able to enjoy the results of his genius. In his day dreams he pictured this inner one bringing the world to his feet. Books were being written about him, magazines and newspapers were filled with his praises and interpretations, and men and women everywhere discussed his ascent in awe. He was a conqueror--a bloodless Napoleon and a martyrless Jesus. A prophet whose genius was lifting men out of the mire.

What the message was which this inner Aubrey was spreading through the world, what the phrases were that ignited the souls of men, were not contained in his imaginings. He approached them from a critical and not creative angle--his fancies presenting him with descriptive self praises. He composed rambling articles in his mind celebrating his triumphs. This inner Aubrey was eloquent, electrifying, unassailable; men and women wept over his writings and repented; cities reared statues to him, and all places sang his glories. The whole thing had begun as a game, deliberately invented to occupy the leisure of his mind. But he had elaborated on it and it had grown almost by itself. Now it preoccupied him to an alarming degree.

The manuscript in his father's collar drawer had given him a shock. He had kept it from his mother, assuring himself that such a course was for the best. It was an odd document for his father to leave behind.

As he sat in his study a week after the funeral reading it for the first time, Aubrey grew frightened. It seemed to him that he was looking at his father--for the first time, that the man who had till now been a half enigmatic figure to him, stood at last in the room, strong and alive. The thing was a primitive type of novel--discoursive, gentle, Rabelaisian. It recounted the mental and physical adventures of an Elizabethan philosopher in a succession of unrelated episodes. There was a caress in the sentences, a simplicity in the narrative that translated itself into cunning realism.

When he had finished the reading, Aubrey stared at his father's portrait hanging over one of the book cases. The reality of the manuscript held him. He felt bewildered. It had for some three hours lifted him out of the present and immersed him in scenes and amid a company of naive ancients, starkly alive. A dormant literary sense awakened in him. The thing was a work of art, as moving, as authentic as Apuleius or Cervantes. But he would put it away. He hid it in a private drawer.

Its memory, however, grew in his mind. During his day at work the thought of the thing his father had written came to haunt him, as if it demanded something. He felt closer to it than he had ever felt to his father. There was something distasteful, though, about the intimacy.

"That was his soul," he would explain over to himself. "He lived that way inside. It was like writing a biography of secret dreams for him. It's strange. We're all like that. Even I. There was something odd in father. Funny we never guessed. It must have been written a paragraph at a time over years and years. It was a sort of diary."