Chapter IV: Part II (2)

She made him sick of himself. Silly little thing! He dropped her hand as if he had forgotten it. He was hunched forward now with his knees crossed. He watched the floor where, in the bright afternoon light, dark patches were moving. There was a curious evil expression in his furtive eyes. His hair was rumpled in a colorless thatch across his head. His mouth was babyish. "That reminds me of a story--" Paul began. He paused a moment with a flickering sneer on his lips. Aunt Julia, damn her! All of him was against May. In spite of his ugly look, his rumpled hair and childish 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 came to her whenever she was uncertain. Why couldn't she laugh! Aunt Julia's brat! 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." He went on. His eyes were wicked and amused. When he had finished he whistled and gazed at the ceiling again.

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

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

May blushed. Her lashes were still wet, her lips tremulous. She stuttered, "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 was halfway to the door before May recovered herself and stood up.

"I was going to meet a fellow this afternoon. I'll let you pursue your juvenile 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?" He saw that she was smiling as if across the fear that was in her look. He resented 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." She accused him. Why did he watch her so intently yet unseeingly? She felt his 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 came near her: her thin small figure, her pointed face, her bright blank eyes, frightened and sweet. He came near her pale thick hair where it was caught away from her temples. As she turned to him he could see the end 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 breasts pointed separately through her sailor blouse. Everything that he saw was a part of something that was killing him. That was why he did not love her. She was too young. Because of this he hated her. She was like himself. He had to hate her. To save himself from the sense of dying and being utterly lost, he had to hate her. Though it was Aunt Julia's fault. He knew that.

All those books! He had tormented himself trying to understand them. Two years ago he hid under the mattress the picture of the fat woman. Childish. He abhorred the picture of the naked woman as he abhorred his Aunt with her filthy priggishness. He remembered that long ago when he asked 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 the world and something that was killing him because there was no truth or beauty in life. They went on smiling in their ugliness, torturing the beautiful things and making them ugly like themselves. He would kill himself. He did not belong in this ugly cruel world.

White little May, white like a moon. Like snow and silence under the trees. 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 blank eternal happiness that was an instant only. Then she was cold and alone and afraid of him: of his face so hot and close, the queer look in his eyes, 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 couch she felt the hot nap of the cloth cover, stiff against her cheek. It seemed 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 the window. The bird hopped from the perch to the cage floor, from the floor to the perch, and the thud of its descent was monotonously reiterated. Occasionally seeds fell in a series of ticks against the polished wainscot. Beyond Paul's head, May looked into the pane above the bird cage, and the glass was like a melted sun. On either side of the glowing transparent squares, the yellow curtains were slack. May fancied that Bobby was on the stairs and that she could hear old Nellie moving about in the kitchen below.

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

He was crying. It astonished her that he was crying, but she felt nothing except a cold burning sensation that came from the warmth of his tears slipping across her face. She was surprised that he cried so silently. Now he lay still against her with his face in her hair. His stillness was too deep. She could not bear it. Her body was cramped and stiff. 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 Aunt Julia's desk, and the creaks of the woodwork on the stairway and in the hall.

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

But nobody came.

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

When he tip-toed across the room he made the floor shake. May's shut eyes 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 Paul was, waiting for him to go so that she could bear it. All at once she knew that he had come out of somewhere and was standing beside her in the light looking down.

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

His voice was frightened. She wondered why he was afraid. It made her sick 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 his stealthiness. It oppressed her. She would not let him see her face. When the floor shook again she knew he was going out. She waited to hear his footsteps on the stairs and the slam of the front door. Then she pushed herself to her elbow and glanced about. In her new body she was strange with herself. She stood up and smoothed her rumpled dress quickly and guiltily. 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. The darkness of the pillow was cool to her eyes and to her whole soul. She wanted her throbbing body to lie still in the cool dark. She felt that she was ugly and terrible in her disgrace. She wanted to ask Paul to forgive her because she had behaved as she had. Sobbing into the bedclothes, 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 and despoiled. In the intensity of his misery earlier in the day there had been, after all, a kind of promise. Now May had gone away from him as if she 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 yet afternoon, he fell asleep soddenly without a dream. Before, his fatigue had been sharp and hungry. Now he was only tired of his own emptiness and stupidity.

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

After the meal he went upstairs and hid himself in the dark. He wondered if any of the beautiful things he had dreamed about existed. Everywhere was inflated dullness. He dwelt on this until he astonished himself by finding a faint pleasure in his reflections. He decided that the stars he saw through the window were burning nettles, and that they pricked his glance when he looked at them. Suddenly there was something substantial and satisfying in his very self-contempt. He decided that he was no better than Julia, and that he detested her and himself for the same reason. It was peculiarly soothing to perceive his own courage in self-condemnation. In despising himself he unclothed himself and he was with her in spiritual nakedness, which somehow took on a fleshly image so that he dared not think of it too clearly.

* * * * *

Laurence forced himself to be alone with Julia. He went into her sitting room casually and took up a book, but when he was seated he did not read. His elbow rested on the arm of the chair and he held his head to one side with his brow laid against his palm.

It was Sunday. Dry hot air blew into the room from the almost deserted street. Now and then the window curtains swelled slightly with the breeze. The canary's cage hung in the light near the ceiling. The sunshine slipped in wavering lines across the gilded bars. The bird tapped with its beak on the sides of the cage which oscillated with its quick 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 the materials 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 was cold 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 not to withdraw his fingers. When he lifted his face to her his expression was kind and obscure. He seemed to draw a veil across himself.

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

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

She did not answer. Her eyes were steady with reproach. Her throat swelled 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 from his 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. Yet she 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 you must decide everything for yourself. Your life is your own. You have told me that one of my mistakes in the past was in condescending to you and attempting to impose my own negative views upon you."

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

Laurence's expression softened. He turned his head so that she could not see his eyes. "I react slowly, Julia. I can't arrive at a set of difficult 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 hand about the knuckles of the other. "It's killing me!" she said. "It's killing me!"

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

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

"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 hard with repugnance. She welcomed the bitterness that was in his kiss. He said, "I have to think of myself, Julia."

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

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

Her sick mind found pleasure in destroying its own illusions. It seemed absurd that, having rejected so many gods, she had made a god of herself. When her reflections became most bitter she grew calm and exalted. Her blood ran light. Having destroyed her world, her disbelief somehow survived as if on an eminence.

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

* * * * *

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

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

May wanted to tell Aunt Julia, but dared not. She knew Aunt Julia was sad, though she did not know why. Aunt Julia, however, resisted confidences. When she came in from work and found May waiting for her in the 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 lady these days. Your father is thinking of sending you away to school when Bobby goes. How would you like that?" And she smiled in a perfunctory far-away fashion.

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

"That would be good for you. You must learn to be self-reliant." Without glancing behind her, Aunt Julia passed quickly up the stairs and disappeared into her room. The door shut.

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

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

White clothes on a line were stretched between the windows of the apartment houses that overhung the alley. The bleached garments, soaked with blue shadow, made a thick flapping sound as the wind jerked them about. When the sun sank the grass was an ache of green in the empty twilight. May thought it was like a painful dream coming out of the earth. She was afraid of the fixity of the white sky that stared at her like a madness. She knew herself small and ugly when she wanted to feel beautiful. 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 the branches of the elm tree against the fence. The large stars, unfolding like flowers, were warm and strange. In the enormous evening only a little shiver of self-awareness was left to her. She tried to imagine that, because she was ugly and impure, Paul had already killed her. The strangeness 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 had insisted on seeing the Farleys several times, but the result of these meetings was always disappointing. What he considered their small hard pride erected about them a wall of impenetrable reserves. He pitied them in their conventionality. They regard me, he thought, as a wrecker of homes, and the fact that I have been Julia's lover prevents them from recognizing me in any other guise.

He felt that he was learning a lesson. He must avoid destructive intimacies. 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 in terror of love, in terror of his own necessities, and afraid of meeting acquaintances who, with the brutality of casual minds, could shake his confidence in himself by uncomprehending statements regarding his work.

He grew morbid, shut himself up in his studio, and refused to admit any validity in the art of painters of his own generation. He persuaded himself that he was the successor of El Greco and that since El Greco no painter had done anything which could be considered of significance to the human race. He would not even admit that Cézanne (whom he had formerly admired) was a man of the first order. He was a painter, to be sure, but Dudley could ally himself only with those whose gifts were prophetic.

His imaginings about himself assumed such grandiose proportions that he scarcely dared to believe in them. To avoid any responsibility for his conception of himself he was persuaded that there was a taint of madness in 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 the blinds drawn, and was tortured with pessimistic thoughts, until, by the very blankness of his misery, he was able to overcome the critical conclusions of his intelligence. He did not eat enough and his health began to suffer. His absorption in death drew him to concrete visions of what would follow his suicide. He was unable to close his eyes without confronting the vision of his own putrid disintegrating flesh. In his body he found infinite pathos. As much as he wanted to escape his physical self, it was sickening to think of leaving it to the indignities of burial at the hands of its enemies.

The idea of suicide, haunting him persistently, aroused a resistant spirit in him. He exaggerated the envies of his contemporaries. He fancied that they feared him far more than they actually did and were longing for his annihilation. He decided that something occult which originated outside him was impelling him toward self-destruction. In refusing to kill himself he was combating evil suggestions rather than succumbing to his own repugnance to suffering and ugliness.

While he was in this frame of mind some one sent him a German paper that was the organ of an obscure artistic group. In this journal, insignificantly printed, was a flattering reference to Dudley. He was called one of the leaders of a new movement in America. He read the article twice and was ashamed of the elation it afforded him. He could not admit his deep satisfaction in such a remote triumph. With a sense of release, he indulged to the full the vindictiveness of his emotions toward his own countrymen--those who were fond of dismissing him as merely one of the younger painters of misguided promise.

However, the praise from men as unrecognized as himself encouraged his defiance to such a point that he resumed work on a canvas which he had thrown aside. His own efforts intoxicated him. He refused to doubt himself. Life once more had the inevitability of sleep. He knew that he was 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 decided to go abroad again and wrote to borrow money of his father. Dudley made up his mind to avoid Paris where, as he expressed it, the professional artist was rampant. He wanted to visit the birthplace of a Huguenot ancestor who had suffered martyrdom for his religion. It stimulated him to 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 opposite directions along the narrow street. The high stone buildings were tinged with the red of the low sunshine. Hundreds of windows, far up, catching the glare, twinkled with the harsh fixity of gorgon's eyes. Beyond everything floated the pale brilliant September sky overcast by the broad rays which stretched upward from the invisible sun.

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

"This is pleasant, Julia. I've been wanting to see you and Laurence Farley. I'm sailing for Europe next week, and I should have been very much disappointed if I had been obliged to go off without meeting you again." He tried to speak easily while he looked at her with an expression of reproach. Julia smiled and held out her hand. There was a defensive light in her eyes which he interpreted as a symptom of dislike. He wanted to convince himself that every one, even she, was completely alienated from him. All that fed his pain strengthened his vacillating egotism.

Julia noted the familiar details of his appearance: his short arms in the sleeves of a perfectly fitting coat; the plump hairy white hand which reached to hers a trifle unsteadily; his short well-made little body that he held absurdly erect; the wide felt hat that he tried to wear carelessly, which, in consequence, was slightly to one side on the back of his head and showed his dark curls; the childishly fresh color which glowed through the beard in his carefully shaven cheeks; his small full mouth that sulked in repose but when he smiled displayed exaggeratedly all of his little even teeth; his prettily modeled, womanish nose; the silky reddish mustache on his short lip; and his soft, ingratiating, long-lashed eyes. Everything in his appearance disarmed her resentment of him. Yet she knew that if she expressed anything of her state of mind he would take advantage of her vulnerability. She was prepared to see his gaze harden toward her and his demeanor, puerile now, become ruthless and commanding. She could not analyze the thing in herself that made her so helpless before him. She was able, she thought, to observe him coldly. She withdrew her hand from his and said, "So you are going away again? I am glad for your sake. I know how America must irk you. Even from my viewpoint I can see that it is the last country for an artist." At the same moment her heart contracted and she told herself that there was something false and monstrous in Dudley which suppressed her natural impulse to be frank in stating what she felt for him.

Dudley walked beside her. She wants me to go away! He insisted on believing this. To know that she continued to suffer, however, comforted him as much now as it had in the past. He sensed that she had, in some remote way, remained subject to him. Because of this she was dear. When he remembered that, but for this accidental meeting, he would not have communicated his departure to her he was momentarily panic-stricken. He no 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 out of 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 the hounds are baying at my heels. When I go abroad this time I am going to avoid Paris. I know dozens of cities. Paris is the only one which is a work of art. That's why I am going to keep away. I am through with the finality of that kind of art. I am going abroad to feel how much of an American I am. That's why I hate it so. It's in me--a part of me. I can't escape it. I must express it. That is my salvation--in belonging to America." It was almost irresistible to tell her some of the conclusions he had arrived at to comfort himself, but he knew that Julia never approached a subject from a cosmic angle. She made him feel small and unhappy and full of a homesickness for understanding. In her very crudity she was the life he had to face. "I want to talk to you about yourself, Julia. There are clouds of misunderstanding between us. We mustn'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 the expression of dull attention in her eyes, that she had overheard his remark. In this atmosphere of public intimacy Julia felt grotesque. "I can't talk about myself, Dudley. Don't ask me. You've put me out of your life. Why should you be interested?"

He was conscious of the stiffening of her body as she walked beside him and observed the forced immobility of her face. Emerging from the self-loathing which was an undercurrent to his vanity, he was grateful to 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 his relationship to her--not its significance in her life, but its significance in his own. He admitted to himself the cruelty of his feeling for her. He wanted to torture her, to annihilate her even. It pleased him to discover in himself enormous capacities for all things that, to the timid-minded, constitute sin. He must embrace life without moral limitations. "Julia, my dear--you must not misunderstand my feeling for you. I want you--want you even physically--as much as I ever did." His voice shook a little. "It is only because I understand now that I must refuse myself much. I have found just this last month a marvelous spiritual rest which makes living deeply more acceptable."

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

"Don't be childish, Julia. You don't want to understand me. We can't talk in the street. Come to my studio for half an hour." He could not let 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 not explain to himself why he was ashamed of being seen with Julia. He wanted to hurry her through the street.

In the oncoming twilight the brilliant shop fronts were vague with glitter and color. Above the glowering tower of an office building a blanched star twinkled among faded clouds. When they reached Dudley's doorstep 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 he was suddenly afraid of her.

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

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

Dudley stumbled over the furniture. He wanted to evade the moment when he 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 voice sounded strange to him.

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

The tension was intolerable to them both. They were experiencing the same nausea and disgust of their emotions--emotions which seemed inevitable for such a moment and so meaningless. Dudley said, "Where are you? 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 the thing in herself which would yield to him. But at this instant the light flashed on and everything that she was feeling appeared to her as unjustifiable and ridiculous.

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

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

When he sat down near her, he said, "Let it suffice, Julia, that I take the hard things you want to say to me as coming from a human being whom I respect and care for enormously--and I still think everything fine possible between us provided you accept in me what I have never doubted in you--my absolute good faith, and my absolute desire, to the best of my 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 she got up. "I can't stay, Dudley. You won't understand." She turned her head 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 for going away.

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

Dudley felt a swift pang of despair. Not because she was gone, but because her going left him again with the problem of reviving the hallucinations of greatness. It was not easy for him to deceive himself. He could do so only in the throes of emotions which exhausted him. In moments of unusual detachment he perceived the faults in himself as apart from the real elements of genius that existed in his work. But he was not strong enough to continue his efforts for the sake of an imperfect loveliness. Only in spiritual drunkenness could he conquer his susceptibility to the nihilistic suggestions of complacent and unimaginative beings.