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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Erik Dorn, by Ben Hecht
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Erik Dorn
+
+
+Author: Ben Hecht
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 19, 2007  [eBook #22358]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERIK DORN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Eric Eldred and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+ERIK DORN
+
+by
+
+BEN HECHT
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+G. P. Putnam's Sons
+New York and London
+The Knickerbocker Press
+1921
+
+Copyright, 1921
+by
+Ben Hecht
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+MARIE
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  PAGE
+
+  PART I
+
+  SLEEP                                                         1
+
+
+  PART II
+
+  DREAM                                                        75
+
+
+  PART III
+
+  WINGS                                                       173
+
+
+  PART IV
+
+  ADVENTURE                                                   277
+
+
+  PART V
+
+  SILENCE                                                     369
+
+
+
+
+ERIK DORN
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+SLEEP
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+An old man sat in the shadows of the summer night. From a veranda chair
+he looked at the stars. He wore a white beard, and his eyes, grown small
+with age, watered continually as if he were weeping. Half-hidden under
+his beard his emaciated lips kept the monotonous grimace of a smile on
+his face.
+
+He sat in the dark, a patient, trembling figure waiting for bedtime. His
+feet, though he rested them all day, grew heavy at night. Of late this
+weariness had increased. It reached like a caress into his mind.
+Thoughts no longer formed themselves in the silences of his hours.
+Instead, a gentle sleep, dreamless and dark, came upon him and left him
+sitting with his little eyes, open and moist, fastened without sight
+upon familiar objects.
+
+As he sat, the withered body of this old man seemed to grow always more
+motionless, except for his hands. Resting on his thighs, his twig-like
+hands remained forever awake, their thin contorted fingers crawling
+vaguely about like the legs of 8 long-impaled spiders.
+
+The sound of a piano from the room behind him dropped into the old man's
+sleep, and he found himself once more looking out of his eyes and
+occupying his clothes. His attitude remained unchanged except for a
+quickened movement of his fingers. Life returned to him as gently as it
+had left. The stars were still high over his head and the night, cool
+and murmuring, waited for him.
+
+He lowered his eyes toward the street beyond the lawn. People were
+straying by, seeming to drift under the dark trees. He could not see
+them distinctly, but he stared at their flowing outlines and at moments
+was rewarded by a glimpse of a face--a featureless little glint of white
+in the shadows: dark shadows moving within a motionless darkness with
+little dying candle-flame faces. "Men and women," he thought, "men and
+women, mixed up in the night ... mixed up."
+
+As he stared, thoughts as dim and fluid as the people in the street
+moved in his head. But he remembered things best not in words. His
+memories were little warmths that dropped into his heart. His cold thin
+fingers continued their fluttering. "Mixed up, mixed up," said the
+night. "Dark," said the shadows. And the years spoke their memories. "We
+have been; we are no more." Memories that had lost the bloom of words.
+The emaciated lips of the old man held a smile beneath the white beard.
+
+This was Isaac Dorn, still alive after eighty years.
+
+The music from the house ended and a woman's voice called through an
+open window.
+
+"I'm afraid it's chilly outside, father."
+
+He offered no answer. Then he heard Erik, his son, speak in an amused
+voice.
+
+"Leave the old man be. He's making love to the stars."
+
+"I'll get him a blanket," said Erik's wife. "I can't bear to think of
+him catching cold."
+
+Isaac Dorn arose from his chair, shaking his head. He did not fancy
+being covered with a blanket and feeling Anna's kindly hands tucking its
+edges around his feet. They were too kindly, too solicitous. Their
+little pats and caressings presumed too much. One grew sad under their
+ministrations and murmured to oneself, "Poor child, poor child." Better
+a half-hour under the cold, amused eyes of his son, Erik. There was
+something between Erik and him, something like an unspoken argument. To
+Anna he was a pathetic little old man to be nursed, coddled, defended
+against chills and indigestions, "poor child, poor child." But Erik
+looked at him with cold, amused eyes that offered no quarter to age and
+asked for nothing. Good Erik, who asked for nothing, whose eyes smiled
+because they were too polite to sneer. Erik knew about the stars and the
+mixed-up things, the dim things old senses could feel in the night
+though he chose to laugh at them.
+
+But one thing Erik didn't know, and the old man, turning from his chair,
+grew sad. What was that? What? His thought mumbled a question. Sitting
+motionless in a corner of the room he could smile at Erik and his smile
+under the white beard seemed to give an answer to the mumble--an answer
+that irritated his son. The answer said, "Wait, wait! it is too early
+for you to say you have lived." What a son, what a son! whose eyes made
+fun of his father's white hair.
+
+The old man moved slowly as if his infirmities were no more than
+meditations, and entered the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The crowds moving through the streets gave Erik Dorn a picture. It was
+morning. Above the heads of the people the great spatula-topped
+buildings spread a zigzag of windows, a scribble of rooftops against the
+sky. A din as monotonous as a silence tumbled through the streets--an
+unvarying noise of which the towering rectangles of buildings tilted
+like great reeds out of a narrow bowl, seemed an audible part.
+
+The city alive with signs, smoke, posters, windows; falling, rising,
+flinging its chimneys and its streets against the sun, wound itself up
+into crowds and burst with an endless bang under the far-away sky.
+
+Moving toward his office Erik Dorn watched the swarming of men and women
+of which he was a part. Faces like a flight of paper scraps scattered
+about him. Bodies poured suddenly across his eyes as if emptied out of
+funnels. The ornamental entrances of buildings pumped figures in and
+out. Vague and blurred like the play of gusty rain, the crowds darkened
+the pavements.
+
+Dorn saluted the spectacle with smiling eyes. As always, in the aimless
+din and multiplicity of streets he felt himself most securely at home.
+The smear of gestures, the elastic distortion of crowds winding and
+unwinding under the tumult of windows, gave him the feeling of a
+geometrical emptiness of life.
+
+Here before him the meanings of faces vanished. The greedy little
+purposes of men and women tangled themselves into a generality. It was
+thus Dorn was most pleased to look upon the world, to observe it as one
+observes a pattern--involved but precise. Life as a whole lay in the
+streets--a little human procession that came toiling out of a yesterday
+into an interminable to-morrow. It presented itself to him as a
+picture--legs moving against the walls of buildings, diagonals of
+bodies, syncopating face lines.
+
+Things that made pictures for his eyes alone diverted Dorn. Beyond this
+capacity for diversion he remained untouched. He walked smiling into
+crowds, oblivious of the lesser destinations of faces, pleased to dream
+of his life and the life of others as a movement of legs, a bobbing of
+heads.
+
+His appreciation of crowds was typical. In the same manner he held an
+appreciation of all things in life and art which filled him with the
+emotion of symmetry. He had given himself freely to his tastes. A creed
+had resulted. Rhythm that was intricate pleased him more than the
+metronomic. In art, the latter was predominant. In life, the former. Out
+of these decisions he achieved almost a complete indifference to
+literature and especially toward painting. No drawn picture stirred him
+to the extent that did the tapestry of a city street. No music aroused
+the elation in him that did the curious beat upon his eyes of window
+rows, of vari-shaped building walls whose oblongs and squares translated
+themselves in his thought into a species of unmelodious but perfect
+sound.
+
+The preoccupation with form had developed in him as complement of his
+nature. The nature of Erik Dorn was a shallows. Life did not live in
+him. He saw it as something eternally outside. To himself he seemed at
+times a perfect translation of his country and his day.
+
+"I'm like men will all be years later," he said to his wife, "when their
+emotions are finally absorbed by the ingenious surfaces they've
+surrounded themselves with, and life lies forever buried behind the
+inventions of engineers, scientists, and business men."
+
+Normal outwardly, a shrewd editor and journalist, functioning daily in
+his home and work as a cleverly conventional figure, Dorn had lived
+since boyhood in an unchanging vacuum. He had in his early youth become
+aware of himself. As a young man he had waited half consciously for
+something to happen to him. He thought of this something as a species of
+contact that would suddenly overtake him. He would step into the street
+and find himself a citizen absorbed by responsibilities, ideas,
+sympathies, prejudices. But the thing had never happened. At thirty he
+had explained to himself, "I am complete. This business of being empty
+is all there is to life. Intelligence is a faculty which enables man to
+peer through the muddle of ideas and arrive at a nowhere."
+
+Private introspection had become a bore to him. What was the use of
+thinking if there was nothing to think about? And there was nothing. His
+violences of temper, his emotions, definite and at times compelling, had
+always seemed to him as words--pretences to which he loaned himself for
+diversion. He was aware that neither ideas nor prejudices--the residues
+of emotion--existed in his mind. His thinking, he knew, had been a
+shuffle of words which he followed to fantastic and inconsistent
+conclusions that left him always without convictions for the morrow.
+
+There was a picture in the street for him on this summer morning. He was
+a part of it. Yet between himself and the rest of the picture he felt no
+contact.
+
+Into this emptiness of spirit, life had poured its excitements as into a
+thing bottomless as a mirror. He gave it back an image of words. He was
+proud of his words. They were his experiences and sophistications. Out
+of them he achieved his keenest diversion. They were the excuse for his
+walking, his wearing a hat and embarking daily for his work, returning
+daily to his home. They enabled him to amuse himself with complexities
+of thought as one improvising difficult finger exercises on the piano.
+
+At times it seemed to Dorn that he was even incapable of thinking, that
+he possessed a plastic vocabulary endowed with a life of its own. He
+often contemplated with astonishment his own verbal brilliancies, which
+his friends appeared to accept as irrefutable truths of the moment.
+Carried away in the heat of some intricate debate he would pause
+internally, as his voice continued without interruption, and exclaim to
+himself, "What in hell am I talking about?" And a momentary awe would
+overcome him--the awe of listening to himself give utterance to
+fantastic ideas that he knew had no existence in him--a cynical magician
+watching a white rabbit he had never seen before crawl naïvely out of
+his own sleeve. Thus his phrases assembled themselves on his tongue and
+pirouetted of their own energy about his listeners.
+
+Smiling, garrulous, and impenetrable--garrulous even in his silences, he
+daily entered his office and proceeded skillfully about his work. He
+was, as always, delighted with himself. He felt himself a man ideally
+fitted to enjoy the little spectacle of life his day offered. Emotion in
+others invariably roused in him a sense of the ludicrous. His eyes
+seemed to travel through the griefs and torments of his fellows and to
+fasten helplessly upon their causes. And here lay the ludicrous--the
+clownish little mainspring of tragedy and drama. He moved through his
+day with a vivid understanding of its excitements. There was no mystery.
+One had only to look and see and words fitted themselves. A pattern
+twisted itself into precisions--precisions of men loving, hating,
+questing. The understanding swayed him between pity and contempt and
+left the balance of an amused smile in his eyes.
+
+Intimacy with Erik Dorn had meant different things to different people,
+but all had derived from his friendship a fascinated feeling of loss.
+His wife, closest to him, had after seven years found herself drained,
+hollowed out as by some tenaciously devouring insect. Her mind had
+emptied itself of its normal furniture. Erik had eaten the ideas out of
+it. Under the continual impact of his irony her faiths and
+understandings had slowly deserted her. Her thought had become a shadow
+cast by his emptiness. Things were no longer good, no longer bad. People
+had become somehow non-existent for her since she could no longer think
+of them as symbols incarnate of ideas that she liked or ideas that she
+disliked. Thus emptied of its natural furniture, her mind had borrowed
+from her heart and become filled, wholly occupied with the emotion of
+her love for Erik Dorn. More than lover and husband, he was an
+obsession. He had replaced a world for her.
+
+It was of his wife that Dorn was thinking when he arrived this summer
+morning at his desk in the editorial room. He had remembered suddenly
+that the day was the anniversary of their marriage. Time had passed
+rapidly. Seven years! Like seven yesterdays. He seemed able to remember
+them in their entirety with a single thought, as one can remember a
+column of figures without recalling either their meaning or their sum.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The employees of the editorial room--a loft-like chamber crazily crowded
+with desks, tables, cabinets, benches, files, typewriters; lighted by a
+smoke-darkened sun and the dim glow of electric bulbs--were already
+launched upon the nervous routine of their day. An excited jargon filled
+the place which, with the air of physical disorder as if the workers
+were haphazardly improvising their activities,--gave the room a vivid
+though seemingly impermanent life.
+
+On the benches against a peeling wall sleepy-faced boys with precocious
+eyes kept up a lazy hair-pulling, surreptitious wrestling bout. They
+rose indifferently in response to furiously repeated bellows for their
+assistance--a business of carrying typewritten bits of paper between
+desks a few feet apart; or of sauntering with eleventh-hour orders to
+the perspiring men in the composing room.
+
+In the forward part of the shop a cluster of men stood about the desk of
+an editor who in a disinterested voice sat issuing assignments for the
+day, forecasting to his innumerable assistants the amount of space
+needed for succeeding editions, the possible development in the local
+scandals. His eye unconsciously watched the clock over his head, his
+ear divided itself between a half-dozen conversations and a tireless
+telephone. With his hands he kept fumbling an assortment of clippings,
+memoranda, and copy.
+
+Oldish young men and youngish old men gravitated about him, their faces
+curiously identical. These were the irresponsible-eyed, casual-mannered
+individuals, seemingly neither at work nor at play, who were to visit
+the courts, the police, the wrecks, the criminals, conventions,
+politicians, reformers, lovers, and haters, and bring back the news of
+the city's day. A common almost racial sophistication stamped their
+expression. They pawed over telephone books, argued with indifferent,
+emotionless profanity among themselves on items of amazing import;
+pounded nonchalantly upon typewriters, lolled with their feet upon
+desks, their noses buried in the humorous columns of the morning
+newspapers.
+
+"Make-up" men and their assistants, everlastingly irritable as if the
+victims of pernicious conspiracies, badgered for information that seemed
+inevitably non-existent. They desired to know in what mysterious manner
+one could get ten columns of type into a page that held only seven and
+whether anyone thought the paper could go to press at half-past ten when
+the bulk of the copy for the edition arrived in the composing room at
+twenty minutes of eleven.
+
+Proof-readers emerged from the bowels of somewhere waving smeared bits
+of printed paper and triumphantly demanded explanation of ambiguous
+passages.
+
+Re-write men "helloed" indignantly into telephones, repeating with
+sudden listlessness the pregnant details of the news pouring in; and
+scribbling it down on sheets of paper ... "dead Grant park bullet
+unknown 26 yrs silk stockings refinement mystery."
+
+Idlers lounged and discussed loudly against the dusty windows hung with
+torn grimy shades.
+
+Copy-readers, concentrated under green eye-shades, sat isolated in a
+tiny world of sharpened pencils, paste pots, shears, and emitted sudden
+embittered oaths.
+
+Editors from other departments, naïvely excited over items of vast
+indifference to their nervous listeners, came and went.
+
+An occasional printer, face and forearms smeared with ink, sauntered in
+as if on a vacation, uttering some technical announcement and
+precipitating a brief panic.
+
+Toward the center of the room, seated at desks jammed against one
+another in defiance of all convenience, telegraph editors, their hands
+fumbling cables and despatches from twenty ends of the earth, bellowed
+items of interest into the air--assassinations in China, probes,
+quizzes, scandals, accusations in far-away places. They varied their
+bellows with occasional shrieks of mysterious significance--usually a
+misplaced paste pot, a borrowed shears, a vanished copy-boy.
+
+These folk and a sprinkling of apparently unemployed and undisturbed
+strangers spread themselves through the shop. Outside the opened windows
+in the rear of the room, the elevated trains stuffed with men and women
+roared into a station and squealed out again. In the streets below, the
+traffic raised an ear-splitting medley of sound which nobody heard.
+
+Against this eternal and internal disorder, a strange pottering,
+apparently formless and without beginning or end, was guiding the latest
+confusions and intrigues of the human tangle into perfunctory groups of
+words called stories. A curious ritual--the scene, spreading through the
+four floors of the grimy building with a thousand men and women
+shrieking, hammering, cursing, writing, squeezing and juggling the
+monotonous convulsions of life into a scribble of words. Out of the
+cacophonies of the place issued, sausage fashion, a half-million papers
+daily, holding up from hour to hour to the city the blurred mirrors of
+the newspaper columns alive with the almost humorous images of an
+unending calamity.
+
+"The press," Erik Dorn once remarked, "is a blind old cat yowling on a
+treadmill."
+
+It was a quarter to nine when Dorn arrived at his desk. He seated
+himself with a complete unconsciousness of the scene. A litter of
+correspondence, propaganda, telegrams, and contributions from Constant
+Reader lay stuffed into the corners and pigeonholes of his desk. He sat
+for a moment thinking of his wife. Call her up ... spend the evening
+downtown ... some unusual evidence of affection ... the vaudeville
+wouldn't be bad.
+
+The thought left him and his eyes fastened themselves upon a sheaf of
+proofs.... Watch out for libel ... look for hunches ... scribble
+suggestion for changes ... peer for items of information that might be
+expanded humorously or pathetically into Human Interest yarns.... These
+were functions he discharged mechanically. A perfect affinity toward his
+work characterized his attitude. Yet behind the automatic efficiency of
+his thought lay an ironical appreciation of his tasks. The sterile
+little chronicles of life still moist from the ink-roller were like
+smeared windows upon the grimacings of the world. Through these windows
+Dorn saw with a clarity that flattered him.
+
+A tawdry pantomime was life, a pouring of blood, a grappling with
+shadows, a digging of graves. "Empty, empty," his intelligence whispered
+in its depths, "a make-believe of lusts. What else? Nothing, nothing.
+Laws, ambitions, conventions--froth in an empty glass. Tragedies,
+comedies--all a swarm of nothings. Dreams in the hearts of men--thin
+fever outlines to which they clung in hope. Nothing ... nothing...." His
+intelligence continued a murmur as he read--a murmur unconscious of
+itself yet coming from the depths of him. Equally unconscious was the
+amusement he felt, and that flew a fugitive smile in his eyes.
+
+The perfunctory hysterics of the stories of crime, graft, scandal, with
+their garbled sentences and wooden phrases; the delicious sagacities of
+the editorial pages like the mumbling of some adenoidal moron in a gulf
+of high winds; headlines saying a pompous "amen" to asininity and a
+hopeful "My God!" to confusion--these caressed him, and brought the
+thought to him, "if there is anything worthy the absurdity of life it's
+a newspaper--gibbering, whining, strutting, sprawled in attitudes of
+worship before the nine-and-ninety lies of the moment--a caricature of
+absurdity itself."
+
+His efficiency aloof from such moralizing moved like a separate
+consciousness through the day, as it had for the sixteen years of his
+service. His rise in his profession had been comparatively rapid. Thirty
+had found him enshrined as an editor. At thirty-four he had acquired the
+successful air which distinguishes men who have come to the end of their
+rope. He had become an editor and a fixture. The office observed an
+intent, gray-eyed man, straight nosed, firm lipped, correctly shaved
+down to the triangular trim of his mustache, his dark hair evenly
+parted--a normal-seeming, kindly individual who wore his linen and his
+features with a certain politely exotic air--the air of an identity.
+
+The day's vacuous items in his life passed quickly, its frantic routine
+ebbing into a lull toward mid-afternoon. Returning from a final uproar
+in the composing room, Dorn looked good-humoredly about him. He was
+ready to go home. Arguments, reprimands, entreaties were over for a
+space. He walked leisurely down the length of the shop, pleased as
+always by its atmosphere. It was something like the streets, this
+newspaper shop, broken up, a bit intricate, haphazard.
+
+A young man named Cross was painstakingly writing poetry on a
+typewriter. Another named Gardner was busy on a letter. "My dearest...."
+Dorn read over his shoulder as he passed. Promising young men, both,
+whose collars would grow slightly soiled as they advanced in their
+profession. He remembered one of his early observations: "There are two
+kinds of newspapermen--those who try to write poetry and those who try
+to drink themselves to death. Fortunately for the world, only one of
+them succeeds."
+
+In a corner a young woman, dressed with a certain ease, sat partially
+absorbed in a book and partially in a half-devoured apple. "The Brothers
+Karamasov," Dorn read as he sauntered by. He thought "an emancipated
+creature who prides herself on being able to drink cocktails without
+losing caste. She'll marry the first drunken newspaperman who forgets
+himself in her presence and spend the rest of her life trying to induce
+him to go into the advertising business."
+
+Turning down the room he passed the desk of Crowley, the telegraph
+editor. A face flabby and red with ancient drinking raised itself from a
+book and a voice spoke,
+
+"Old Egan gets more of a fool every day." Old Egan was the make-up man.
+Dorn smiled. "The damned idiot crowded the Nancy story off page one in
+the Home. Best story of the day." Crowley ended with a vaguely conceived
+oath.
+
+Dorn glimpsed the title of the book on his desk, _L'Oblat_. Crowley had
+been educated for the priesthood but emerged from the seminary with a
+heightened joy of life in his veins. A riotous twenty years in night
+saloons and bawdy houses had left him a kindly, choleric, and respected
+newspaper figure. Dorn caught his eye and wondered over his sensitive
+infatuation of exotic writing. In the pages of Huysmans, De Gourmont,
+Flaubert, Gautier, Symons, and Pater he seemed to have found a subtle
+incense for his deadened nerves. Inside the flabby, coarsened body with
+its red face munching out monosyllables, lived a recluse. "Too much
+living has driven him from life," Dorn thought, "and killed his lusts.
+So he sits and reads books--the last debauchery: strange, twisted
+phrases like idols, like totem poles, like Polynesian masks. He sits
+contemplating them as he once sat drunkenly watching the obscenities of
+black, white, and yellow bodied women. Thus, the mania for the rouge of
+life, for the grimace that lies beyond satiety, passes in him from
+bestiality to asceticism and esthetics. Yesterday a bacchanal of flesh,
+to-day a bacchanal of words ... the posturings of courtezans and the
+posturings of ornate phrases become the same." He heard Crowley
+repeating, "Damned idiot, Egan! No sense of human values. Crowded the
+best story of the day off page one." ... Some day he'd have a long talk
+with Crowley. But the man was so carefully hidden behind perfunctories
+it was hard to get at him. He resented intrusion.
+
+Dorn passed on and looked around for Warren--a humorous and didactic
+creature who had with considerable effort destroyed his Boston accent
+and escaped the fact that he had once earned his living as professor of
+sociology in an eastern university. Dorn caught a memory of him sitting
+in a congenial saloon before a stein and pouring forth hoarsely oracular
+comments upon the activities of men known and unknown. The man had a
+gift for caricature--Rabelaisean exaggerations. Dorn was suddenly glad
+he had gone for the day. The office oppressed him and the people in it
+were too familiar. He walked to his desk thinking of the South Seas and
+new faces.
+
+"I tell you what," a voice drawled behind him, "Nietzsche has it on the
+whole lot of them." Cochran, the head of the copy desk, was talking--a
+shriveled little man with a bald face and shoe-button eyes. "You've got
+to admit people are more dishonest in their virtues than in their vices.
+Of course, there's a lot of stuff he pulls that's impractical."
+
+Dorn shrugged his shoulders, smiled and lifted his hat out of a locker.
+He remembered again to telephone his wife, but instead moved out of the
+office. A refreshing warmth in the street pleased his senses and he
+turned toward the lake. Walk down Michigan avenue, take a taxi
+home--what else was there to do? Nothing, unless talk. But to whom? He
+thought of his father. A tenacious old man. Probably hang on forever.
+God, the man had been married three times. If it wasn't for his damned
+infirmities he'd probably marry again. Looking for something. What was
+it the old man had kept looking for? As if there was in existence a
+concrete gift to be drawn from life. A blithering, water-eyed optimist
+to the end, he'd die with a prayer of thankfulness and gratitude.
+
+Thus innocuously abstract, moving in the doldrum which sometimes
+surrounded him after his day's work, he turned into the boulevard along
+the lake. The day grew abruptly fresher here. An arc of blue sky rising
+from the east flung a great curve over the building tops. Dorn paused
+before the window of a Japanese art shop and stared at a bulbous wooden
+god stoically contemplating his navel.
+
+During his walks through the streets he sometimes met people he knew.
+This time a young woman appeared at the window beside him. He recognized
+her with elation. His thought gave him an index of her ... Rachel
+Laskin, curious girl ... makes me talk well ... appreciative ... unusual
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+They walked together down the avenue. Dorn felt a return of interest in
+himself. Introspection bored him. His insincerity made self thought
+meaningless. Listeners, however, revived him. As they walked he caught
+occasional glimpses of his companion--vivid eyes, dark lips, a cool,
+shadow-tinted face that belonged under exotic trees; a morose little
+girl insanely sensitive and with a dream inside her. She admired him; or
+at least she admired his words, which amounted to the same thing. Once
+before she had said, "You are different." As usual he held his cynicism
+in abeyance before flattery. People who thought him different pleased
+him. It gave them a certain intellectual status in his eyes.
+
+His thought, as he talked, busied itself with images of her. She gave
+him a sense of dark waters hidden from the moon--a tenuous fugitive
+figure in the pretty clamor of the bright street.
+
+"You remind me," he was saying, "of a nymph among dowagers and
+frightened to death. There's really nothing to be frightened of, unless
+you prefer fear to other more tangible emotions."
+
+She nodded her head. He recalled that the gesture had puzzled him at
+first. It gave an eager assent to his words that surprised him. It
+pretended that she had understood something he had not said, something
+that lay beneath his words. Dorn pointed at the women moving by them.
+
+"Poems in shoe craft, tragedies in ankles and melodramas in legs," he
+announced. "Look at their clothes! Priestly caricatures of their sex.
+You're still drawing?"
+
+"Yes. But you don't like my drawing."
+
+"I saw one of your pictures--an abominable thing--in some needlework
+magazine. A woman with a spindly nose, picking flowers."
+
+He glanced at her and caught an eager smile in her eyes. She was someone
+to whom he could talk at random. This pleased him; or perhaps it was the
+sense of flattery that pleased him. He wondered if she was intelligent.
+They had met several times, usually by accident. He had found himself
+able to talk at length to her and had come away feeling an intimacy
+between them.
+
+"Look at the windows," he continued. "Corsets, stockings, lingerie. Shop
+windows remind me of neighbors' bathrooms before breakfast. There's
+something odiously impersonal about them. See, all the way down the
+street--silks, garments, ruffles, laces. A saturnalia of masks. It's the
+only art we've developed in America--over-dressing. Clothes are
+peculiarly American--a sort of underhanded female revenge against the
+degenerate puritanism of the nation. I've seen them even at revival
+meetings clothed in the seven tailored sins and denouncing the devil
+with their bustles. Only they don't wear bustles any more. But what's an
+anachronism between friends? Why don't you paint pictures of real
+Americans?--men hunting for bargains in chastity and triumphantly
+marrying a waistline. If that means anything."
+
+He paused, and wondered vaguely what he was talking about. Vivid eyes
+and dark lips, a face that belonged elsewhere. He was feeding its
+poignancy words. And she admired him. Why? He was saying nothing. There
+was a sexlessness about her that inspired vulgarity.
+
+"You remind me of poetry," she answered without looking at him. "I
+always can listen to you without thinking, but just understanding. I've
+remembered nearly everything you've said to me. I don't know why. But
+they always come back when I'm alone, and they always seem unfinished."
+
+Her words jarred. She was too naïve to coquette. Yet it was difficult to
+believe this. But she was an unusual creature, modestly asleep. A
+fugitive aloofness. Yes, what she said must be true. There was nothing
+unreasonable about its being true. She made an impression upon him. He
+undoubtedly did upon her. He would have preferred her applause, however,
+somewhat less blatant. But she was a child--an uncanny child who cooed
+frankly when interested.
+
+"I can imagine the millennium of virtue in America," he went on. "A
+crowd of painted women; faces green and lavender, moving like a
+procession of bizarre automatons and chanting in Chinese, 'We are pure.
+We are chaste and pure.' A parade of psychopathic barbarians dressed in
+bells, metals, animal skins, astrologer hats and Scandinavian ornaments.
+A combination of Burmese dancer and Babylonian priest. I ask for nothing
+more."
+
+He laughed. He had half consciously tried to give words to an image the
+girl had stirred in him. She interrupted,
+
+"That's me."
+
+He looked at her face in a momentary surprise.
+
+"I hate people, too," she said. "I would like to be like one of those
+women."
+
+"Or else a huntress riding on a black river in the moon. I was trying to
+draw a picture of you. And perhaps of myself. You have a faculty of ...
+of ... Funny, things I say are usually only reflections of the people I
+talk to. You don't mind being a psychopathic barbarian?"
+
+"No," she laughed quietly, "because I understand what you mean."
+
+"I don't mean anything."
+
+"I know. You talk because you have nothing to say. And I like to listen
+to you because I understand."
+
+This was somewhat less jarring, though still a bit crude. Her admiration
+would be more pleasant were it more difficult to discover. He became
+silent and aware of the street. There had been no street for several
+minutes--merely vivid eyes and dark lips. Now there were
+people--familiar unknowns to be found always in streets, their faces
+withholding something, like unfinished sentences. He had lost interest
+and felt piqued. His loss of interest in his talk was perhaps merely a
+reflection of her own.
+
+"I remember hearing you were a socialist. That's hard to believe."
+
+There was no relation between them now. He would have to work it up
+again.
+
+"No, my parents are. I'm not."
+
+"Russians?"
+
+"Yes. Jews."
+
+"I'm curious about your ideals."
+
+"I haven't any."
+
+"Not even art?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A wingless little eagle on a barren tree," he smiled. "I advise you to
+complicate life with ideals. The more the better. They are more
+serviceable than a conscience, in which I presume you're likewise
+lacking, because you don't have to use them. A conscience is an
+immediate annoyance, whereas ideals are charming procrastinations. They
+excuse the inanity of the present. Good Lord, what do you think about
+all day without ideals to guide you?"
+
+Dorn looked at her and felt again delight with himself. It was because
+her interest had returned. Her eyes were flatteries. He desired to be
+amusing, to cover the eager child face beside him with a caress of
+words.
+
+"I don't think," she answered. "Do people ever think? I always imagine
+that people have ideas that they look at and that the ideas never move
+around."
+
+"Yes," he agreed, "moving ideas around is what you might call thinking.
+And people don't do that. They think only of destinations and for
+purposes of forgetting something--drugging themselves to uncomfortable
+facts. I fancy, however, I'm wrong. It's only after telling a number of
+lies that one gets an idea of what might be true. Thus it occurs to me
+now that I can't conceive of an intelligent person thinking in silence.
+Intelligence is a faculty which enables people to boast. And it's
+difficult boasting in silence. And inasmuch as it's necessary to be
+intelligent to think, why, that sort of settles it. Ergo, people never
+think. Do you mind my chatter?"
+
+"Please ..."
+
+A perfect applause this time. Her sincerity appealed to him as an
+exquisite mannerism. She said "Please" as if she were breathless.
+
+"You're an entertaining listener," he smiled. "And very clever. Because
+it's ordinarily rather difficult to flatter me. I'm immensely delighted
+with your silence, whereas ..." Dorn stumbled. He felt his speech was
+degenerating into a compliment.
+
+"Because you tell me things I've known," the girl spoke.
+
+"Yet I tell you nothing."
+
+He stared for an instant at the people in the street. "Nothing" was a
+word his thought tripped on. He was used to mumbling it to himself as he
+walked alone in streets. And at his desk it often came to him and
+repeated itself. Now his thought murmured, "Nothing, nothing," and a
+sadness drew itself into his heart. He laughed with a sense of treating
+himself to a theatricalism.
+
+"We haven't talked about God," he announced.
+
+"God is one of my beliefs."
+
+She was an idiot for frowning.
+
+"I dislike to think of man as the product of evolution. It throws an
+onus on the whole of nature. Whereas with a God to blame the thing is
+simple."
+
+She nodded, which was doubly idiotic, inasmuch as there was nothing to
+nod to. He went on:
+
+"Life is too short for brevities--for details. I save time by thinking,
+if you can call it thinking, _en masse_--in generalities. For instance,
+I think of people frequently but always as a species. I wonder about
+them. My wonder is concerned chiefly with the manner in which they
+adjust themselves to the vision of their futility. Do they shriek aloud
+with horror in lonely bedrooms? There's a question there. How do people
+who are important to themselves reconcile themselves to their
+unimportance to others? And how are they able to forget their
+imbecility?"
+
+They were walking idly as if dreamily intent upon the spectacle of the
+avenue. The nervous unrest that came to Dorn in streets and fermented
+words in his thought seemed to have deserted him. Assured of the
+admiration of his companion, he felt a quiet as if his energies had been
+turned off and he were coasting. He recognized several faces and saluted
+them as if overcome with a desire to relate a jest.
+
+"Notice the men and women together," he resumed easily, almost
+unconscious of talking. "Observing married couples is a post-graduate
+course in pessimism. There's a pair arm in arm. Corpses grown together.
+There's no intimacy like that of cadavers. Yet at this and all other
+moments they're unaware of death. They move by us without thought,
+emotion, or words in them."
+
+"They look very proud," she interrupted.
+
+"It's the set expression of vacuity. Just as skeletons always seem
+mysteriously elate. Their pride is an absence of everything else--a sort
+of rigid finery they put on in lieu of a shroud. Never mind staring
+after them, please. They are Mr. and Mrs. Jalonick who live across the
+street from my home. I dislike staring even after truths. Listen, I have
+something more to say about them if you'll not look so serious. Your
+emotions are obviously infantile. I can give you a picture of marriage:
+two little husks bowing metronomically in a vacuum and anointing each
+other with pompous adjectives. Draw them a little flattened in the rear
+from sitting down too much and you'll have a masterpiece. It's amusing
+to remember that Mr. and Mrs. Jalonick were once in love with each
+other!" Dorn laughed good-naturedly. "Fancy them on a June night ten
+years ago before their eyes had become cotton, holding hands and trying
+to give a meaning to the moon. Are you tired?"
+
+"No, please. Let's walk, if you haven't anything else to do."
+
+"Nothing." It was the seventh anniversary of his marriage. An annoying
+thought. "You're an antidote for inertia. I marvel, as always, at my
+garrulity. Women usually inspire me with a desire to talk. I suppose
+it's a defensive instinct. Talk confuses women and renders them
+helpless. But that isn't it. I talk to women because they make the best
+sounding-boards. Do you object to being reduced to an acoustic? Yes, sex
+is a sort of irritant to the vocabulary. It's amusing to converse
+profoundly with a pretty woman whose sole contributions to any dialogue
+are a bit of silk hose and an oscillation of the breasts."
+
+"You make me forget I'm a woman and agree with you."
+
+"Because you're another kind of woman. The reflector. Or acoustic. I
+prefer them. I sometimes feel that I live only in mirrors and that my
+thoughts exist only as they enter the heads of others. As now, I speak
+out of a most complete emptiness of emotion or idea; and my words seem
+to take body in your silence--and actually give me a character."
+
+"I always think of you as someone hiding from himself," she answered.
+Dorn smiled. They were old friends--a union between them.
+
+"There's no place of concealment in me," he said after a pause. He had
+been thinking of something else. "But perhaps I hide in others. After
+talking like this I come away with a sort of echo of what I've said. As
+if someone had told me things that almost impressed me. I talk so damned
+much I'm unaware of ever having heard anybody else but myself express an
+opinion. And I swear I've never had an opinion in my life." He became
+silent and resumed, in a lighter voice, "Look at that man with whiskers.
+He's a notorious Don Juan. Whiskers undoubtedly lend mystery to a man.
+It's a marvel women haven't cultivated them--instead of corsets. But
+tell me why you've disdained art as an ideal. You're curious. It's a
+confessional I should think would appeal to you. I'm almost interested
+in you, you see. Another hour with you and you would flatter me into a
+state of silence."
+
+Dorn paused, somewhat startled. Her dark lips parted, her eyes glowing
+toward the end of the street, the girl was walking in a radiant
+abstraction. She appeared to be listening to him without hearing what he
+said. Dorn contemplated her confusedly. He frowned at the thought of
+having bored her, and an impulse to step abruptly from her side and
+leave became a part of his anger. He hesitated in his walking and her
+fingers, timorous and unconscious of themselves, reached for his arm. He
+wondered with a deeper confusion what she was dreaming about. Her hand
+as it lay on his forearm gave him a sense of companionship which his
+words sought clumsily to understand.
+
+"I was saying something about art when you fell asleep," he smiled.
+
+Rachel threw back her head as if she were shaking a dream out of her
+eyes.
+
+"I wasn't asleep," she denied. They moved on in the increasing crowd.
+
+"Men and women," Dorn muttered. "The street's full of men and women
+going somewhere."
+
+"Except us," the girl cried. Her eyes, alight, were thrusting against
+the cold, amused smile of his face. He would be late. Anna would be
+waiting. An anniversary. Anniversaries were somehow important. They
+revived interest in events which had died. But it was nice to drift in a
+crowd beside a girl who admired him. What did he think of her? Nothing
+... nothing. She seemed to warm him into a deeper sleep. It was a relief
+to be admired for one's silence. Admired, not loved. Love was a bore.
+Anna loved him, bored him. Her love was an applause that did not wait
+for him to perform--an unreasonable ovation.
+
+He looked at the girl again. She was walking beside him, vivid eyes,
+dark lips--almost unaware of him, as if he had become a part of the
+dream that lived within her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+When she was a child she used to see a face in the dark as she was
+falling asleep. It was crude and misshapen, and leered at her, filling
+her heart with fear. Later, people had become like that to her.
+
+When she was eighteen Rachel came to Chicago and studied art at an art
+school. She learned nothing and forgot nothing. She read books in
+English and in Russian--James, Conrad, Brusov, Tolstoi. Her reading
+failed to remove her repugnance to the touch of life. Instead, it lured
+her further from realities. She did not like to meet people or to hear
+them talk. At twenty she was able to earn her living by drawing posters
+for a commercial art firm and making occasional illustrations for
+magazines designed for female consumption.
+
+As she matured, the repugnance to life that lay like a disease in her
+nerves, developed dangerously. She would sit in her room in the evening
+staring out of the window at the darkened city and thinking of people.
+There was an endless swathing of people, buildings, faces, words, that
+wound itself tightly about her. She would cover her face suddenly and
+whisper, "Oh, I must go away. I must."
+
+She hurried through dragging days as if she were running away. But there
+were things she could not escape. Men smiled at her and established
+themselves as friends. Women were easy to get rid of. One had only to be
+frank and women vanished. But this same frankness, she found, had an
+opposite effect upon men. Insults likewise served only to interest men.
+They would become gradually more and more acquainted with her until it
+became impossible to talk to them. Then she would have to ignore them,
+turning quickly away when they addressed her and saying, "Good-bye, I
+must go."
+
+At times she grew ashamed of her sensitiveness. She would sit alone in
+her room surrounded by a whimpering little silence. A melancholy would
+darken her heart. It wasn't because she was afraid of people. It was
+something else. She would try to think of it and would find herself
+whispering suddenly, "Oh, I must go away. I must."
+
+To men, Rachel's beauty seemed always a doubtful quality. Her appeal
+itself was doubtful. The Indian symmetry of her face lay as behind a
+luminous shadow--an ill-mannered, nervous face that was likely to lure
+strangers and irritate familiars. In the streets and restaurants people
+looked at her with interest. But people who spoke to her often lost
+their interest. There was a silence about her like a night mist. She
+seemed in this silence preoccupied with something that did not concern
+them. Men found the recollection of her more pleasing than her presence.
+Something they remembered of her seemed always to be missing when they
+encountered her again. Lonely evening fields and weary peasants moving
+toward the distant lights of their homes spoke from her eyes. An exotic
+memory of simple things--of earth, sky, and sea--lay in her sudden
+gestures. A sense of these things men carried away with them. But when
+they came to talk to her they grew conscious only of the fact that she
+irritated them. These who persisted in their friendship grew to regard
+her solicitously and misunderstand their emotions toward her.
+
+It was evening when Rachel came to her room after her walk with Erik
+Dorn. The long stroll had given her an aversion toward work. She glanced
+at several unfinished posters and moved to a chair near a window.
+
+A glow of excitement brightened the dusk of her face. Her eyes, usually
+asleep in distances, had become alive. They gave themselves to the
+night.
+
+Beyond the scratch of houses and the slant of home lights she watched
+the darkness lift against the sky. The city had dwindled into a huddle
+of streets. Noise had become silence. The great crowds were packed away
+in little rooms. Sitting before the window, unconscious of herself, she
+laughed softly. Her black hair felt tight and heavy. She shook her head
+till its loose coils dropped across her cheeks. She had felt confused
+when she entered the room, as if she had grown strange to herself.
+
+"Who am I?" she whispered suddenly. She raised her hand and stared at
+it. Something intimate had left her. She remembered herself as in a
+dream. There had been another Rachel who used to sit in this chair
+looking out of the window. A memory came of people and days. But it was
+not her memory, because her mind felt free of the nausea it used to
+bring.
+
+She stood up quickly and turned on a light. Her dexterous hands twisted
+her hair back into loose coils on her head. Strange, she did not know
+herself. That was because things seemed different. Here was her room,
+littered with books and canvasses and clothes, and the bed in which she
+slept, half hidden by the alcove curtains. But they were different. She
+began to hum a song. A tune had come back to her that men sang in Little
+Russia trudging home from the wheat fields. That was long ago when the
+world was a bad dream that frightened her at night. Now there was no
+world outside, but a darkness without faces or streets--a darkness with
+a deep meaning. It was something to be breathed in and felt.
+
+She opened the window and stood wondering. She was lonely. Loneliness
+caressed her heart and drew dim fingers across her thought. She could
+never remember having been lonely before. But now there was a
+difference. She smiled. Of course, it was Erik Dorn. He had pleased
+her. The things he had said returned to her mind. They seemed very
+important, as if she had said them herself. She would go out and walk
+again--fast. It was pleasant to be lonely. Her throat shivered as she
+breathed. Bewildered in the lighted room she laughed and her lips said
+aloud, "I don't know. I don't know!"
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Among the men who had established themselves as friends of Rachel was a
+young attorney named George Hazlitt. He had gone to school with her in a
+small Wisconsin town. A year ago he had discovered her again in Chicago.
+The discovery had excited him. He was a young man with proprietary
+instincts. He had at once devoted them to Rachel. After several months
+he had begun to dream about her. They were correct and estimable dreams
+reflecting credit upon the correct and estimable stock from which he
+came.
+
+He fell to courting Rachel tenaciously, torn between a certainty that
+she was insane and a conviction that a home, a husband's love, and the
+paraphernalia of what he termed clean, healthy living would restore her
+to sanity. Their meetings had been affairs of violence. In her presence
+he always felt a rage against what he called her neurasthenia--a word he
+frequently used in drawing up bills for divorce. He regarded
+neurasthenia not as a disease to be condoned like the mumps, but as a
+deliberate failing--particularly in Rachel. The neurasthenia of the
+defendants he pursued in courts annoyed him only slightly. In Rachel it
+outraged him. It was his habit to inform her that her sufferings were
+nothing more than affectations and that her moods were shams and that
+the whole was a part and parcel of neurasthenia.
+
+This unhappy desire of his to browbeat her into a state which he defined
+as normal, Rachel had accepted in numb helplessness. She had given up
+commanding him to leave her alone. His presence frequently became a
+nausea. Her enfevered senses had come to perceive in the conventionally
+clothed and spoken figure of the young attorney, a concentration of the
+repugnant things before which she cowered. During his courtship he had
+grown familiar to her as a penalty and his visits had become climaxes of
+loathsomeness.
+
+But a stability of purpose peculiar to unsensitive and egoistic young
+men kept Hazlitt to his quest. His steady rise in his profession, the
+growing respect of his fellows for his name, fired him with a sense of
+success. Rachel had become the victim of this sense. Of all the men she
+knew Hazlitt grew to be the most unnecessary. But his persistence seemed
+to increase with her aversion for him. In a sort of mental self-defense
+against the nervous disgust he brought her, she forced herself to think
+of him and even to argue with him. By thinking of him she was able to
+keep the memory of him an impersonal one, and to convert him from an
+emotionally unbearable influence into an intellectually insufferable
+type. A conversion by which Hazlitt profited, for she tolerated him more
+easily as a result of her ruse. She thought of him. His youth was fast
+entrenching itself in platitudes and acquiring the vigor and directness
+that come as a reward of conformity. Life was nothing to wonder at or
+feel. Life shaped itself into definite images and inelastic values
+before him. To these images and values he conformed, not submissively,
+but with a militant enthusiasm. On summer mornings he saw himself as a
+knight of virtue advancing clear-eyed upon a bedeviled world. When he
+was among his own kind he summed up the bedevilments in the word "bunk."
+The politer word, to be used chivalrously, was "neurasthenia." The
+victims of these bedevilments were "nuts." A dreadful species like
+herself, given to wrong hair cuts, insanities, outrages upon decency and
+above all, common sense.
+
+Hazlitt's attraction to Rachel in the face of her neurasthenia did not
+confuse him. Confusion was a quality foreign to Hazlitt. He courted her
+as a lover and proselyter. His proselyting consisted of vigorous
+denunciations of the things which contributed to the neurasthenia of his
+beloved. He declaimed his notions in round, rosy-cheeked sentences.
+There was about Hazlitt's wooing of Rachel the pathos which might
+distinguish the love affair of a Baptist angel and the hamadryad
+daughter of a Babayaga.
+
+Yet, though in her presence he denounced her art, taste, sufferings,
+books, friends, affectations, away from her she came to him--beautiful
+eyed and fragile--bringing a fear and a longing into his heart. Dreaming
+of her over a pipe in his home at night, he saw her as something
+bewilderingly clean, different--vividly different from other women, with
+a difference that choked and saddened him. There was a virginity about
+her that extended beyond her body. This and her fragility haunted him.
+His youth had caught the vision of the night mist of her, the lonely
+fields of her eyes, the shadow dreams toward whose solitudes she seemed
+to be flying. Beside Rachel all other women were to him somehow coarse
+and ungainly fibered, and somehow unvirginal.
+
+Out of his dream of her arose his desire to have her as his own,
+to come home and find her waiting, to have her known as Mrs.
+George Hazlitt. The thought of the Rachel he knew--mysterious, fugitive,
+neurasthenic--established normally across a breakfast table, smiling a
+normal good-bye at him with her arms normally about his neck, was a
+contrast that sharpened his desire. It offered a transformation that
+would be a victory not only for his love but for the shining, militant
+platitudes behind which Rachel had correctly pointed out to herself, he
+lived.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Bewildered in the lighted room, Rachel turned suddenly to the door.
+Someone was knocking--loud. She hurried eagerly forward, wondering at
+an unfinished thought ... "perhaps it is...." Hazlitt, smiling with
+steady, solicitous eyes confronted her.
+
+"I've been knocking for five minutes," he announced. "I heard you or I'd
+have gone away."
+
+Rachel nodded. Of course, it would be Hazlitt. He was always appearing
+when least expected. But it would be nice to talk to someone. She
+smiled. This was surprising and she shook her head as if she were
+carrying on a conversation with herself. George Hazlitt was always
+unbearable. But that was a memory. It no longer applied.
+
+"I'm glad you came," she greeted him. "I was lonely."
+
+Hazlitt looked at her in surprise. Visiting Rachel was a matter that
+required an extreme of determination. He had come prepared as usual for
+the sullen, uncomfortable hour she offered.
+
+"I was going out," she continued, "but I won't now. If you'll sit down
+I'll do some work. You won't mind."
+
+She looked at him eagerly as if to tell him he must forget she had
+always hated him and that she was different now. At least for the
+moment. He understood nothing and remained staring at her. His manner
+proclaimed frankly that he was bewildered.
+
+"Yes, certainly," he answered at length, and sat down. She hurried
+about, securing her paints and setting up one of the unfinished
+posters. Drawing a deep breath Hazlitt lighted a pipe and watched her.
+She was beautiful. He admitted it with less belligerency than usual. He
+sat thinking, "what the deuce has happened to her. She said she was glad
+to see me." He was afraid to start an inquiry. She had never before
+smiled at him, let alone voiced pleasure over his presence. It was a
+mistake of some sort but he would enjoy it for awhile. But perhaps it
+was the beginning of something.
+
+Hazlitt sighed. He smoked, waited, and struggled to avoid the thoughts
+that crowded upon him.
+
+"That's rather nice," he said. He would follow her mood, whatever it
+was. Rachel's eyes laughed toward him.
+
+"I hope it doesn't bore you. If you hadn't come I would never have
+thought of working."
+
+The thing was unbelievable. Yet he contemplated it serenely. He would
+talk to her soon and find out what was the matter. There was undoubtedly
+something the matter. His eyes stared at her furtively as she returned
+to her work. "There's something the matter," his thought cautioned him.
+Rachel resumed her talking. A naïveté and freshness were in her voice.
+She was letting her tongue speak for her and laughing at the sound of
+the curious remarks it made.
+
+"Do you think that women are becoming barbarians? The way they mess up
+their hair and go in for savage colors! Sometimes I get to feeling that
+they will end up as--as psychopathic barbarians. With astrologer hats."
+
+She regarded Hazlitt carelessly. Hazlitt, with fidgets in his thought,
+smiled. His eyes lost their solicitous air. They began to search
+shrewdly for some reason. The spectacle of a coquettish Rachel was
+beyond him, even as the sound of her laugh was an amazing music to his
+senses. But his shrewdness evaporated. It occurred to him that women
+were peculiar. Particularly Rachel. A direct and vigorous Hazlitt
+concluded that Rachel had succumbed to his superior guidance. There was
+nothing else to explain her tolerance. He called it tolerance, for he
+was still wary and her eyes shining eagerly, hungrily at him might be no
+more than a new kind of neurasthenia. He let her talk on without
+interruption. She would like to paint streets, houses, lights in the
+dark, city things. Blowing puffs of smoke carelessly toward the ceiling
+he answered finally, "If you didn't have to support yourself, perhaps
+you could." A fear whirled in his heart with the sentence. He had never
+asked her outright to marry him. The thought that he had almost asked
+her, now made him feel dizzy.
+
+"There! I guess that can rest now."
+
+Rachel put aside her painting. She sat down near him. Her eyes narrowed
+and she listened with a sleepy smile as he began carefully to recite to
+her incidents that had happened during his day. But he became silent.
+She didn't mind that. She desired to sit as she was, her emotion a
+dream that escaped her thought. Hazlitt fumbled with his pipe. It was
+out. He dropped it into a pocket. His shrewdness and his weariness had
+left him. He felt almost that he was alone.
+
+"You're wonderful," he whispered; and he grew frightened of his voice.
+Rachel saw his face light with an unusual expression. He would be kind
+now and let her smile.
+
+"I'm glad you came," she sighed. "I don't know why. I feel different
+to-night."
+
+She had a habit of short, begrudging sentences delivered in a quick
+monotone--a habit of speech against which Hazlitt had often raged. But
+now her words--flurried, breathless, begrudging as always--stirred him.
+They could be believed. She was a child that way. She spoke quickly
+thoughts that were uppermost in her mind.
+
+"I never thought I could be glad to see you. But I am."
+
+Hazlitt felt suddenly weak. Her face before him was something in a
+dream. It was turned away and he could watch her breathing. Bewilderedly
+he remembered a thousand Rachels, different from this one, who was glad
+he had come. But the beauty of her burned away uncomfortable memories.
+She was the Rachel of his loneliness. Out of George Hazlitt vanished the
+vigor and directness of a young man who knows his own soul. There came a
+vision--a thing uncertain and awesome, and he sat humbled before it.
+
+He reached her hand and closed his fingers over it. An awe squeezed at
+his throat. Her hand lay without protest within his. He had never
+touched her before. She had been a symbol and a dream. Now he felt the
+marvel of the fact that she was a woman. Her hand, warm and alive,
+astonished him with the news.
+
+Rachel, during his speechlessness, looked at him unbelievingly. The grip
+of his fingers was bringing an ache into her heart. It was sad. The
+night and the room were sad. She could feel sadness opening little
+wounds in her breasts. And before she had been happy. She heard him
+whispering, "I can't talk to you. I can't. Oh, you are beautiful!"
+
+His eyes made her think he was suffering. Then he was sad, too. She
+stood up because his hand drew her. Why did he want her to stand up? His
+body touched her and she heard him gasp. Her heart seemed adrift. She
+was unreal. There was another Rachel somewhere else. He was saying, but
+he was not talking to her, "Oh, Rachel, I love you. I love you, Rachel!"
+
+Still she waited unbelievingly, the ache in her dragging at her senses.
+She had fallen asleep and was dreaming something that was sad. But his
+face was suddenly too close. His eyes were too near and bright. They
+awakened her.
+
+"Let me go, quick."
+
+His hands clung. For an instant she failed to understand his resistance.
+He was saying jerkily, "No ... no!"
+
+She twisted out of his arms and stood breathless, as if she were
+choking. Hazlitt looked at her, a bit pensively. His heart lost in a
+dream and a rapture could only grimace a child's protest out of his
+stare. He hadn't kissed her. But that would come soon. Not everything at
+once. He must not be a brute. He smiled. His good-natured face glowed as
+if in a light. Then he heard her talking,
+
+"Go away. At once. I never want to see you again. I'll die if I see you
+again."
+
+Her hands were in her hair.
+
+"Go away. Please.... Oh, God, I can't stand you. You--horrify me!"
+
+The panic in Rachel's voice seemed to dull his ears to her words. He saw
+her for a vivid moment against the opened window and then he found
+himself alone, looking into a night that was haunted with an image of
+her. He remembered her going, but it seemed to him he still saw her
+against the window, his eyes bringing to him a vision of her face as she
+had looked.
+
+He had grown white. In the memory of her face, as in an impossible
+mirror, he saw a loathsome image of himself. Her eyes had blazed with
+it. He sickened and his thought grew faint. Then the night came before
+him and the echo of the words Rachel had spoken beat in his head. He
+walked with his hat politely in his hand out of the door.
+
+On the stairs his eyes grew weak and warm. Tears rushed from them. He
+stumbled and clutched at the banister. She had led him on. She had
+looked at him with love. Love ... but he had dreamed that. What was it,
+then? Her eyes burning toward him had told him he was loathsome. There
+was something wrong with him. He wept. He put his hat on mechanically.
+He dried his eyes. There was something wrong.
+
+On her bed Rachel lay mumbling to herself, mumbling as if the words were
+a pain to her ears. "Erik Dorn ... Erik Dorn."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The world in which Erik Dorn lived was compounded of many surfaces. Of
+them Anna, his wife, was the most familiar. It was a familiarity of
+absorption. Weeks of intimacy passed between them, of lover-like
+attentiveness during which Dorn remained unconscious of her existence.
+Her unending talk of her love for him--words and murmurs that seemed an
+inexhaustible overflow of her heart--passed through his mind as a part
+of his own thought. Hers was a more definite contribution to the
+emptiness of the life through which he moved.
+
+Yet in his unconsciousness of her there lived a shadowy affection. On
+occasions in which they had been separated there had always awakened in
+him an uneasiness. In his nights alone he lay sleepless, oppressed, a
+nostalgia for her presence growing in him. With his eyes opened at the
+darkness of a strange room he experienced then an incompleteness as if
+he himself were not enough. The emptiness in which he was living became
+suddenly real. He would feel a despair. Words unlike the sophisticated
+patter of his usual thought would come to him.... "What is there ... I
+would like something ... what?..." A sense of life as an unpeopled
+vastness would frighten him vaguely. Night sounds ... strange,
+shadow-hidden walls. They made him uneasy. Memories then; puzzling,
+mixed-up pictures that had lost their outlines. Things that had left no
+impression on his thought--sterile little incidents through which he had
+moved with automatic gestures--returned like sad little outcasts
+pleading with him. Faces he could not remember and that were yet
+familiar peered at him in his sleeplessness with poignant eyes that
+frightened.
+
+There would come to him the memory of the time he had been a boy and had
+lain like this in his mother's home, startled with fears that sat like
+insanities in his throat. The memory of his being a boy seemed to
+restore him to the fears long forgotten. Words would come ... "I was a
+boy ..." and he would lie thinking of how people grew old; of how he had
+grown old without seeming to change, and yet changing--as if he had been
+gently vanishing from himself and even now was moving slowly away. He
+was like a house from which issued a dim procession of guests never
+pausing for farewells. He had been a boy, a youth, a man ... each
+containing days and thoughts. And they moved slowly away from
+him--completed figures fully dressed. Slowly, without farewells, with
+faces intensely familiar yet no longer known. Thus he would continue to
+vanish from himself, remaining unchanged but diminishing, until there
+were no more guests to forsake and he stood alone waiting a last
+farewell--a curious, unimaginable good-bye to himself. Nothing ...
+nothing. A long wait for a good-bye. And then nothing again. Already he
+was half shadow--half a procession of Erik Dorns walking away from him
+and growing dimmer.
+
+In the dark of the strange room, his eyes staring and fearful, he would
+reach suddenly for Anna, embracing her almost as if she were beside him.
+Her smile that forever shone upon him like the light of lilies and
+candles from a sad, quiet altar; her words that forever flowed like a
+dream from her heart, the warmth of her body that she offered him as if
+it no longer existed for herself--to these his loneliness sought vainly
+to carry him. And he would find himself tormented by a desire for her,
+lying with her name on his lips and her image alone alive in the empty
+dread of his thought.
+
+United again in their home, he lapsed into the unconsciousness of her,
+sometimes vaguely startled by the tears he felt on her cheeks as they
+lay together at night. Out of this unconsciousness he made continual
+love to her, giving her back her endearments and caresses. Of this he
+never tired. His kisses unaware of her, his tendernesses without meaning
+to him, he yet felt in her presence the shadow of a desire. The love
+that filled his wife seemed to animate his phrases with an amorous
+diction that echoed her own. He would hold her in his arms, bestowing
+kisses upon her, and watch as in wonder of some mysterious make-believe,
+the radiance that his meaningless gestures brought to her.
+
+There were times, however, when Dorn became aware of his wife, when she
+thrust herself before him as a far-away-eyed and beautiful-faced
+stranger. He had frequently followed her in the street, watching her
+body sway as she walked, observing with quickening surprise her trim,
+lyre-like shoes, her silken ankles, the agile sensualism of her
+litheness under a stranger's dress. He had noticed that she had coils of
+red hair with bronze and gold lights slipping over it, that her face
+tilted itself with a hint of determination and her eyes walked proudly
+over the heads of the crowd. He watched other men glimpse her and turn
+for an instant to follow with their stares the promise of her body and
+lighted face. Dorn, walking out of her sight, got a confused sense of
+her as if she were speaking to the street, "I am a beautiful woman. In
+my head are thoughts. I am a stranger to you. You do not know what my
+body looks like or what dreams live in me. I have destinations and
+emotions that are mysterious to you. I am somebody different from
+yourselves."
+
+On top of this sense of her had come each time a sudden vivid
+picture--Anna in their bedroom attaching her garters to the tops of her
+stockings; Anna tautening her body as she slipped out of her nightgown
+... or a picture of her pressing his head against her breasts and
+whispering passionately, "Erik, I adore you." The strangeness then would
+leave her and again she was something he had absorbed. When he looked
+for her she had vanished in the scribble of the crowd and he walked with
+the same curious unconsciousness of her existence as of his own.
+
+There were times too in their home when Anna became a reality before his
+eyes--an external that startled him. This was such a time now. Rachel
+had come to visit them. She sat silent, fugitive-bodied amid overfed,
+perspiring-eyed guests. And he stood looking at Anna and listening to
+her.
+
+He wondered why he looked at Anna and not at Rachel. But his wife in
+black velvet and silken pumps, like a well-limned character out of some
+work of stately fiction, held his attention. He desired to talk to her
+as if she were a stranger. She sat without surprise at his unusual
+verbal animation in her behalf, listening to his banter with an intent,
+almost preoccupied smile in her eyes. While he talked, asking her
+questions and pressing for answers, he thought. "She's not paying any
+attention to my words, but to me. Her love is like a robe about her,
+covering her completely." Yet she seemed strange. Behind this love lived
+a person capable of thinking and reasoning. Dorn, as sometimes happened,
+grew curious about her thoughts. He increased his efforts to rivet her
+attention, as if he were trying to coax a secret out of her. The
+easiest way to arouse her was to say things that frightened her, to make
+remarks that might give her the feeling he had some underlying idea in
+his head hostile to their happiness.
+
+The company of faces in the room emitted laughter, uttered words of
+shocked contradiction, pressed themselves eagerly forward upon his
+phrases. A red-faced man whose vacuity startled from behind a pair of
+owlish glasses exclaimed, "That's all wrong, Dorn. Women don't want war.
+Your wife would rather cut off her arm than see you go to war. And mine,
+too."
+
+The wife of the red-faced man giggled. A younger, unmarried woman posed
+carelessly on the black piano bench in an effort to exaggerate the
+charms of her body, spoke with a deliberate sigh.
+
+"No, I don't agree with you, Mr. Harlan. Women are capable of
+sacrifice."
+
+She thrust forward a lavender-stockinged leg and contemplated it with a
+far-away sacrificial light in her eyes. The red-faced one observed her
+with sudden owlish seriousness. His argument seemed routed.
+
+"Of course that's true," he agreed. Mr. Harlan came of a race whose
+revolutionary notions expired apologetically before the first platitude
+to cross their path. "We must always bear in mind that women are capable
+of sacrifice; that women ..." The lavender stocking was withdrawing
+itself and Mr. Harlan stammered like an orator witnessing a sudden
+exodus of his audience, "that women are really capable of remarkable
+things," he concluded.
+
+Dorn was an uncommonly clever fellow, but a bit radical. He'd like to
+think of something to say to him just to show him there was another side
+to it. Not that he gave a damn. Some other time would do. The red face
+turned with a great attentiveness toward the hoarsely oracular Mr.
+Warren, his eyes dropping a furtive curtsy in the direction of the
+vanished stocking.
+
+"I never agree with Dorn," Warren was remarking, "for fear of
+displeasing him."
+
+He gazed belligerently at Anna whose eyes were attracting attention. She
+was watching her husband in a manner unbecoming a hostess. A middle-aged
+youth toying politely with the blue sash of a girl in a white dress--he
+had recently concluded a tense examination of the two antique rings on
+her fingers--saw an occasion for laughter and embraced it. The girl
+glanced somewhat timidly toward Anna and addressed her softly, as if
+desiring to engage in some conversation beyond the superficial
+excitement of the moment.
+
+"I'm just mad about blue sashes," she whispered. "I think the sash is
+coming back, don't you?"
+
+Anna nodded her head. Erik had resumed his talk, his eyes still on her.
+
+"Women are two things--theory and fact," he was saying. "The theory of
+them demands war. If we get into this squabble you'll find them
+cheering the loudest and waving the most flags. War is something that
+kills men; therefore, it is piquantly desirable to their subconscious
+hate of our sex." He smiled openly at Anna. "It's also something that
+plays up the valor and superiority of man and therefore offers a
+vindication for her submission to him."
+
+"Oh," the lavender stocking was indignantly in evidence, "how awful!"
+
+Dorn waited until the young woman had shifted her hips into a more
+protesting outline.
+
+"I agree," the red face chimed in. "It's nonsense. Dorn's full of clever
+nonsense. I quite agree with you, Miss Dillingham." Miss Dillingham was
+the lavender stocking. The wife of the red face fidgeted, politely
+ominous. She announced pertly:
+
+"I agree with what Mr. Dorn says." Which announcement her husband
+properly translated into a warning and a threat of future conversation
+on the theme, "You never pay any attention to me when there's anybody
+else around."
+
+Dorn continued, "And it gives them a sense of generalities. Women live
+crowded between the narrow horizons of sex. They don't share in life.
+It's very sad, isn't it, Miss Williams?" Miss Williams removed her sash
+gently from the hands of the elderly youth and pouted. She was always
+indignant when men addressed her seriously. It gave her an
+uncomfortable feeling that they were making fun of her.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she answered. The elderly youth nodded his head
+enthusiastically and whispered close to her ear, "Exactly."
+
+"The things that are an entirety to women," pursued Dorn, "milk bottles,
+butcher bills, babies, cleaning days, hello and good-bye kisses, are
+merely gestures to their husbands. So in a war they find themselves able
+to share what is known as the larger horizon of the male. One way is
+through sacrifice. They sacrifice their sons, lovers, husbands, uncles,
+and fathers with a high, firm spirit, announcing to the press that they
+are only sorry their supply of relatives is limited. The sacrificing
+brings them in contact with the world in which their males live. That's
+the theory of it."
+
+Anna's smile continued to deny itself to his words. It said to him,
+"What does it matter what you say? I love you." And yet there was a
+thought behind it holding itself aloof.
+
+"But the fact of woman is always denying her theory," he added. "That's
+what makes her confusing. The fact of her weeps at departures, shell
+shocks, amputations; grows timid and organizes pacifist societies. It's
+a case of sex instinct versus the personal complex."
+
+The elderly young man straightened in his chair, removing his eyes from
+Miss Williams with the air of one returning to masculine worldliness.
+
+"I don't know about that," he said. "It's all very well to talk about
+such things flippantly. But when the time comes, we must admit ..."
+
+"That talk is foolish," interrupted Warren. He looked at Rachel and
+laughed. "As a matter of fact, if anybody else but Dorn said it, I'd
+believe it. But I never believe Dorn. Do you, Miss Laskin?"
+
+Rachel answered, "Yes."
+
+Dorn, piqued by the continual silence of his wife, felt a sudden
+discomfiture at the sound of Rachel's voice. Was Anna aware he was
+talking to her so as to avoid talking to Rachel? Perhaps. But Rachel's
+presence was diluted by the company. He caught a glimpse of her dark
+eyes opened towards him, and for a moment felt his words disintegrate.
+He continued hurriedly:
+
+"War, in a way, is a noble business, in that it reduces us to a
+biological sanity--much the same as does Miss Dillingham's lavender
+stocking!"
+
+The company swallowed this with an abrupt stiffening of necks. Isaac
+Dorn, who had been airing himself on the veranda, relieved a tension by
+appearing in the doorway and moving quietly toward an unoccupied chair.
+Anna reached her hand to the old man's and held it kindly. Miss
+Dillingham, surveying the stretch of hose which had been honored in her
+host's conversation, raised her eyes and replied quietly:
+
+"Mr. Dorn is too clever to be really insulting."
+
+The red-faced one clung to a sense of outrage. His cheeks had grown
+slightly distended, and with the grimace of indignant virtue bristling
+on his face, he turned the expression toward his wife for approval. She
+nodded her head and tightened the thin line of her lips.
+
+"I only meant," laughed Dorn, "that it reduces us to the sort of sanity
+that wipes out the absurd, artificial notions of morality that keep
+cluttering up the thought of the race. War reminds us that civilization
+and murder are compatible. Lavender stockings, speaking in generalities,
+are reminders that good and evil walk on equally comely legs."
+
+Mr. Harlan, having registered indignation, now struggled vainly against
+the preenings of his wit, and finally succumbed.
+
+"In these days you can't tell Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's lady apart
+by their stockings, eh?" He hammered his point home with a laugh. Warren
+winked at Rachel as if to inform her of the mixed company they were in,
+and Mrs. Harlan endeavored to put an end to the isolated merriment of
+her husband with a "John, you're impossible!" The elderly youth,
+conscious of himself as the escort of a young virgin, lowered his eyes
+modestly to her ankles. Dorn, watching his wife's smile deepen, nodded
+his head at her. He knew her momentary thought. She labored under the
+pleasing conviction that his risqué remarks were invariably inspired by
+memories of her.
+
+"Barring, of course, the unembattled stay-at-homes," he continued. "The
+sanity of battlefields is in direct ratio to the insanity of the
+non-combatants. You can see it already in the press. We who stay at
+home endeavor to excuse the crime of war by attaching ludicrous ideals
+and purposes to its result. Thus every war is to its non-combatants a
+holy war. And we get a swivel-chair collection of nincompoops raving
+weirdly, as the casualty lists pour in, of humanity and democracy. It
+hasn't come yet, but it will."
+
+"Then you don't believe in war?" said the red face, emerging
+triumphantly upon respectable ground.
+
+"As a phenomenon inspired by ideals or resulting in anything more
+satisfactory than a wholesale loss of life, war is always a joke," Dorn
+answered. He wondered whether Rachel was considering him a pompous ass.
+"I have a whole-hearted respect for it, however, as a biological
+excitement."
+
+The blue sash winced primly at the word biological, and appealed to her
+escort to protect her somehow from the indecencies of life. The elderly
+youth answered her appeal with a tightening of his features.
+
+"War isn't biological," he retorted in her behalf.
+
+Dorn, wearying of his talk, waited for some one of the company to
+relieve him of the burden. But the elderly youth had subsided, and
+fulfilling his functions as host--a business of diverting visitors from
+the fact that there was no reason for their presence in his home--Dorn
+was forced to continue:
+
+"I can conceive of no better or saner way to die than crawling around
+in the mud, shrieking like a savage, and assisting blindly in the
+depopulation of an enemy. But unless a man is forced to fight, I can
+conceive of nothing more horrible than war. Don't you think that, Anna?"
+
+"You know what I think, Erik," she answered. "I hate it."
+
+He was startled by a sudden similarity between Rachel and Anna. She too
+was looking at him with the indignant aloofness of his wife--with a rapt
+attention seemingly beyond the sound of his words. He caught the two
+women turn and smile to each other with an understanding that left him a
+stranger to both. He thought quickly, "Anna is the only one in the room
+intelligent enough for Rachel to understand." He felt a momentary pride
+in his wife, and wondered.
+
+As the conversation, playing with the theme of war, spread itself in
+spasmodic blurs about the room, bursting in little crescendoes of
+conviction, pronouncements, suddenly serious and inviolable truths, Dorn
+found himself listening excitedly. An unusual energy pumped notions into
+his thought. But it was impossible to give vent to ideas before this
+collection of comedians. He desired to look at Rachel, but kept his eyes
+away. If they were alone, he could talk. He permitted himself the luxury
+of an explosive silence.
+
+He sat for a time thinking. "Curious! She knows I have things to say to
+her. They are unimportant but I can say them to no one else. She knows
+I avoid looking at her. There must be something--an attraction. She's a
+fool. I don't know. I should have put an end to our walks long ago."
+
+His vocabulary, marshaling itself under a surprising force, charged with
+a rush through his thought. Sentences unrelated, bizarre combinations of
+words--a kaleidoscopic procession of astounding ideas--art, life, war,
+streets, people--he knew what they were all about. An illumination like
+a verbal ecstacy spread itself through him. Under it he continued to
+think as if with a separate set of words, "I don't know. She isn't
+beautiful. A stupid, nervous little girl. But it hasn't anything to do
+with her. It's something in me."
+
+He stood up, his eyes unsmiling, and surveyed the animated faces as from
+a distance. Paper faces and paper eyes--fluttering masks suspended
+politely above fabrics that lounged in chairs. They were unreal--too
+unreal even to talk to. Beyond these figures in the room and the noises
+they made, lay something that was not unreal. It pulled at the sleep in
+him. He stood as if arrested by his own silence. The night outside the
+window came into his eyes, covering the words in his brain and leaving
+him alone.
+
+He heard Anna speaking.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Erik?"
+
+Her eyes seemed to him laden with forebodings. Yet she was smiling.
+There was something that made her afraid. He turned toward Rachel and
+found her standing as if in imitation of himself, her face lifted toward
+the window, the taut line of her neck an attitude that brought him the
+image of a white bird's wing soaring. He felt himself unable to speak,
+as if a hand had been laid threateningly on his throat. Rachel was
+indiscreet to stand that way, to look that way. There was no mistaking.
+His thought, shaking itself free of words ... "In love with me. In love
+with me!" He paused. A bewildering sense of infidelity. But he had done
+nothing--only walk with her a few afternoons. And talk. "A stupid,
+nervous little girl." It was some sort of game, not serious necessarily.
+He stepped abstractedly toward his wife, aware that the conversation had
+flattened.
+
+"I wasn't thinking," he answered, searching guiltily for an epigram.
+"Won't you play?"
+
+Anna stood up and brought her eyes to a level with his own. Again the
+light of foreboding, of unrevealed shadows flashed at him out of her
+smile. She understood something not clear in his own head; nor in hers.
+He grasped her hand as she passed and with a dolorous grimace of his
+heart felt it unresponsive in his fingers.
+
+Anna was playing from a piano score of _Parsifal_. The music dropped a
+curtain. Dorn became conscious of himself in an overheated room
+surrounded by a group of awed and saccharine faces. Rachel was smiling
+at him with a meaning that he seemed to have forgotten. He stared back,
+pleasantly aware that a familiar sneer had returned to his eyes. In a
+corner his father sat watching Anna and he noticed that the old man's
+watery eyes turned in, as if gazing at images in his own thought. His
+father's smile, as always, touched Dorn with an irritation, and he
+hurried from it.
+
+The others were more amusing. The spectacle of the faces wilting into
+maudlin abstractions under the caress of the music brought a grin to
+him. The sounds had drugged the polite little masks and left them poised
+morosely in a sleepy dream. The lavender stocking crept tenderly into
+evidence. The owlish glasses focused with noncommittal stoicism in its
+direction. The blue sash looked worried and the raised eyebrows of the
+elderly youth asked unhappy questions. Music made people sad and caused
+sighs to trickle from their ludicrously inanimate features. Melting
+hearts under lacquered skins, dissolving little whimpers under
+perfunctory attitudes.
+
+He remembered his own mood of a few moments ago, and explained to
+himself. Something had given him a dream. The night shining through the
+window, the curve of Rachel's neck. Rachel ... Rachel ... He grew
+suddenly sick with the refrain of her name. It said itself longingly in
+his thought as if there was a meaning beyond it.
+
+The playing had stopped. The listeners appeared to be lingering
+dejectedly among its echoes. Rachel slipped quickly to her feet, her
+arms thrust back as if she were poised for running. She passed abruptly
+across the room. Her behavior startled him. The faces looked at her
+curiously. She was running away.
+
+Anna followed her quietly into the vestibule and the company burst into
+an incongruous babble. Dorn listened to their voices, again firm and
+self-sufficient, chattering formalities. He watched Rachel adjusting her
+hat with over-eager gestures. Her eyes were avoiding him. She seemed
+breathless, her head squirming under the necessity of having to remain
+for another moment before the eyes of the people in the room.
+
+"I must go," she said suddenly. Her hand extended itself to Anna. A
+frightened smile widened her mouth. Dorn felt her eyes center excitedly
+on him. A confused desire to speak kept him silent. He stood up and
+entered the hall to play his little part as host. But Rachel was gone.
+The door had closed behind her and he stared at the panels, feeling that
+the house had emptied itself. Things were normal again. Anna was
+speaking to her guests, smoothly garrulous. They were putting on hats
+and saying good-bye. They would have to hurry to escape the rain. He
+assisted with wraps, his eyes furtively watching the door as if he
+expected to see it open again, with Rachel returning.
+
+"I've really had a wonderful time," the lavender stocking was shrilling.
+He became solicitous and followed her to the door, walking with her
+down the housesteps. A moist summer night, promising rain.
+
+But the street was empty of Rachel, and he returned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+They were in their bedroom undressing. Outside, the night rustled with
+an approaching storm. On the closed windows the rain began a rattle of
+water. A wind filled the darkness.
+
+"What makes you act so strangely to-night, Erik?"
+
+She looked at him as she stood uncovering herself. She desired to speak
+with a disarming casualness. Instead, her words came with a sound of
+tears in them. He was always strange--always going away from her until
+she had to close her eyes and love in the dark without trying to see
+him. Now he might go to war and be killed. Something would happen.
+"Something ... something ..." kept murmuring itself in her thought.
+
+"I love to hear you play to a crowd," he answered good-humoredly.
+
+"Why?" She could not get the languor out of her voice.
+
+"When people listen to music it always reminds me we are descended from
+fish. God, what dolts! Minds like soft-bodied sea growths. I can
+actually see them sometimes."
+
+"You always dislike my friends."
+
+She would argue with him, and in his anger his strangeness would go
+away.
+
+"Your friends?" He seemed pleased at the chance of growing angry. "Allow
+me to point out to you that the assemblage to-night had the distinction
+of being my friends. I discovered the collection. I brought them to the
+house first."
+
+"They think you're wonderful." She would get him angry that way.
+
+"A virtue, I admit. But it doesn't excuse their other stupidities."
+
+They seemed to have nothing to argue about. Anna loosened her hair. The
+sight of it rolling in glistening bronzes and reds from her head
+invariably gave her a desire to cover Erik's face in it. With his face
+buried in the disordered masses of her hair she would feel an exquisite
+fullness of love.
+
+"You don't think Rachel stupid, do you?"
+
+Dorn felt a relief at the sound of her name. His thought was full of
+her, but he had been afraid to talk.
+
+"Miss Laskin," he replied, concealing his eagerness for the topic with a
+drawl, "is partially insane."
+
+"Yes, you like insane people, though. I can always tell when you like
+people. You never pay any attention to them then, but sort of come
+hanging around me--as if you were apologizing to yourself for liking
+them, and doing penance. Or you call them names."
+
+"Miss Laskin," Dorn answered, delighted to protract the conversation,
+"is a vivid sort of imbecile suffering from vacuous complexities. An
+hour alone in a room with her would drive even a philosopher to madness.
+She's one of the kind of people given to inappropriate silences. She
+reminds me of an emotion undergoing a major operation. Good Lord, Anna,
+don't tell me you're jealous of her?"
+
+It was immaterial whether he denounced or upheld Rachel. To talk of her
+even with indignation was a delight.
+
+Thunder rolled, and he became silent. Anna turned her nakedness to him.
+Her eyes, grown dark, beheld a yearning and a sorrow.
+
+"Don't talk about people," she whispered. "I'm glad you hate them--all
+of them."
+
+Her nudity always surprised Dorn. Her body seemed always to have grown
+more beautiful and impersonal. A shout of rain sounded in the night and
+a chill wind burst with a clatter in the darkness. He thought of Rachel
+as he darkened the room. There came to him a picture of her walking in
+the rain with her head raised and laughing.
+
+Anna lay for a moment, awed by the suddenness of the storm. She turned
+quickly, her arms reaching hungrily about her husband.
+
+"I love you," she whispered. "Oh, I love you so much. My own, my
+dearest!"
+
+She felt his lips touch hers, and closed her eyes.
+
+"Tell me...."
+
+Dorn murmured back to her, "I adore you."
+
+A little laugh came, and tears reached her cheeks.
+
+"You're so wonderful," she whispered. "Think of it! It's been the same
+since the first night. You love me--just as you did."
+
+She paused questioningly--an old question to which he gave an old
+answer.
+
+"I love you more."
+
+"I know it. I can feel it. You won't ever get tired of loving me?"
+
+"Never--never as long as I live."
+
+"Oh, you make me so happy!"
+
+A sigh almost like a moan came from her heart.
+
+"Oh, I'm a fool. I get frightened sometimes--when I hear you talk.
+Something takes you away. You mustn't ever go away. Promise me. Listen,
+Erik." She dropped into a panic. "Promise me you won't go to war."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"That was only talk," he whispered. "You should know my talk by this
+time."
+
+"I'll never know you."
+
+"Please, Anna, don't. You hurt me when you say that."
+
+"And when you were silent," she went on softly, "I felt--I felt
+something had happened. Erik, darling Erik. Oh, you're my whole life!"
+
+"I adore you, sweetest," he murmured.
+
+"I don't live except in you, Erik. And, oh, I'm a fool. Such a fool!"
+
+"You're wonderful," he interrupted. He was making responses in an old
+ritual.
+
+"No, I'm not. I'll make you tired of me. Tell me, please. Tell me you
+love me. I feel you've never told me it."
+
+"I love you more than everything else in life. More than everything."
+
+"Oh, do you, Erik?"
+
+She pressed herself closer to him, and he felt her body like the heat of
+a flame avidly caress him.
+
+"I don't want you any different, though," she whispered. "When I see
+other men I get horrified to think that you might become like them--if
+you didn't love me. Dead, creepy things. Oh, men are horrible. Talk to
+me, Erik."
+
+"I can't. I love you. What else is there to say?" His voice trembled and
+her mouth pressed upon his.
+
+"I don't deserve such happiness," she said. Tears from her eyes fell
+like warm wax on his shoulder. Her hands were fumbling distractedly over
+him.
+
+"Erik," she gasped, "my Erik! I worship you."
+
+The storm pounded through the night, leaping and bellowing in a halloo
+of sounds. Dorn tightened his arms mechanically about her warm flesh.
+His lips were murmuring tensely, dramatically, "I love you. I love you."
+And a sadness made a little warmth in his heart. He was alone in the
+night. His arms and words were engaged in an old make-believe. But this
+time he felt himself further away. There was no meaning....
+
+He tried vainly to think of Anna, but an emptiness crowded even her name
+out of his mind. His hands were returning her caresses, mimicking the
+eager distraction of her own. His mind, removed as if belonging
+elsewhere, was thinking aimless little words.
+
+There was a storm outside. Lightning.... The war was taking up too much
+space in the paper. Crowding out important local news. The Germans would
+probably get to Paris soon and put an end to it.... Why did Rachel run
+away? Should he ask her? Sometime. When he saw her. Ask her. Ask her....
+His thought drifted into a blank. Then it said ... "The thing is
+meaningless. Meaningless. Houses, faces, streets. Nothing, nothing.
+There's nothing...."
+
+His wife lay silent, quivering with an ecstasy. Her arms were hungrily
+choking him. Dorn closed his eyes as if to hide himself. His lips still
+murmured in a monotone, vague as the voice of a stranger in his
+ears--responses in an old ritual--"I love you, I love you! Oh, I love
+you so much!..."
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+DREAM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+In the evening when women stand washing dishes in the kitchens of the
+city, men light their tobacco and open newspapers. Later, the women
+gather up the crumpled sheets and read.
+
+The streets of the city spell easy words--poor, rich--neither.
+
+Here in one part live the grimy-faced workers, their sagging, shapeless
+women and their litters of children. Their windows open upon broken
+little streets and bubbling alleys. Idiot-faced wooden houses sprawl
+over one another with their rumps in the mud. The years hammer
+away--digesting the paint from houses. The years grind away, yet life
+persists. Beneath the grinding of the years, life gropes, shrieks,
+sweats. And in the evening men light their tobacco and open newspapers.
+
+Around a corner the boxes commence. One, two, three, four, and on into
+thousands stand houses made of stone, and their regimental masonry is
+like the ticking of a clock. Unvarying windows, doors identical--a
+stereotype of roofs and chimneys--these hold the homes of the crowds.
+Here the vague faces of the streets, the hurrying, enigmatic figures
+pumping in and out of offices and stores gather to sleep and breed. In
+the evening the crowds drift into boxes. The multiple destinations
+dwindle suddenly into a monotone. The confusions of the city's traffic;
+the winding and unwinding herds that made a picture for the eyes of Erik
+Dorn, individualize into little human solitudes. The stone houses stand
+ticking away the years, and within them men and women tick. Doors open
+and shut, lights go on and off, day and night drop a tick-tock across
+miles of roofs. And in the hour of the washing of dishes men kindle
+their tobacco and read the newspapers.
+
+Slowly, timidly, the city moves away from the little stone boxes.
+Automobiles and trees appear. Here begin the ornaments. Marble, bronze,
+carved and painted brick--a filigree and a scrollwork--put forth claims.
+The lords of the city stand girthed in ornaments. Knight and satrap have
+changed somewhat. Moat and battlement grimace but faintly from behind
+their ornaments. The tick-tock sounds through the carouse. Sleek, suave
+men and languorous, desirable women sit amid elaborations, sleep and
+breed in ornamental beds. Power wears new masks. Leadership has improved
+its table manners, its plumbing, and its God.
+
+Beautiful clocks, massive with griffiens and gargoyles, nymphs and
+scrollwork--they shelter heroes. But heroes have changed. Destiny no
+longer passes in the night--a masked horseman riding a lonely road.
+Instead, an old watchmaker winds up clocks, sleek men and desirable
+women. In the inner offices of the city the new heroes sit through the
+day, watchmakers themselves, winding and unwinding the immemorial crowds
+with new devices. But in the evening they too return to their ornamental
+boxes, and under Pompeian lamps, amid Renaissance tapestries, open
+newspapers.
+
+Alley box and manor, the tick-tock of the city has them all. Paved
+streets and window-pitted walls beat out a monotone. Lust and dream turn
+sterile eyes to the night. The great multiple tick-tock of the city
+waits another hour to pass.
+
+Wait, it reads a newspaper. On the west side of the city a man named
+Joseph Pryzalski has murdered a woman he loved, beating her head in with
+an ax, and subsequently cut his own throat with a razor. At the inquest
+there will be exhibited a note scribbled on a piece of wrapping-paper
+still redolent with herring ... "God in heaven, forgive me! She is dead.
+It is better. Oh, God, now my turn!" Deplorable incident.
+
+In the next column the exploits of three young men armed with guns.
+Entering a bank, the three young men shot and killed Henry J. Sloane,
+cashier; held half a dozen other names at bay, loaded their pockets with
+money, and escaped in a black automobile. The police are, fortunately,
+combing the city for the three young men and the black automobile. Thank
+God for the police moving cautiously through the streets with a large,
+a magnificent comb that will soon pick the three young men, their three
+guns, and their symbolical black automobile out of the city.
+
+Next, the daily report of excitements in Europe. The Austrian army has
+been annihilated. A part of the German army, seemingly the most
+important part, has also been annihilated. Day by day the armies of the
+Allies continue to devour, obliterate, grind into dust the armies of the
+Kaiser. Bulletin--black type demanding quick eye--twenty thousand
+unsuspecting Prussians walking across a bridge on the Meuse were blown
+up and completely annihilated. This occurred on a Monday. In the teeth
+of these persistent and vigorous annihilations, the Huns still continue
+their atrocities. Shame! In Liége, on a Tuesday, the blood-dripping Huns
+added another horror to their list of revolting crimes. Three citizens
+of Liége were executed. They died like heroes. There are other items on
+this general subject, including a message from the Pope.
+
+Alongside the war, as if in a next room, a woman has shot her lover on
+learning he was a married man. "Beauty Slays Soul-Mate; Shoots Self."
+... Annihilation on a smaller but more interesting scale, this.
+
+A street-car has crashed into a brewery wagon and at the bottom of the
+column a taxi has run over a golden-haired little girl at play.
+
+But why has Raymond S. Cotton, wealthy clubman and financier and
+prominent in north-shore society circles, disappeared? Society circles
+are agog. Sometimes society circles are merely disturbed. But they are
+always active. Society circles are always running around waving
+lorgnettes and exclaiming, "Dear me, and what do you think of this? I am
+all agog." The police are combing the city for a woman in black last
+seen with the prominent Mr. Cotton in a notorious café. But a man is to
+be hanged in the County Jail. "The doomed man ate a hearty breakfast of
+ham and eggs and seemed in good spirits." Fancy that!
+
+"Flames Destroy Warehouse, Two Firemen Hurt." This, in small apologetic
+type like a footnote on a timetable. Inconsiderate firemen who take up
+important space on a crowded day!
+
+Apology ceases. Here is something that requires no apology. It is
+extremely important. Wilbur Jennings, prominent architect, has defied
+the world and departed for a Love Bungalow in Minnesota with another
+man's wife. A picture of Wilbur in flowing bow tie and set jaws defying
+the world. Also of his inamorata in a ball gown, eyes lowered to a rose
+drooping from her hand. Various wives and chubby-faced children, and the
+inamorata's Siberian hound, "Jasper." What he said. What she said. What
+they said. Opinions of three ministers, roused on the telephone by
+inquiring reporters. The three divines are unanimous. But Wilbur's tie
+remains defiant.
+
+Arm in arm with Wilbur, his tie and his troubles, his epigrams and his
+Love Bungalow, sits an epidemic of clairvoyants. There is an epidemic
+of clairvoyants in the city. Five widows have been swindled. The police
+are combing the city for ... a prominent professor of sociology on the
+faculty of the local university interrupts. The prominent professor has
+been captured in a leading Loop hotel whither he had gone to divert
+himself with a suitcase, a handbook on sex hygiene, and an admiring
+co-ed.
+
+This, waiting for an hour to pass, the city reads. Crimes, scandals,
+horrors, holocausts, burglaries, arsons, murders, deceptions. The city
+reads with a vague, dull skepticism. Who are these people of the
+newspaper columns? Lusting scoundrels, bandits, heroes, wild lovers,
+madmen? Not in the streets or the houses that tick-tock through the
+night.... Somewhere else. A troupe of mummers wandering unseen behind
+the great clock face of the city--an always unknown troupe of rascally
+mummers for whom the police are continually combing and setting large
+dragnets.
+
+In the evening men light their tobacco and read the little wooden
+phrases of the press that squeal and mumble the sagas of the
+lawbreakers. Women come from the washing of dishes and eating of food
+and pick up the crumpled pages.... A scavenger digging for the disgusts
+and abnormalities of life, is the press. A yellow journal of lies,
+idiocies, filth. Ignoring the wholesome, splendid things of life--the
+fine, edifying beat of the tick-tock. Yet they read, glancing dully at
+headlines, devouring monotonously the luridness beneath headlines. They
+read with an irritation and a vague wonder. Tick, say the streets, and
+tock, say the houses; and within them men and women tick. To work and
+home again. Home again and to work. New shoes grow old. New seasons
+vanish. Years grind. Life sinks slowly away with a tick-tock on its
+lips.
+
+Yet each evening comes the ragged twopenny minstrel--a blear-eyed,
+croaking minstrel, and the good folk give him ear. No pretty words in
+rhythms from his tongue. No mystic cadences quaver in his voice. Yet he
+comes squealing out his song of an endless "Extra! All about the
+mysteries and the torments of life. All about the raptures, lusts, and
+adventures that the day has spilled. Read 'em and weep! Read 'em and
+laugh! Here's the latest, hot off the presses, from dreamers and
+lawbreakers. Extra!"
+
+Thus the city sits, baffled by itself, looking out upon a tick-tock of
+windows and reading with a wonder in its thought, "Who are these
+people?..."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+At ten o'clock the courts of the city crowd up. The important gentlemen
+who devote themselves to sending people to jail and to preventing them
+from being sent to jail, appear with fat books under their arms and
+brief-cases in their hands. They have slept well and eaten well and have
+arrived at their tasks with clear heads containing arguments. These are
+arguments vastly more important than poems that writers make or
+histories that dreamers invent. For they are arrangements of words which
+function in the absence of God. God is not exactly absent, to be sure,
+since the memory of Him lingers in the hearts of men. But it is a vague
+memory and at times unreliable. It would appear that He was on earth
+only for a short interval and failed to make any decided impression.
+
+Therefore, at ten o'clock, the courts crowd up and the important
+gentlemen bristling with substitute arrangements of words, address
+themselves to the daily business of demonstrating whether people have
+done right or wrong, and proving, or disproving also, how extensive are
+the sins which have been committed. Arrangements of words palaver with
+arrangements of words. There ensues a vast shuffling of words, a drone
+and a gurgle of syllables. The Case of the State of Illinois Versus Man.
+Order in the Court Room. "No talking, please...." "If it Please Your
+Honor, the Issue involved in this case is identical with the Issue as
+explicitly set forth in the Case of Matthews Versus Matthews, Illinois
+Sixth, Chapter Eight, Page ninety two, in which in the Third Paragraph
+the Supreme Court decided." The Court Instructs the Jury, "You are to be
+Guided by the Law as given You in these instructions and by the Facts as
+admitted in Evidence of the Case; the court Instructs the jury they are
+the judges of the law as well as of the fact but the Court further
+instructs the Jury before You decide for Yourselves that the Law is
+Otherwise than as given you by the Court, you are to exercise great Care
+and Caution in arriving at your decision...." "Gentlemen, have you
+arrived at your verdict?" "We have." "Let the clerk be handed the
+verdict." "We the Jury find the Defendant...."
+
+Thus the tick-tock of the great city grown stern and audible, grown
+verbose and insistent, speaks aloud in the courts. And here huddled on
+benches are the little troupes of mummers who have committed crimes. The
+mysterious sprinkling of marionettes not wound up by the watchmaker.
+Names that solidify for a moment into the ink headlines. Lusts, dreams,
+greeds, and manias sitting sad-faced and dolorous-eyed listening to a
+drone and a gurgle of words. Alas! The evil-doers and the doers of good
+bear a fatuous resemblance to each other. God Himself might well be
+confused by this curious fact. But fortunately there are arrangements of
+words capable of adjusting themselves to confusion, capable of
+tick-tocking in the midst of disorder. Tick, say the words and tock say
+the juries. Tick-tock, the cell door and the scaffold drop. Streets and
+windows, paintings of the Virgin Mary, beds of the fifty-cent
+prostitutes, cannon at Verdun and police whistles on crossings; the Pope
+in Rome, the President in Washington, the man hunting the alleys for a
+handout, the languorous women breeding in ornamental beds--all say a
+tick-tock. Behind the arrangements of words, confusion strikes a posture
+of guilt, strikes a posture of innocence. God Himself were a dolt to
+interfere. For if the song of the angels is somehow other than the
+tick-tock of men, the song of the angels is a music for heaven and the
+tick-tock of men is a restful drone in which the city hides the
+mysteries non-essential to the progress and pattern of its streets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+In and out of the crowded courtrooms of the city George Hazlitt pursued
+his career. Buried in the babble of words, his voice sounded from day to
+day with a firm, self-conscious vigor. To the thousand and one droners
+about him, the law was a remunerative game in which one matched
+platitude with bromide, legal precedent of the State of Illinois with
+legal precedent of the State of Indiana; in which right and wrong were a
+shuffle of words and the wages of sin dependent upon the depth of a
+counselor's wits.
+
+There was in Hazlitt, however, a puritanical fervor which withstood the
+lure of expediency. He entered the courts not to juggle with words,
+fence for loopholes out of which to drag dubious acquittals for his
+clients. His profession was a part of his nature. He saw it as a battle
+ground on which, under the babbling and droning, good and evil stood at
+unending grips. Good always triumphing. Evil always going to jail
+despite habeas corpuses, writs, and duces tecums.
+
+To question the nobility of the Hazlitt soul would be a sidestepping.
+There were among his friends, men of dubious integrity with elastic
+scruples and pliable consciences. But skepticism thrust in vain at the
+Hazlitt armor. In him had been authentically born the mania for
+conformity. He was a prosecutor by birth. Against that which did not
+conform, against all that squirmed for some expression beyond the
+tick-tock of life, he was a force--an apostle with a sword. Men
+pretending virtues as relentless as his own were often inclined to eye
+him askance. Virtue breeds skepticism among the virtuous. But there was
+a difference about Hazlitt.
+
+The basis of his philosophy was twofold. It embraced a rage against
+dreamers and a rage against lawbreakers. Lawbreakers were men and women
+who sacrificed the welfare and safety of the many for the sating of
+their individual greeds and lusts. He viewed the activities of
+lawbreakers with a sense of personal outrage. He, Hazlitt, was a part of
+society--a conscious unit of a state of mind, which state of mind was
+carefully written out in text-book editorials, and on tablets handed
+down by God from a mountaintop. Men who robbed, cheated, beat their
+wives, deserted their families, seduced women, shirked responsibilities,
+were enemies on his own threshold. They must be punished, mentally, by
+him; physically by the society to which he belonged.
+
+The punishing of evil-doers did more than eliminate them from his
+threshold. It vindicated his own virtue. Virtue increases in direct
+proportion with its ability to distinguish evil. The denunciation of
+evil-doers was the boasting of George Hazlitt, "I am not one of them."
+The more vigorous the denunciation, the more vigorous the boast. The
+hanging of a man for the crime of murder was a reward paid to George
+Hazlitt for his abstinence from bloodshed. The jailing of a seducer
+offered a tangible recompense for the self-denial which he, as a
+non-seducer, practiced.
+
+Apart from the satisfactions his virtue derived in establishing its
+superiority by assisting spiritually in the punishment of the
+unvirtuous, his rage against lawbreakers found itself equally on his
+devotion to law. He perceived in the orderly streets, in the miles of
+houses, in the smoothly functioning commerce and government of his day,
+a triumph of man over his baser selves. The baser selves of man were
+instincts that yearned for disorder. Of this triumph Hazlitt felt
+himself a part.
+
+Disorder he thought not only illegal, but debasing. The same virtue
+which prevented him from promenading in his pajamas in the boulevard
+stirred with a feeling of outrage against the confusion attending a
+street-car strike. His intelligence, clinging like some militant
+parasite to the stability of life, resented all agitations, material or
+spiritual, all violators who violated the equilibrium to which he was
+fastened.
+
+Against dreamers his rage was even deeper and more a part of his fiber.
+In the tick-tock of life Hazlitt saw a perfection--an evolution out of
+centuries of mania and disorder. The tick-tock was a perfection whose
+basic principle was a respect for others. This respect evolved out of
+man's fear of man and insuring a mutual protection against his predatory
+habits, was to Hazlitt a religion. He denied himself pleasures and
+convenient expressions for his impulses in order to spare others
+displeasure and inconvenience. And his nature demanded a similar
+sacrifice of his fellows--as a reward and a symbol of his own
+correctness. Such explanation of his conduct as, it is easier to follow
+the desires of others than to give expression to the desires of one's
+self, would have been, to Hazlitt, spiritual and legal sacrilege.
+
+In dreamers, the rising young attorney sensed a poorly concealed effort
+to evade this primal responsibility toward him and the society of which
+he was an inseparable part. Men who walked with their heads in the
+clouds were certain to step on one's feet. Dreamers were scoundrels or
+lunatics who sought to justify their unfitness for society by ridiculing
+it as unworthy and by phantasizing over new values and standards which
+would be more amiable to their weaknesses. There were political dreamers
+and dreamers in morals and art. Hazlitt bunched them together, branded
+them with an identical rage, and spat them out in one word, "nuts."
+
+Dreamers challenged his sense of superiority by hinting at soul states
+and social states superior to those he already occupied. Dreamers
+disturbed him. For this he perhaps hated them most. Their phantasies
+sometimes lifted him into moments of disorder, moments of doubt as
+revolting to his spirit as were sores revolting to his skin. Then also,
+dreamers had their champions--men and women who applauded their lunatic
+writings and cheered their lunatic theories.
+
+The punishment of lawbreakers vindicated his own virtue. But his rage
+against dreamers was such that their punishing offered him no sense of
+satisfactory vindication. His railing and ridicule against creatures who
+yearned, grimaced--neurasthenics, in short--left him with no fine
+feeling of the victorious sufficiency of himself. Thus to conceal
+himself from doubts always threatening an appearance, it was necessary
+for him to assume a viciousness of attitude not entirely sincere. So he
+read with unction political speeches and art reviews denouncing the
+phantasts of his day, and from them he borrowed elaborate invective. Yet
+his invective seemed like a vague defense of himself who should need no
+defense and thus again doubt raised a dim triumph in his heart.
+
+"Yes, I'm a reactionary," he would say. "I'm for the good old things of
+life. Things that mean something." And even this definition of faith
+would leave him unsatisfied.
+
+The paradox of George Hazlitt lay in the fact that he was himself a
+dreamer. Champions of order and champions of disorder share somewhat in
+a similarity of imaginative impulses.
+
+Six months had passed since Hazlitt had wept on the stairs as he left
+Rachel's room. Dry-eyed now and clear-headed, he sat one winter
+afternoon against his chosen background--the swarm and clutter of a law
+court. His brief-cases were packed. His law books had been bundled back
+to his office.
+
+He was waiting beside a vivid-faced young woman who sat twisting a
+tear-damp handkerchief in her hands. The jury that had listened for
+three weeks to the tale of the young woman's murder of a hospital
+interne who had seduced and subsequently refused to marry her, had
+sauntered out of the jury-box to determine now whether the young woman
+should be hanged, imprisoned, or liberated. The excitements attending
+the trial had brought a reaction to Hazlitt. He seemed suddenly to have
+lost interest in the business of his defense of the wronged young woman.
+This despite that he had for three weeks maintained a high pitch of rage
+against the scoundrel who had violated his client and subsequently
+driven her insane by even more abominable cruelties.
+
+Hazlitt's concluding remarks to the jury on the subject of dishonored
+womanhood and the merciless bestiality of certain male types had been
+more than a legal oration. He had expressed himself in it and had spent
+two full days lost in admiration of the echoes of his bombast.... "Men
+who follow the vile dictates of their lower natures, who sow the
+whirlwind and expect to reap the roses thereby; cynical, soulless men
+who take a woman as one takes a glove, to wear, admire, and discard;
+depraved men who prowl like demons at the heels of virtue, fawning their
+ways into the pure heart of innocence and glutting their beastly hungers
+upon the finest fruits of life--the beauty and sacrifice of a maiden's
+first love--are such creatures men or fiends, gentlemen of the jury?"
+And then ... "spurned, taunted by the sneers of one of these vipers, her
+pleadings answered with laughter and blows of a fist, the soul of
+Pauline Pollard grew suddenly dark. Where had been sanity, innocence,
+and love, now came insanity. Her girl's mind--like sweet bells jangled
+out of tune--brought no longer the high message of reason into her
+heart. We sitting here in this sunny courtroom, gentlemen, can think and
+reason. But Pauline Pollard, struggling in the embrace of a leering
+savage, listening to his fiendish mockeries of her virtue--the virtue he
+had stolen from her--ah! the soul and brain of Pauline Pollard vanished
+in a darkness. The law is the law, gentlemen. There is no one respects
+it more than I. If this girl killed a man coldly and with reason
+functioning in her mind, she is guilty. Hang her, gentlemen of the jury!
+But, gentlemen, the law under which we live, you and I and all of us,
+also says, and says wisely, that a mind not responsible for its acts, a
+soul whose balance has been destroyed by the shrieking voices of mania,
+shall not be held guilty...."
+
+The jury that had listened with ill-concealed envy to the recital of the
+amorous interne's promiscuous exploits, listened to Hazlitt and
+experienced suddenly a fine rage against the deceased. Out of the young
+attorney's florid utterings a question fired itself into the minds of
+the jurors. The deceased had done what they all desired to do, but dared
+not. This grinning, unscrupulous fiend of a hospital interne had
+blithely taken what he desired and blithely discarded what he did not
+desire. The twelve good men and true bethought them of their wives whom
+they did not desire and yet kept. And of the young women and the things
+of flesh and spirit they desired with every life-beat in them and yet
+did not take. Was this terrible denial which, for reasons beyond their
+incomplete brains, they imposed upon themselves, a meaningless,
+profitless business? The bland interne was dead and unfortunately beyond
+their punishment. Yet the fact that he had lived at all called for a
+protest--some definitely framed expression which would throw a halo
+about their own submission to women they did not desire, and their own
+denial to women they did desire. The law, whose arrangements of words
+are omniscient, provided such a halo.
+
+Dr. Hamel, the interne under discussion, was dead and buried, and
+therefore, properly speaking, not on trial. Nor yet was Pauline Pollard
+on trial. The persons on trial were twelve good men and true who were
+being called upon to decide, somewhat dramatically, whether they were
+right in living in a manner persistently repugnant to them; whether
+somebody else could get away with something which they themselves, not
+daring to attempt, bitterly identified as sin.
+
+In thirty minutes the still outraged jury was to file in and utter its
+dignified protest. Pauline Pollard would again be free. And twelve men
+would return to their homes with a high sense of having meted out
+justice, not to Pauline or her amorous interne, but to themselves.
+
+Enticing speculation, the yes or no of these twelve men, three days ago.
+But now Hazlitt sat with an odd indifference in his thought. The crowd
+waiting avidly for the dramatic moment of the verdict; living
+vicariously the suspense of the defendant--depressed him. The newspaper
+reporters buzzing around, forming themselves into relays between the
+press table and the door, further depressed him. He felt himself
+somewhere else, and the scene was a reality which intruded.
+
+There was a dream in Hazlitt which sometimes turned itself on like a
+light and revealed the emptiness of life without Rachel, the emptiness
+of courtrooms, verdicts, crowds. Yes, even the emptiness of the struggle
+between good and evil. He sat thinking of her now, contrasting the
+virginal figure of her with the coarseness of the thing in which he had
+been engaged. There was something about her ... something ... something.
+And the old refrain of his dream like a haunting popular ballad, started
+again here in the crowded courtroom.
+
+He remembered the eyes of Rachel, the quick gestures of her full-grown
+hands that moved always as in sudden afterthoughts. Virginal was the
+word that came most often to his thought. Not the virginity that spells
+a piquant preface to sensualism. She would always be virginal, even
+after they were married. In his arms she would remain virginal, because
+there was something in her, something beyond flesh. His heart choked at
+the memory of it, and his face saddened. Something he could not see or
+place in a circle of words, that did not exist for his eyes or his
+thought, and yet that he must follow. Even after he had won her there
+would be this thing he could not see; that trailed a dream song in his
+heart and kept him groping toward the far lips of the singer. Yes, they
+would marry. She had refused to see him twice since the night he had
+wept on the stair, leaving her. But the memories of that night had
+adjusted themselves. He had seen love in the eyes of Rachel as he held
+her hand. She had laughed love to him, given him for an instant the
+vision of beauty-lighted places waiting for him. The rest had been ...
+neurasthenia. Thus he had forgotten her words and his tears and the
+vivid moment when he had seen himself reflected in her eyes as a horror.
+He had tried twice to see her. He would continue trying, and some day
+she would again open the door to him, laughing, whispering ... "I'm so
+lonely. I'm glad you've come." In the meantime he would continue sending
+her letters. Once each week he had been writing her, saying he loved
+her. No answers had come. But this, curiously, did not anger him. He
+wrote not so much to Rachel as to a dream of her. She remained intact in
+her silence ... as he knew her ... an aloof, virginal being whose
+presence in the world was its own song.
+
+There was a commotion. Hazlitt looked about him and saw strange faces
+light up, strange eyes gleam out of the electric-glowing dusk. Snow was
+falling outside. Pauline's hand gripped his forearm. Her fingers burned.
+Raps of a gavel for silence. The judge spoke. A sad-faced man, with a
+heavy mustache combating his words, stood up in the jury-box and spoke.
+In a vast silence a clerk beside the judge's bench cleared his voice,
+moistened his lips, and spoke.
+
+So he had won another case. Pauline was free. Snow outside and rows of
+lighted windows. She was overwrought. Let her weep for a spell. Snow
+outside. Three weeks and one day. Everybody seemed happy with the
+verdict. People were good at heart. A triumph for decency cheered them.
+People were not revengeful at heart, only decent. Congratulations ...
+"Thank you, thank you! No, Miss Pollard has nothing to say now. She is
+too overcome. To-morrow...." The persistent press! What did they expect
+her to say? Absurd the way they kept interviewing her. The snow would
+probably tie up traffic. Eat downtown....
+
+"If you're ready, Miss Pollard."
+
+"Oh, I must thank the jurors."
+
+Handshakes. Twelve good men with relaxed faces. "There, there, little
+woman. Start over. We only did our duty and what was right by you."
+
+Everybody stretched his legs. Mrs. Hamel was sobbing. Well, she was his
+mother. It would only have satisfied her lower instincts of vengeance to
+have jailed Pauline.
+
+"All right, Miss Pollard." He took her arm. Curious, what a difference
+the verdict had made in her. She was a woman like any other woman
+now.... His overcoat might do for another season.... Pretty girl. Hard
+to get used to the idea she wasn't a defendant.
+
+"This way, Miss Pollard".... Take her to a cab and send her home. If
+she'd ever get started. What satisfaction did women find in kissing and
+hugging each other? "Thank God, Pauline. Oh, I'm so glad".... Girl
+friends. Well, she'd be back among them in a few days, and in a month or
+so the thing would be over.
+
+At last! Hazlitt blinked. The whirl of snow and crowds emptying out of
+buildings gave him a sense for an instant of having stepped into a
+strange world. The sharp cold restored his wandering energies and a
+realization of his victory in the courtroom brought him a belated glow.
+He was young, on an upgrade, able to command success.
+
+Hazlitt felt a sudden lusty kinship toward the swarm of bodies
+unwinding itself through the snowfall. A contact with other ... a
+pleasant, comforting contact. What more was life, anyway? A warmth in
+the heart that came from the knowledge of work well and honestly done.
+Look the world squarely in the eyes and say, "You have no secrets and I
+have no secrets. We're friends."
+
+"Shall we go to your office, Mr. Hazlitt?"
+
+Why there? Hazlitt smiled at the young woman. She was free. He patted
+the gloved hand on his arm and was surprised to see her eyes grow alive
+with tears.
+
+"I would like to talk to you--now that it's over. I feel lost. Really."
+She returned his smile as one determined to be brave, though lost.
+
+The snow hid the buildings and left their window lights drifting. Faces
+passing smiled as if saying, "Hello, we're all together in the same snow
+with no secrets from each other.... All friends".... Hazlitt walked with
+the girl through the streets. The traffic and the crowds were intimate
+friends and he spoke to them by patting Pauline's hand. An
+all's-well-with-the-world pat.
+
+"Eighth floor, please...."
+
+The elevator jiggled to a stop and they stepped into the corridor.
+Scrawny-faced women were crawling patiently down the floor. They slopped
+wet brushes before them, wrung mops out over pails, and crawled an inch
+farther down the floor. Hazlitt smiled. This, too, was a part of
+life--keeping the floors of the building scrubbed. He won law cases.
+Old women scrubbed floors. It fitted into an orderly pattern with a
+great meaning to its order. He paused for a moment to admire the
+cleanliness of the washed surface. Homage to the work of others--of old
+women on their knees scrubbing floors.
+
+"Well, it's all over, Miss Pollard."
+
+She was sitting beside the desk where she had sat the first time they
+had discussed her defense. Hazlitt, unloading his brief-case, looked at
+her. Uncommonly pretty. Trusting eyes. What a rotten fellow, the
+interne!
+
+"I don't know why I wanted to come here." Pauline's eyes stared sadly
+about the room. "I'm free, but ..." She covered her face and wept.
+
+"Now, now, Miss Pollard!"
+
+"Oh, it's still awful."
+
+"You'll forget soon."
+
+"I'll go away. Somewhere. Alone." A louder sob.
+
+"Please don't cry."
+
+Hazlitt watched her tenderly. The weeping increased. A lonesomeness and
+a vagueness were in the girl's heart. The tick-tock of the city had a
+foreign sound. She was a stranger in its streets. There had been
+something else, and now it was gone. A wilderness, a tension, the
+familiar face of Frankie Hamel telling her to go to hell one night and
+stop bothering him with her damned wailing ... and Frankie dying at her
+feet whispering, "What the devil, Pauline?" Then the trial. Hot and
+cold hours. A roomful of silent, open-mouthed faces listening to her
+weep, watching her squirm with proper shame and anguish as she told her
+story to the jurors ... the details of the abortion. "And then I
+couldn't stand it. I don't remember what happened. Oh, I loved him! I
+don't remember. He cursed me. He called me a ... Oh, God, names. Awful
+names! I told him I was going to kill myself. I couldn't live, disgraced
+... without his love. I'd bought a gun to kill myself. And he laughed. I
+don't remember after that; except that somehow he was ... he was dead.
+And I wasn't...."
+
+These things were gone. The trial was over and done. Now there was
+nothing left but the city with its street-cars and offices.
+
+"Oh, everything's so changed," she murmured. Hazlitt stood behind her
+chair, hand on her shoulder. Poor child! The law could not free her from
+the remorse for her crime and mistake. Lawlessness carried its own
+punishment. Virtue its own rewards, sin its own torments.
+
+"You'll forget," he answered softly. The law sometimes punished. But
+after all this was the real punishment ... beyond the power of the law
+to mete out. Punishment of sin. Conscience. Poor child! Inexorable fruit
+of evil. Despair, remorse....
+
+"You must forget. You're young. You can begin over. Please don't cry."
+
+Thus Hazlitt comforted her who was weeping not with remorse for what had
+been, but that it had gone. No word consciousness stirred her grief. An
+unintelligible sorrow, it swelled in her heart and filled her with
+helplessness. Life had gone from her. She was mourning for it. Mourning
+for a murderess and a sinner who had gone, abandoned her and left her a
+naked, uninteresting Pauline Pollard again--a nobody surrounded by
+nobodies. And once it had been different. Lighted faces listening to her
+in a room. Frankie whispering, "What the devil, Pauline?"
+
+A fresh burst of tears brought Hazlitt in front of her. Gently he moved
+her hands from her face.
+
+"You mustn't," he began over again.
+
+"Oh, I won't ever be able to...."
+
+"Yes you will, little girl."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+She was standing. Snow outside. Rows of lighted windows drifting.
+Thoughts slipped out of his head. Traffic probably tied up.
+
+"Please don't cry."
+
+She dropped her head against his shoulder and wept anew. It was nice to
+have somebody asking her not to cry. It made it easier and more
+purposeful to weep.
+
+Hazlitt sighed. Tears ... tears ... the live odor of hair. Arms that
+felt soft. She was mumbling close to him, "I can't help it. Please
+forgive me."
+
+"Yes, yes! There, there!" Of course he would forgive her. Forgiveness
+made him glow. But as he spoke his voice depressed him. What should he
+do? Could he help her? What was life, anyway? Snow outside and rows of
+lighted windows drifting. Her body close, warm, and saddening. The
+firmness of his nerves dissolved. He had his sorrow too ... Rachel. Far
+away. Drifting like the snow outside. Rachel ... the odor of hair
+brought her back. Should he cry? Her knees had touched him once like
+this. She had held her arm about his shoulder once, like this. But, oh,
+so different!... The girl seemed to come closer to him.
+
+He had been holding a stranger politely. Now the stranger relaxed. Soft,
+warm, familiar body. He grew frightened. Somehow the clinging of the
+girl's body, the murmur of her tears, brought a sorrow into his heart. I
+am not Rachel, but I am like her.... What made him think that? Yes, she
+was like her, warm, soft, and woman. Like her--like her. Why had they
+kissed? And her hands clasping nervously at his shoulders? She was not
+in love? Not Rachel. But she wanted something. And he too. Something
+that was a dream song. Here were the lips of the singer, eager, reaching
+to his own. Pressing, asking more. How had this happened? Should he
+speak? But what? Nothing to say. Had he forgotten Rachel? Remembering
+Rachel? Who was this? The questions blurred. Rachel, sang his heart. For
+a moment he embraced the warm shadow of a dream. And then a woman was
+offering herself to him. No dream now. Her thighs riveted themselves
+against him. Under her clothes her body seemed to be moving, coming to
+him.
+
+Hazlitt grew dizzy. He had been consoling her. No more. Now what? He
+threw his strength into his embrace. Their bodies moved together.
+
+"Oh ..." A moan as if she were still weeping. Her lips parted in
+desperate surrender. Her kiss took the breath out of him.
+
+"Dearest!" His voice carried him out of her arms. He knew suddenly that
+but for the word and the familiar sound of his voice he would have
+possessed her. But the word rang an alarm in his ears. Fright, nausea,
+relaxed muscles. A wiliness in his thought.... "Do you feel better now?"
+
+She failed to hear. Her fingers still clutched.
+
+"There ... there, don't cry!" He felt cold. His hands on her arms
+pressed them gently away, his fingers patting them with a fatherly
+diapason. George Hazlitt, attorney-at-law.
+
+"Better now, Pauline?" An error to have called her Pauline. Look bad in
+the record. Committed him to "Pauline."
+
+"Oh, George!"
+
+The thought of Rachel listened in amazement ... George ... Pauline.
+Dearest! He must be careful. She had grown numb against him. A numb
+woman sewed to his lapels. He lowered her as if she were lifeless and he
+fearful of disturbing her. She looked harmless in a chair. Was it
+possible to talk now? Not yet. Take her hand; careful not to squeeze it.
+Pat it as he'd done in the street. An all's-well-with-the-world pat.
+
+Somebody rattled the doorknob. Hazlitt started eagerly. Relief. But,
+good God, no lights in the office. The cleaners would come in and think
+things. Her hair in disorder and her face smeared with weeping would
+make them think things. An oath disentangled itself from his confusion.
+The door opened. Two scrawny-faced women with mops and brooms....
+
+"It's all right. Go ahead. We're just leaving. Are you ready, Miss
+Pollard?"
+
+The Miss Pollard was a masterpiece. But did it deceive the mops and
+brooms? Damn them! They walked arm in arm down the corridor.
+
+"I think the elevators have stopped. Wouldn't it be a joke if we had to
+walk down?"
+
+She refused to answer. Witness remains silent. Why couldn't she be
+interested in jokes?... the woman of it. Nothing had happened. She had
+nothing to think about. Why not jokes? He frowned at the grilling of the
+elevator door. An elevator bobbed up.
+
+In the street, "I'll get a cab, Miss Pollard." Take a firm stand and not
+call her Pauline again. But she was silent. Nothing had happened. He
+grew frightened. She was trying to bulldoze him by pretending. Bundle
+her into a cab and get rid of her.
+
+Suddenly, as if he'd been thinking it out when he hadn't, "You must
+forgive me for--that. I didn't mean to, please."
+
+Anything rather than her silence. Even an apology. Nothing had happened,
+but he would apologize anyway to be on the safe side. She looked at him
+and said, "Oh!"
+
+"Please, Miss Pollard, you make me feel like a cur."
+
+A chauffeur leaned forward from his seat and thrust open the cab door.
+Pauline entered without hesitation. She might have the decency to
+hesitate when he was apologizing for nothing. Hazlitt stuck his head in
+after her. The thing was ludicrously unfinished and he was making an ass
+of himself. She should have hesitated.
+
+"Tell your mother I hope she'll be better soon."
+
+"Where to, mister?"
+
+He gave an address and added, "Just a minute, please."
+
+Hazlitt reëntered the cab with his head. The thing was still unfinished.
+Wishing good health to her mother made it worse--as if he were trying to
+cover up something. He must be frank. Drag everything into the open and
+show he wasn't afraid. But she was weeping again. He paused in
+consternation. Her hand reached toward him. A voice, vibrant and soft
+with tears, whispered in the gloom of the cab. A love voice. "Good-by,
+George!"
+
+He watched the tail light dart through the traffic and then began his
+defense. Gentleman of the jury ... jury ... he had done nothing. It was
+she who had suggested the office. A low, vulgar ruse to trap him. The
+evidence was plain on that point. Overruled. But he had attempted only
+to console her. Irrelevant and immaterial to the facts at issue in the
+case. But she had flung her arms around him. Not he! Never he! The woman
+was mad. Yes, a mad woman. Dangerous. She had done the same to the
+interne. Overruled. Overruled. What? Frank Hamel, gentleman of the jury,
+glutting his beastly hungers on the finest fruit of life--the innocence
+and sacrifice of a maiden's first love. No, not Hamel. Hazlitt. Are such
+creatures men or fiends? What was he thinking about Oh, yes, the
+interne. Dead, buried ... we, the jury, find the defendant not
+guilty.... But the dead interne was saying something.
+
+For moments George Hazlitt looked out upon a new world--a miserable
+world--vast, blurred, upside down. People were moving in it. Dead
+internes. They passed with faces intent upon their own solitudes.
+Buildings were in it. They burst a skyrocket of windows into the night.
+There was snow. It fell twisting itself out of the darkness. Familiar
+faces, buildings, snow. Theater façades making a jangle of light through
+the storm. Entrances, exits, cars clanging, figures hurrying, signs
+sputtering confusion in the snow. All familiar, all a part of the great
+tick-tock of the city.
+
+Hazlitt stopped and stared at the familiar night of the streets. A gleam
+and a flurry were sweeping his eyes. Snow. But faces and buildings and
+lights were a part of it. They swarmed and danced about him, sending a
+shout to his heart. "We're upside down ... we're upside down ... heels
+in air.... She made love to the interne as she did to you ... and the
+fiend is dead. Lies ... lies ... but who gives a damn?"
+
+The horn of a motor screeched. A woman and a man pattered by on a run,
+leaving a trail of laughter. From afar came the sound of voices--of
+street evangels singing hymns on a corner. The soul of George Hazlitt
+grew sick. Night hands fastened themselves about his throat. Upside down
+... heels in air. The things he had said to the jury were lies. Lies and
+disorder. Right and wrong. God in heaven, what were they, if not right
+and wrong?
+
+The thing came to Hazlitt without words, with a gleam and a flurry as of
+snow. He stood blind--a little snow-covered figure shivering and lost in
+a lighted, crowded street. All because a woman, warm and clinging, had
+kissed him on the mouth and moved her body. But once she had kissed
+another man thus--on the mouth, with her body moving, and therein lay a
+new world--a world of flying-haired Mænads and growling satyrs that
+lived behind the tick-tock of windows. Standing in the snowstorm an
+insane notion took possession of Hazlitt. It had to do with Evil. Order
+was an accident. Men and women were evil. The tick-tock was a pretense.
+
+The notion passed. Doubt needs thought to feed upon, and Hazlitt gave it
+none. Or he would have ended as Hazlitt and become someone else. He
+walked again with a silence in his head. Another block, and life had
+again focused itself into tableaux. The moment of doubt had shaken him
+as if rough hands had reached from an alley and clutched wildly at his
+throat. But it had gone, and the memory of it too was gone. Hands that
+had nobody behind them; emotion that came without the stabilizing
+outline of words. So the world stood again on its feet. Tick-tock, said
+the world to George Hazlitt; and his brain gave an answer, "Tick-tock!"
+
+For the paradox of Hazlitt was not that he was a thinker, but a dreamer.
+His puritanism had put an end to his brain. Like his fellows for whose
+respect and admiration he worked, he had bartered his intelligence for a
+thing he proudly called Americanism, and thought for him had become a
+placid agitation of platitudes. But he could still dream. His emotions
+avenged his stupidity. Walking in the street--he felt a desire to
+walk--he shut himself in. It seemed to him now that his love had become
+a part of the snow and the far-away dark of the sky. Rachel ... Rachel,
+his thought called as if summoning something back.
+
+It came to him slowly--the image of the virginal one--doubly sweet and
+beautiful now that he was unclean. How had it happened? She had been
+weeping; he comforting her. Two strangers, they had sat in his office.
+One a murderess weeping for her sins; the other a kindly hearted,
+clean-minded attorney consoling her, pointing to her the way of hope.
+And then like two animals they had stood sucking at each other's breath.
+God, what could he do? Nothing. He was unclean. He recalled with a dread
+the thought that had come to him in the embrace ... was she Rachel? Yes,
+she had been Rachel and he had lowered his dream to her lips, as if in
+the lust of a strange woman's kiss there lay the image of Rachel, the
+virginal mystery of Rachel. If he had been man enough not to drag the
+memory of Rachel into it, it would be easy now. But he would look
+squarely at the facts, anyway. That must be his punishment and his
+penance. Yes, say it ... it was with his love for Rachel he had embraced
+and almost possessed the body of a stranger.
+
+Hazlitt quickened his walking. He was confronted with the intricate
+business of forgiving himself. He felt shame, but shame was something
+that could be walked off. Faster ... with an amorous mumble soothing him
+and the hurt. After all, was it so important? Yes ... no. Forgive
+himself, but not too quickly. He walked.... Words made circles in his
+head--abject and sorrowful circles about the dream of the virginal one.
+
+A man with a curious smile stopped in front of him to light a pipe.
+Hazlitt paused and looked at the street. He would take a car. His legs
+were tired. The wind and snow put out the match of the man who was
+lighting a pipe. Hazlitt looked at him. What was he smiling about? We're
+all in the snow ... all without secrets in the snow. Hail fellows of the
+street ... Curious, he should feel sad for a man who was smiling on a
+street corner. Tiredness. The man was cursing the snow good-humoredly.
+Suddenly the pipe was lighted and the man seemed to have forgotten it.
+His eyes gleamed for an instant across Hazlitt's face, and with an
+abrupt nod of recognition the man passed on. Walking swiftly, bent
+forward, vanishing behind a flurry of snow.
+
+Hazlitt peered down the track for his car. He wondered how the man knew
+him. It pleased his vanity to be recognized by people he couldn't place.
+It showed he was somebody. Yes, George Hazlitt, attorney-at-law. He
+recalled ... they had met once in an office. A newspaperman--editor or
+something. Probably looking for news. Hazlitt was glad he had been
+recognized. The man would think of him as he walked on in the snow--of
+his victory in the courtroom and his future. That was part of life, to
+be thought of and envied by others.
+
+Beside him a newsboy raised a shout ... "Extra! Pauline Pollard
+acquitted!..." People would read about it in their homes. His name.
+Wonder who he was. A voice across the street answered, "Extra! Germans
+bombard Paris!..." The damned Huns! Why didn't America put an end to
+their dirty business by rushing in?
+
+He stepped into the warm street-car and sat staring moodily out
+of the window. He was a part of life, but there was something
+beyond--a--mystery. "Extra!..." He should have bought a paper. There was
+the newspaper fellow again, still walking swiftly, bent forward, staring
+into the snow.... Oh, yes, Erik Dorn. He had met him once.... The car
+passed on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Erik Dorn laughed as he walked swiftly through the snow in the street.
+It seemed to him he had been laughing incessantly for a week, and that
+he would continue to laugh forever. His thought played delightedly with
+his emotions ... a precocious child with new fantastic toys. He was in
+love. A laughable business!
+
+Five months of uncertainty had preceded the laugh. An irritated,
+inexplicable moodiness as if the shadow of a disease had come into his
+blood. On top of this moodiness a violence of temper, a stewing,
+cursing, fuming about. A five months' quarrel with his wife....
+
+His love-making had been somewhat curious. Walks with Rachel--a
+whirligig of streets, faces, words. A dance and a flash of words, as if
+he were exploding into phrases. As if his vocabulary desired to empty
+itself before Rachel. His garrulity amazed him. Everything had to be
+talked about. There was a desperate need for talk. And when there was
+nothing to talk about for the moment, his words abhorring idleness, fell
+to inventing emotions--a complete set of emotions for himself and for
+Rachel. These were discussed, explained, and forgotten.
+
+Finally the strange talk that had ended a week ago--a last desperate
+concealment of emotion and desire in a burst of glittering phrases.
+Phrases that whirled like the exotic decorations about the wild body of
+a dancer, becoming a dance in themselves, deriving a movement and a
+meaning beyond themselves. Then the end of concealment. An exhausted
+vocabulary sighed, collapsed. A frantic discarding of ornaments and the
+nude body of the dancer stood posturing naïvely, timidly. Therewith an
+end to mystery. The thing was known.
+
+It had happened during one of their walks. Leaden clouds over day-dark
+pavements. Warehouses, railroad tracks, factories--a street toiling
+through a dismantled world. Their hands together, they paused and
+remained staring as if at a third person. He had reached out rather
+impersonally and taken her hand. The contact had shocked him into
+silence. It was difficult to breathe.
+
+"Rachel, do you love me?"
+
+She nodded her head and pressed his hand against her cheek. They walked
+on in silence. This brought an end to talk. Talk concealed. There was
+nothing more to conceal. His vocabulary sighed as if admitting defeat
+and uselessness. At a corner grown noisy with wagons and trucks Rachel
+stopped. Her eyes opened to him. He looked at her and said, as if he had
+fallen asleep "I too am in love." He laughed dreamily. "Yes, I've been
+since the beginning. Curious!"
+
+She might laugh at him. It was evident he had avoided making love to her
+during the five months in fear of that. The only reason he hadn't
+embraced, kissed, and protested affection five months ago was the
+possibility that she would laugh--and perhaps go away.
+
+Even now, despite the absence of laughter, a part of the fear he had
+still lingered. He was no longer Erik Dorn, man of words and mirror of
+nothings. He had said he loved her. Avoiding, of course, the direct
+remark. But he had indicated it rather definitely. It would undoubtedly
+lessen him to her, make him human. She had admired him because he was
+different. Now he was like everybody else saying an "I love you" to a
+woman. Perhaps he should unsay it. Again, a dreamy laugh. But it made
+him happy. A drifting, childish happiness. He looked at her. Her eyes
+struck him as marvelously large and bright. Yet in a curious way he
+seemed unaware of her. No excitement came to him. Decidedly there was
+something unsensual about his love--if it was love. It might be
+something else. It is difficult for an extremely married man to
+distinguish offhand. He desired nothing more than to stand still and
+close his eyes and permit himself to shine. Vague words traced his
+emotions. A fullness. A completion. An end of nothing. Thrills in his
+fingers. Remarkable disturbance of the diaphragm. To be likened to the
+languorous effects of some almost stimulating drug.
+
+In a great calm he slowly forgot himself, his words, and Rachel.
+Standing thus he heard her murmur something and felt his hand once more
+against her cheek. A pretty gesture. Then she was walking down the dark
+street, running from him. She had said good-bye. He awoke and cursed. A
+bewildering sensation of being still at her side as if he had gone out
+of himself and were following her. He remained thus watching the figure
+of Rachel until it disappeared and the street grew suddenly cold and
+empty. A strange scene mocked him. Strange smoke, strange warehouses,
+strange railroad tracks. Cupid awaking in a cinder patch.
+
+He walked on, still bewildered. Nothing had happened to him. Instead,
+something had happened to the streets. The city had suffered an
+amputation. There was something incomplete about its streets and crowds.
+His eye felt annoyed by it. He was not thinking of Rachel. He felt as if
+she had suddenly ceased to exist and left behind her an unexistence. It
+was this emptiness outside that for the moment annoyed and then
+frightened him. An emptiness that had something to give him now. His
+senses reached eagerly toward the figures of people and buildings and
+received nothing. What did he want of them? They were a pattern,
+intricate and precise, with nothing to give. Yet he wanted. Good God, he
+wanted something out of the streets of the city. Then he remembered, as
+if recalling some algebraic formula, "I'm in love." His laughter had
+started at that moment.
+
+At home it continued in him. Anna had gone to visit relatives in
+Wisconsin. He spent an hour writing her a long amorous letter. He was in
+love with Rachel, but a new notion had planted itself in him. Whatever
+happened, Anna must not be made unhappy. Love was not a reality. Anna
+and her happiness were the realities that must be carefully considered.
+This thing that had popped into life in the cinder patch was a
+mood--comparable to the mood of a thirsty man taking his first sip of
+water.
+
+" ... the memory of you comes before me," he scribbled to his wife, "and
+I feel sad. I am incomplete without you. Dear one, I love you. The
+streets seem empty and the hours drag...."
+
+In writing to his wife he seemed to recover a sense of virtue. He smiled
+as he sealed the envelope. "It must be an old instinct," he thought.
+"People are kindest to those they deceive. Thus good and evil balance."
+
+His father, sitting before a grate fire, desired to talk. He would talk
+to him in circles that would irritate the old man and make his eyes
+water more.
+
+"People don't live," he began. "To live is to have a dream behind the
+hours. To have the world offering something."
+
+"Yes, my son. Something ..."
+
+"Then the people outside one take on meaningful outlines. There comes a
+contact. One is a part of something--of a force that moves the stars,
+eh?"
+
+The old man nodded, and mumbled in his beard. Dorn felt a warmth toward
+his father. His stupidity delighted him. He would be able henceforth to
+talk to the old man and say, "I love Rachel," and the old man would
+think he was coining phrases for a profitless amusement. It would be the
+same with Anna. He would be able to make love to Anna differently
+hereafter. A rather cynical idea. He laughed and beamed at Isaac Dorn.
+Did it matter much whom one kissed as long as one had a desire for
+kissing? In fact, his desire for Rachel seemed at an end, now that he
+had mentioned it to her. A handclasp, a silence trembling with emotion,
+a sudden light in the heart--properly speaking, this was all there was
+to love. The rest was undoubtedly a make-believe. As he walked out to
+post the letter he tried to recall the emotions or ideas that had
+inspired him to marry Anna. There had undoubtedly been something of the
+sort then. But it had left no memory. Their honeymoon, of which she was
+always speaking, even after seven years, with a mist in her eyes--good
+Lord, had there been a honeymoon?
+
+He spent the next afternoon with Rachel. A silence of familiarity had
+fallen upon them. There was a totality in silence. Walking through the
+streets beside her, Dorn mused, "Undoubtedly the thing is over. It
+begins even to bore a bit." He noted curiously that he was unconscious
+of the streets. No tracing their pictures with phrases. They were
+streets, and that was an end of it. They belonged where they were.
+
+His eyes dropped to his companion. A face with moonlight grown upon it.
+Beautiful, yes. Sometime he would tell her. Pour it out in words. There
+was a paradox about the situation. He was obviously somewhat bored. Yet
+to leave her, to put an end to their strolling through the strange
+moments, would hurt. Had he ever lived before? Banal question. "No, I've
+never lived before. Living is somewhat of a bore, a beautiful bore."
+
+When they parted she stood looking at him as one transfixed.
+
+"Erik!"
+
+She made his name mean something--a world, a heaven. For an instant his
+laughter ended and a sadness engulfed him. Then once more he was alone
+and laughing. Rachel was walking away, something rather ridiculously
+normal about her step. Yes, he would laugh forever. Lord, what a jest!
+Like water coming out of a stone. Laugh at the crowds and buildings that
+desired to annoy him by sweeping toward him the memory of Rachel saying
+"Erik!" He diverted himself, as he hurried to his home, by staring into
+people's eyes and saying, "This one has a dream. That one hasn't. This
+one loves. The streets hurt him. That one is dead. The streets bury
+him."
+
+On the third day the bombardment of Paris interfered with his plans. He
+remained too late in the office to walk with Rachel. As he sauntered
+about the shop, assisting and directing at the extras and replates, he
+vaguely forgot her. Word had come from the chief to hold the paper open
+until nine o'clock. If Paris failed to fall by nine everybody could go
+home and spend the rest of the night wrangling with his wife or looking
+at a movie. If it fell by nine there would be a final extra.
+
+"I hope the damned town falls five minutes after nine," growled Warren,
+"if it's got to fall. Let it fall for the morning papers. What the hell
+are they for, anyway? I've got a rotten headache."
+
+Dorn told him to run along. "I'll handle the copy, if there is any. A
+history of Paris out of the almanac will answer the purpose, I guess."
+
+Warren folded his newspapers and left. Dorn sat scribbling possible
+headlines for the next re-plate: "Germans Bombard Paris ..." and then a
+bank in smaller type: "French Capital Silent. Communication Cut Off." He
+paused and added with a sudden elation, "Civilization on Its Knees."
+
+The hum and suspense of the night-watch pleased him. He liked the idea
+of sitting in a noisy place waiting to flash the news of the fall of
+Paris to the city. And the next day the four afternoon papers would
+carry a small box on the front page announcing to the public that, as
+usual, each of them had been first on the street with the important
+announcement. The fall of Paris! His thought mused. Babylon Falls....
+Civilization on Its Knees. The City Wall of Jericho Collapses. Carthage
+Reduced to Ashes. Rome Sacked by Huns. Yes, there had been magnificent
+headlines in the past. Now a new headline--Paris. There would be a
+sudden flurry; boys running between desks; Crowley trying to shout and
+achieving a frightful whisper; a smeared printer announcing some ghastly
+mistake in the composing room; and Paris would be down--fallen. Nothing
+left to do except grin at the idea of the morning papers cursing their
+luck. He sat, vaguely hoping there might be tidal waves, earthquakes,
+cataclysms. On this night his energies seemed to demand more work than
+the mere fall of Paris would occasion. "Might as well do the thing up
+brown and put an end to the world--all in one extra," he smiled.
+
+A messenger boy brought a telegram. He opened it and read,
+
+"I am going away. RACHEL."
+
+All a part of the night's work. Killing off Paris. Answering telegrams
+to vanishing sweethearts. He stuffed the message into his pocket. On
+second thought he tore it up. Anna was coming home the next day. "Wife
+Finds Tell-tale Telegram...." Another headline.
+
+"Wait a minute, boy."
+
+The messenger lounged into an editor's chair. Dorn scribbled on a
+telegraph blank:
+
+"Wait till Friday. I must see you once more. I will call for you at
+seven o'clock Thursday. We have never been together in the night. ERIK."
+
+The messenger boy and the telegram disappeared. Still the laughter
+persisted. There was a jest in the world. Paris seemed a part of it.
+Everything belonged to it.
+
+"I wonder what the writers of Paris are saying," Crowley inquired.
+
+"Enjoying themselves, as usual," Dorn answered. "I'll tell you a secret.
+We live in a mad and inspiring world."
+
+There was no final headline that night. Wednesday brought problems of
+conduct. It was obvious that Rachel was going away because of Anna. Her
+departure was a fact which presented itself with no finality. It
+resembled an insincere thought of suicide. Rachel, having gone, would
+still remain. The emotional prospects of the farewell closed his thought
+to the future. He spent Wednesday waiting for a seven o'clock on
+Thursday. An hour had detached itself from hours that went before and
+that followed. At home in the evening he endeavored to avoid his wife.
+His letters to her during her visit in Wisconsin had brought her back
+violently joyous. She desired love-making. He listened to her pour out
+ardent phrases and wondered why he felt no sense of betrayal toward her.
+"Conscience," he thought, "seems to be a vastly over-advertised
+commodity." He sat beside Anna, caressing her hand, smiling back into
+her passion-filled eyes, and gently checking an impulse in him to
+confide to her that he was in love with Rachel. It would be pleasant to
+tell her that, provided she would nod her head understandingly, smile,
+and stroke his hair; and answer something like, "You mean Rachel is in
+love with you. Well, I can't blame her. I'm horribly jealous, but it
+doesn't matter." An incongruous sanity warned him to avoid confessions,
+so he contented himself by rolling the situation over on his tongue,
+tasting the jealousy of his wife, the drama of the dénouement, and
+remaining peacefully smiling in his leather chair.
+
+Thursday arrived. The afternoon dragged. He sat at his desk wondering
+whether he was sorrowful or not. The thought of meeting Rachel elated
+him. The thought that she was leaving and that he would not see her
+again seemed a vague thing. He put it out of his mind with ease and
+devoted himself to dreaming what he would say, the manner in which he
+would bid farewell.
+
+Walking now swiftly in the street toward Rachel's home his thought still
+played with his emotions. It was this that partially caused his
+laughter. Also, now that he was going to see her, there was again the
+sense of fullness. An unthinking calm, complete and vibrant, wrapped him
+in an embrace. The fullness and the calm brought laughter. His thought
+amused him with the words, "There's a flaming absurdity about
+everything."
+
+He delighted in dressing his emotions in absurd phrases, in words that
+grimaced behind the rouge of tawdry ballads. Thinking of Rachel and
+feeling the sudden lift of sadness and bewilderment in his blood, he
+murmured aloud: "You never know you have a heart till it begins to
+break." The words amused him. There were other song titles that seemed
+to fit. He tried them all. "I don't know why I love you, but I do-o-o."
+Delightful diversion--airing the mystic desires of his soul in the
+tattered words of the cabaret yodelers. "Just a smile, a sigh, a
+kiss...." A sort of revenge, as if his vocabulary with its intricate
+verbal sophistications were avenging itself upon interloping emotions.
+And, too, because of a vague shame which inspired him to taunt his
+surrender; to combat it with an irony such as lay in the ridiculous
+phrases. This irony gave him a sense of being still outside his emotions
+and not a submissive part of them. "I am still Erik Dorn, master of my
+fate and captain of my soul," he smiled. But perhaps it was most of all
+the reaction of a verbal vanity. His love was not yet pumping rhapsodies
+into his thought. Instead, the words that came seemed to him somehow
+banal and commonplace. "I love you. I want to be with you all the time.
+When we are together things grow strange and desirable." Amorous
+mediocrities! So he edited them into a further banality and thus
+concealed his inability to give lofty utterance to his emotions by
+amusing himself with deliberately cheapened insincerities. "Saving my
+linguistic face," he thought suddenly, and laughed again.
+
+Rachel was sad. They left her home in silence.
+
+"We'll go toward the park," he announced. It irritated him to utter
+matter-of-fact directions. Why when he had had nothing to talk about had
+he been able to talk? And now when there was something, there seemed
+little to say? Words were obviously the delicate fruit of insincerity.
+Silence, the dark flower of emotion.
+
+"I must go away." Rachel slipped her arm into his. He stared at her. She
+seemed more sorrowful than tears. This annoyed. It was ungrateful for
+her to look like weeping. But she was going from him. He tried to think
+of her and himself after they had parted, and succeeded only in
+remembering she was at his side. So he laughed quietly.
+
+"Yes, to-morrow the guillotine falls," he answered. "To-night we dance
+in each other's arms. Immemorial tableau. Laughter, love, and song
+against the perfect background--death. Let's not cheat ourselves by
+being sad. To-morrow will be time enough."
+
+He realized he was collapsing into a pluck-ye-the-roses-while-ye-may
+strain, and stopped, irritated. There was something he should talk to
+her about--the causes of her departure. Plans. Their future. Was there a
+future? Undoubtedly something would have to be arranged. But his mind
+eluded responsibilities.
+
+"I'm happy," he whispered. "I talk like a fool because I feel like one.
+Heedless. Irresponsible. You've given me something and I can only look
+at it almost without thought."
+
+"It seems so strange that you should love me," she answered. "Because
+I've loved you always and never dreamed of you loving." She had become
+melting, as if her sadness were dissolving into caresses. "Let's just
+walk and I'll remember we're together and be happy, too."
+
+Thoughts vanished from him. He released her hand and they walked in
+silence with their arms together. A sleep descended. Their faces,
+tranquil and lighted by the snow, offered solitudes to each other.
+
+It was now snowing heavily. A thick white lattice raised itself from the
+streets against the darkness. The little black hectagonals of night
+danced between its spaces. Long white curtains painted themselves on the
+shadows of the city. The lovers walked unaware of the street. The snow
+crowded gently about them, moving patiently like a white and silent
+dream over their heads. Phantom houses stared after them. Slanting
+rooftops spread wings of silver in the night and drifted toward the
+moon. The half-closed leaden eyes of windows watched from another world.
+
+The snow grew heavier, winding itself about the yellow lights of street
+lamps and crawling with sudden life through the blur of window rays.
+Beneath, the pavements opened like white and narrow fans in a far-away
+hand. Black figures leaning forward emerged for an instant from behind
+the falling snow and disappeared again.
+
+Still the lovers moved without words--two black figures themselves, arms
+together, leaning forward, staring with burning hearts and tranquil
+faces out of a dream, as if they did not exist, had never existed; as if
+in the snow and night they had become an unreality, walking deeper into
+mists--yet never quite vanishing but growing only more unreal. Snow and
+two lovers walking together with the world like a dream over their
+heads, with life lingering in their eyes like a delicately absent-minded
+guest--the thought drifted like a memory through their hearts.
+
+Then slowly consciousness of themselves returned, bringing with it no
+relief of words. Their hearts seemed to have grown weak with tears, and
+in their minds existed nothing but the dark vagueness of despair--the
+despair of things that die with their eyes open and questing. Faces
+drifting like circles of light in the storm. At the end of the street a
+park. Here they would vanish from each other. The snow would continue
+falling gently, patiently, upon an empty world.
+
+The cold of Rachel's fingers pressed upon his hand. Her face turned
+itself to him. A moment of happiness halted them both as if they had
+been embraced. A wonder--the why and where of her leaving. But an
+indifference deprived him of words.
+
+"This is all of life," he muttered. Rachel staring at him nodded her
+head in echo. They were standing motionless as if they had forgotten how
+to live. Beyond this there were no gestures to make, nowhere to go. They
+had come to a horizon--an end. Here was ecstasy. What else? Nothing.
+Everything, here. Sky and night and snow had fallen about their heads in
+an ending. They stood as if clinging to themselves. Dorn heard a soft
+laugh from her.
+
+"I thought I had died," Rachel was murmuring. He nodded his head in
+echo.
+
+A lighted window lost in the snow drew their eyes. People sat in a
+room--warm, stiff figures. The lovers stood smiling toward it. Words,
+soft and mocking, formed themselves in Dorn. A pain was pulling his
+heart away. The ecstasy that had raised him beyond his emotions seemed
+suddenly to have cast him into the fury of them. He would say mocking
+things--absurd phrases to which he might cling. Or else he must weep
+because of the pain in him. "Two waifs adrift in a storm, peering into a
+bakery window at the cookies." That was the key. A laugh at the dolorous
+asininity of life. "Face to face with the Roman Pop U Lace. We who are
+about to die salute you." Laugh, a phrase of laughter or he would stand
+blubbering like an imbecile.
+
+He struggled for the theatric gesture and found himself shivering at
+Rachel's side, his arm clinging about her shoulders. Lord, what a jest!
+After the moment they had lived through, to stand round-eyed and
+blubbering before the gingerbread vision of joys behind a lighted
+window. The whine of a barrel-organ. The sentimental whimpering of a
+street-corner _Miserere_. And he must weep because of it--he who had
+stood with his head thrust through the sky. His thought, like an
+indignant monitor, collapsed with scoldings. Let it come, then! With a
+sigh he gave himself to tears, and they stood together weeping.
+
+The little lighted room seemed an enchantment floating in the scurry of
+the storm. It reached with warm fingers into their hearts, whispering a
+broken barrel-organ lullaby to them. Life shone upon them out of the
+lighted window and behind it the world of rocking-chairs and fireplaces,
+wall pictures and table lamps, lay like a haven smiling a good-by to
+them. Their hearts become tombs, closed slowly and forever upon a
+vision.
+
+"The world will be a black sky and the memory of you like a shining star
+that I watch endlessly." He listened to his words. They brought a dim
+gladness. His phrases had finally capitulated to his love. He could talk
+now without the artifice of banality to hide behind. Talk, say the
+unsayable, bring his love in misty word lines before his eyes; look and
+forget a moment.
+
+Rachel's voice at his side said, "I love you so. Oh, I love you so!"
+
+Yes, he could talk now. His heart wagged a tongue. The pain in him had
+found words. The mystic desires and torments--words, words.
+
+"We'll remember, years later, and be grateful we didn't bury our love
+behind lighted windows, but left it to wander forever and remain forever
+alive. Rachel, my dear one."
+
+"I love you so!" she wept.
+
+More words ... "it would have been always the same. We've lived one
+moment and in all of life there's nothing more than what we've had.
+Lovers who grow old together live only in their yesterdays. And their
+yesterdays are only a moment--till the time comes when their yesterdays
+die. Then they become little, half-dead people, who wait in lighted
+rooms, empty handed, fumbling greedily with trifles...."
+
+"I love you!" She made a refrain for him. "I don't know the things you
+do. I only love you."
+
+"Rachel ..." He had no belief in what he was saying. The things he knew?
+What? Nothing but pain and torment. Yet his heart went on wagging out
+words: "All life is a parting--a continual and monotonous parting. And
+most hideous of all, a parting with dead things. A saying good-by to
+things that no longer exist. We part with living things, and so keep
+them, somehow. Your face makes life for the moment familiar. Visions
+bloom like sad flowers in my heart. Your body against mine brings a
+torment even into my words. Oh, your weeping's the sound of my own
+heart dying. Rachel, you are more wonderful than life. I love you! I
+feel as if I must die when you go away. Crowds, streets, buildings--all
+empty outlines. Empty before you came, emptier when you have gone."
+
+He paused. His thought whispered: "I'll remember things I say. I mustn't
+say too much. I'm sad. Oh, God, what a mess!"
+
+They walked into the park. A sudden matter-of-factness came into Dorn's
+mind. He had sung something from his heart. Yet he remembered with
+astonishment it had been a wary song. He had not asked her to stay. Had
+he asked her she would have remained. Curious, how he acquiesced in her
+going. A sense of drama seemed to demand it. When he had received her
+message the night in the office he had agreed at once. Why? Because he
+was not in love? This too, a make-believe, more colored, more persuasive
+than the others? Wrong. Something else. Anna. Anna was sending her away.
+The figure of Anna loomed behind their ecstasies. It stood nodding its
+head sorrowfully at a good-by in the snow.
+
+They were deep in the park. Trees made still gestures about them. The
+ivory silhouettes of trees haunted the distance. A spectral summer
+painted itself upon the barren lilac bushes. Beneath, the lawn slopes
+raised moon faces to the night. Deep in the storm the ghost of a bronze
+fountain emerged and remained staring at the scene.
+
+It was cold. The wind had died and the snow hung without motion, like a
+cloud of ribbons in the air. The white park gleamed as if under the
+swinging light of blue and silver lanterns. The night, lost in a dream
+wandered away among strange sculptures. In the distance a curtain of
+porphyry and bisque drew its shadow across the moon.
+
+Rachel pointed suddenly with her finger.
+
+"Look!" she whispered. She remained as if in terror, pointing.
+
+Three figures were converging toward them--black figures out of the
+distant snow. Figures of men, without faces, like three bundles of
+clothes, they came toiling across the unbroken white of the park, an air
+of intense destinations about them. Above the desolate field of white
+the three figures seemed suddenly to loom into heroic sizes. They reared
+to a height and zigzagged across a nowhere.
+
+"See, see!" Rachel cried. She was still pointing. Her voice rang
+brokenly. "They're coming for me, Erik. Erik, don't you see? People
+wandering toward me. Horrible strangers. Oh, I know, I know!" She
+laughed. "My grandmother was a gypsy and she's telling my fortune in the
+snow. Things that will jump out of space and come at me, after you're
+gone."
+
+The three men, puffing with exertion, converged upon the walk and passed
+on with a morose stare at the lovers. Dorn sighed, relieved. He had
+caught a strange foreboding sense out of the tableau of the white field
+and the three converging black figures.... If he loved her why was he
+letting her go? If he loved her....
+
+He walked on suddenly wearied, saddened, uncertain. It was no more than
+a dream that had touched his senses, a breath of a dream that lingered
+for a moment upon his mirror. It would pass, as all things pass. And he
+would fall back into the pattern of streets and faces, watching as
+before the emptiness of life make geometrical figures of itself. Yes, it
+was better to have her go--simpler. Perhaps a desire would remain, a
+breath, a moonlit memory of her loveliness to mumble over now and then,
+like a line of poetry always unwritten. Let her go. Beautiful ...
+wonderful.... These were words. Was he even sad? She was--what? Another
+woman.
+
+In the shadow of a snow-covered wall he paused. The snow had ended.
+
+"Come closer," he whispered. She remained silent as he removed her
+overcoat. He dropped it in the snow and threw his own beside it.
+
+"We'll be warm for a minute against each other."
+
+She was a flower in his arms. She seemed to vanish and become mist.
+Slowly he became aware of her touch, of her arms holding him and her
+lips. She was saying:
+
+"I am yours--always--everywhere. I will be a shrine to you. And whenever
+you want me I will come crawling on my knees to you."
+
+Dying, dying! She was dying. Another moment and the mist of her would be
+gone. "Rachel.... Rachel. I love you. I send you away. Oh, God, why do I
+send you away?"
+
+She was out of his arms. Undressed, naked, emptied, he stood unknown to
+himself. No words. Her kiss alone lived on his lips. She was looking at
+him with burning wild eyes. Expression seemed to have left her. There
+was something else in her face.
+
+"I must look at you. To remember, to remember!" she gasped. "Oh, to
+remember you! I have never looked at you. I have never seen you. It's a
+dream. Who is Erik Dorn? Who am I? Oh, let me look at you...."
+
+The eyes of Rachel grew marvelously bright. Burned ... burned.
+
+Dorn stared into an empty park. Gone! Her coat still in the snow. His
+own beside it. He stood smiling, confused. His lips made an apology. He
+walked off. Oh, yes, their coats together in the snow. A symbol. He
+stumbled and a sudden terror engulfed him. "Her face," he mumbled, "like
+a mirror of stars." He felt himself sicken. What had her eyes said? Eyes
+that burned and devoured him and vanished. "Rachel," he wept, "forever!"
+He wondered why he spoke.
+
+The park, white, gleaming, desolate, gave him back her face. Out of the
+empty night, her face. In the trees it drifted, haunting him. The print
+of a face was upon the world. He went stumbling toward it in the snow.
+He covered his eyes with his hands as he walked.
+
+"Her face," he mumbled, "her face was beautiful...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+In a dining-room of the city known as the Blue Inn, Anna Dorn sat
+waiting for her husband. Opposite her a laughing-eyed man was talking.
+She listened without intelligence. He was part of old memories--crowded
+rooms in which lights had been turned off. They had danced together in
+their youth. She had worn his fraternity pin and walked with him one
+night under a moon and kissed him, saying: "I will always love you. The
+other boys are different. You are so nice and kind, Eddie." And Eddie
+had gone away east to continue a complacent quest for erudition in a
+university. Almost forgotten days and places when there had been no Erik
+Dorn, and when one debated which pumps to wear to the dance. Erik had
+blotted them out. A whimsical, moody young Mr. Dorn, laughing and
+carousing about the city and singling her out one night at a party....
+"We must get out of here or we'll choke to death. Come, we'll go down to
+the lake and laugh at the stars. They're the only laughable things in
+the world."
+
+She looked sadly at the man whose kindly voice sought to rally her out
+of a gloom. Before the laughing stars there had been another day--other
+stars, another Anna. All part of another world. Eddie Meredith and
+another world sat dimly apparent across the white linen of the table.
+Anecdotes of old friends they had shared, forgotten names and incidents
+reached through the shadows of her thought and stirred an alien memory.
+He hadn't changed. Ten years--and he was still Eddie Meredith, with eyes
+that looked for simple pleasures and seemed to find them. He had always
+found something to laugh about. Not the way Erik laughed. Erik's laugh
+was something that had never ceased to hurt. Strange that Eddie's voice
+had never grown tired of laughing during the ten years.
+
+The ache in her heart lightened and she listened with almost a
+smile--the ghost of another Anna smiling. It was the other Anna who had
+walked through youth with a joyous indifference to life, to everything
+but youth. Buried now deep under years, Eddie warmed it back. Eddie sat
+talking to the ghost that had been Anna Winthrop and that could not
+answer him.
+
+He was a poor talker. She was too used to Erik. Simple, threadbare
+phrases, yet she had once thought him brilliant. Perhaps he was--a
+different kind of brilliance. She noted how his words seemed stimulated
+with an enthusiasm beyond their sense. Trifles assumed an importance.
+For moments she felt herself looking at the joyousness of an old friend
+and forgetting. Then as always through the day and night.... "Erik,
+Erik," murmured itself in her mind ... "he doesn't love me. Erik, dear
+Erik!" Over and over, weaving itself into all she said and saw.
+Sometimes it started a panic in her. She would feel herself grow dark,
+wild. Often it seemed to bring death. Things would become vague and she
+would move through the hours unaware of them.
+
+The joyousness of Eddie drifted away. She remained smiling
+blankly at him. His words slipped past her ear. Inside, she was
+wandering--disheveled thoughts were wandering through a darkness. At
+night she lay beside him as he slept, with her eyes wide open and her
+lips praying, "Dear Jesus, sweet brother Jesus, give Erik back to me!"
+... Or she would crawl out of bed and walk into a deserted room to weep.
+Here she could mumble his name till the anguish of her tears choked her.
+As the cold streets grew gray she would hurry to bathe her face, even
+rouging her cheeks, and return to their bed to wait for Erik to awake,
+that she might caress him, warm something back in him with her kisses,
+and perhaps hear him whisper her name as he used to do. But he drew
+himself away, his eyes sometimes filling with tears. "It's nothing,
+Anna, nothing. Please don't ask. I don't know what it is. My head or
+something. I feel black inside...." And he would hurry to work, not
+waiting for her to join him at breakfast.
+
+Then there had been nights when he held her in his arms thinking she was
+asleep, and she felt his tears dropping over her face--tears of
+silence. She would lie trembling with a wild joy, yet not daring to open
+her eyes or speak, knowing he would move away. These moments, feigning
+sleep and listening to Erik weeping softly against her cheek, had been
+her only happiness in the four black months since the change had come to
+him. He still loved her. Yes.... Oh, God, it was something else. Perhaps
+madness. She would drift to sleep as his weeping ceased, long after it
+ceased, and half dreams would come to her of nursing him through
+terrible darknesses, of warming him with her life, of magically driving
+away the things that were tormenting him out of his mind--great black
+things. Through the day she hungered for his return from work, that she
+might look at him again, even though the sight of him, dark and aloof,
+tore at her heart till she grew faint.
+
+She had never thought of questioning him calmly. There had been no
+suspicion of "someone else." That was a thing beyond even the wildest
+disorder of her imaginings. It was only that Erik was restless, perhaps
+tired of his home, of her too much loving and longing to go
+somewhere--away. Her awe of his brain, of his strange, always
+impenetrable character, adjusted itself to the change in him. There were
+mysterious things in Erik--things she couldn't hope to understand. Now
+these unknown things had grown too big in him. He was different from
+other men, not to be questioned as one might question other men. So she
+must wander about blindly, carefully, and drive things away.
+
+She came out of her sorrow reveries and smiled. Eddie was still talking.
+The music of a violin, harp, and piano was playing with a rollicking
+wistfulness through the clatter and laughter of the café. Eddie was
+saying, "There, that's better. That makes you look like Anna. You were
+looking like somebody else."
+
+His jolly eyes had a keenness. She must dissemble better. Erik would
+come in a moment and Eddie must never think....
+
+"I've heard about your husband, the lucky dog!" Eddie beamed at her
+impudently. "Think," he exploded, "of meeting you accidentally after ten
+years. Wow! Ten years! They say themselves quickly, don't they? By the
+way, there's a curious fellow coming to meet me here. I'll drag him in.
+If your Erik don't like it I'll sit on him till he does. His name's
+Tesla--Emil Tesla. Bomb-thrower or something. I don't know exactly. He's
+helped me with my collection. Oh, I forgot. You don't know about that. I
+keep thinking that you know me. You see nothing has changed in me. I'm
+still the same Eddie--richer, balder, foolisher, perhaps. It seems you
+ought to know all about the ten years without being told. But I'll tell
+you. I'm an art collector on the sly. Pictures--horrible things that
+don't look like anything. I don't know why I collect them, honestly.
+Pictures mean nothing to me. Never did. Particularly the kind I pick
+up. But it's a habit that keeps me cheerful. Better than collecting
+stamps. Cubist, futurist, expressionist. Ever see the damn things? I
+gobble them up. I guess because they're cheap. Here he is--the young
+fellow with the soft face."
+
+Meredith rose and jubilantly waved a napkin. A stocky man in loose
+clothes nodded at him and approached.
+
+"Not Mrs. Erik Dorn," he repeated. Anna nodded. The sound of her
+husband's name on others' lips always elated her, even now. She lost for
+a moment the aversion she felt at the touch of Tesla's hand. It seemed
+boneless.... They would all eat together. Anna was an old school friend.
+Years ago, ah! many years.
+
+Tesla fastened a repugnantly appreciative eye upon her, as if he were
+becoming privy to an exclusive secret. She frowned inwardly. An ugly man
+with something bubbly about him.
+
+"I was telling Mrs. Dorn you were a bomb-thrower or something," Meredith
+announced. His good spirits frisked about the table like a troupe of
+frolicsome puppies.
+
+"Only an apprentice," Tesla's soft voice--a voice like his
+hands--answered. "But why talk of such things in the presence of a
+beautiful lady." He bowed his head at her. She thought, "An unbearable
+man, completely out of place. How in the world could Eddie...."
+
+The music had changed. Muted cornets, banjos and saxophones were
+wailing out a tom-tom adagio. People were rising from tables and moving
+toward a dancing space. Eddie stood beside her bowing with elaborate
+stiffness.
+
+"My next dance, Miss Winthrop."
+
+Anna looked up blankly.
+
+"Good Lord, have you forgotten your own name? Come on. You know Dorn,
+don't you, Emil? Well, throw a fork at him when he shows up. Come, we
+haven't danced together for ten years. The last time was...."
+
+"The last time was the senior prom," Anna interrupted quickly. "You see
+I haven't forgotten." She stood mechanically.
+
+As they walked between tables and diners, he said, "I sure feel like a
+boy again seeing you."
+
+"I'm afraid I've almost forgotten how to dance, Eddie. My husband
+doesn't dance much."
+
+"Here we are! Like old days, eh? Remember Jimmie Goodland, my deadly
+rival for your hand?"
+
+They were dancing.
+
+"Well, he's married. Three kids."
+
+"And how many children have you, Eddie?"
+
+"Me?" He laughed. "Have I forgotten to tell you that? Well, I'm still at
+large, untrammeled, free. There've been women, but not _the_ woman."
+
+His voice put on a pleasing facetiousness.
+
+"Mustn't mind an old friend getting sentimental. But after you they had
+to measure up to something--and didn't."
+
+Since the night Erik had singled her out at the party no man had spoken
+to her that way. She listened slightly amazed. It confused her. His
+eyes, as they danced, were jolly and polite. But they watched her too
+keenly. Erik might misunderstand. Her love somehow resented being looked
+at and spoken to like that. She hurried back to their first topic.
+
+"What became of Millie Pugh, Eddie?"
+
+"Married. A Spaniard or something. Two kids and an automobile. Saw them
+in Brazil somewhere."
+
+"And Arthur Stearns?"
+
+"Fatter than an alderman. Runs a gas works or something in Detroit.
+Married. One kid."
+
+Anna laughed. "You sound like an almanac of dooms."
+
+"Well, all married but me--little Eddie, the boy bachelor, faithful unto
+death to the memories of his childhood. Do you remember the night we ran
+Mazurine's out of ice-cream?"
+
+This was another world, another Anna. She closed her eyes dreamily to
+the movement of the dance and music--delicious drugs.
+
+"Faster," she whispered.
+
+They broke into quicker steps. "Erik.... Erik.... my own. Love me again.
+Come back to me...." Still in her thought, but fainter, deeper down.
+Not words but a sigh that moved to the rhythm of the music.
+
+"And how may children have you?"
+
+She answered without emotion, as if she were talking with a distant part
+of herself. "There was a little boy. He died as a baby. We haven't any."
+
+Deep, kindly eyes looking at her as they danced. "I'm so sorry, Anna."
+
+She whispered again, "Faster!" A shadow over his face. She must be
+careful of his eyes--eyes that laughed, but keen, almost as keen as
+Erik's. "My Erik ... my own...." It was all a dream, a nightmare of her
+own inventing. Nothing had happened. Imaginings. Erik loved her. Why
+else should he weep and kiss her when he thought her asleep? He loved
+her, he loved her!
+
+Her face grew bright. Faster. Always to dance and dream of Erik. She
+must tell Eddie....
+
+"Erik is wonderful. I'm dying to have you meet him. Oh, Eddie, he's
+wonderful!"
+
+Now she could laugh and enjoy herself. Something had emptied out of her
+breasts--cold iron, warm lead. She was lighter, easy to bend and glide
+to the music. Everything was easy. Her face lighted by something deeper
+than a smile, she danced in silence. Eddie was far away--ten years away.
+His eyes that were smiling at her were no eyes at all. They were part of
+the music and movement that caressed her with the sweetness of life, of
+being loved by Erik....
+
+Tesla watched his friend lead the red-haired lady away to dance. For a
+while there lingered about him the air of unctious submission that had
+revolted Anna. Then it vanished. His face as he sat alone seemed to
+tighten. The flabbiness of his eyes became something else. Diners at
+other tables caught glimpses of him while they ate. A commanding figure,
+rugged, youthful-faced. Features that made definite lines, compelling
+lines, in the blur of other features. A man of certainties, yet with
+something weak about him. His eyes were like a child's. They did not
+quite belong in his face. There, eyes should have gleamed, stared with
+intensities. Instead, eyes purred--abstract, tender eyes; the kind that
+attracted women sometimes because they were almost like a women's eyes
+dreaming of lovers.
+
+"Hello, Tesla!"
+
+Again the fawning lights, smiles, bowings. This was Dorn--a Somebody.
+Somebodies always changed Tesla. There was a thing in him that smirked
+before Somebodies, as if he were a timorous puppy wagging its tail and
+leaping about on flabby legs.
+
+"Mrs. Dorn is sitting here with a friend. They're dancing. We're all at
+this table, Mr. Dorn."
+
+Dorn caught the eager innuendo of his voice. He knew Tesla vaguely as a
+radical, an author of pamphlets. Tesla continued to talk, a sycophantic
+purr in his words.... The war was financed by international bankers.
+Didn't he think so? America was being drawn in by Wall Street--to make
+the loans to the Allies stand up. But something was going to happen. The
+eyes of the workers were opening slowly all over the world. In Russia
+already a beginning of realities. Ah, think of the millions dying for
+nothing, advancing or improving nothing by their death. Soldiers,
+heroes, workingmen, all blind acrobats in another man's circus. But
+something was happening. Revolution. This grewsome horseplay in Europe's
+front yard would start it. And then--watch out!
+
+The voice of Emil Tesla, eager, fawning, had yet another quality in it.
+It promised, as if it could not do justice to the things it was saying
+and must be careful, soft, polite. Dorn felt the man and his power. Not
+a puppy on flabby legs but a brute mastiff with a wild bay that must
+come out in little whines, because the music was playing, because he was
+talking to Somebody. A man physically beaten by life, his body scraping,
+bowing; his words mumbling confusedly in the presence of other words.
+Yet a powerful man with a tremendous urge that might some day hurl him
+against the stars. He had something....
+
+To Tesla's sentences Dorn dropped a yes or no. Tesla needed no replies.
+He purred on eagerly before his listener, seeming to whine for his
+appreciation and good will, yet unconscious of him. A waiter brought
+wine. Dorn stared at the topaz tint in his glass. His eyes had changed.
+They no longer smiled. A heaviness gleamed from them. The thing in his
+heart would not go. Heavy hands turning him over and over, as if life
+were tearing him, crowds and streets pulling at him. There had been no
+rest since Rachel had gone.
+
+He sat almost oblivious of Tesla. In the back of his brain the city
+tumbled--an elephantine grimace, a wilderness of angles, a swarm of
+gestures that beat at his thought. But before his eyes there were no
+longer the precise patterns of another day. He was no longer outside. He
+had been sucked into something, the something that he had been used to
+refer to condescendingly as life. People sitting in a room like this had
+been furniture that amused him. Now they were alive, repulsive, with a
+meaning to them that sickened him. Streets had once been stone and
+gesture. Now they, too, were meanings that sickened. A sanity in which
+he alone was insane, surrounded him; a completion in which he alone
+seemed incomplete. Men and women together--tired faces, lighted
+faces--all with destinations that satisfied them. And he wandering,
+knocked from place to place by heavy hands, pushed through crowds,
+dropped into chairs. Time itself a torment into which he kept thrusting
+himself deeper.
+
+The change in Erik Dorn had come to him with a cynicism of its own. It
+laughed with its own laughter. A mind foreign to him spoke to him
+through the day.... "You would smile at life, Erik; well, here it is.
+Easy for a sleeper to smile. But smile now. Life is a surface, eh?
+shifting about into designs for the delectation of your eyes. Watch it
+shifting then. Darkness and emptiness in a can-can. Watch the tumbling
+streets that have no meanings. No meanings? Yet there's a torment in
+them that can hoist you up by your placid little heels and swing you
+round ... round, and send you flying. A witch's flight with the scream
+of stars whistling through it. Flight that has no ending and no
+direction ... no face of Rachel at its ending. Burning eyes, devouring
+eyes ... face like a mirror of stars. There's a face in the world and
+you go after it, heels in air, tongue frozen, breathing always an
+emptiness that chokes. Easy for sleepers to dawdle with words and say
+carelessly life is this, life is that. What the hell's the difference
+what life is? It means nothing to me. People and their posturings mean
+nothing. But what about now? A contact, a tying up with posturings, and
+the streets and crowds tearing you into gestures not your own...."
+
+Aloud he would say, "My love for her has given me a soul and I've become
+a fool along with other fools."
+
+He did not think of Rachel in words. There were moments of dream when he
+made plans--a fantastic amorous rigmarole of Rachel and himself walking
+together over the heads of the world; child dreams that substituted
+themselves for the realities he demanded. But these were infrequent. He
+was learning to avoid them as one avoids a drug that soothes and then
+doubles the hunger of the nerves.
+
+As now in the café, listening to Tesla, watching with dark eyes the
+scene, there was a turning of heavy hands in him to which he must not
+give thought. Watch the café, listen to Tesla, talk, eat and spit out a
+disgust for the things of which he was a part--things from which he
+demanded Rachel and a surcease to the pain in him. And that only stifled
+with the emptiness of her.
+
+Out of the wretchedness of garbled emotions that had become the whole of
+Erik Dorn, his vocabulary arose with a facile paint brush and painted
+upon his thought. His phrases wandered about looking for subjects as if
+he must taunt himself with details that forever brought him loathing.
+
+Before he had seen pictures complete, rhythmic pictures of streets and
+crowds, pleasantly blurred and in motion. Now he saw them as if life was
+in a state of continual pause--an arrested cinematograph; grotesquely
+detailed and with the meaning of motion out of it. A picture waiting
+something to set it moving. This something he could not give it.
+Helplessly his words continued to trace themselves over the outlines of
+scenes about him, as if trying to stir them into a life.
+
+This scene consciousness had become almost a mania in the four months.
+But in the mechanical, phraseological movement of his thought he was
+able to hide himself. Thus he listened to Tesla and looked at the café.
+The inn was filled with people--elaborately dressed women and shiningly
+groomed men--grouped about white-linened, silver-laden tables; an
+ornamental grimacing little multitude come to the café as to some grave
+rite, moving to the tables with an unctious nonchalance. Women dressed
+in effulgent silks, their flesh gleaming among the spaces of exotic
+plumage, gleaming through the flares of luxurious satin distortions. A
+company that gestured, grimaced with the charm of lustful marionettes.
+Flesh reduced to secrecy. Lust, dream in hiding. From the secret world
+they inhabited, moist bodies beckoned with a luscious, perverse denial
+of artifice.
+
+The picture of it shot into his eyes, arousing a hate in his thought. He
+heard Tesla ... "life has changed with the industrialization of society.
+It is no longer a question of who shall run the court. The court is an
+atrophied institution, a circus surviving in the backyard of history.
+It's a question of who shall run the factory. Democracy is a thing that
+touches only politicians. The factory touches people. Democracy cleared
+the way but it's not a way in itself. It's still the court idea of
+government. Steam, gas, and electricity made the French revolution
+obsolete even before it was ended. This war ... good God, Dorn, blood
+pouring over toys we've outgrown!..."
+
+Still fawning voiced, but with a bay underneath. Dorn listened and
+remained elsewhere--among a turning of heavy hands. Yet he thought of
+Tesla, "He makes an impression on me. I'll remember his words. A man of
+power, rooted in visions." He replied suddenly, "I'm convinced the weak
+will rule some day, if that's what you're driving at. The race can
+survive only as long as its weakest survive. Christianity started it.
+Socialism will carry it a step further. The fight against the
+individual. What else is any institutionalism? A struggle to circumvent
+the biological destiny of man, which is the same as the biological
+destiny of fish--extinction. That's what we're primarily engaged in. The
+race must protect its weak, so it invents laws to curb the instincts and
+power of its strong. And we obey the laws--a matter of adjusting
+ourselves ludicrously to our weaknesses and endowing these adjustments
+with high names. Bolshevism will be the law of to-morrow and wear even a
+higher name than Christianity. Yesterday it was, 'only the poor shall
+inherit heaven, only crippled brains and weaker visions shall see God.'
+To-morrow the slogan will have been brought down to earth. Yes, they'll
+run the factories--your masses. There's the strength in them of
+logic--a logic opposed to evolution. They'll run the factories as they
+now run heaven--an Institution nicely accommodated to their fears and
+weaknesses."
+
+Dorn paused. He was not thinking. People said things. An automatic box
+of phrases in him released answers. Tesla was replying, not so
+fawningly, the bay beneath his soft words mastering his sycophantic
+tones. Let him talk. He had something to talk about. He saw something.
+There was a new tableau in Tesla's brain. Let him keep murmuring things
+about it--suavely, unctuously letting off steam.
+
+Like a man returning drearily to his game of solitaire, Dorn fastened
+his eyes again upon the scene. Looking at things would keep him from
+thinking. To think was to cry out. He had learned this. His eyes, dark
+and heavy, fastened themselves upon the walls of the inn lost in
+shadows, painted with nymphs and satyrs sprawling over tapestried
+landscapes. He devoured their details, his heart searching in them for
+the mystery of Rachel and finding only a deeper emptiness--insistently
+naked bodies of nymphs lying like newly bathed housemaids amid stiff
+park sceneries. Miracles of photographic lechery. Would people about him
+look like that naked? Thank God they were dressed! An ankle in silk was
+better than a thigh in sunlight. An old saw ... beauty lay in the
+imagination. Women removed their beauty with their clothes. The nymphs
+on the wall reminded one chiefly that they were careful to scrub their
+legs all the way up.
+
+He sighed and watched the eyes of diners look at the walls. Her face--a
+mirror of stars. What else was there but her face? Other faces, of
+course. A revulsion of other strange faces. Men studying the naked
+figures on the walls with profound but aloof interest, eyeing the women
+near them shrewdly as they turned away. Women with serious,
+unconcentrated eyes upon the paintings, turning tenderly towards their
+escorts. He would die of looking at faces that were not hers. A
+love-sick schoolboy. God, what an ass! Tesla was becoming an
+insufferable bore. What in God's name did he have to do with masses
+raising their skinny arms from a smoking field and crying aloud,
+"Bread!" Tesla had a lot to do with it. The skinny arms, the smoking
+field, and the balloon with the word "bread" in it were Tesla's soul.
+But his soul was different--heavy hands turning.
+
+Dorn drank wine from his glass. Anna, dancing with a plump, laughing
+stranger, flitted through the distance. A deeper turning over of iron in
+his heart at the glimpse of her. The scene no longer could divert him.
+The thought of Anna dropped like a curtain upon a picture. What could he
+do? What? At night he grew sick lying beside her. It wasn't conscience.
+There was nothing wrong about loving someone else. But there was an
+uncanniness about it. Lying beside a woman who didn't know what was in
+his mind. He would lie thinking, "Oh, Rachel, I love Rachel," repeating
+almost idiotic love words for Rachel in his mind. And Anna would smile
+patiently at him, unaware. That was the most intolerable thing. The fact
+she didn't know. And also the fact that he must remain inarticulate. He
+must sit with his heart choking him and his head in a blaze, and keep
+stuffing words back down his throat. Through the day he tormented
+himself with the thought, "I must tell her. I can't keep this thing up
+any longer." But when he saw her it was impossible to tell her. A single
+phrase would end it. He held the phrase on his lips--as if it were a
+knife balanced over Anna's heart. "I love Rachel." That would end it.
+But it was impossible. He couldn't say it. Why? He sat, trying to get a
+glimpse of her dancing again and tried to avoid answering himself. It
+was something he mustn't answer. He must get away from his damned
+thought. His eyes fastened themselves upon the fountain in the center of
+the room. It was Anna that tormented him, not Rachel. Anna ... Anna....
+The tension broke. He was looking at the fountain surmounted by a marble
+nude crouched in a posture of surprise; probably disturbed by her
+nudity. It was necessary for nudity to be disturbed by itself. Did
+virgins eyeing themselves in mirrors blush with shame? Unquestionably.
+The nude peered into the water of a large tiled basin. A gush of water
+over her managed to veil her unsuccessfully in an endless spray. Water
+filled the air with an odorless spice.
+
+" ... the first blow will come out of Russia, Dorn. The Russians have
+not been side-tracked into the phantasms of democracy. They still think
+straight. Civilization hasn't crippled them with phrases. They are still
+what you would call biological. And dreams live in them. Yes, I know
+what you'll say ... heavy dreams. But here in America there are no
+dreams--yet. Nothing but paper. Paper thoughts. Paper morals. Everything
+paper. Russia will send out fire to burn up this paper. Destroy it.
+Leave nothing behind--not even ashes."
+
+True enough. Why answer it? But what difference did it make if paper
+burned? Was man after all a creature consecrated to institutions, doomed
+to expend himself upon institutions? A hundred million nervous systems,
+each capable of ecstasies and torments, devoting themselves to the
+business of political brick-laying. Always yowling about new bricks.
+Politics--a deformity of the imagination; a game of tiddledy-winks
+played with guns and souls.
+
+He breathed with relief. Abstractions were a drug. But his thinking
+ended. Blue electric lights cast an amorous glow--an artificial
+moonlight--upon tables surrounding the fountain. Beneath the cobalt
+water of the basin, colored fish gliding like a weaving procession of
+little fat Mandarins. The remainder of the room also blue from shaded
+lights. That was why they dubbed it the Blue Inn. Blue lights made the
+Blue Inn. The air was heavy with the uncoiling lavender tinsel of
+tobacco smoke. A luxurious suppression as about some priapic altar ...
+artificial shadows, painted lights, forlorn fountain ripplings.
+
+"Oh, Erik, I've been dancing. This is Mr. Meredith. I once told you
+about him. The music is simply wonderful here."
+
+Tesla, flabby-eyed and almost maliciously polite, as if he would expose
+the innate absurdity of politeness, tipped over a water glass in his
+floppings. Anna, still alive with the joyousness that had come to her,
+seated herself beside her husband. Her hand rested eagerly on his arm.
+He must love her ... must. Must. It had been only a nightmare she'd
+invented. Oh, God, did anything matter as long as they loved each other?
+
+"Tired, dearest?"
+
+He looked at her and tried to lighten his eyes.
+
+"Yes, a little. The damned war."
+
+"I'm so sorry."
+
+She mustn't ask him to dance. He was tired. She would coddle him. He was
+only a baby--tired, sleepy, sad. She must ask no questions. Only love.
+Before her love the darkness of his face would clear away as before
+sunshine.
+
+"I'm so happy, Erik darling!"
+
+Her fingers quivered on his arm. He looked at her and smiled out of
+misty eyes. Of all the unbearable things in an unbearable world her
+happiness was the most unbearable. She nodded, as if she understood. Her
+pretense of understanding was a ghastly business. But Anna smiled. Poor
+Erik, he was only a boy. If only they were alone! If Eddie and Tesla and
+the whole world would go away and leave her with him, to kiss his eyes
+and stroke his hair. Sleep, baby, sleep.... What a crazy, wild thing,
+thinking that Erik no longer loved her. No longer loved her! Dear God,
+she was only a part of him. He must love her.... Must!
+
+The talk kept on--words bubbling from Tesla, Eddie frisking with
+laughter.
+
+"You must dance with me, Erik. It's been so long since we danced."
+There--she shouldn't have asked. She didn't mean to. Her eyes
+apologized. When he answered, "No, I'm tired," there was wine from a
+glass that warmed the little coldness his words dropped into her.
+
+Listening to her, answering with words he tried to soften and make
+alive, Dorn tried to occupy himself with the details of the scene again.
+Could he keep on living as two persons--one of them turning over and
+over in a fire that consumed him--and the other making phrases,
+gestures, as if there were no fire consuming him? If he kept his eyes
+working, perhaps. He hated Anna. But that was because he couldn't bear
+the thought of her suffering. He hated her because he must be kind to
+her.
+
+Meredith was ordering the dinner. Dorn stared out over the room.
+
+Anna was watching him with her senses. Why didn't he speak to her as
+Eddie did? Perhaps he was going mad. His eyes suffered. He looked at
+things and seemed to hurt himself with looking. She kept her voice
+vibrant with a hope of joyousness. "I mustn't give in to the nightmare.
+It's only imagining...."
+
+"Erik, dearest, do eat something. Let me order for you."
+
+Talk, talk! Dorn listened. Anna was saying, "Eddie thinks as you do
+about the war, Erik. Isn't that odd?" Yes, that anybody should be able
+to think as he did. He was a God. A super-God. If only she hated him. A
+moment of hate in her eyes would be heaven.
+
+"A plain case of accepting an evil and making the best of it," laughed
+Meredith. "If we go in all I ask is for God's sake let's keep our eyes
+open and not slobber around."
+
+Soft remonstrances from Tesla with polite references to Wall Street.
+Food on platters. An air of slight excitement with Anna directing the
+talk and serving. What made her so vivacious? The sight of an old
+friend, Meredith? Meredith ... oh, yes, school days, long ago. A wild
+hope unfolded itself in Dorn. He looked at the man anew. Fantastic
+notion. But throw them together, day and night. Cafés, dancing, music,
+propinquity. He was her type--kindly, unselfish, prosperously elate
+over life. He'd help her on with her wraps and be polite over doorways.
+Perhaps. He turned to his wife and laughed softly. A way out. Give her
+to the man. Give her away. End her love for him--her damned, torturing
+love that made him turn over inside and weep at night when she was
+asleep; that hounded him like an unclean memory. It was only her love
+that made him unclean. He looked at her with his eyes lighted.
+
+"Dancing makes a difference, doesn't it, dear? I'd dance myself, only my
+legs are tired."
+
+He smiled as he spoke with the unctuousness of a villain administering
+poison in a bouquet of roses. But a way to get rid of her love. He
+didn't mind her, but the thing in her. That was the whole of it. Why
+hide from it? God, if he could only kill it he'd be free. Otherwise he'd
+never be free. Even if he went away there'd be the thought of her
+love.... Anna's face bloomed with joy at his words.
+
+"We'll come here another night when you're not tired, honey."
+
+"Yes," he answered, "make a party of it. How about that, Mr. Meredith?"
+
+"Surest thing."
+
+They forgot Tesla.
+
+"Oh, Erik!" She embraced his arm with both her hands. Under the table
+she pressed her thigh trembling against him.
+
+The music from the platform had changed. Cornets, banjos, saxophones,
+again. The boom and jerk of voices arose as if in greeting. Foreheads
+of diners glistening with a fine sweat. Sweat on the backs of women's
+necks, on their chins, under their raised arms; gleaming on the cool
+intervals of breasts, white and bulbous breasts peeping out of a secret
+world.
+
+"If I may, Anna...."
+
+Eddie was taking her away. The plot was working. Dorn's heart warmed
+toward the man. A rescuer, a savior. He nodded his head at his wife. He
+must make it look as if he were sorry it wasn't he going to dance with
+her; smile with proper wistfulness; shake his head sadly.
+
+Anna, suddenly beside herself, laughed, and, leaning over touched his
+hair quickly with her lips. Damned idiot, he'd overdone it! No. Perhaps
+she was guilty. Apologizing for impulses away from him toward Meredith?
+He sat hoping feverishly, caressing a diagnosis as if he could establish
+it by repeating it over and over.
+
+Tesla again, this time on art. Art of the proletaire. Damn the
+proletaire and Tesla both! He had a plot working out. Would their hands
+touch, linger, sigh against each other? Of course. They were human--at
+least their hands were. And then, dances every night. What a miserable
+banal plot! Another day-dream. Forget. Beyond Tesla's soft voice ... an
+opening and shutting of mouths swollen in delicious discomforts. Look at
+them. Identify mouths. Tell himself the angles they made. People ...
+people ... a wriggling of bodies in a growing satiety of tepid lusts.
+
+"True art, Dorn, is something beyond decoration. Dreams made real. But
+the right kind of dreams--things that touch people. The other art was
+for sick men. That is--men sickened of life. The new art will be for
+healthy men, men reaching out of everything about them. And we must give
+them bread, soup, and art."
+
+Yes, that might as well be true as anything else. Anything was truth.
+Anything and everything. Here he was in a scene that had no relation to
+him. Yet he wasn't detached.
+
+"Speaking of art, Dorn, we've found a new artist, a wonder. She's going
+to do some things for _The Cry_. I got her interested. I must tell
+Meredith about her. Maybe you know her--Rachel Laskin. One of her things
+is coming out in the next issue. I'll send you a copy."
+
+Coolly, amazedly, Dorn thought, "What preposterous thing makes it
+possible for this man to talk of Rachel as if she were a reality ...
+like the people in the café? To him she's like the people in the café.
+He knows her like the people in the café."
+
+He answered carelessly, "Oh, yes; Miss Laskin. I remember her well. That
+reminds me: you don't happen to have her address? I've got some things
+she left at the office we can't use."
+
+Tesla dug an address out of a soiled stack of papers. His pockets seemed
+alive with soiled papers. Rachel's address was a piece of soiled paper
+like any other piece of soiled paper. Mumbling silently, Dorn sighed.
+Just in time. Anna again, and Meredith. He looked at them, recalling his
+plot. Were they in love? Tesla--the blundering idiot--"I was telling
+Dorn of a new artist I've found, Eddie. Rachel Laskin, a sort of Blake
+and Beardsley and something else. Thin lines, screechy things. You'll
+like them."
+
+"Oh, yes, I always like them," Meredith smiled.
+
+And Anna, "Oh, I know Rachel Laskin well. We're old friends. She's a
+charming, wonderful girl. I liked her so much. Where is she?"
+
+"In New York."
+
+"I'll have to look at her work," Meredith added. "That's me. Always
+looking at other people's work and saying, fine, great, and never
+knowing a thing about it. Ye true art collector, eh, Emil?"
+
+Anna went on, "Erik was amused with her. She is rather odd, you know,
+and sort of wearing on the nerves. But you can't help liking her."
+
+An amazing description of a face of stars. Dorn smiled.
+
+Tesla said, "I only saw her once. A nervous girl, and she seemed upset."
+
+More from Anna: "I hope she'll come back to Chicago. She was such fun. I
+really miss her...."
+
+All mad. Babbling of Rachel. Dorn stared cautiously about him. The
+torment in him became a secret swollen beyond its proper dimensions.
+They would look at him now and understand that he was not Erik Dorn, but
+somebody else huddled up, burning and flopping around inside. Love was a
+virulent form of idiocy. It meant nothing to people outside. Everything
+inside. Anna talking about Rachel started a panic in him. She was
+playing with memories of Rachel. Do you remember this? and that? As if
+he, of course, had forgotten her. Yes, there was an "of course" about
+it. A gruesome "of course." Gruesome--an excellent word. It meant Anna
+petting and laughing over a knife that was to plunge itself into her
+heart. When? Soon ... soon. He had an address copied from a soiled piece
+of paper.
+
+They bundled out of the café. Waiters, wraps. Eddie helped with the
+wraps. Alien streets, dark waiting buildings, lights, and then
+good-nights. The moments whirled mysteriously away. What did the moments
+matter? He was going to Rachel. Ah! When had he decided that? He didn't
+remember reaching any decision in the matter.
+
+They entered a cab alone. The cab rolled away over snow-packed streets.
+But he couldn't leave Anna. Yes he could. Why not? No. Impossible. A
+faint thought like a storm packed into a nutshell.... "I will."
+
+"You were wonderful to-night, Erik. When I see you with other men I just
+thank God for you."
+
+That was the intolerable thing--his wonderfulness, his damned
+wonderfulness. It existed in her. He couldn't leave it behind.
+
+Her hand lay warm in his.
+
+"Kiss me, dearest!"
+
+He kissed her and laughed. He was happy, then? Oh, yes, he was going to
+Rachel. Simple. Four months of misery, making a weeping idiot out of
+himself. And now, a decision had been reached. His head on her shoulder,
+she wanted it so, she was whispering caresses to him. This was Anna. But
+it would soon be Rachel. What difference did such things make? One
+woman, another woman....
+
+"You're like Jimmie was."
+
+Happy tears filled her eyes, to be noted and remembered now that he was
+going to Rachel. Jimmie was a baby who had died--his baby. Offspring was
+a more humorous word. To be noted and remembered. What a dream!
+
+"I'm so happy, Erik. Everything seems wonderful again when you smile and
+laugh like this. Your cheeks make such a nice little curve and your head
+on my shoulder, where it belongs ... for always and ever...."
+
+Let her sing. He could stand it. What did it matter? But would she die
+when he left. He would have to say something outright. God, what a thing
+to say outright. Kill not only her but the wonderful selves of him that
+lived in her. That didn't mean anything. Anyway, it was rather silly to
+waste time thinking.... To-night, after the ride ... going to Rachel.
+He had her address. He would walk up, ring the bell. She would answer
+and her face would look in surprise at him.
+
+"My Erik, my own sweet little one!"
+
+Dreaming of Jimmie, of him and Jimmie together.... "I don't ever want to
+move. I want us to keep on riding like this forever and ever...."
+
+Quite exquisite tragedy. A bit crude. But reality was always rather
+crude. Crude or not, what was more exquisite than happiness laughing
+with an unseen knife moving toward its heart? At least he was an
+appreciative audience. With his head on her shoulder. Why not? Life
+demanded that one be an audience sometimes ... sit back and listen to
+the fates whispering. What a ride! Dark waiting houses moving by. Seven
+years together, growing closer and more subtly together--yet not
+together at all. Anyway, he was sick of living that way. Even without
+Rachel ... a mess. Night lies. Passion lies. A dirty business. No, not
+that. She was beautiful. Anna, not Rachel. He was the unclean one.
+
+"Are you happy, beloved?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Lord, what an answer to give her. A prayer! Insufferably exquisite gods
+of drama--she was praying. Tears rushing from her eyes.
+
+"Sweet Jesus ... sweet brother Jesus ... thanks for everything. Oh, I've
+been so unfaithful. Not to believe. Thanks for my wonderful Erik."
+
+He must kill her, swiftly, before she could know that prayers were vain.
+Easier to kill her body than to listen to this. How, though? With his
+hands about her throat. Murder was an old business. It would be mercy to
+her. But he was too much a coward. A cowardly audience listening to
+words ... far away from him.
+
+"Beloved ... darling. Oh, it's so good to have you back again."
+
+"Don't talk." He put his arm tightly around her, his fingers fumbling at
+her bare neck. But that was only a pretense, a bit of insipid
+melodrama--his fingers. He was an actor frightened by his part.
+
+The taxi driver was demanding $4.50--an outrage.
+
+"That's too much, Erik."
+
+But he paid. Should he tell him to wait? He would need him in a few
+minutes. No, too cold-blooded to tell him to wait. And anyway, Anna was
+listening. He was still an audience. He would jump on the stage and
+begin acting later. Soon.
+
+"Keep the change."
+
+"Thanks, sir."
+
+An insane world ... a polite and jovial taxi-cab driver carrying
+lunatics about the streets.
+
+"Oh, dear, look! Father's sitting up." She was disappointed. "And I
+wanted to kiss and hug you before we went upstairs."
+
+Dorn unlocked the door of his house. He still had a house and could
+unlock its door without its meaning anything. To-morrow he would have no
+house. That was the difference between to-day and to-morrow. The old man
+would be there. That would make it easier. He shivered. "I'm going to do
+something then".... This was alarming.
+
+Anna's arms were around him before he could remove his coat. She clung,
+laughing, kissing. Let her.... "The doomed man ate a hearty breakfast of
+ham and eggs and seemed in good spirits." Reporters, with a sense of the
+dramatic, usually wrote it that way. Ham and eggs were a symbol. Should
+he mull around for extenuating epigrams--a fervid rigmarole on the
+mysteries and ethics of life? Or strike swift, short?... "Death was
+instantaneous. The drop fell at 10:08 A.M. sharp." Always sharp. Damn
+his reporters!
+
+"Anna ..."
+
+She bloomed at the sound of her name.
+
+"I want to talk, Anna."
+
+"No, let's not talk. I'm so happy.... Aren't you up rather late,
+father?"
+
+Thank God she was getting nervous. One can't kill a smile.
+
+"Anna, come to me."
+
+An old phrase of their love-making. He hadn't meant to use it. But
+phrases that have been used for seven years get so they say themselves.
+She moved quickly toward him. His father--smiling beyond her shoulder.
+Now for the slaughter....
+
+"Do you love me enough to make me happy, Anna?"
+
+"I would give my life for you."
+
+He was deplorably calm--too calm. His eyes were looking at books on
+shelves, at chairs, at pictures on the walls, as if everything was of an
+identical importance.
+
+"I know, but that isn't it."
+
+"What then, Erik?"
+
+He couldn't say it. Particularly with his father smiling--an irritating
+old man who would never die. Should he fall at her feet and whimper? He
+couldn't. Her face was his, her eyes his. It wasn't leaving Anna.
+Himself, though. Yes, he was confronting himself. Seven years of selves.
+All wonderful. Everything he had said and done for seven years lived in
+Anna. So he must kill seven years of himself with a phrase. No. Yet he
+was talking on. It soothed him, untightened the agony in him.
+
+"Listen, Anna. I can't tell you, but I must. My words circle away from
+me. They run away from what I want to tell you. Anna ... I must go
+away--leave you."
+
+Tears in his eyes, over his face. His voice, warm, blurring with tears.
+He choked, paused.
+
+"Erik...."
+
+A white sound. Something bursting.
+
+"If I stay, I'll go mad."
+
+"No ... no ... Erik ..."
+
+Still white sounds, only whiter. Blank sounds, caused by speechlessness.
+Sounds of speechlessness.
+
+"I may come back, if you'll take me back sometime...."
+
+A man was always an imbecile. Imbecility is a trademark. But there were
+no sounds now. His eyes tried to turn away from her. A face had ceased
+to live and give forth sounds. He remained looking at it. A cold,
+emptied face, like a picture frame with a picture recently torn out of
+it.
+
+"Anna, for God's sake, hate me. Hate me. Loathe me the rest of
+your life. I've lied and lied to you--nothing but lies.... No,
+that's not true. But now it is. Think of me as vile when I go
+away.... Otherwise..."
+
+Tears blubbered out of him.
+
+... "otherwise I'll die thinking of you. Don't look at me that way. Yell
+at me.... You've known it. I can't help it.... It's something. I can't
+help it."
+
+Behind this voice he thought: "It's not me alone. Nights of love ...
+kisses ... Jimmie ... seven years.... Little things. Oh, God, little
+things. We're all leaving her--pulling ourselves out of her."
+
+"Where are you going, my son?"
+
+Could he lie now? Yes, anything that made it easier.
+
+"Nowhere. Anywhere. I must go. Otherwise I'll choke to death. Take care
+of her. There's money. All hers. I'll write later about it. Anna ...
+don't please."
+
+The thing was a botch. Wrong, all wrong. But that didn't matter. His
+coat and hat mattered more than phrases. Looking for a coat and hat when
+he should be winding up the scene properly. These were preposterous
+banalities that distinguished life, unedited, from melodrama. Where was
+his hat? His hat ... hat ... Life, Fate, Tragedy had mislaid his
+insufferable hat. Ah ... on the floor.
+
+She was standing staring at him. Would she die on her feet? Quick,
+before the shriek. It was coming ... a madness that would frighten him
+forever if he heard it. What a scoundrel he was! Why deny it? But in a
+few years he would be dead and no longer a scoundrel, and all this so
+much forgotten dust.
+
+"Write to us, my son. And come back soon."
+
+He closed the door softly behind him and started to walk. But his legs
+ran. It had been easy ... easy. He stumbled, sprawled upon the iced
+pavement, bruising his face. He picked himself up unaware that he had
+stopped running. Night, houses, streets, what matter? In a few
+years--dust. But he had left in time. That was the important thing.
+Another minute and he would have heard her. A terrible unheard sound.
+He had left it behind. He had left her unfinished. Why was he running?
+Oh, yes--Anna.
+
+He paused and held his eyes from staring back at his house. His eyes
+would pull him back to the door. Little things--oh, the little things
+made hurts. He must turn a corner. Light does not travel around corners.
+
+Gone. The house was gone with all its little things. One jerk and he had
+ripped away....
+
+He walked slowly. A coldness suddenly fell into him. Rachel. He had
+forgotten about Rachel. Never a thought for Rachel. Disloyal. Where
+was she--the mirror of stars? Nowhere. He didn't love her. Was he
+insane? He loved Anna, not Rachel. He must go back. The thing was
+lopsided--pretense. He'd been pretending he was in love with Rachel.
+Love ... schoolboy business. Mirror of stars! Something scribbled on a
+valentine. That was love. Rachel. No.... There was another face. Cold,
+emptied--a circle of deaths. Anna's face. But he must remember Rachel
+because he was going to Rachel--remember something about her. Say her
+name over and over. But that wasn't Rachel. That was a word like ...
+like pocketbook. Something about her....
+
+Ah! yes. Her coat lying in the snow. He sighed with a determined effort
+at sadness ... her little coat in the snow!
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+WINGS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"Boom, boom," said the city of New York, "we have gone to war!"
+
+And all the other cities, big and little, said a boom-boom of their own.
+A mighty nation had gone to war.
+
+A time of singing. Songs on the lips of crowds. Lights in their eyes.
+High-pitched, garbled words, brass bands, flags, speeches.... Mine eyes
+have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord but we don't want the
+Bacon, All we Want is a Piece of the Rhine(d).... A brass monkey playing
+"Nearer, My God, to Thee" on a red banjo.... _Allons, les enfants_ ...
+_le jour de gloire est arrivé!_ You tell 'em, kid! Store fronts,
+cabarets, hotel lobbies, sign-boards, office buildings all become
+shining citadels of righteousness beleaguered by the powers of darkness.
+Newspaper headlines exploding like firecrackers on the corners. A
+bonfire of faces in the streets. A bonfire of flags above the streets.
+
+Boom, boom!... societies for the relief of martyred Belgium. Societies
+for Rolling Cigarettes, Bandages, Exterminating Hun Spies, Exterminating
+Yellow Dogs and Slackers.... Wah, don't let anybody be a slacker! A
+slacker is a dirty dog who does what I wanna do but am afraid to do.
+Who lies down. Who won't stand up on his hind legs and cheer when he's
+supposed to.... Societies for Knitting Sweaters, Giving Bazaars,
+Spotting Hun Propaganda. A bonfire of committees, communes, Jabberwocks,
+clubs, Green Walruses, False Whiskers, Snickersnees, War Boards, and
+Eagles Shrieking from their Mountain Heights with an obligato by the
+Avon Comedy Four--I'm a Jazz Baby....
+
+A mighty nation had gone to war. Humpty Dumpty and the March Hare
+wheeled out the Home Guards. Said the Débutante to her Soldier Boy in
+the moonlight, "To Hell with the chaperone, War is War...." Somebody
+lost Eighty Hundred Billion Dollars trying to build aeroplanes out of
+Flypaper and a new kind of Cement. And the Press, slapping Fright Wig
+No. 7 on its bald head, announced to the Four Winds, " ... once more
+glory, common cause, sacrifice, welded peoples of America, invincible
+host, lay common blood, altar liberty, sacred principle, government of
+the people by the people for the people perish earth" ... And the
+Pulpits obliged with an "O God who art in Heaven girthed in shining
+armor before Thee Thy cause Liberty Humanity Democracy Thy blessing
+inspire light of sacrifice brave women and hero men give us strength O
+Lord not falter see way of Righteousness stern hearts bear great burden
+Thou has given us carry on till powers of darkness routed virtue again
+triumphant. Thy will done on earth as it is in Heaven...."
+
+And the soldiers entraining for the cantonments--clerks and salesmen,
+rail-splitters and window-washers with the curve of youth on their
+faces--the soldiers said, "Whasamatter with Uncle Sam? Rah ... Wow ...
+Good-bye ... We'll treat 'em rough ... ashes to ashes and dust to dust
+if the Camels don't get you the Fatimas must...." And in the cantonments
+the soldiers said, " ... this lousy son of a badwoman of a shavetail
+can't put nothin' over on me ... say ... oh, I hate to get up in the
+morning, oh, how I long to remain in bed...." And in France the soldiers
+sang " ... there are smiles that make you happy there are smiles that
+make you sad.... The Knights of Columbus are all right but the Y. M. C.
+A. is a son of a badwoman of a grafting mess...."
+
+"Yanks Land in France ... Yanks in Big Battle ... Yanks Sink Submarines"
+... bang banged the headlines. Don't eat meat on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
+Help the Red Cross buy Doughnuts for the Salvation Army and keep an eye
+on Your Austrian Janitor.... Elephants, tom-cats, and chorus-girls; a
+hallelujah with a red putty nose, Seventy-six Thousand Press Agents
+Walking on their Hands, Jabberwocks, Horned Toads, and Prima Donnas ...
+here comes the Liberty Loan Drive ...
+
+A mighty nation had gone to war. Boom! Boom!
+
+And in a moon-lighted room overlooking a fanfare of roofs, Erik Dorn
+whispered one night to Rachel,
+
+"You have given me wings!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Time to get up. An oblong of sunlight squeezing through beneath the
+drawn blind and slapping itself boldly on the gloomy carpet ... "shame
+on all sleepy heads. Here's another day...."
+
+Rachel smiled as she opened her eyes. She lay quietly, smiling. It was
+as it was yesterday--as the day before. One opened one's eyes and life
+came quickly back with a "Hello, here I am--where you left me." So one
+lay, fearful to move, like a cup of wine that is too full and mustn't be
+joggled with even a kick at the bed sheets.
+
+One lay and smiled. Thoughts and stockings side by side somewhere on the
+floor. Put on stockings in a minute. Put on thoughts in a minute. Dress
+oneself up in phrases, hats, skyscrapers, and become somebody.
+
+Rachel's eyes livened slowly. Pleasant to be nobody--a bodyless,
+meaningless smile awake in the morning. Opened eyes on a pillow. A deep,
+deep sigh on a pillow. An oblong of sunshine on the floor. A happy bed.
+A happy ceiling. A happy door. Nothing else. Nobody else.
+
+But a hat, a blue straw hat with a jauntily curved brim, sat on a
+candlestick and winked. Which reminded one that one was alive. After
+all, one was somebody. Time to get up. All the king's horses and all the
+king's men demanded of one to arise and get dressed and go out and be
+somebody. Rachel kicked at the sheets. Protest against the Decrees of
+Destiny. " ... those are my feet kicking. Hello, here I am."
+
+There was a note on the pillow adjacent. It read: "At eight o'clock
+to-night I'll return. Please don't get run over in the streets. ERIK."
+
+Well, why not kiss the note, embrace the pillow and sigh? Why try to be
+anything but an idiot?... "Yes, Mr. Erik Dorn, I will be very careful
+and not let myself get run over in the streets."
+
+Rachel's head fell on the adjacent pillow and she lay whispering, "I
+love you," until the sound of her voice caused her to laugh.... Time to
+get up. Dear me! She closed her eyes and rolled herself out of bed....
+"Ouch!..." She sat up on the floor, legs extended, and stared at a shoe.
+Alas! a shoe is a crestfallen memory. A crestfallen yesterday lurks in
+old shoes. Shoes are always crestfallen. Even the shoes of lovers
+waiting under the bed weep and snivel all night. But why sit naked on
+the floor, stark, idiotically naked on the floor with legs thrust out
+like a surprised illustration in _La Vie Parisienne_ and toes curling
+philosophically toward a shoe?... "I'll do as I please. Very well."
+
+Sanity demanded clothes. But a sudden memory started her to her feet.
+She stood up lightly and hurried toward the large oval mirror.... "Your
+breasts are white birds dreaming under the stars. Your body is like the
+Queens of China parading through the moon...."
+
+She looked at herself in the mirror. Yes. But why not the Emperors of
+Afghanistan Walking on Their Hands? Thus ... "my Body is like the
+Presidents of the United States Riding Horseback...."
+
+She placed her hands on her slim hips and tautened her figure. When Erik
+was away all one could do was play with the things he had said. Was she
+as beautiful as he thought? A joyousness flowed through her. The mirror
+gave her back a memory of Erik. She was a memory of Erik.
+
+When she looked at herself in the mirror she saw only something that
+lived in the admiring eyes of Erik. Beautiful legs, beautiful body and
+"eyes like the courts of Solomon at night, like circles of incense." ...
+All were memories of Erik.
+
+She whispered softly to the figure in the mirror, "Erik knows your eyes.
+They are the beckoning hands of dreams." Thus Erik spoke of them. "I
+mustn't laugh at myself. I am more beautiful than anything or anybody in
+the whole world. There is nobody as beautiful as the woman Erik Dorn
+loves."
+
+If she were only in a forest now where she could run, jump in the air,
+scream at birds, and end by hurling herself into dim, cool water.
+Instead, an absurd business of fastening her silk slip.
+
+She seated herself on the bed, her stockings hanging from her hand, and
+fell again to listening to Erik. His word made an endless echo in her
+head.... "Perins a droll species. A sort of indomitable ass. Refuses to
+succumb to his intelligence. If you think he's in love with your Mary
+you're a downright imbecile. The man adjusts his passions to his phrases
+as neatly as a pretty woman pulling on her stockings...." She didn't
+like Erik to refer to pretty women pulling on their stockings. What an
+idiot! If Erik wanted to he could go out and help all the pretty women
+in New York pull on their stockings. As if that had anything to do with
+their love. Somebody else's stockings! A scornful exclamation point. Now
+her skirt, waist, shoes, and hat, and she was somebody.
+
+Somebody walking out of a house, in a street, looking, smiling, swinging
+along. The beautiful one, the desired one out for a promenade,
+embarrassed somehow by the fact that she was alive, that people looked
+at her and street-cars made frowning overtures to her. This was not her
+world. Yet she must move around in it as if she were a fatuous part of
+its grimacings and artifices. Shop windows that snickered into her eyes
+... "shoes $8 to-day. Hats, $10.50.... Traveling-cases only $19...." She
+must be polite and recognize its existence by composing her features,
+wearing a hat, saying "pardon me" when she trod on anyone's feet or
+bumped an elbow into a stomach. A stranger's world--gentlemen in straw
+hats; gentlemen in proud uniforms marching off to war; a fretwork of
+gentlemen, signs, windows, hats, and automobiles and a lot of other
+things, all continually tangling themselves up in front of her nose. A
+city pouring itself out of the morning sky and landing with a splash and
+a leap of windows around her feet. Thus the beautiful one, out for a
+promenade and moving excitedly through a superfluous world.
+
+She plunged into a perilous traffic knot and emerged unscathed. But that
+was wasting time. Time--another superfluous element, a tick-tock for the
+little wingless ones to crawl by. Then she remembered--a moon-lighted
+room ... "you have given me wings!" Her thought traced itself excitedly
+about the memory. This had happened. That had been said. Yesterday,
+to-day and to-morrow--all the same. Memories mixing with dreams. Wings!
+Yes, wings that beat, beat on the air and left one moving behind a blue
+dress, under a jaunty hat like all other jaunty hats. But something else
+moved elsewhere. There were two worlds for her. But not for Erik. One
+world for Erik. Where would his wings take him? Beyond life there was
+still life. A wall of life that never came to an end or a top. That was
+the one world for Erik. Hurl himself against it, higher, higher. Soar
+till the superfluous ones became little dots on a ribbon of streets.
+
+Tears came into her eyes. The strange world drifted away--a flutter of
+faces. A silence seemed to descend upon the streets as if their roaring
+were not a noise but the opened mouth of a dumb man. Erik had come to
+her. Arm in arm, smiling tears at him she walked through the spinning
+crowd in a path hidden from all snickering windows and revolving faces.
+A dream walk. These were her wings.
+
+Consciousness returned. She rubbed her eyes with the knuckles of her
+hands and laughed softly. She must not excite herself with hysterical
+worries. Wondering about Erik. There had been days when she had moved
+like a corpse through the streets, a corpse always finding new and
+further deaths. Death days with her heart tearing at empty hours, with
+time like a disease in her veins. Days before he had come. Now all life
+was in her. Why invent new causes of grief? She must talk sane words to
+herself. But the sane words bowed a polite adieu and putting on their
+hats walked away and sat down behind the snickering windows.... Other
+words arrived quickly, breathlessly.... There was something in his eyes
+that frightened, something that did not rest with her but seemed to
+reach on further. In the midst of their ecstasies his eyes, burning,
+unsatisfied, making her suddenly chill with fear, would whisper to her,
+"There is something more." In each other's arms it was she who came to
+an ending, not he. His kisses, his "I love you," were the clawing of
+fingers high up on the wall. For her they were the obliteration, the
+ending beyond life.
+
+The street unraveled itself about her with a bang of crowds and a whirl
+of flags, a zigzag of eyes like innumerable little tongues licking at
+the air. The tension of her thought relaxed. She remembered that when he
+walked in streets he was always making pictures. She thought of his
+words.... "It's a part of me that love hasn't changed, except to
+increase. A pestiferous sanity keeps demanding of me that I translate
+incoherent things into words. The city keeps handing itself to me like a
+blank piece of paper to write on. And I scribble away."
+
+She would do as he did, scribble words over faces and buildings as she
+walked. The city was a ... a swarm of humanity. Swarm of humanity. My
+God, had she lost the power of thought? Imagine telling Erik, "A crowd
+of people I saw to-day reminded me of a swarm of humanity." There was no
+sanity in her demanding words. Because there was no incoherence outside.
+Things weren't incoherent but non-existent. The city was no mystery.
+There was nothing to translate. It was an alien, superfluous world. That
+was the difference between them. To Erik it was not alien or
+superfluous. Even in their ecstasies there was still a world for him,
+like some mocking rival laughing at him, saying, "You can embrace
+Rachel. But what can you do to me? See if you can embrace me and swallow
+me with a kiss...."
+
+That's why he stayed away till eight o'clock, moving among men, writing,
+talking, doing work on the magazine. But there was nothing for her to
+do. She inhabited a world named Erik Dorn, a perfect world in which
+there was no room even for thought.
+
+Erik had written her a note from the office once ... "my heart is a
+dancing star above the graves of your absence...." But that was almost a
+lie because it was true only for one moment. Things occupied him that
+could not occupy her.
+
+Another block. Four more blocks. Noisy aliveness of streets that meant
+nothing. She thought, "People look at me and envy me because I'm in a
+hurry as if I had somewhere important to go. People envy everybody who
+is in a hurry to get somewhere. Because for them there are no
+destinations--only halting places for their drifting. Perhaps I should
+go home and paint something so as to have it to show him when he comes;
+or sit down somewhere and think up words to give him. I won't be able to
+talk to-night. I must just be ... without thinking ... of anything but
+him. Why doesn't he sometimes mention Anna? Is he afraid it might offend
+me to remind me of Anna? Would it? No. Many people live in the world.
+Another woman lived in Erik Dorn and he was unaware of her as the sky
+is unaware of me. And she died. But she isn't dead. Only her world died.
+Her sky fell down...."
+
+Tears came to Rachel's eyes. Her hands clenched.... "Anna, Anna, forgive
+me! I'm so happy. You must understand...."
+
+She felt a revulsion. She had thought something weak, silly. "Who is
+Anna that I must apologize to her? A woman. A woman Erik never loved. Do
+I ask apologies of her for having lived with him--kissed him?"
+
+There was a luncheon appointment with Mary James. Mary would bring a
+man. Perrin, maybe. Mary always brought a man. Without a man, Mary was
+incomplete. With a man she was even more incomplete. Mary insisted on
+lunching. Rachel hurried toward the rendezvous. She thought, "People can
+make me do anything now. Mary or anybody else. I was able once to walk
+over them. Now they lead me around. Because nothing matters. And people
+don't sicken me with their faces and talk. They're like noises in
+another room that one hears, sometimes sees, but never listens to or
+looks at. They ask questions. And you sit in a secret world beyond them
+with your hat and dress, properly attentive."
+
+Here was the hotel for the rendezvous. Mary out of breath,
+
+"Rachel! Hello! Wait a minute. Whee! What do you think you're doing?
+Pulling off a track meet or something? Been tryin' to catch up to you
+for an hour."
+
+Rachel looked at her. She was a golden-haired monkey full of words.
+
+"Charlie's at the Red Cat." A man. "We're going to lunch there. What in
+God's name's the matter with you?" A pause in the thick of the crowd.
+"Heavens, Rachel, are you well? I mean...."
+
+Rachel laughed. If you laughed people thought you were making answers.
+
+They arrived at the Red Cat. Small red circular tables. Black walls. A
+painstaking non-conformity about the decoration. A sprinkling of diners
+saying, "We eat, but not amid normal surroundings. We are emancipated
+from normal surroundings. It is extremely important that we eat off
+little red circular tables instead of big brown square tables in order
+to conform with our mission, which is that of non-conformity."
+
+Mary led the way to a table occupied by a tall, broad-shouldered youth
+with a crooked nose and humorously indignant eyes. He resembled a
+football player who has gone into the advertising business and remained
+a football player. Mary referred to him with a possessive "Charlie."
+
+Charlie said, "Why do you always pick out these joints to eat in, Mary?
+Been sittin' here for ten minutes scared to death one of these females
+would begin crawlin' around on the walls. There's a waiter here with
+long hair and two teeth missin' that I'm goin' to bust in the nose if
+he doesn't stop."
+
+"Stop what, Charlie?'
+
+"Oh, lookin' at me...."
+
+The luncheon progressed. Olives, watery soup, delicate sandwiches....
+
+An air of breathlessness about Rachel seemed to discommode her friends.
+Charlie, piqued at her inattentiveness, essayed a volubility foreign to
+his words. He was not so "nice a young man" as Hazlitt. But he boasted
+among friends that girls had had a chance with him. They could stay
+decent if they insisted but he let them understand it wouldn't do them
+any good so far as marrying them was concerned because he wasn't out for
+matrimony. There was too much to see.
+
+Mary interspersed her eating with quotations from advanced literature,
+omitting the quotation marks. A slim, shining-haired girl--men adored
+her hair--pretty-faced, silken-ankled, Mary had a mission in life. It
+was the utilizing of vivacious arguments on art, God, morals, economics,
+as exciting preliminaries for hand-holding and kissing with eyes closed,
+lips murmuring, "Ah, what is life?" Technically a virgin, but devoted
+exclusively to the satisfying of her sex--a satisfying that did not
+demand the completion of intercourse but the stimulus of its suggestion,
+Mary utilized the arts among which she dabbled as a bed for artificial
+immoralities. In this bed she had managed for several years to remain an
+adroitly chaste courtesan. Her pride was almost concentrated in her
+chastity. She guarded it with a precocious skill, parading it through
+conversation, hinting slyly of it when its existence seemed for the
+moment to have become unimportant. Her chastity, in fact, had become
+under skillful management the most immoral thing about her. She had
+learned the trick of exciting men with her virginity.
+
+The thing had become for her an unconscious business. After several
+years of it she evolved into a flushed, nervous victim of her own
+technique. She managed, however, to preserve her self-esteem by looking
+upon the perversion of her normal sexual instincts into a species of
+verbal nymphomania as an indication of a superior soul state. Radical
+books excited her mind as ordinarily her body might have been excited by
+radical caresses. Amateur theatricals, publicity work for charitable
+organizations, an allowance from her home in Des Moines, provided her
+with a practical background.
+
+Charlie was her latest catch. Later he would hold her hand, slip an arm
+around her, press her breasts gently and with a proper unconsciousness
+of what he was doing, and she would let him kiss her ... while music
+played somewhere ... preferably on a pier. Then she would murmur as he
+paused, out of breath, "Ah, what is life, Charlie?" And if instead of
+playing the game decently Charlie abandoned pretense and made an
+adventurous sortie, there would ensue the usual dénouement ... "Charlie
+... Oh, how could you? I'm ... I'm so disappointed. I thought you were
+different and that love to you meant something deeper and finer
+than--just that." And she would stand before him, her body alive with a
+sexual ardor that seemed to find its satisfaction in the discomfiture of
+the man, in his apologetic stammers, in her own virtuous words; and
+reach its climax in the contrite embrace which usually followed and the
+words, "Forgive me, dearest. I didn't mean.... Oh, will you marry me?"
+
+These were things in store for Charlie. But he must listen first. There
+were essential preliminaries--a routine of the chase. Her trimly shod
+foot crawled carefully against his ankle. There were really two types of
+men. Men who blushed when you touched their ankle under the table, and
+men who pretended not to blush. Charlie blushed with a soup-spoon at his
+lips. He glanced nervously at Rachel but she seemed breathlessly asleep
+with her eyes open--a paradoxical condition which baffled Charlie and
+caused him to withdraw disdainfully from further consideration of her.
+
+Rachel, eating without hunger, was remembering an actress in vaudeville
+making a preliminary curtain announcement to her "Moments from Great
+Plays" ... "Lady Godiva accordingly rode na-aked through the streets of
+Coventry, but, howevah, retained her vuhtue...."
+
+"Oh, but Charlie, you're not listening," explained Mary. "I was saying
+that chastity in woman is something man has insisted upon in order to
+show his capacity for waste. He likes the world to know that all his
+possessions are new and that he can command the purchase of new things
+because it shows his capacity for waste by which his standard of
+respectability is gauged in the eyes of his fellows...."
+
+Charlie lent an ear to the garbled veblenisms and gave it up. The
+mutterings and verbal excitements of women in general were mysteries
+beyond Charlie's desire to comprehend. They had, for Charlie, nothing to
+do with the case. It was pleasing, though, to have her talk of chastity.
+Chastity had a connection with the case. It was closely related to
+unchastity. He nodded his head vaguely and focused his attention on
+questing for the foot under the table that had withdrawn itself. The
+long-haired waiter with the missing teeth was an annoyance. He turned
+and glowered at him.
+
+"Don't you think so, Rachel?" Mary pursued.
+
+A monkey chattering. Another monkey kicking at her toes under the table.
+A room full of monkeys and all the monkeys looking at her, talking to
+her, kicking her foot, inspired by the curious hallucination that she
+was a part of their monkey world. Rachel laughed and eyes turned to her.
+People were always startled by laughter that sounded so sudden. There
+must be preliminaries to laughter so as to get the atmosphere prepared
+for it.
+
+"Rachel, I'm talking to you, if you please."
+
+Mary, puckering her forehead very importantly, was informing her that
+Mary existed and was demanding proof of the fact. That was the secret of
+people. They didn't really exist to themselves until somebody recognized
+them and proved they were alive--by answering their questions. People
+lived only when somebody talked to them--anybody. The rest of the time
+they went along with nothing inside them except stomachs that grew
+hungry.
+
+She answered Mary, "Oh, there are lots of things you don't know." And
+laughed, this time careful of not sounding too sudden. She meant there
+was something that lived behind hours, there was a dream world in which
+the words and faces of people were ridiculously non-existent. But Mary
+was a literal-minded monkey and thought she was referring to quotations
+from books superior to the ones she used.
+
+"Oh, is that so?" said Mary.
+
+Charlie, also literal-minded and still after the foot, echoed Rachel,
+"You bet your life it is."
+
+"And I suppose you know all about them, Miss Laskin." Very sarcastic. An
+inflection that had made her a conversational terror in the Des Moines
+High School.
+
+Mary was always conscious of not having read enough and of therefore
+being secretly inferior to more omnivorous readers. She did not think
+Rachel read much, but Rachel was different. Rachel was an artist and
+had ideas. Mary respected artists and was always sarcastic toward them.
+It usually made them talk a lot--particularly male artists--and thus
+enabled her to find out what their ideas were and use them as her own.
+Nevertheless, despite her most careful parrotings the artists always
+managed to have other ideas always different from the ones she stole
+from them. Fearing some devastating rejoinder from Rachel--Rachel was
+the kind of person who could blurt out things that landed on you like a
+ton of bricks--she sought to fortify Charlie's opinion of her by
+replacing her foot against his ankle.
+
+"Well, what are they, Rachel?"
+
+What were the things Mary knew nothing about? A large order. Rachel's
+tongue began to wag in her mind. Stand up and make a speech. Fling her
+arms about. High-sailing words. Absurd! A laugh would answer. Laughs
+always answered. Rachel laughed. She would suffocate among such people,
+exasperating strangers with inquisitive faces and nervous feet.
+
+At the conclusion of the luncheon Charlie had reached a new stage in his
+amorous maneuverings. He had paid no further attention to Rachel,
+although vividly conscious of her. But Mary offered definite horizons. A
+bird in the hand. There was something exciting about Mary not to be
+encountered in the Junos and Aphrodites of his cabaret quests. Mary
+appeared virtuous--and yet promised otherwise. She used frank
+words--lust, chastity, virginity, sexuality. Charlie quivered. The
+words sticking out of long, twisted sentences, detached themselves and
+came to him like furtively indecent caresses. Mary promised. So he
+agreed to go with her to the Players' Studio where she was rehearsing in
+some kind of nut show.
+
+"You must come too, Rachel. Frank Brander has done some gorgeous
+settings for the next bill."
+
+Long hours before eight o'clock.
+
+"I've got some important things on at the office," Charlie hesitated.
+
+"Yes, I'll go," Rachel answered. This, mysteriously, seemed to decide
+Charlie. He would go too.
+
+In the buzzing little auditorium of the Players' Studio, Charlie
+endeavored to further his quest. But the atmosphere seemed,
+paradoxically enough, a handicap. A free-and-easy atmosphere with men
+and women in odd-looking rigs sauntering about. The place was as immoral
+as a honky-tonk. Charlie stared at the young women in smocks and bobbed
+hair, smoking cigarettes, sitting with their legs showing. They should
+have been prostitutes but they weren't. Or maybe they were, only he
+wasn't used to that kind. Too damn gabby. Mary had jumped up on the
+small stage and was talking with a group of young men and women. He
+moved to follow, but hesitated. He didn't have the hang of this kind of
+thing. The sick-looking youths loitering around, casually embracing the
+gals and rubbing their arms, seemed to know the lingo. Charlie sat down
+in disgust and yielded himself to a feeling of stiffly superior virtue.
+
+In a corner Rachel listened to Frank Brander.
+
+"We've got quite a promising outfit here, Miss Laskin. Why don't you
+come around and help with the drops or something? The more the merrier.
+We're putting on a thing by Chekov next week and a strong thing by
+Elvenah Jack. Lives down the street. Know her? Oh, it isn't much." He
+smiled good-naturedly at the miniature theater. "But it's fun. I'll show
+you around."
+
+Rachel submitted. Brander was a friend of Emil Tesla. He drew things for
+_The Cry_. He had a wide mouth and ugly eyes that took things for
+granted--that took her for granted. She was a woman and therefore
+interested in talking to a man. He held her arm too much and kept saying
+in her thought, "We've got to pretend we're decent, but we're not. We're
+a man and woman." But what did that matter? Long hours before eight
+o'clock.
+
+On the stage Brander became a personality. A group of nondescript faces
+deferred to him. A woman with stringy hair and an elocutionist's mouth,
+grew dramatic as he passed. They paused before Mary. Brander had stopped
+abruptly in his talk. He turned toward Mary and stared at her until she
+began to grow pink. Rachel wondered. Mary wanted to run away, but
+couldn't. Brander finally said shortly, "Hello, you!" His eyes blazed
+for an instant and then grew angry.
+
+"Come on, Miss Laskin." He jerked her and she followed. In the wings
+half hidden from the group that crowded the tiny stage Brander said, "Do
+you know that girl?"
+
+Rachel nodded.
+
+"She's no good," he grinned. "I like women one thing or the other. She's
+both. And no good. I got her number."
+
+Rachel noticed that he had moved his hand up on her arm and was gently
+pressing the flesh under her shoulder. He kept saying to her now in her
+thought, "I've got a man's body and you've got a woman's body. There's
+that difference between us. Why hide it?" His voice became soft and he
+said aloud, "Don't you like men to be one kind or the other? And not
+both?"
+
+Rachel looked at him blankly. She must pretend she didn't know what he
+was talking about. Otherwise she would begin to talk. He was a man to
+whom one talked because he demanded it. His face, ugly and boyish,
+seemed to have rid itself of many expressions and retained a certainty.
+The certainty said, "I'm a man looking for women."
+
+Brander laughed.
+
+"Oh, you're one of the other kind," he said. "Beg pardon. No harm done.
+Let's go out front."
+
+Out front in the half-lighted auditorium Brander suddenly left her. She
+saw him a few minutes later standing close to a nervous-voiced woman who
+was saying, "Oh, dear! Dear me! I'll never get this part. I won't! I
+just know it!"
+
+Brander was toying idly with a chain that hung about the woman's neck.
+He was looking at her intently. Mary approached, bearing Charlie along.
+She began whispering to Rachel, "That man's a beast. I hate him. He
+thinks he's an artist, but he's a beast. You'll find out if you're not
+careful."
+
+Rachel asked, "Who?"
+
+"Brander," Mary answered.
+
+Charlie interrupted, indignation rumbling in his voice,
+
+"A bunch of freaks, all of them. I don't see why a decent girl wants to
+hang around in a dump like this."
+
+He was more grieved than indignant. A woman with dark hair and long
+gypsy earrings had suddenly laughed at him when he sat down beside her.
+Mary patted his arm.
+
+"I know, Charlie. But you don't understand. My turn in a few minutes,
+Rachel. We'll wait here till the Chekov thing comes on. Do you know
+Felixson? He's got a wonderful thing for the bill after this. A
+religious play. Awfully strong. That's him with the bushy hair. You must
+know him."
+
+Charlie grunted.
+
+"You don't mean you act in this damn joint?"
+
+"Oh, I'm just helping out for next week. It's lots of fun, Charlie."
+
+Rachel stood up suddenly from the uncomfortable bench seat.
+
+"I must go," she murmured. "I'm sorry."
+
+Turning quickly she walked out of the place. Behind her Charlie laughed.
+"A wild little thing."
+
+Mary with her body pressed closely against him combated an influence
+that seemed at work upon Charlie.
+
+"She's changed a great deal, poor girl," said Mary.
+
+"What is she?"
+
+"An artist. She says wonderful things sometimes. Awfully strong things
+and just hates people."
+
+"A nut," agreed Charlie.
+
+"Oh, she's sort of strange. Puts on a lot, of course." Mary felt
+uncomfortable. Rachel had managed to leave behind a feeling of the
+unimportance of everybody but Rachel. She was leaning against Charlie
+for vindication. His body, trembling at the contact, provided it; but
+his words annoyed her.
+
+"Well, she's different from the gang in here--I'll say that for her."
+
+"Oh, let's forget her," Mary whispered. "I don't like this place.
+Really, I ..." She hesitated and thought, "Rachel thinks she's
+mysterious and enigmatic and everything, but she's an awful fool. She
+can't put it over on me." Yet she sat, despite the vindication of
+Charlie's amorous embarrassment, and wondered, parrot fashion, "Ah, what
+is life?"
+
+Outside Rachel was walking again. The memory of her meeting with Mary,
+of Brander's ugly appealing face that whispered frankly of his sex, was
+dead in her. Little toy people playing at games. Erik hated them. Erik
+said ... well, it was something too indecent to repeat. She couldn't get
+used to Erik's indecent comparisons. But they were like that--the toy
+people in the little toy village. She didn't hate them the way Erik did.
+Some of them were just playing. But there were others. Why think of
+them? Walk, walk. Just be. A perfect circle.... "There's nothing to do.
+I don't want anything. To-night he'll talk to me. And I'll make real
+answers." Why did she want to be kissed? Kisses were for people like
+Mary. "Oh, he'll kiss me and I'll become alive."
+
+It was late afternoon. Still, long hours before eight o'clock. It
+pleased Erik when she told him how empty the day had been. But she
+mustn't harp too much on that. It would sound as if she were making
+demands on him. No demands. He was free. They weren't married. A crowd
+was solidifying in 10th Street. She walked slowly, watching the people
+gathering at the corner. The office of _The Cry_ was there. She
+remembered this and hurried forward.
+
+Something was happening. An excitement was jerking people out of their
+silences. Blank, silent faces around her suddenly opened and dropped
+masks. Bodies drifting carelessly up and down the street broke into
+runnings.
+
+Around the corner people were shouting, pressed into a ball of wild
+faces and waving arms. It was in front of the office of _The Cry_ that
+something was happening.
+
+"Kill the dirty rascal! Make the son-of-a----kiss the flag!"
+
+Words screeched out of a bay of sound.
+
+"Kill him! Kill the son-of-a---- String him up!"
+
+On the edge of the ball that was growing larger and seeming about to
+burst into some wild activity, Rachel stood tip-toed. She could see two
+burly-looking men dragging a bloody figure out of a doorway. Blood
+dropped from him, leaving stains on the top step. The two men were
+twisting his wrists as if they wanted them to come off. Yet they didn't
+act as if they were twisting anybody's wrists off. They seemed to be
+just waiting.
+
+It was Tesla between them. His face was cut. One of his arms hung limp.
+Blood began to spurt from his wrists and drop from his fingers as if he
+were writing something on the top step in a foolish way. At the sight of
+him the noises increased. The ball of faces grew angrier. Policemen
+swung sticks. They yelled, "Back, there! Everybody back!" Runners were
+coming from all directions as if the city had suddenly found a place to
+go and was pouring itself into 10th Street.
+
+"Hey ... hey ... they've got him!"
+
+Nobody asked who, but came running with a shout.
+
+The street broke over Rachel. Tesla vanished. Roaring in her ears, faces
+tumbling, lifting in a wildness about her. A make-believe of horror. Her
+thought gasped, "Where am I? What is this?" Her feet were carrying her
+into the boiling center of a vat of bodies. Then she saw Tesla again,
+standing above them. A blood-smeared man with a broken arm, his head
+raised. But he was somebody else.
+
+Caught in the pack she became far away, seeing things move as with an
+almost lifeless deliberateness. Tesla's face was the center. His swollen
+eyes were trying to open. His paralyzed mouth was trying to form itself
+back into a mouth. A mist covered him as if the raging street and the
+many voices focused into a film and hid him. Behind this film he was
+doing something slowly. Then he became vivid. He was shouting,
+
+"Comrades ... workers ..."
+
+A roar from the street concealed him and his voice. But the vividness of
+him lingered and emerged again.
+
+"Comrades!"
+
+A fist struck against his mouth. His head wabbled. Another fist struck
+against his eye. The two men holding his wrists were striking into his
+uncovered face with their fists. A gleeful, joyous sound went up. Rachel
+stared at the wabbling head of Tesla. The street laughed. Fists hammered
+at an uncovered face. People were coming on a run to see. A bell
+clanged. Beside her a man shrieked, "Make him kiss the flag, the dirty
+anarchist!"
+
+Things slowed again. A film was over the scene. Tesla was being dragged
+down the steps. His head kept falling back as if he wanted to go to
+sleep. Then something happened. A laugh, high like a scream, lit the
+air. It made her cold. The men dragging Tesla down the steps paused, and
+their fists moving with a leisureliness struck into his face, making no
+sound and not doing anything. It was Tesla who had laughed. The fists
+kept moving through a film. But he laughed again--a high laugh like a
+scream that lit the air with mystery.
+
+When the pack began to sift and sweep her into strange directions she
+felt that Tesla was still laughing, though she could no longer hear him.
+The street became shapeless. Something had ended. A bell clanged away.
+People were again walking. They had dull faces and were quiet. She
+caught a glimpse of the step on which Tesla had stood behind a mist and
+cried, "Comrades!" She remembered often having stood on the step herself
+in coming to the office of _The Cry_. This made her sicken. It was her
+wrists that had been twisted, her uncovered face that had been struck
+by fists.
+
+The emotion left her as a hand tugged eagerly at her arm. It pulled her
+up on the crowded curbing.
+
+"Good God, Rachel, what are you doing here?"
+
+She looked up and saw Hazlitt in uniform. He kept pulling her. Why
+should Hazlitt be pulling her out of a crowd in 10th Street? She tried
+to jerk away. She must run from Hazlitt before he began talking. He
+would make her scream.
+
+Turning to him with a quiet in her voice she said carefully:
+
+"Please let me go. You hurt my arm."
+
+But his hand remained. His eyes, shining and indignant, prodded at
+her.... The street was quiet. Nothing had happened. Unconscious
+buildings, unconscious traffic, faces wrapped in solitudes--these were
+in the streets again. She turned and looked with amazement at her
+companion. People do not fall out of the sky and seize you by the arm.
+There was something stark about Hazlitt pulling her out of the street
+mob and holding her arm. He was an amputation. You pulled yourself out
+of a filth of faces and sprawled suddenly into a quiet, cheerful street
+holding an arm in your hand, as if it had come loose from the pack. It
+seemed part of some arrangement--Tesla, the pack, Hazlitt's arm. Her
+amazement died. Hazlitt was saying:
+
+"I knew you'd be in that mob. I thought when I saw them haul that dirty
+beggar out ..."
+
+He halted, pained by a memory. Rachel nodded. The curious sense of
+having been Tesla came again to her. He had laughed in a way that
+reminded her of herself. She would laugh like that if they struck at her
+face. Her eyes turned frightenedly toward Hazlitt. What was he going to
+do? Arrest her? He was in uniform. But why should he arrest her? His
+eyes had the fixed light of somebody performing a duty. He was arresting
+her, and Erik would come home and not find her. Her lithe body became
+possessed of an astounding strength. With a vicious grimace she tore
+herself from his grip and confronted him, her eyes on fire.
+
+"Please, Rachel. Come with me till I can talk. You must ..."
+
+A white-faced Hazlitt, with suffering eyes. Then he was not arresting
+her. The street bobbed along indifferently.
+
+"I'm going away in an hour. You'll maybe never see me again. But I can't
+go away till I've talked to you. Please."
+
+It didn't matter then. She would be home in time. And it was easier to
+obey the desperate whine of his voice then run into the crowd. He would
+chase after her, whining louder and louder. They entered a hotel lobby.
+Hazlitt picked out a secluded corner as if arranging for some rite. He
+was going to do something. Rachel walked after him, annoyed,
+indifferent. What did it matter? This was George Hazlitt--a name that
+meant nothing and yet could talk to her.
+
+Sitting opposite her the name began, "Now you must promise me you won't
+get up and run away till I'm through--no matter what I say."
+
+She promised with a nod. She must be polite. Being polite was part of
+the idiotic penalties attached to adventuring outside her real world, in
+unreal superfluous streets. What had made Tesla laugh? His laugh had not
+been unreal. Almost as if it were a part of her. Blood dropping from his
+fingers. A bleeding man.
+
+"I'm leaving for France, Rachel. I couldn't go away without seeing you.
+I've spent a week trying to find you and this morning they told me to
+inquire at _The Cry_."
+
+Was he apologizing for Tesla? She remembered the faces that had swept by
+in 10th Street. His had been one of them. Hazlitt had twisted Tesla's
+wrists and struck into his uncovered face.
+
+Rachel slipped to her feet and stared about her. A hand caught at her
+arm and pulled her into the chair.
+
+"You promised. You can't leave till you hear me."
+
+She sank back.
+
+"Give me five minutes. I'm unworthy of them. But I've found you and must
+talk now. I can't go across without telling you."
+
+She looked up. Tears almost in his eyes. His voice grown low. He seemed
+to be whispering something that didn't belong to the sanity of the hotel
+lobby and the two large potted palms in the corner.
+
+"I'm unclean. I've been looking for you to ask you to forgive me."
+
+Hazlitt's hands crept over his knees.
+
+"Oh, God, you must listen and forgive me."
+
+This was a mad monkey uttering noises too unintelligible for even an
+attentive hat, dress, and pair of shoes to make anything of.
+
+"Rachel, I love you. I don't know how to say it. There's something I've
+got to say. Because ... otherwise I can't love you. I can't love you
+with the thing unsaid."
+
+He looked bewilderedly about him and gulped, his face red, his eyes
+tortured.
+
+"It's about a woman."
+
+"Perhaps," she thought, "he's going to boast. No, he's going to cry.
+What does he want?"
+
+The sound of his voice made her ill. If he were going to make love why
+didn't he start instead of gulping and covering his face and choking
+with tears in a hotel lobby as if he were an actor?
+
+"I was drawn into it. I couldn't help it. One afternoon in my office
+after the trial. Then she kept after me. The thought of you has been
+like knives in me. I've loved you all through it and hated myself for
+thinking of you, dragging you into it. I dragged the thought of you down
+with me. But she wouldn't let me go. God, I could kill her now. I broke
+away after weeks. She got somebody else. I've been living in hell ever
+since--on account of you. I'm unclean and can't love you any more. If it
+hadn't been for my going across I'd not have come to you. But the war's
+given me my chance. I can't explain it. I went in to--to wipe it out.
+But I had to find you and tell you. I didn't want to think of dying and
+having insulted you and not ..."
+
+He stopped, overcome. Rachel was nodding her head. She must make an
+answer to this. It was a riddle asking an answer.
+
+"For God's sake, Rachel, don't look like that. Oh, you're so clean and
+pure. I can't tell you. You're like a star shining and me in the mud.
+You've always hated me. But it's different now. I'm going to France to
+die. I don't want to live. If you forgive me it'll be easier. That's why
+I had to talk, Rachel, forgive me. And then it won't matter what
+happens."
+
+She let him take her hand. It was an easy way to make an answer. A
+desire to giggle had to be overruled. The words he had spoken became
+absurd little manikins of words, bowing at each other, striking idiotic
+postures before her. But he had done something and for some astounding
+reason wanted her to forgive him for what he had done. He was a fool. An
+impossible fool. He sat and looked like a fool. Not even a man.
+
+Hazlitt raised her hand to his face. Tears fell on it. Rachel felt them
+crawling warmly over her fingers. They were too intimate.
+
+"You make me feel almost clean again. Your hand's like something clean
+and pure. If I come back...."
+
+He stared at her in desperation. He seemed suddenly to have forgotten
+his intention to die in France. He recalled Pauline. Was he sorry? No.
+It was over. Not his fault. All this to Rachel was a ruse. Clever way to
+get her sympathy. Not quite. But he felt better.
+
+He became incomprehensible to Rachel. The things he had said--his
+weeping, gulping--all part of an incomprehensible business. She nodded
+her head and looked serious. It was something that had to do with a
+far-away world.
+
+"Good-bye. Remember, I love you. And I'll come through clean because of
+you...."
+
+She held out her hand and said, "Good-bye."
+
+But he didn't go. Now he was completely a fool. Now there was something
+so completely foolish about him that she must laugh. The light in his
+face detained her laughter.
+
+"You forgive me ... for ..."
+
+She nodded her head again. It seemed to produce a magical effect--this
+nodding of her head up and down. His eyes brightened and he appeared to
+grow taller.
+
+"Then if I die, I'll go to heaven."
+
+She winced at this. An unbearable stupidity. But Hazlitt stood looking
+at her for an instant quite serious, as if he had said something noble.
+He saluted her, his hand to his cap, his heels together, and went away.
+
+The memory lingered. Hazlitt had always been incomprehensible. His
+stupidity was easy enough to understand. But something under it was a
+mess. Now he was a fool. Stiff and idiotic and making her feel ashamed
+as if she were sorry for him.... Tesla came back and stood on a step
+dropping blood from his fingers. Brander came back and whispered with
+his ugly face. Hazlitt, Tesla, Brander--three men that jumped out at her
+from the superfluous streets. Like the three men in the park walking
+horribly across the white park in the night.... An idiot, a bleeding
+man, and an ugly face. But they had passed her and gone. They were
+things seen outside a window.
+
+Her eyes looking at a clock said to her, "Two hours more. Oh, in two
+hours, in two hours!"
+
+She sat motionless until the clock said, "One hour more, one more hour!"
+
+Then she stood up and walked slowly out of the hotel. Things had changed
+since she had left the streets. The strange world full of Marys,
+Hazlitts, and Teslas had added further superfluities. A band of music.
+Soldiers marching. Buildings waving flags and crying, "Boom, boom! we
+have gone to war!..."
+
+She came to her home. A red-brick house like other red-brick houses. But
+her home. What a fool she had been to leave it. It would have been
+easier waiting here. She walked into the two familiar rooms filled with
+the memory of Erik--two rooms that embraced her. Her hat fell on the
+bed. She would have to eat. Downstairs in the dining-room. Other
+boarders to look at. But Erik would have eaten when he came. He
+preferred eating alone.
+
+Rachel took her place at one of the smaller tables and dabbled through a
+series of uninteresting dishes. An admiring waitress rebuked her ...
+"Dearie, you ain't eating hardly anything."
+
+She smiled at the waitress and watched her later bringing dishes to a
+purple-faced fat man at an adjoining table. The fat man was futilely
+endeavoring to tell secrets to the waitress by contorting his features
+and screwing up his eyes. He reminded Rachel of Brander, only Brander
+told secrets without trying. She finished and hurried out. She would be
+hungry later, but it didn't matter. Erik would be there then.
+
+In the hallway Mrs. McGuire called, "Oh, Mrs. Dorn!"
+
+Being called Mrs. Dorn always frightened her and made her dizzy. She
+paused. Some day Mrs. McGuire would look at her shrewdly and say,
+"You're not Mrs. Dorn. I called you Mrs. Dorn but I know better. Don't
+think you're fooling anybody. Mrs. Dorn, indeed!"
+
+But Mrs. McGuire held out her hand.
+
+"A letter for your husband. Do you want to sit in the parlor, Mrs. Dorn?
+You know I want all my boarders to make themselves entirely at home."
+
+"Thank you," said Rachel. "You're so nice. But I have some work to do
+upstairs."
+
+Escaping Mrs. McGuire was one of the difficult things of the day. A
+buxom, round-faced woman in black with friendly eyes, Mrs. McGuire had a
+son in the army and a sainted husband dead and buried, and a childish
+faith in the friendliness and interest of people. Rachel hurried up the
+stairs. In her room she looked at the letter. For Erik. Readdressed
+twice. From Chicago. She stood holding it. It said to her, "I am from
+Anna. I am from Anna. Words of Anna. I am the wife of Erik Dorn."
+
+Anna was a reality. Long ago Anna had been a reality. A background
+against which the dream of Erik Dorn raised itself. She remembered
+sitting close to Anna and smiling at her the first time she had visited
+Erik's home. Why had she gone? If only she had never seen Anna! Her
+tired, sad eyes that smiled at Erik. Rachel's fingers tightened over the
+envelope. She laughed nervously and tore the letter. He was hers. Anna
+couldn't write to him.
+
+A pain came into her heart as the paper separated itself into bits in
+her fingers. She felt herself tearing something that was alive. It was
+cruel to tear the letter. But it would save Erik pain. ... To read
+Anna's words, to hear her cries, see her sad tired eyes staring in
+anguish out of the writing--that would hurt Erik.
+
+She dropped the bits into the waste-paper basket and stood wide-eyed
+over them. She had dared. As if he had belonged to her. What would he
+say? But he wouldn't know. Unless Mrs. McGuire said, "There was a letter
+for you, Mr. Dorn." Why hadn't she read the letter before tearing it up?
+Perhaps it was important, saying Anna had died. When Anna died Erik
+would marry her. She would have children and live in a house of her own.
+Mrs. Rachel Dorn, people would call her. This was a dream.... Mrs.
+Rachel Dorn. He would laugh if he knew; or worse, be angry. But ... "Oh,
+God, I want him. Like that. Complete." Anna had had him like that. The
+other thing. Not respectability. But the possession of little things.
+
+She would have to tell him about the letter. She couldn't lie to him,
+even silently. The clock on the dresser, ticking as it had always
+ticked, said, "In a half-hour ... a half-hour more."
+
+She sprang from the bed and stood listening.
+
+Someone was coming down the hall. Strange hours fell from her. Now Erik
+was coming. Now life commenced. The empty circle of the day was over.
+
+Her body grew wild as if she must leap out of herself. Her eyes hung
+devouringly upon the blank door--a door opening and Erik standing,
+smiling at her. It was still a dream. It would never become real. She
+would always feel frightened. Though he came home a hundred thousand
+times she would always wait like now for the door to open with a fear
+and a dream in her heart. But why did he knock?
+
+She opened the door with a feverish jerk. Not Erik. A messenger-boy
+blinking surprised eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Dorn?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Sign here, second line."
+
+A blank door again. The message read:
+
+"I'll be home late. Don't worry. ERIK."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Warren Lockwood was a man who wrote novels. He had lived in the Middle
+West until he was thirty-five and begun his writing at his desk in a
+real-estate office of which he had been until then a somewhat bored half
+owner.
+
+During the months Erik Dorn had been working on the staff of "the _New
+Opinion_--an Organ of Liberal Thought," he had encountered Lockwood
+frequently--a dark-haired, rugged-faced man with a drawling,
+high-pitched masculine voice. Dorn liked him. He talked in the manner of
+a man carefully focusing objects into range. Lockwood was aware he had
+gotten under the skin of things. He talked that way.
+
+The change from the newspaper to the magazine continued, after several
+months, to irritate Dorn. The leisureliness of his new work aggravated.
+There was an intruding sterility about it. The _New Opinion_ was a
+weekly. From week to week it offered a growing clientèle finalities.
+There were finalities on the war, finalities on the social unrest;
+finalities on art, life, religion, the past, present, and future. A
+cock-sure magazine, gently, tolerantly elbowing aside the mysteries of
+existence and holding up between carefully manicured thumb and
+forefinger the Gist of the Thing. The Irrefutable Truth. The Perfect
+Deduction.
+
+There were a number of intelligent men engaged in the work of writing
+and editing the periodical. They seemed all to have graduated from an
+identical strata. Dorn, becoming acquainted with them, found them
+intolerable. They appealed to him as a group of carefully tailored
+Abstractions bombinating mellifluously in a void. The precision of logic
+was in them. The precision of even tempers. The precision of aloof eyes
+fastened upon finalities. Theoretical radicals. Theoretical
+conservatives. Theoretical philosophers. Any appellation preceded by the
+adjective theoretical fitted them snugly. Of contact with the
+hurdy-gurdy of existence which he as a journalist felt under the ideas
+of the day, there was none. Life in the minds of the intellectual staff
+of the _New Opinion_ smoothed itself out into intellectual paragraphs.
+And from week to week these paragraphs made their bow to the public.
+Mannerly admonitions, courteous disapprovals. A style borrowed from the
+memory of the professor informing a backward class in economics what the
+exact date of the signing of the Magna Charta really was.
+
+Lockwood was the exception. He wrote occasional fictional sketches for
+the magazine. Dorn had been attracted to him at first because of the
+curious intonations of his voice. He had not read the man's
+novels--there were four of them dealing with the Middle West--but in the
+repressed sing-song of his voice Dorn had sensed an unusual character.
+
+"He's a good writer, an artist," he thought, hearing him talking to
+Edwards, one of the editors. "He talks like a lover arguing patiently
+and gently with his own thoughts."
+
+After that they had walked and eaten together. The idea of Warren
+Lockwood being a lover grew upon Dorn. Of little things, of things
+seemingly unimportant and impersonal, the novelist talked as he would
+have liked to talk to Rachel--with a slow simplicity that caressed his
+subjects and said, "These are little things but we must be careful in
+handling them, for they're a part of life." And life was important.
+People were tremendously existent. Dorn, listening to the novelist,
+would watch his eyes that seemed to be always adventuring among secrets.
+
+Once he thought, "A sort of mother love is in him. He keeps trying to
+say something that's never in his words. His thoughts are like a lover's
+fingers stroking a girl's hair. That's because he's found himself. He
+feels strong and lets his strength come out in gentleness. He's found
+himself and is trying to shape secrets into words."
+
+In comparing Lockwood with the others on the staff of the magazine he
+explained, "There's the difference between a man and an intellect.
+Warren's a man. The others are a group of schoolboys reducing life to
+lessons."
+
+There grew up in Dorn a curious envy of the novelist. He would think of
+him frequently when alone, "The fellow's content to write. I'm not. He's
+found his way of saying what's in him, getting rid of his energies and
+love. I haven't. He feels toward the world as I do toward Rachel. An
+overpowering reality and mystery are always before him; but it gives him
+a mental perspective. What does Rachel give me? Desires, ambitions--a
+sort of laughing madness that I can't translate into anything but
+kisses. I'm cleverer than I was before. I talk and write better. There's
+a certain wildness about things as if I were living in a storm. Yes, I
+have wings, but there's no place to fly with them. Except into her arms.
+There must be something else."
+
+And he would rush through the day, outwardly a man of inexhaustible
+energies, stamping himself upon the consciousness of people as a
+brilliant, dominating personality. Edwards, with whom he discussed
+matter for editorials and articles, had grown to regard him with awe.
+
+"I've never felt genius so keenly before," Edwards explained him to
+Lockwood. "The man seems burning up. Did you read his thing on Russia
+and Kerensky? Lord, it was absolutely prophetic."
+
+Lockwood shook his head.
+
+"Dorn's too damn clever," he drawled. "Things come too easily to him.
+He's got an eye but--I can't put my finger on it. You see a fella's got
+to have something inside him. The things Erik says cleverly and
+prophetically don't mean anything much, because they don't mean anything
+to him. He makes 'em up as he goes along."
+
+Edwards disagreed. He was a younger man than Lockwood, with an
+impressionable erudition. Like his co-workers he had been somewhat
+stampeded by Dorn's imitative faculties, faculties which enabled the
+former journalist to bombinate twice as loud in a void three times as
+great as any of his colleagues.
+
+"Well, I've met a lot of writing men since I came East," he said. "And
+Dorn's the best of them. He's more than a man of promise. He's opened
+up. Look what he's done in the new number. Absolutely revolutionized the
+liberal thought of the country. You've got to admit that. He's a man
+incapable of fanaticism."
+
+"That's just it," smiled Lockwood. "You've hit it. You've put your
+finger on it. He's the kind of man who knows too damn much and don't
+believe anything."
+
+The friendship between Lockwood and Dorn matured quickly. The two men,
+profoundly dissimilar in their natures, found themselves launched upon a
+growing intimacy. To Lockwood, heavy spoken, delicate sensed, naïve
+despite the shrewdness of his forty-five years, Erik Dorn appealed as
+some exotic mechanical contrivance might for a day fascinate and
+bewilder the intelligence of a rustic. And the other, in the midst of
+magnificent bombinations that amazed his friend, thought, "If I only
+had this man's simplicity. If on top of my ability to unravel mysteries
+into words I could feel these mysteries as he does, I might do
+something."
+
+At other times, carried away by the strength of his own nature, he would
+find himself looking down upon Lockwood. "I'm alive. He's static. I live
+above him. There's nothing beyond me. I can't feel the things out of
+which he makes his novels, because I'm beyond them."
+
+He would think then of Lockwood as an eagle of a rustic painstakingly
+hoeing a field. On such days the disquiet would vanish from Dorn's
+thought. He would feel himself propelled through the hours as if by some
+irresistible wind of which he had become a part. To live was enough. To
+live was to give expression to the clamoring forces in him. To sweep
+over Edwards, hurl himself through crowds, pulverize Warren, bang out
+astounding fictions on the typewriter, watch the faces of acquaintances
+light up with admiration as he spoke--this sufficed. The world
+galvanized itself about him. He could do anything. He could give vision
+to people, create new life around him. This consciousness sufficed. Then
+to rush home from a triumphant day, a glorious contempt for his fellows
+lingering like wine in his head--and find Rachel--an eagle waiting in a
+nest.
+
+Joy, then, become a mania. Desires feeding upon themselves, devouring
+his body and his senses and hurling him into an exhausted sleep as if
+death alone could climax the madness of his spirit--these Dorn knew in
+the days of his strength.
+
+But the days of disquiet came, confronting him like skeletons in the
+midst of his feastings upon life. The ecstasy he felt seemed suddenly to
+turn itself inward and demand of him new destinations. On such days he
+had fallen into the habit of going upon swift walks through the less
+crowded streets of the city. During his walking he would mutter, "What
+can I do? What? Nothing. Not a thing." As if secret voices were debating
+his destiny.
+
+Restless, vicious spoken, venting his strainings in a skyrocket burst of
+phrases upon the inanity and stupidity of his fellow creatures for which
+he seemed to possess an almost uncanny vision, he fled through these
+days like the victim of some spiritual satyriasis. No longer a wind at
+his heels riding him into easy heights, he found himself weighted down
+with his love, and strangely inanimate.
+
+The direction in which he was moving loomed sterilely before him. His
+love itself seemed a feverishly sterile thing. His work upon the
+magazine, his incessant exchange of intolerant adjectives with admiring
+strangers--these became absurdly petty gestures, absurdly insufficient.
+There was something else to do. As he had longed for Rachel in the black
+days before their coming together, he longed now for this something
+else. Without name or outline, it haunted him. Another face of stars,
+but this time beyond his power to understand. Yet it demanded him, as
+Rachel had demanded him, and towards it he turned in his days of
+disquiet, inanimate and bewildered.
+
+"I must find something to do," he explained to himself, "that will give
+me direction. People must have a monomania as a track for their living,
+or else there is no living."
+
+Then, as was his custom, he would begin an unraveling of the notion.
+
+"Men with energies in them wed themselves quickly to some consuming
+project, even if it's nothing more than the developing of a fish market.
+Rachel isn't a destination. She's a force that fills me with violence
+and I have no direction in which to live to use this violence. I don't
+know what to do with myself. So I'm compelled to live in the violence
+itself. In a storm. A kind of Walkyrie on a broomstick. But, good God,
+what else is there? Sit and scribble words about fictitious characters.
+Bleat out rhapsodies. Art is something I can spit out in conversation.
+If I do anything it's got to be something too difficult for me to do. My
+damned cleverness puts me beyond artists who find a destination for
+their energies in the struggle to achieve the thing with which I begin.
+If not art, then what? War, politics, finance. All surfaces meaning
+nothing. If I did them all there'd still be something I hadn't done. I
+want something that's not in life. Life's too damned insufficient. I
+want something out of it."
+
+Rachel had thought at first that his fits of brooding restlessness came
+from a memory of Anna. But phrases he had blurted cut half-consciously
+had given her a sense of their causes. The thought of Anna had died in
+him. Neither consciousness of her suffering nor memory of the years they
+had lived together had yet awakened in him. He had been moving since the
+night he had walked out of his home and there had been no looking back.
+
+Undergoing a seeming expansion of his powers, Erik Dorn had become a
+startling, fascinating figure in the new world he had entered. The
+flattery of men almost as clever as himself, the respect, appreciation
+of political, literary, and vaguely social circles, of stolid men and
+eccentric acquaintances, were continually visited upon him. He was a
+personality, a figure to enliven dinner parties, throw a glamour and a
+fever into the enervated routine of sets, cliques, and circles.
+
+He had made occasional journeyings alone and sometimes with Rachel into
+the homes of chance acquaintances, and had put in fitful appearances at
+the various excitements pursued by the city's more radical
+intelligentsia--little-theater premiers, private assemblings of shrewd,
+bored men and women, precious concerts, electric discussions of
+political unrest. From all such adventurings he came away with a sense
+of distaste. Friendships, always foreign to his nature, had become now
+almost an impossibility. He felt himself a procession of adjectives
+exploding in the ears of strangers.
+
+With Warren Lockwood alone he had been able to achieve a contact. In
+the presence of the novelist there was a complement of himself both in
+the days of his disquiet and strength. Together they took to frequenting
+odd parts of the city, visiting lonely cafés and calling upon strangers
+known to the novelist. The man's virile gentleness soothed him. He was
+never tired of watching the turns of his naïveté, delighting as much in
+his friend's unsophisticated appreciation of the arts as in the vivid
+simplicity of his understanding of people and events.
+
+He had finished a stormy conference with the directors of the magazine
+on the subject of a new editorial policy toward Russia--new editorial
+policies toward Russia had become almost the sole preoccupation of the
+_New Opinion_--when Lockwood arrived at the office, resplendent in the
+atrocities of a new green hat and lavender necktie.
+
+"There's a fella over on the east side you ought to meet," Lockwood
+explained. "I was going over there and thought you'd like to come
+along."
+
+He leaned over, seriously confidential.
+
+"If you can lay off a while in this business of revolutionizing the
+liberal thought of the whole country, Erik, I'll tell you something.
+Between you and me, this man we're going to see is the greatest artist
+in America. I know."
+
+Lockwood waved his hand casually as if dismissing once and for all an
+avalanche of contradictions. Dorn hesitated. It was one of his days of
+disquiet; and he had left a note with Rachel saying he would be home at
+eight. It was now six.
+
+"If you've got a date," went on Lockwood, "call it off. Lord, man, you
+can't afford missing the greatest artist in the world."
+
+Dorn frowned. He might telephone. But that would mean explanations and
+the pleading sound of a voice saying, "Of course, Erik." He would send a
+message, and scribbled it on a telegraph blank:
+
+"I'll be home late. Don't worry.
+
+"ERIK."
+
+"We'll make a night of it," he laughed.
+
+Lockwood looked at him, shrewdly affectionate.
+
+"What you need," he spoke, "is a good drink and some fat street woman to
+shake you out of it. You look kind of tied up."
+
+"I am," grinned Dorn. "Wound up and ready to bust."
+
+Lockwood nodded his head slowly.
+
+"Uh-huh," he said, as if turning the matter over carefully in his
+thought. "Why don't you buy a new hat like I do when I get feeling sort
+of upside down? Buying a new hat or tie straightens a man out. Come on!"
+He laughed suddenly. "This artist's name is Tony. He's an old
+man--seventy years old."
+
+They entered the street, Lockwood watching his companion with dark,
+fixed eyes as if he were slowly arriving at some impersonal diagnosis.
+
+"A lot of fools," he announced abruptly, waving his hand at the crowds.
+"They don't know that something important's happening in Russia." He
+pronounced it Rooshia. Dorn saw his eyes kindle with a kindliness as he
+denounced the rabble about them.
+
+"What do you figure is happening in Rooshia?" he inquired of the
+novelist.
+
+"I don't figure," smiled Lockwood. "I feel it. Something important that
+these newspaper Neds around this town haven't got any conception of.
+It's what old Carl calls the rising of the proletaire." He chuckled.
+"Old Carl's sure gone daft on this proletaire thing." His face abruptly
+hardened, the rugged features becoming set, the swart eyes paying a
+far-away homage. "But old Carl's a great poet--the greatest in America.
+God, but that old boy can write!"
+
+Dorn nodded. In the presence of the novelist the unrest that had held
+him by the throat through the day seemed to ebb. There was companionship
+in the figure beside him. They walked in silence for several blocks. The
+day was growing dark quickly and despite the crowds in the streets,
+there seemed an inactivity in the air--the wait of a storm.
+
+Into a ramshackle building on the corner of a vivaciously ugly street
+Lockwood led his friend in quest of the greatest artist. An old man in a
+skull cap, woolen shirt, baggy trousers and carpet slippers appeared in
+a darkened doorway. With his long white beard he stood bent and
+rheumatic before them, making a question mark in the gloom of the hall.
+
+"Hello, Tony," Lockwood greeted him. "I've brought a friend of mine
+along to look at your works."
+
+The old man extended thin fingers and nodded his head. Dorn entered a
+large room that reminded him of a tombstone factory. Figures in clay,
+some broken and cracked, cluttered up its floor and walls. In a corner
+partly hidden behind topsy-turvy busts and more figures was a cot with a
+blanket over it. Dorn after several minutes of silence, looked
+inquiringly at his friend. The works of art, despite an obvious vigor of
+execution, were openly banal.
+
+"He's got some more in the basement," announced Lockwood with an air of
+triumph. "And there's some stuck away with the family upstairs. The
+whole street here's full of his works."
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"He doesn't talk much English," went on Lockwood. "But I'll tell you
+about him. I got the story from him. He's the greatest artist in the
+world."
+
+As Dorn moved politely from figure to figure, the old man like a museum
+monitor at his heels, Lockwood went on explaining in a caressing
+sing-song:
+
+"This old boy came to New York when he was in his twenties. And he's
+been living here ever since and making statues. He's working right now
+on a statue of some general. Been working for fifty years without
+stopping, and there's nobody in this town ever heard of him or come near
+him. Get this picture of this old boy, Erik, buried in this hole for
+fifty years making statues. Working away day after day without anybody
+coming near him. I brought a sculptor friend of mine who kept squinting
+at some of the things the old boy did when he first came over and
+saying, 'By God, this fella was an artist at one time.' Get the picture
+of this smart-aleck sculptor friend of mine saying this old boy was an
+artist."
+
+The eyes of Warren Lockwood grew hard and seemed to challenge. He
+extended his arm and waved his hand gently in a further challenge.
+
+"The fools in this town let this old boy stay buried," he whispered,
+"but he fooled them. He kept right on making statues and giving them
+away to the folks that live around here and hiding them in the basement
+when there wasn't anybody to take them."
+
+Lockwood grasped the arm of his friend excitedly and his voice became
+high-pitched.
+
+"Don't you get this old man?" he argued. "Don't you get the figure of
+him as an artist? Lord, man, he's the greatest artist in the world, I
+tell you!"
+
+Dorn nodded his head, amused and disturbed by the novelist's excitement.
+The old sculptor was standing in the shadow of the figures piled on top
+of each other against the wall. He wore the air of a man just awakened
+and struggling politely to grasp his surroundings.
+
+"A sort of altruistic carpenter," thought Dorn. "That's what Warren
+calls an artist. Works diligently for nothing."
+
+The respect and awe in the eyes of his friend halted him.
+
+"Yes, I get him," he added aloud. "Living with a dream for fifty years."
+
+Lockwood snorted and then with a quiet laugh answered: "No, that isn't
+it. You're not an artist yourself so you can't quite get the sense of
+it." He seemed petulent and defeated.
+
+They left the old man's studio without further talk. It had started to
+rain. Large spaced drops plumbed a gleaming hypotenuse between the
+rooftops and the streets. They paused before a basement restaurant.
+
+"It looks dirty," said Lockwood, "but let's go in."
+
+Here they ordered dinner. During their eating the noise of thunder
+sounded and the splash of the storm drifted in through the dusty
+basement windows. A thick-wristed, red-fingered waitress slopped back
+and forth between their table and an odorous kitchen door. Lockwood kept
+his eyes fastened steadily upon the nervous features of his friend. He
+thought as the silence increased between them: "This man's got something
+the matter with him."
+
+Gradually an uneasiness came over the novelist, his sensitive nerves
+responding to the disquiet in the smiling eyes opposite.
+
+"You're kind of crazy," he leaned forward and whispered as if confiding
+an ominous, impersonal secret. "You've got the eyes of a man kind of
+crazy, Erik."
+
+He sat back in his chair, his hands holding the edge of the table, his
+chin tucked down, as if he were ruminating, narrow-eyed, upon some
+involved business proposition.
+
+"I get you now," he added slowly. "I'll put you in a book--a crazy man
+who kept fooling himself by imitating sane people."
+
+Dorn nodded.
+
+"Insanity would be a relief," he answered. "Come on."
+
+He stood up quickly and looked down at his friend.
+
+"Let's keep going. I've got something in me I want to get rid of."
+
+In the doorway the friends halted. The grave, melodious shout of the
+rain filled the night. The streets had become dark, attenuated pools.
+The rain falling illuminated the hidden faces of the buildings and
+silvered the air with whirling lines.
+
+As they stood facing the downpour Dorn thought, "Rachel's waiting for
+me. Why don't I go to her? But I'd only make her sad. Better let it get
+out of me in the rain."
+
+Holding his friend's arm he stood staring at the storm over the city.
+Through the sparkle and fume of the rain-colored night the lights of
+café signs burned like golden-lettered banners flung stiffly into the
+downpour. About the lights floated patches of yellow mist through which
+the rain swarmed in flurries of gleaming moths. There were lights of
+doors and windows beneath the burning signs. The remainder of the street
+was lost in a wilderness of rain that bubbled and raced over the
+pavements in an endless detonation.
+
+He spoke with a sudden softness: "I didn't get your artist, Warren, but
+you don't get this storm. It's noise and water to you."
+
+The novelist answered with a sagacious nod.
+
+"There's something alive in a night like this," Dorn went on, "something
+that isn't a part of life."
+
+He pulled his friend out of the doorway. They walked swiftly, their
+shoes spurting water and the rain dripping from their clothes. Dorn felt
+an untightening. His eyes hailed the scene as if in greeting of a
+friend. He became aware of its detail. He smiled, remembering the way in
+which he had been used to hide his longing for Rachel in the desperate
+consciousness of scenes about him. Now it was something else he was
+hiding. Beneath his feet he watched the silver-tipped pool of the
+pavement. Gleaming in its depths swam reflections of burning lamps, like
+the yellow script of another and wraith-like world staring up at him out
+of a nowhere. The rest was darkness and billowy stripes of water. People
+had vanished. Later a sound of thunder crawled out of the sky. A vein
+of lightning opened the night. Against its blue pallor the street and
+its buildings etched themselves.
+
+"Stiff, unreal, like a stage scene," murmured Dorn. "Another world."
+
+The rain flung itself for an instant in great ghostly sheets out of the
+lighted spaces. He caught a glimpse in the distance of a hunched, moving
+figure like some tiny wanderer through tortuous fields. Then darkness
+resumed, seizing the street. A wind entered the night outlining itself
+in the wild undulations of the rain reaching for the pavements.
+
+Dorn forgot his companion, as they pressed on. Disheveled rain ghosts
+crowded around him. The fever that had burned in him during the day
+seemed to have become a part of the storm. The leap and hollow blaze of
+the lightnings gave him a companionship. His eyes stared into the
+inanimate bursts of pale violet outlines in the dark. His breath drank
+in the spice of water-laden winds. The stumble of thunder, the lash and
+churn of rain were companions. The something else that haunted him was
+in the storm. He turned to Lockwood, who seemed to be lagging, and
+shouted in his ear:
+
+"Great, eh? Altar fires and the racket of unknown gods."
+
+Lockwood, his face filmed with water, grunted indignantly:
+
+"Let's get out of this."
+
+The night was growing wilder. Dorn's eyes bored into the vapors and
+steam of the rain.
+
+"We're in a good street," he cried again. "A nigger street."
+
+A blinding gust of light brought them to a halt. Thunder burst a horror
+of sound through its dead glare. Dorn stiffened and stared as in a dream
+at a face floating behind the glass of a door. A woman's face contorted
+into a stark grimace of rapture. Its teeth stood out white and
+skull-like against the red of an open mouth.
+
+Silence and darkness seized the street. Rain poured. The sound of a
+laugh like some miniature echo of the tumult that had torn the night
+drifted to them. Lockwood had started for the door.
+
+"Come on," he called, "this is crazy."
+
+Dorn followed him. The streaming door opened as they approached and two
+figures darted out. They were gone in an instant and in pursuit of them
+rushed a rollicking lurch of sound. Dorn caught again the shrill
+staccato of the laugh, and the door closed behind them.
+
+Dancing bodies were spinning among the tables. Shouting, swinging noises
+and a bray of music spurted unintelligibly against the ears of the
+newcomers. A chlorinated mist, acrid to the eye, and burning to the
+nose, crawled about the room. Dorn, followed by Lockwood, groped his way
+through the confusion toward a small vacant table against a wall. From
+here they watched in silence.
+
+A can-can was in progress. The dancers, black and white faces glued
+together, arms twined about each other's bodies, tumbled through the
+smoke. Waiters balancing black trays laden with colored glasses sifted
+through the scene. At the tables men and women with faces out of focus
+sat drinking and shouting. Niggers, prostitutes, louts. The slant of red
+mouths opened laughters. Hands and throats drifted in violent fragments
+through the mist. The reek of wine and steaming clothes, the sting of
+perspiring perfumes and the odors of women's bodies fumed over the
+tumble of heads. Against the scene a jazz band flung a whine and a
+stumble of tinny sounds. Nigger musicians with silver instruments glued
+to their lips sat on a platform at the far end of the room. They danced
+in their chairs as they played, swinging their instruments in crazy
+circles. A broken, lurching music came from them, a nasal melody that
+moaned among the laughters.
+
+Dorn's fingers lay gripped about the arm of his friend. His senses
+caught the rhythm of the scene. His eyes stared at the dancing figures,
+blond heads riveted against black satin cheeks; bodies gesturing their
+lusts to the quick whine and stumble of the music; eyes opening like
+mouths.
+
+"God, what an orgie!" he whispered. "Look at the thing. It's insane. A
+nigger hammering a scarlet phallus against a cymbal moon."
+
+His words vanished in the din and Lockwood remained with eyes drawn in
+and hard. When he turned to his friend he found him excitedly pounding
+his fist on the table and bawling for a waiter. A man, seemingly asleep
+amid confusions, appeared and took his order.
+
+"There's a woman in here I've got to find," Dorn shouted.
+
+"You're crazy, man."
+
+"I saw her," he persisted, talking close to his friend's ear. "I saw her
+face in the door. You wait here."
+
+Lockwood seized his arm and tried to hold him, but he jerked away and
+was lost in a pattern of dancing bodies. Lockwood watching him
+disappear, frowned. He felt a sudden uncertainty toward his friend, a
+fear as if he had launched himself into a dark night with a murderer for
+a companion.
+
+"He's crazy," he thought. "I ought to get him out of here before
+anything happens."
+
+He sat fumbling nervously with the stem of a wine-glass. Outside, the
+rain chattered in the darkness and the alto of the wind came in long
+organ notes into the din of the café. He caught sight of Dorn pulling an
+unholy-looking woman through the pack of the room.
+
+"Here she is--our lady of pain!"
+
+Dorn thrust the creature viciously into a seat beside Lockwood. She
+dropped with a scream of laughter. The music of the nigger orchestra had
+stopped and an emptiness flooded the place. Dorn bellowed for another
+glass. Lockwood looked slowly at the creature beside him. She was
+watching Dorn. In the swarthy depths of her eyes moved threads of
+scarlet. Beneath their lashes her skin was darkened as if by bruises. An
+odd sultry light glowed over the discolorations. Her mouth had shut and
+her cheeks were without curves, following the triangular corpse-like
+lines of her skull. Her lips, like bits of vermilion paper, stared as
+from an idol's face. She was regarding Dorn with a smile.
+
+He had grown erratic in his gestures. His eyes seemed incapable of
+focusing themselves. They darted about the room, running away from him.
+The woman's smile persisted and he turned his glance abruptly at her.
+The red flesh of her opened mouth and throat confronted him as another
+of her screaming laughs burst. The laugh ended and her gleaming eyes
+swimming in a gelatinous mist held him.
+
+"A reptilian sorcery," he whispered to Lockwood, and smiled. "The face
+of a malignant Pierrette. A diabolic clown. Look at it. I saw it in the
+lightning outside. She wears a mask. Do you get her?" He paused
+mockingly. Lockwood shifted away from the woman. Erik was drunk. Or
+crazy. But the woman, thank God, had eyes only for him. She remained, as
+he talked, with her sulphurous eyes unwaveringly upon his face.
+
+"She's not a woman," he went on in a purring voice. "She's a lust. No
+brain. No heart. A stark unhuman piece of flesh with a shark's hunger
+inside it."
+
+He leaned forward and took one of her hands as Lockwood whispered,
+
+"Christ, man, let's get out of here."
+
+The woman's fingers, dry and quivering, scratched against Dorn's palm.
+He felt them as a hot breath in his blood.
+
+"What's the matter, Warren?" he laughed, emptying a wine-glass. "I like
+this gal. She suits me. A devourer of men. Look at her!"
+
+He laughed and glared at his friend. Lockwood closed his eyes nervously.
+
+"I've got a headache in this damned place," he muttered.
+
+"Wait a minute." Dorn seized his arm. "I want to talk. I feel gabby. My
+lady friend doesn't understand words." The sulphurous eyes glowed
+caresses over him. "You remember the thing in Rabelais about
+women--insatiable, devouring, hungering in their satieties. The prowling
+animal. Well, here it is. Alive. Not in print. She's alive with
+something deeper than life. Wheels of flesh grinding her blood into a
+hunger for ecstasies. She's a mate for me. Come on, little one."
+
+He sprang from the table, pulling the woman after him.
+
+"Wait here, Warren," he called, moving toward the door. It opened,
+letting in a shout and sweep of rain, and they were gone.
+
+"A crazy man," muttered the novelist, and remained fumbling with the
+stem of his glass.
+
+Outside Dorn held the body of the woman against him as they hurried
+through the storm. Her flesh, like the touch of a third person, struck
+through his wet clothes.
+
+"Where we going?" he yelled at her.
+
+She thrust out an arm.
+
+"Up here."
+
+They came breathless up a flight of stairs into a reeking room lighted
+by a gas jet.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+In the café, Lockwood waited till the music started again. Then he rose
+and, slapping his soggy hat on his head, walked out of the place. The
+rain, sweeping steadily against the earth, held him prisoner in the
+doorway. He stood muttering to himself of his friend and his craziness.
+Gone wild! Crazy wild with a mad woman in the rain. Long ago he might
+have done it himself. Yes, he knew the why of it. The rain fuming before
+him made him sleepy. He leaned against the place and waited. The storm
+faded slowly into a quiet patter. Starting for the pavement, Lockwood
+paused. A hatless figure had jumped out of a doorway across the street
+and was running toward him.
+
+"It's Erik," he muttered, and hurried to meet him.
+
+Dorn, laughing, his clothes torn and his face smeared with blood under
+his eye, drew near. He took his friend's arm and walked him swiftly
+away. At the corner Dorn stopped and regarded the novelist.
+
+"I've had a look at hell," he whispered, and with a laugh hurried off
+alone. Lockwood watched him moving swiftly down the street, and yawned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+It was near midnight. Rachel's eyes, brightened with tears, watched her
+lover bathing his face.
+
+"It seemed so long," she murmured, "till you came."
+
+"That damned Warren Lockwood led me astray," he smiled. He dried his
+face and came toward her. She dropped to the floor beside him as he sat
+down and pressed her cheeks against his knees. His hands moved tenderly
+through her loosened hair.
+
+"You told me to be careful about getting run over," she smiled sadly,
+"and you go out and get all cut up in a brawl. Oh, Erik,
+please--something might have happened."
+
+"Nothing happened, dearest."
+
+She asked no further questions but remained with her face against his
+knees. This was Rachel whose hair he was stroking. Dorn smiled at the
+thought. After a silence she resumed, her voice softened with emotion:
+
+"Erik, I've been lying to you--about my love. It's different than I said
+it was. I've said always what you've wanted me to say. You've always
+wanted me to be something else than a woman--something like a dream.
+But I can't. I love you as--as Anna loved you. Oh, I want to be with you
+forever and have children. I'm nothing else. You are. I can't be like
+you. For me there's only love for you and nothing beyond."
+
+"Dear one," he answered, "there's nothing else for me."
+
+"Now you're telling me lies," she wept. "There is something I can't give
+you; and that you must go looking for somewhere else."
+
+"No, Rachel. I love you."
+
+"As you loved Anna--once."
+
+"Don't! I never loved Anna--or anyone. Or anything."
+
+"I can't help it, Erik. Forgive me, please. I love you so. Don't you see
+how I love you. I keep trying to be something besides myself and to give
+other names to the things I feel. But they're only sentimental things.
+My dreams are only sentimental dreams--of your kissing me, holding me,
+being my husband. Oh, go way from me, Erik, before I make you hate me!
+You thought I was different. And I did too. I _was_ different. But
+you've changed me. Women are all the same when they love. Differences go
+away."
+
+She looked up at him with tear-running eyes.
+
+"Different than other people! But now I'm the same. I love you as any
+other woman would. Only perhaps a little more. With my whole soul and
+life."
+
+"Foolish to talk," he whispered back to her. "Words only scratch at
+things. I love you as if I had never seen you or kissed you."
+
+"But I'm not a dream, Erik. Oh, it sounds silly. But I want you."
+
+He raised her and held her lithe body close to him. The feeling that he
+was unreal, that Rachel was unreal, rested in his thought. There was a
+mist about things that clung to them, that clung about the joyousness in
+his heart.
+
+"There's nothing else," he whispered. "Love is enough. It burns up
+everything else and leaves a mist."
+
+His arms tightened.
+
+"Erik dear, I'm afraid."
+
+His kiss brought a peace over her face. She had waited for it. She
+looked up and laughed.
+
+"You love me? Yes, Erik loves me. Loves me. I know."
+
+She watched his eyes as he spoke. The eyes of God. They remained open to
+her. She began to tremble and her naked arms moved blindly toward his
+shoulders.
+
+"This is my world," she whispered. "I know, Erik. I know everything. You
+are too big for love to hold. The sun doesn't fill the whole world.
+There are always dark places. I know. Don't hide from me, lover."
+
+She smiled and closed her eyes as her lips reached toward him.
+
+The eyes of Erik Dorn remained open and staring out of the window. There
+was still rain in the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Erik Dorn to Rachel, September, 1918:
+
+" ... and to-night I remember you are beautiful, and I desire you. My
+arms are empty and there is nothing for my eyes to look at. Are you
+still afraid. Look, more than a year has gone and nothing has changed.
+You are the far-away one, the dream figure, and my heart comes on wings
+to you.... I write with difficulty. What language is there to talk to
+you? How does one converse with a dream? Idiot phrases rant across the
+paper like little fat actors flourishing tin swords. I've come to
+distrust words. There are too many of them. Yet I keep fermenting with
+words. Interlopers. Busybody strangers. I can't think ... because of
+them.... Alas! if I could keep my vocabulary out of our love we would
+both be better off. Foolish chatter. I thought when I sat down to write
+to you that the sadness of your absence would overcome me. Instead, I am
+amused. Vaguely joyous. And at the thought of you I have an impulse to
+laugh. You are like that. A day like a thousand years has passed.
+Dead-born hours that did not end. Chill, empty streets and the memory of
+you like a solitude in which I sat mumbling to phantoms. And now in the
+darkness my heart sickens with desire for you and the night sharpens
+its claws upon my heart. Yet there is laughter. Words laugh in my head.
+The torment I feel is somehow a part of joyousness. The claws of the
+night bring somehow a caress. Even to weep for you is like some dark
+happiness whose lips are too fragile to smile. Dear one, the dream of
+you still lives--an old friend now, a familiar star that I watch
+endlessly. You see there are even no new words. For once before I told
+you that. It was night--snowing. We walked together. I remember you
+always as vanishing and leaving the light of your face burning before my
+eyes. I shall always love you. Why are you afraid? Why do you write
+vague doubts into your letters? I will be with you soon. You are a
+world, and the rest of life is a mist that surrounds you.... I have
+nothing to write. I discover this as I sit staring at the paper. I
+remember that a year has passed, that many years remain to pass. Dear
+one, I know only that I love you, and words are strangers between us."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Rachel to Erik, September end, 1918:
+
+" ... when I went away you were unhappy and restless. Now that I have
+gone you are again happy and calm. Oh, you're so cruel! Your love is so
+cruel to me. I sit here all day, a foolishly humble exile, waiting for
+you. I keep watching the sea and sometimes I try to feel pain. When your
+letter comes I spend the day reading it.... I am beautiful and you
+desire me. Oh, to think me beautiful and to desire me, suffices. You do
+not come where I am. Nothing has changed, you write with a joyous
+cruelty. In your lonely nights your dream of me still brings you
+torments and I am a star that you watch endlessly. I laugh too, but out
+of bitterness. Because what you write is no longer true and we both have
+known it for long. I am no longer a dream or a star, but a woman who
+loves you. Yes, nothing has changed, except me. And you remedy that by
+sending me away. When you send me away I too become unchanged in your
+thought. I am again like I was on the night we parted in the white park
+and you can love me--a memory of me--that remains like a star....
+
+"But here I am in this lonely little sea village. There is no dream for
+me. I am empty without you and I lie at night and weep till my heart
+breaks, wondering when you will come. It were better if I were dead. I
+whisper to myself, 'you must not write him to come to you, because he is
+too busy loving you. He weeps before the ghost of you. He sits beside an
+old dream. You must not interrupt him. Oh, my lover, do you find me so
+much less than the dream of me, that you must send me away in order to
+love me? My doubts? Are they doubts? We have grown apart in the year. On
+the night it snowed and I went away from you you said, 'people bury
+their love behind lighted windows....' Dearest, dearest, of what do I
+complain? Of your ecstasies and torments of which I am not a part, but a
+cause? Forgive me. I adore you. I am so lonely and such a nobody without
+you. And I want you to write to me that you long for me, to be with me,
+to caress me and talk to me. And instead you send phrases analyzing your
+joyousness. Oh, things have changed. I am no longer Rachel, but a woman.
+I feel so little and helpless when I think of you. Strangers can talk to
+you and look at you but I must sit here in exile while you entertain
+yourself with memories of me. You are cruel, dear one, and I have become
+too cowardly not to mind. This is because I have found happiness--all
+the happiness I desire--and hold it tremblingly. And you have not found
+happiness but are still in flight toward your far-away one, your dream
+figure. I cannot write more. I worship you and my heart is full of
+tears. I will sit humbly and look at the sea until you come."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Rachel to Frank Brander, September:
+
+" ... I answer your letter only because I am afraid you would
+misunderstand my silence. I send your letter back because I cannot throw
+it away. It would make the sea unclean. As you point out, I am the
+mistress of Erik Dorn and he may some day grow tired of me, at which
+time you are prepared to be my friend and protect me from the world. I
+will put your application on file, Mr. Brander, if there is a part of my
+mind filthy enough to remember it."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Rachel to Emil Tesla:
+
+" ... I was glad to hear from you. But please do not write any more. I
+am too happy to read your letters. I never want to draw pictures for
+_The Cry_ again. I hope you will be freed soon. I can think of nothing
+to write to you."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Erik Dorn to Rachel, November, 1918:
+
+"DEAREST ONE!
+
+"Beneath my window the gentle Jabberwock has twined colored tissue-paper
+about his ears and gone mad. He shrieks, he whistles, he blows a horn.
+The war, beloved, appears to have ended this noon and the Jabberwock is
+endeavoring to disgorge four and a half years in a single shriek. 'The
+war,' says the Jabberwock, in his own way, 'is over. It was a rotten
+war, nasty and hateful, as all wars are rotten and hateful, and
+everything I've said and done hinting at the contrary has been a lie and
+I'm so full of lies I must shriek.'
+
+"Anybody but a Jabberwock, dear one, would have died of apoplexy hours
+ago. But the Jabberwock is immortal. Alas! there is something of pathos
+in the spectacle. Our gentle friend with tissue-paper around his ears
+prostrates himself before another illusion--peace. Says the shriek of
+the Jabberwock beneath my window, 'The Hun is destroyed. The menace to
+humanity is laid low. The powers of darkness are dispelled by the breath
+of God and the machine-guns of our brave soldats. The war that is to end
+war is over. Hail, blessed peace!'
+
+"Why do I write such arid absurdities to you? But I feel an impulse to
+scribble wordly words, to stand in a silk hat beside the statue of
+Liberty and gaze out upon the Atlantic with a Carlylian pensiveness.
+Idle political tears flow from my brain. For it is obvious that the war
+the Jabberwock has so nobly waged has been a waste of steel and powder.
+Standing now on his eight million graves with the tissue-paper of
+Victory twined about his ears, the Jabberwock is a somewhat ghastly,
+humorous figure. He has, alas! shot the wrong man. To-morrow there will
+be an inquest in Paris and the Jabberwock will rub his eyes and discover
+that the corpse, God forgive him, is that of a brother and friend and
+that the Powers of Darkness threatening humanity are advancing upon him
+... out of Moscow. I muse ... yes, it was a good war. War is never
+pathetic, never wholly a waste. Maturity no less than childhood must
+have its circuses. But the Jabberwock ... Ah! the Jabberwock ... the
+soul of man celebrating the immortal triumph of righteousness ... the
+good Don Quixote has valiantly slain another windmill and your Sancho
+Panza shakes his head in wistful amusement.
+
+"I did not send you this letter yesterday and many things have happened
+since I wrote it. I will see you in a few days. It has been decided that
+I go to Germany for the magazine. Edwards insists. So do the directors,
+trusting gentlemen. I will stop at Washington and try to get two
+passports and then come on to you, and we will wait together until the
+passports are issued. Another week of imbecile political maneuverings in
+behalf of the passports and I will again be your lover,
+
+                                                     "ERIK."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"We've been separated almost three months," he thought, looking out of
+the train window. "I'll see her soon."
+
+There were four men in the smoking-compartment. They were discussing the
+end of the war. Dorn listened inattentively. He was remembering another
+ride to Rachel. Looking out of a train window as now. Whirling through
+space. A locomotive whistle wailing in the prairies at night like the
+sound of winds against his heart.
+
+The memories of the ride drifted through his mind. He saw himself again
+with the tumult of another day sweeping toward Rachel. What had he felt
+then? Whatever it was, it was gone. For he felt nothing now but a
+sadness. He had telegraphed. She would be waiting, her face alight, her
+hands trembling. He had started from Washington elatedly enough. But now
+in the smoking-compartment where the men were discussing the end of the
+war he felt no elation. He was thinking, "It'll be difficult when we see
+each other." He became aware that he was actually shrinking from the
+meeting. The voices of the men about him began to annoy and he returned
+to his seat in the train.
+
+Early evening. Another two hours and the train would stop to let him
+off. Dear, dear Rachel! He had wept tormented by a loneliness for her.
+Now he was coming to her with sadness. There had been another ride when
+he had come to her in a halloo of storms. Things change.
+
+The porter brushed him and removed his grips to the platform. The far
+lights of a village sprinkled themselves feebly in the darkness. This
+was where Rachel was waiting.
+
+Dorn stepped from the train. It became another world, lighted and human.
+He looked about the dingy little station. Rachel was walking toward him.
+
+"She looks strange and out of place," he thought.
+
+They embraced. Her kisses covering his lips delighted him unexpectedly.
+He found himself walking close to her in the night and feeling happy.
+They entered a darkened wooden house and Rachel led the way upstairs.
+
+"I can't talk, Erik."
+
+She held his hand against her cheek.
+
+"No, don't kiss me. Let me look at you. Sit over here. I must look at
+you."
+
+She laughed softly, but her eyes, unsmiling, stared at him. He remained
+silent. The sadness that had fallen upon him in the train returned now
+like a hurt in his heart. He had expected it to vanish at the sight of
+her. But her kisses had only hidden it. She came to his side after a
+pause and whispered gently,
+
+"Perhaps it would have been better if you hadn't come, dearest. I've
+become almost used to being alone."
+
+He embraced her and for the moment the sadness was hidden again.
+Rachel's hands crept avidly to his face, holding his cheeks with hot
+fingers.
+
+"Erik, oh, Erik, do you love me? I'm not afraid to hear. Tell me."
+
+"Yes, dear one. You are everything."
+
+"What makes you cry?"
+
+He kissed her lips.
+
+"I don't know," he whispered. "Only it's been so long."
+
+"Oh, you are so sad."
+
+Her voice had grown thin. Her eyes, dry, burning, haunted the dark room.
+She removed herself from his arms and stood with her hand in her hair.
+She looked at the dark sea that mirrored the night outside the window.
+Turning to him after a pause she murmured:
+
+"I had forgotten Erik Dorn was here."
+
+A sudden stride, the gesture of another Rachel, and she had thrown
+herself on the bed.
+
+"Oh, God!" she sobbed. "I knew, I knew!"
+
+Dorn, kneeling on the floor, pulled her head toward him. He whispered
+her name. Why was he sad, frightened? A thought was murmuring in him,
+"You must love her."
+
+"Rachel, I love you. Please. Your tears. Dearest, what has happened?
+Tell me."
+
+"Don't ask that." Her tears came anew. "But you come to me sad, as if I
+were no longer Rachel to you."
+
+The thought kept murmuring, "You must love her...."
+
+"Beautiful one," he said softly, "you're weeping because something has
+happened to you."
+
+The thought murmured, "because something has happened to you, not her."
+
+"No, no, Erik!"
+
+"Then why? If you loved me you would be happy."
+
+Absurd sentences. They would deceive no one.
+
+A belated emotion overcame him. Now he was happy. His arms grew strong
+about her. He would say nothing, but lie beside her kissing her until
+the tears ended. This was happiness. He watched her lips begin to smile
+faintly. Her face touched him as if she had sighed. She whispered after
+a long silence, "Oh, I thought you had changed."
+
+He laughed and pulled her to her feet. His head thrown back, his eyes
+amused and warm, he asked, "Do I seem changed now?"
+
+He waited while she regarded him. Why was he nervous? Must he answer the
+question too?
+
+"No," she said, "you are the same."
+
+Her face shining before him. Her head quickly lifted.
+
+"I was a fool. Look, Erik, I am happy--happier than anybody on earth."
+
+She dropped to her knees, kissing his hand.
+
+"I am so happy, I kneel...."
+
+They stood together in the window and laughed.
+
+"There's a wonderful old woman here. We've talked a great deal, about
+everything, and you. You don't mind? To-morrow we'll lie all day on the
+shore. Oh, Erik. Erik!"
+
+"We'll never be alone again, Rachel."
+
+"Never!" she echoed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+A calm had fallen upon Erik Dorn, an unconsciousness of self. He
+sprawled through the sunny days, staring at the sea with Rachel or
+walking alone to the fishing-boats at the other end of the village, or
+sitting with Mama Turpin, the old woman in whose cottage they lived.
+With Mama Turpin he held interminable talks that rambled on through the
+night at times. Religion was Mama Turpin's favored topic. Her round body
+in a rocking-chair, her seamed, vigorous face raised toward the sky, the
+old woman would fall into a dream and talk quietly of her God. She would
+begin, her voice coming out of the dark reminding Dorn of a girl.
+
+"Yes, I have always known this here one thing. Everybody must have a
+religion. Because there's something in everybody that's way beyond their
+selves to understand. And there's nobody to give it to excepting God.
+Some God, anyways...."
+
+Rachel, sitting in the shadows, would listen with her eyes upon Erik.
+The fear that he had brought her was growing in her heart, making her
+thought heavy and her gestures slow. She would listen, almost asleep, to
+his words.
+
+" ... Yes, Mama Turpin, religion comes to all people. But not for long.
+We all get a flame in us at some time and it burns until it burns itself
+out, and then we sit and forget to wonder about things...."
+
+Talk perhaps for her to understand. But why should he hint when words
+outright were easier? Rachel carried questions in her heart.
+
+Among the fishermen Dorn listened sometimes to stories of great catches
+and storms. He was usually silent watching them empty their nets on the
+shore and remove the catch into basins and pails. The men accepted his
+interest in their work with a pleased indifference.
+
+Rachel sometimes walked with him or stretched beside him on the sand.
+But he felt an uneasiness in her presence. Her eyes questioned him
+silently and seemed to answer their own questions.
+
+Since the evening of his coming there had been no scenes. He was
+grateful for this. But the eyes of Rachel sometimes haunted him at night
+as she lay asleep beside him. What spoke in her eyes? He felt calm when
+alone, at peace with himself. But at night while she slept he would
+become sleepless and a sadness would enter him. Thoughts he did not seem
+to be thinking would move through his head. "Things pass. Years pass.
+The sea and the stars remain the same. But men and women change. Life
+eats into men and women--eats things away from them...."
+
+In his sadness there would come to him a memory of Anna. Thoughts of
+Anna and Rachel would mingle themselves.... Anna had once lain beside
+him like this. He remembered now. Her body was different from
+Rachel's--softer, warmer ... a woman named Anna had lived with him. Now
+a woman named Rachel. And to-morrow, what? There were yesterdays. These
+were not sad. Things already dead were not so sad. But things that are
+to die....
+
+His heart would grow weak, seeming to dissolve. Something unspoken in
+the night. Tears in his heart. Calm in his thought. He would figure it
+out sometime. His words were alert little busy-bodies. They could follow
+things into difficult crevices. But was there anything to figure out? He
+was growing old and a to-morrow was haunting him. Some day he would
+close his eyes slowly and in the slow closing of his eyes the world
+would end. Erik Dorn would have ended. Was there such a thing as ending?
+Yes, things were always ending. Now he was different than the night he
+had lain beside Rachel and whispered, "You have given me wings." But
+how? He felt the same. Change came like that. Leaving one the same. He
+would write things from Europe that would startle. He could write....
+But, something unspoken in the night. He must say it to himself.... "You
+must love her...." Then that was it. He no longer loved her.
+
+He lay listening to her breathing. An end to his love. Preposterous
+notion! How, since the thought of parting from her wrenched at his
+heart? "If I went away from Rachel I would die." Unquestionably
+sincere.... "I'd die." Not, of course, die. But feel death. Yet, there
+was something changed. But a man doesn't remain an ecstatic lover. There
+comes a time. Well, he loved her like this--quietly, happily, and if he
+went away from her he would feel an end had come to his life. The other
+love had been words flying in his head. Nice to have felt as he had. But
+life--practical, material rush of hours. Words had flown in his head
+once. He smiled. "Wings, what are they?" He remembered having spoken and
+thought a great deal about wings. Now the idea seemed somewhat absurd.
+They were not a part of life. Inventions. An invention. A phrase to
+explain an unusual state of physical and mental excitement.... Sleep
+intruded and the sadness melted out of him. As he closed his eyes his
+hand reached dreamily for Rachel and lay upon her shoulder.
+
+A week of silence followed. Dorn talked. Politics, economics, the coming
+peace treaty. Rachel listened and made replies. Yet their words seemed
+only the part of a silence between them. A letter from Washington
+interrupted them. A passport was being issued for Erik Dorn, but the
+bureau was not issuing passports for women and would have to deny Mrs.
+Rachel Dorn ... "enclosed please find $1 deposit made for Mrs. Dorn at
+this office."
+
+"Well, that ends it," he laughed. "Perhaps I shouldn't have lied about
+your being Mrs. Dorn. God is a jealous God and punishes liars."
+
+"You must go on," Rachel said. "Perhaps I'll get one later."
+
+"No, we'll both wait. I couldn't go without you."
+
+Rachel regarded him tenderly. They were sitting on Mama Turpin's porch.
+
+"Yes, you will," she said.
+
+He shook his head, pleased at the opportunity for sacrifice. He hoped as
+he smiled that Rachel would plead with him to go alone. In her pleading
+she would point out all the things he was giving up by not going. She
+might even say, "You must go, Erik. You can't sacrifice your career."
+
+Then he could shrug his shoulders, remain silent for a moment as if
+weighing his career beside his love for her, and smile suddenly and say,
+gently, "No. It's ended. Please, it's ended and forgotten." A laugh, a
+bit too casual, would leave the thing on the proper plane. Later there
+would be times when he could grow thoughtful and abstract and Rachel,
+looking at him, would know that he had sacrificed--his career.
+
+On Mama Turpin's porch Dorn's thoughts rambled in silence. Rachel had
+said nothing. He looked at her and grew confused before the straightness
+of her eyes, as if she knew the tawdry little plot moving through his
+mind. Then an irritation ... why didn't she plead? Did she think it was
+nothing to give up his plans? Was it anything? No. He endeavored to
+evade his own questioning, but his thoughts mocked him with answers....
+"I'm playing a game with her. I want her to feel sorry and grateful for
+my not going and to feel that I've made a sacrifice for her. Because I
+could cherish it against her ... later. Have something I could pretend
+to be sad about. It would give me an excuse to scold her.... Merely by
+looking at her I could remind her that she is indebted to me for a
+sacrifice. Make-believe sacrifice gives one the unconsciousness of
+virtue without any of its discomforts. I'm irritated because she refuses
+to play her part in the farce and so makes me seem cheap. She knows I'm
+lying but she can't figure out how or what about. So she looks at me and
+says to herself, 'Erik has changed. He's different.' She means that I've
+become an actor and able to offer her cheap things. But she doesn't know
+that in words."
+
+As he sat thinking, an understanding of himself played beneath his
+thoughts. He was irritated with her. The passport business was something
+he could hang his irritation on. It offered an opportunity to make the
+petulant, indefinable aversion he sometimes felt toward her into a
+noble, self-laudatory emotion.
+
+He stood up abruptly. Make amends by being truthful and putting an end
+to the theatrics.... "Listen, Rachel, it's foolish for us to take this
+seriously. I don't give a damn about going, and I never did. It would
+bore me. It means nothing to me, and it's no sacrifice or even
+inconvenience. Please, I mean it. Put it out of your head."
+
+He leaned over and took her hands.
+
+"I love you...."
+
+Despite himself there was a note of sacrifice. He frowned. His "I love
+you" had startled him. He had said it as one pats a woman reassuringly
+on the shoulder. More, as one turns the other cheek in a forgiving
+Christian spirit. He was not an actor. He had become naturally cheap.
+
+Rachel smiled wanly at him and kissed his hands. He noticed that she
+looked thin about the face and that her eyes seemed ill with too much
+weeping. He wondered when it was she wept. When she was alone, of
+course. For a moment the thought of her flung across the bed and weeping
+stirred him sensually. Then ... what made her cry so much? Good God,
+what did she want of him? He was giving up.... Again he frowned. "I've
+become a cad," he thought. "I can't think honestly any more. Thoughts
+act themselves in my head. I've gotten to thinking lies and thinking
+them naturally without trying to lie...."
+
+"I'm going for a walk," he announced, and went off toward the shore
+where the fishing-boats were drifting in becalmed.
+
+Mama Turpin came out on the porch. Rachel smiled at the old woman.
+
+"It's peaceful here, Mama Turpin."
+
+"Yes, honey. My work's all done for the day now."
+
+"Nothing ever changes here," Rachel murmured. "The sea is just the same
+as when I came. I think I'll be leaving soon, Mama Turpin. Mr. Dorn will
+stay on for a little while. I have some work I must get back to."
+
+She paused and shaded her eyes from the setting sun.
+
+"It's been wonderful down here. I'll never forget it. Perhaps some day
+I'll come back to visit again."
+
+She arose and sighed.
+
+"What's the matter, honey?" the old woman asked, watching her.
+
+Rachel waited till her lips could smile again. Then she said:
+
+"Oh, I hate to leave it here. But I have so much work to do."
+
+She entered the house swiftly. In her room she lay on the bed, her face
+in the pillow as if she were waiting for tears. But none came. She lay
+in silence until it grew dark and she heard Erik outside asking Mama
+Turpin where she was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+It was dawn when they awoke. Rachel opened her eyes first. A lassitude
+filled her. She remained quiet for moments and then sat up and stared at
+Erik. His face was flushed and he was sleeping lightly, his eyes almost
+open.
+
+"Erik," she whispered. When he looked at her she leaned over and kissed
+him.
+
+"Last night was wonderful," she murmured.
+
+He smiled sleepily.
+
+"I want to lie in your arms for just a minute. And then we'll get up,
+Erik."
+
+Her head sank against his shoulder and she remained with her eyes
+closed. He murmured her name. Over Rachel's face a curious light spread
+itself. She sat up and turned her eyes to him.
+
+"My dear one, my lover!"
+
+Dorn regarded her with a sudden confusion. Her eyes and voice were
+confusing. Women were strange. Her eyes were large, burning, devouring
+... "I will be a shrine to you always. Let me look at you. I have never
+looked at you...." Why was he remembering that? He felt himself grow
+frightened. Her eyes were saying something that must not be said. His
+arms reached out. Crush her to him. Hold her tightly. Sing his love to
+her....
+
+She had slipped from the bed and was standing on the floor, shaking her
+head at him. Her face seemed blank. Dorn sat up and blinked ludicrously.
+She had jumped out of his arms. He laughed. Coquetting. But her eyes had
+been strange....
+
+"Listen, Erik, do you mind if I spend the morning alone? I have some
+letters to write and things. Then I'll meet you on the beach and we'll
+go swimming and lie on the sand together. Will you?"
+
+He nodded cheerfully and swung himself out of bed. His calm had
+returned. The memories of the curiously abandoned, shameless Rachel of
+the night lingered for a moment questioningly and then left him.
+
+They ate breakfast together and Dorn strode off alone. He felt surprised
+at himself. He had forgotten all about his trip to Europe.
+
+"The sun and the rest here are doing me good," he thought. "I'm getting
+normal. But a little stupidity won't hurt."
+
+The morning slipped away and he returned to the beach from a walk
+through the village. It was early afternoon and the sands were deserted.
+The sea lay like a great Easter egg under the hot sun, a vast and
+inanimate daub of glittering blue, green, and gold. He seated himself on
+the burning sand and stared at it. Years could pass this way and he
+could sit dreaming lifeless words, the sea like a painted beetle's back,
+the sea like a shell of water resting on a stenciled horizon. A wind was
+dying among the clouds. It had blown them into large shapeless virgins.
+Puffy white solitudes over his head. He looked down and saw Rachel
+coming toward him. She was carrying a woolen blanket over her arms.
+
+She approached and appeared excited. Her face flushed.
+
+"Shall we go in?"
+
+He nodded. Her voice disturbed him. He would have preferred her calm,
+gentle. Particularly after last night. She unloosened her clothes
+quickly and hurried nude toward the water. Dorn, after an uneasy survey
+of the empty beach, watched her. In the glare of the sun and sand her
+body seemed insistently unfamiliar. He would have preferred her
+familiar. He joined her and they pushed into the water together. Her
+excited manner depressed him.
+
+"Let's swim," he called.
+
+A blue, singing moment under the water and they were up, swimming slowly
+into the unbroken sheet of the sea. Rachel came nearer to him, the water
+sparkling from her moving arms.
+
+"Do you like it, Erik?"
+
+He laughed in answer. Her head was turned toward him and he could see
+her dark eyes smiling against the water.
+
+"Wouldn't it be nice," she said softly, "to swim out together like
+lovers in a poem? Out and out! And never come back!"
+
+Her voice, slipping across the water, became unfamiliar. They continued
+moving.
+
+"Yes," he answered at length, smiling back at her. "It would be easy.
+And I'm willing."
+
+They swam in silence. He began to wonder. Were they going out and out
+and never coming back? Perhaps they were doing that. One might become
+involved in a suicide like that. He closed his eyes and his head moved
+through the coldness of the water. What matter? What was there to come
+back to? All hours were the same. He might wait until a thousand more
+had dragged themselves to an ending. Or swim out and out. When he grew
+tired he would kiss her and say, "It is easier to make our own endings
+than to wait for them." The sun would be shining and her eyes would sing
+to him for an instant over the water.
+
+"We'd better turn now, Erik."
+
+"No," he smiled. "We're lovers in a poem."
+
+She came nearer.
+
+"Come, we must go back, Erik."
+
+"No."
+
+He answered firmly. It pleased him to say "no." He felt a superiority.
+He could say "no" and then she would plead with him and perhaps finally
+persuade him.
+
+"Not now, Erik. Some other time, maybe...."
+
+"But it would be a proper ending," he argued. "What else is there? You
+are unhappy. And perhaps I am too. Come, it will be easy."
+
+For a moment a fright came into him. She was not pleading. She was
+silent and looking at him as they drifted. What if she should remain
+silent? "I don't want to die," he thought, "but does it matter?" He
+wondered at himself. He had spoken of dying. Sincerely? No. But if she
+remained silent they would keep swimming until there was nothing left to
+do but die. Then he was sincere? No. He would drown as a sort of casual
+argument. Good God! Her silence was asking his life. What matter? He
+cared neither to live nor to die. He looked at her with an amused smile
+in his eyes. His heart had begun to beat violently.
+
+A sudden relief. She had turned and was swimming toward the shore. He
+hesitated. Absurd to turn back too hurriedly. He waited till she looked
+behind her to see if he were coming. Her looking back was a vindication.
+She had believed then that he might go on, out and out.... He could
+follow her to the shore now....
+
+The swim had exhausted them. Rachel threw herself on the sand, Dorn
+covering her with the blanket. They lay together, the whiteness and the
+blaze of the sky tearing at their eyes. Her hair had spread itself like
+a black fan under her head.
+
+The oven heat of the day dried the burn of the sun into a chalked and
+hammering glare--an unremitting roar of light that seemed to beat the
+world into a metallic sleep. The sea had stiffened itself into a dead
+flame. Molten, staring sweeps of color burst upon their eyes with a
+massive intimacy. The etched horizon, the stagnant gleaming arch of the
+water, and the acetylene burn of the sand gave the scene the appearance
+of a monstrous lithograph.
+
+The figures of the lovers lay without life. Rachel had turned her head
+from the glare. Through veiling fingers Dorn remained staring at the
+veneer of isolation about them. Waves of heat crept like ghost fires
+across the nakedness of the scene. He thought of the sun as a pilgrim
+walking over the barren floor of an empty cathedral. Over him the
+motionless smoke-bellied clouds hung gleaming in the dead fanfare of the
+sky. He thought of them as swollen white blooms stamped upon a board. As
+the moments slipped, he became conscious that Rachel was talking. Her
+voice made a tiny noise in the grave torpitude of the day.
+
+"It's like listening to singing, Erik. What are you thinking of?"
+
+"Nothing. I like the way the heat tightens my skin and pinches."
+
+"Do you remember," she asked softly, "once you said beauty is an
+external emotion?"
+
+He answered drowsily, "Did I? I'm tired, dearest. Let's nap awhile."
+
+"No. I want to hear you talk just a little."
+
+He pressed his face into his arm, drawing his clothes carelessly over
+him for protection.
+
+"I can't think of anything to say, Rachel, except that I'm content. The
+sun brings a luxurious pain into one's blood...."
+
+"Yes, a luxurious pain," she repeated quietly. "Please let's talk."
+
+"Too damn hot."
+
+"I always expect you to say things. As if you knew things I didn't,
+Erik. I've always thought of you as knowing everything."
+
+"Ordinarily I do," he mumbled.
+
+"Wonderful Erik...."
+
+Flattery was annoying. There were times for being wonderful and times
+for grunting at the sand.
+
+"My vocabulary," he mumbled again, "has curled up its toes and gone to
+sleep."
+
+His eyes grew heavy.
+
+Drowsily, "I'm an old man and need my sleep."
+
+He felt Rachel's hand reaching gently for his head.
+
+A cool gloom squatted on the sand about him when he opened his eyes. The
+scene was a stranger. The sea and sand, dark strangers. His body felt
+stiffened and his skin hurt. He sat up and stared about with parched
+eyes.
+
+The sun had gone down. A hollow light lingered in the sky, an echo of
+light. He turned toward the blanket beside him. Rachel was gone. She had
+left the blanket in a little heap, unfolded. Why hadn't she wakened him?
+She must be on the beach somewhere, waiting.
+
+In the distance he saw the shapeless figures of the fishermen moving
+from their grounded boats. Staring about at the deserted scene he felt
+unaccountably sad. It would have been pleasant to have wakened and found
+Rachel sitting beside him.
+
+A sheet of paper was pinned on the blanket. He noticed it as he slipped
+painfully into his shirt. He continued to dress himself, his eyes
+regarding the bit of paper. His heart had grown heavy at the sight of
+it.
+
+When he was dressed he folded the blanket carefully and removed the
+note. A pallor in his thought. Something had happened. He had fallen
+asleep under a glaring sun. Rachel stretched beside him. Now the glare
+of the sun was gone and the sea and the sand were vaguely unreal, dark,
+and unfriendly. The little blanket was empty.
+
+He sat wondering why he didn't read the note. But he was reading it. He
+knew what it said. It said Rachel had gone and would never come back. A
+very tragic business.... "You do not love me any more as you did. You
+have changed. And if I stayed it would mean that in a little while
+longer you would forget all about me. Now perhaps you will remember."
+
+Quite true. He had taught her such paradoxes. He would remember. That
+was logical ... "to remember how you loved me makes it impossible to
+remain with you. Oh, I die when I look at you and see nothing in your
+eyes. It is too much pain. I am going away.... Dearest, I have known for
+a long time."
+
+His eyes skipped part of the words. Unimportant words. Why read any
+further? The thing was over, ended. Rachel gone. More words on the other
+side of the paper. His eyes skimmed ... "you have been God to me. I am
+not afraid. Oh, I am strong. Good-bye."
+
+Still more words. A postscript. Women always wrote postscripts--the
+gesture of femininity immortalized by Lot's wife. Never mind the
+postscript. Tear the paper into bits. It offended his fingers. Walk over
+to the water's edge and scatter it on the sea.
+
+He had lain too long in the sun. Probably burn like hell to-night. "Here
+goes Rachel into the sea." Soft music and a falling curtain.
+
+He read from one of the scraps.... "Erik, you will be grateful
+later...." Let the sea take that. And the "good-bye, my dear one...." A
+patch of white on the darkened water, too tiny to follow. Would she be
+waiting when he came back to the room? No, the room would be empty. A
+comb and brush and tray of hairpins would be missing from the
+dressing-table.
+
+A smile played over Dorn's face. His movements had grown abstract as if
+he were intensely preoccupied with his thoughts. Yet there were no
+thoughts. He walked for moments lazily along the water's edge kicking at
+the sand, his eyes following the last of the paper bits still afloat.
+They vanished and he sighed with relief.... "It's all a make-believe.
+The sea, Rachel, the war. Things don't mean anything. Last night there
+was someone to kiss. To-night, no one. But where's the difference.
+Nothing ... nothing.... Will I cave in or keep on smiling? Probably cave
+in. One must be polite to one's emotions. The sea says she's gone," his
+thought rambled, "dark empty waters say she's gone. Rachel's gone. Well,
+what of it? Like losing a hat. Does anything matter much? An ending.
+Leave the theater. Draw a new breath. Remember vaguely what the actors
+said or what they should have said. All the same. What was in the
+postscript? Not fair to throw it away without reading it. Should have
+read carefully. Took her hours to pick the right words. Night ... night.
+It'll be night soon."
+
+His words left him and he walked faster. He began to run. She would be
+waiting in their room. On the bed ... crying ... "I couldn't leave you,
+Erik. Oh, I couldn't." And later they would laugh about it.
+
+Mama Turpin was on the porch. He slowed his run. To rush breathless past
+the old woman would make a bad impression, if nothing had happened.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Dorn."
+
+Of course she was upstairs. Or would Mama Turpin say good-evening?
+
+"Hello," he called back casually, and walked on, his legs jumping ahead
+of him.
+
+The room was empty. More than empty, for the comb and brush and tray of
+hairpins were missing. His eyes had swept the dressing-table as he came
+in. They were gone.
+
+There would be another note. Why didn't she leave it some place where he
+could find it at a glance, instead of making him hunt around? Hunt
+around. Under the bed. On the chairs. No note. Good God, she was insane!
+Going away--why should she go away?... "we'll have a long talk about it
+and straighten it out, of course, but ..." The insanity of the thing
+remained. Gone!
+
+He stopped and felt his head aching. The sun ... "you won't find me if
+you look for me. Please don't try. One good-bye is easier and better
+than two. Erik, Erik, something has died for always...."
+
+Then he had read it. That had been in the postscript. He had given it a
+glance, not intending to follow the words. Unimportant words.
+
+"Died for always," he mumbled suddenly.
+
+... His head pressed against the pillow in the dark room, he began to
+weep. The odor of her hair was still in the pillow. Yes, the dream had
+died. And she had run from its corpse, leaving behind the faint odor of
+her hair on a pillow. How, died? Better to have her gone.... Tears
+burned in his eyes. He repeated aloud, "better...."
+
+An agony was twisting itself about his heart. His face moved as if he
+were in pain. With his fists he began to beat the bed. It had gone away.
+It had come and smiled at him for a moment, lifted him for a moment, and
+then gone away as if it had never been. But it would come back. He
+would weep and pound on the bed with his fists and bring it back. The
+face of stars, eyes burning, devouring, eyes kindling his soul into
+ecstasies.
+
+"Rachel!" he cried aloud.
+
+Silence. His tears had ended. He lay motionless on the bed, his body
+suddenly weak, his thought tired. Someone had shouted a name in his
+ears. A dead man had shouted the name of Rachel. It was the cry of an
+Erik Dorn who was dead. He'd heard it in the dark room. An old, already
+forgotten Erik Dorn who had laughed in a halloo of storms, heels up,
+head down. Madness and a dream. Wings and a face of stars. They had
+vanished with an old and almost forgotten Erik Dorn who had called their
+name out of a grave. So things whirled away.
+
+He arose and stood looking out of the window. Night had come ... "dark
+rendezvous of sorrows. Silent Madonna of the spaces...." He whispered to
+see if there were still phrases in him. His lips smiled against the
+window. Phrases ... words ... and the rest was a make-believe once more.
+A pattern precise and meaningless. His little flight over. Now it was
+time to walk again.
+
+Anna had stood one night staring at him. He remembered. Oh, yes, he'd
+run away quickly for fear he might hear her shriek. And then, Rachel.
+But these things were passed. It was time to walk. Did he still love
+her? Yes. It would have been easier to walk with her--calmly, placidly,
+their hands sometimes touching. Forgetting other days and other kisses
+together. But he would not lie to himself. An end to that now. Love made
+a liar of a man. At the beginning and at the end--lies. The ache now was
+one of memory, not of loss. The pain was one of death. Dead things hurt
+inside him. Afterward his heart would carry them about unknowingly. The
+dead things would end their hurt. But now, leaden heavy, they kept
+slipping deeper into him as if seeking graves that did not yet exist.
+
+Standing before the window, Dorn's smile grew cold.
+
+"A make-believe," he whispered, "but not quite the same as it was
+before. A loneliness and an emptiness. Ruins in which once there was
+feasting. And now, nothing ... nothing...."
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Long days. Short days. Outside the window was an ant-hill street. And an
+ant-hill of days. In the stores they were already selling calendars for
+the next year. Outside the window was a flat roof. By looking at the
+flat roof you remembered that Mary James was married. Unexpectedly. You
+came out of the ant-hill street, climbed the stairs, and sat down and
+looked at the flat roof. Long days, short days turned themselves over on
+the flat roof, and turned themselves over in your heart.
+
+Occasionally an event. Events were things that differed from putting on
+your shoes or buying butter in the grocery store. There was an event
+now. It challenged the importance of the flat roof. Hazlitt was sitting
+in the room and talking. Rachel listened.
+
+An eloquent event. But words jumbled into sound. Loud sounds. Soft
+sounds. They made her sleepy, as rain pattering on a window made her
+sleepy, or snow sinking out of the sky. There were sleepy words in her
+mind that had nothing to do with the event. Then the event came and
+mingled itself, mixed itself into the words ... "no sorrow. No remorse.
+The dead are dead. Oh, most extremely dead! So I'll sit by my sad
+little window and listen to this unbearable creature make love. The
+idiot'll go 'way in an hour and I'll be able to draw. Funny, my thoughts
+keep moving on, despite everything. Like John Brown's soul, or
+something. Words get to be separate, like the snickers of dead people.
+You think as one adds figures. Thoughts add, and draw pictures the same
+way. A line here. A line there. And you have a face. Curve a line up and
+the face laughs. Curve it down and the face weeps. You lie dead. Always
+dead. You lie dead in the street. The day tears your heart out. The
+night tears your eyes out. And when somebody passes, even a banana
+peddler, your eyes jump back, your heart jumps back, and you look up and
+snicker and say, 'It's all right. I'm just lying here for fun. I'm dead
+for fun.... He still loves me. I must answer him.'"
+
+She spoke aloud:
+
+"No, George, I hear you. But I don't love you. I can't say it more
+plainly, can I?"
+
+Her thoughts resumed. "Dear me. He talks almost as well as Erik. Lord,
+he thinks I'm a virgin. His pure and unfaltering star. Well, well! Why
+am I amused? Is life amusing, after all? Am I really happy? Alas! my
+heart is broken. I must not forget my heart is broken. You forget
+sometimes and begin snickering and somebody rings the bell and hands you
+a telegram reading, 'Your heart is broken.' Rachel of the broken heart!
+It was all very beautiful. This talk of his somehow brings it back ...
+Oh, God. That was a line curved down. What eloquence! There, now, I must
+speak. I'll have to tell him again."
+
+Aloud she went on, "You're mistaken in me, George."
+
+A flurry of silent words halted her.... "Ye gods, what a speech; she is
+not all his fancy painted him. Indeed! Not mistaken. His heart tells
+him. Poor boy! Poor little clowns who pay attention to what their hearts
+say! I mustn't be rude."
+
+She interrupted him, "If you'll listen to me, George ..."
+
+Then, "What'll I say? If only he inspired something by his eloquence--a
+phrase, at least. But my heart snickers at him. Ah! the dead are
+wonderfully dead. I'll tell him I'm not a virgin. That'll be surprising
+news. But how? Like a medical report? The woman was found not to be a
+virgin. The thing seems to hinge on that. Why in God's name does he keep
+virgining?"
+
+"No, George," she answered aloud, "I'm sorry. I don't believe in
+love...." Listen to her! "You see, I've been in love myself. Indeed I
+have. That's why you find me changed."
+
+He protested and her words followed silently. "My laughing makes him
+angry. But I must laugh. Love is something to laugh over, isn't it? Oh,
+God, why doesn't he go 'way?" The flat roof vanished. There was a rising
+event in the room and the flat roof bowed good-bye and walked away.
+
+"Yes, I was in love for quite a while with a man," she answered him.
+"And I'm in love with him yet--in a way. But we've parted. He had to go
+to Europe." Nevertheless he still thought she was a virgin. He'd started
+another virgining speech. There would have to be a medical report. "We
+lived together for over a year. We weren't married, of course, because
+he had a wife. You see, you're terribly mistaken." He must be impressed
+by her calm. "Because what I really am is a vampire. I lured a man from
+his wife, lived with him, and cast him aside."
+
+The event jumped to its feet. No room to talk for a moment, so her
+thought resumed, "I'm lying. He thinks I'm lying. I should have
+confessed in tears. With a few 'Oh, Gods.' Amusing! Amusing! That was
+Erik's favorite word. I'm beginning to understand it now. But there's
+nothing to be amused about ... in itself an amusing circumstance ... but
+you look at the banana peddler and snicker. Will he hit me? Oh, very
+red-faced. Speechless. I'd better talk. If he hit me.... He'll start in
+a minute...."
+
+"Yes, you know him, George," she cried suddenly. "And if you doubt me
+you can ask a lot of people. Ask Tesla or Mary James or Brander or New
+York." She'd make him believe. God, what an idiot! She'd claw his eyes
+out with words. Throw roofs on him. But it was a good thing Erik was in
+Europe, or he'd be killed.
+
+"Yes. I've told you in order to get rid of you. I'd rather be rid of
+you than keep my good name in your estimation. So now, run along and do
+your yelling outside. I'm sick of you."
+
+She paused on a high gesture.... "He's going to hit me. Strike a woman.
+War has brutalized him. Dear me!" But he asked a question ominously and
+she answered,
+
+"Erik Dorn. Yes. Erik Dorn."
+
+This made it worse. It was bad enough without a name. But a name made it
+realler. And very ominous. She moved toward a chair.
+
+"I'll sit still and then he won't hit me. If I'm calm, serene like a nun
+facing the wrath of God. This is melodrama. He can squeeze my shoulders
+all he wants. What good will it do him? If I giggled now he'd kill me.
+Sorry? Oh, so I must be sorry. Because I've offended him. Dear God, what
+a mess!"
+
+She twisted out of his grasp and cried.
+
+"No, I'm not sorry. You fool! I'm glad I was his woman. I'll always be
+glad, as long as I live. Leave me alone. You're a fool. I've always
+thought of you as a fool. You make me want to laugh now. You're a clown.
+I'll give myself to men. But not to you. I gave myself to Erik Dorn
+because I love him. If he wants me again I'll come to him not as a
+lover, because he doesn't love me any more--but as a prostitute. Now do
+you know me? Well, I want you to. So you'll go way and never bother me
+again...."
+
+That was a good speech. She stood dramatically silent as hands seized
+her shoulder again. "He hurts me. Why this? Oh, my shoulder! Does he
+want to? Oh, God, this is me! He'll let me go in a minute if I don't
+move. Very still. Silent ... I don't want him to cry. Can't he see it's
+amusing? If he'd only look at me and wink, I'd kiss him. No, he's a
+fool. I'll not say anything more. Let him cry! His life is ruined. Dear
+me, I have ruined his life. His love. I was his dream. Through the war
+... rose of no-man's land. Amusing, amusing! He looks different.
+Contempt. He has contempt for me. And horror. Oh, get out, get out, you
+fool! You sniveling nincompoop, get out! I want to draw pictures, and
+forget. Console him ... for what? I don't know, I don't know. He's
+going. Thank God! Oh, I don't know anything. Poor man, he should know
+better than to have dreams. Dreams are for devils, not for men or women.
+Dreams ... dreams ... I don't know ... I'll draw a picture. But I don't
+want to. He'll never come back. I'm sad again. The flat roof says
+something. Is it Erik? Dear Erik! Poor Erik! I love you. But I'll begin
+crying. Pretty tears, amusing tears. Erik mine, dead for always. But
+it's not as bad as it was. Another month, year, ten years. Oh, it chokes
+me. I can't help it. Your eyes are the beckoning hands of dream. Whose
+eyes? Mine ... mine.... Mine ... I know. I know. I must keep on dying,
+keep on dying. But I'm not afraid. Look, I can laugh! Amusing that I
+can laugh ... Oh, God ... God...."
+
+Beside her window looking out on the ant-hill street Rachel covered her
+face with her hands. When she removed them she caught a glimpse of the
+figure of Hazlitt walking as if it were a blind man in zig-zags down the
+pavement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The thing that had been buried in Emil Tesla and that used to rumble
+under his fawning words, had come to life one day with two men twisting
+his wrists and hammering at his uncovered face. He had laughed.
+
+The two men came into his office to seize him. When he started to
+protest they walked up to him slowly as if to shake hands. Instead, they
+began beating him. For a moment he wondered why the two men hated him so
+violently. He stood looking into their faces and thinking, "They're like
+me."
+
+The visitors, however, saw no resemblance. They twisted his arm till it
+broke. Then they kept on battering at him with their fists till he fell
+to the floor. While he lay on the floor they kicked him, and his muscles
+grew paralyzed.
+
+He never remembered the walk downstairs. But in the open he saw a crowd
+of faces drifting excitedly beneath him. This was a scene he remembered
+later.
+
+It was while looking at the faces that he had grown strong. He laughed
+because it occurred to him at the moment he was unconquerable. Later, in
+prison, he often thought, "I have only my life to lose. I'm not afraid
+of that. When they hit me they were hitting at an idea. But they could
+only hit me. They couldn't touch the idea. I'll remember when I come
+out--they can only hit me. If they end by shooting me they'll not touch
+the idea even then. That's something beyond their fists and guns. I'll
+remember I'm only a shadow."
+
+A year passed and Tesla came out. He returned to the office of _The
+Cry_. His friends noticed a change. He had grown quiet. He no longer
+bubbled with words. His eyes looked straight at people who spoke to him.
+His manner whispered, "I'm nothing--a shadow thrown by an idea. I don't
+argue, and I'm not afraid. I'm part of masses of people all over the
+world and cannot be destroyed."
+
+The new Tesla became a leader. Among the radicals whose intellects were
+groping noisily with the idea of a new justice he often inspired a fear.
+His smile disquieted them and their arguments. His smile said, "Here,
+what's the use of arguing? There is no argument. It isn't words we must
+give the revolution, but lives. I'm ready. Here's mine."
+
+When he looked at men and women who vociferated in the councils of
+radical pamphleteers, workers, organizers, theorists, new party
+politicians, Tesla thought, "That one's afraid. He's only a logician.
+His mind has led him into revolution. If he changed his mind he would
+become a conservative.... There's one that isn't afraid. He's like me.
+His mind helps him. But no matter what his mind told him he would
+always be in the revolution. Something in him drives him...."
+
+For the rabble of artists and near-artists drifting by the scores into
+radical centers, Tesla held a respectful dislike.
+
+"He's in revolt because he must find something different than other
+people," he thought of most of them. "The revolution to him means only
+himself. It's something he can use to make himself felt more by people.
+And also he's a revolutionist because of the contrariness in him that
+artists usually have. Especially artists who, when they can't create new
+things, make themselves think they're creating new things by destroying
+old things."
+
+Of himself Tesla thought, "I'll fight and not mind if I'm killed.
+Because people will still be left alive, and so the idea of which I'm a
+part will continue to live."
+
+In the days before his going to prison Tesla had felt the need of
+writing and talking his revolution. This was because of an impatience
+and intolerance toward the enemy. Now that was gone. The enemy had
+become a blatant, trivial thing. The things it said and did were
+unimportant. He read with amusement the rabid denunciations of the
+radicals in the press of the day. The grotesque hate hymns against the
+new Russia, the garbled shriekings and pompous anathemas that fell
+hourly upon the heads of all suspects, inspired no argument in him.
+
+Tesla's days were busy with organization. He had almost ceased his
+activities as pamphleteer, although still editor of _The Cry_. With a
+group of men, silent as himself, he worked at the radicalization of the
+factories and labor unions. Each day men left Tesla to seek employment
+in shops throughout the country, in mines and mills. Their duties were
+simple. Tesla measured them carefully before sending them on.... This
+one could be relied upon to work intelligently, to talk to workingmen at
+their benches and during noon hours without antagonizing, or, worse,
+frightening them. Another was dubious. His eyes were too bright. He
+would be discovered and arrested by the company. But he might do some
+good. The arrest of a radical always did some good to the cause. Where
+would Christianity have been without the incompetent agitators who
+blundered into the clutches of the Roman law and the amphitheater?
+
+Aloud he would say, "Work carefully. Remember that the revolution is for
+all; that the workers, no matter what they say to you, are comrades.
+Remember that strikes are better than fights. The time hasn't come yet
+for fighting. What we must do is put into the hearts of the workers the
+knowledge that there is nothing in common between them and their bosses.
+The workers are the producers. They work and make no money. The bosses
+are the exploiters. They don't work and make all the money. If you get
+the workers to thinking this they'll want more money themselves and
+declare strikes. By strikes we can paralyze industry and give the
+workers consciousness of their power. This is only a step; but the first
+and most important step. Make strikes. Make dissatisfaction. But don't
+argue about fighting and revolution."
+
+Over and over Tesla repeated his instructions through the days. He spoke
+simply. Men listened to him and nodded without questioning. They saw
+that his eyes were unafraid and that if he was sending them upon
+dangerous missions, he would some day reserve a greater mission for
+himself. Tesla had become a leader since he had laughed on the step
+overlooking the pack of faces.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+At his desk in _The Cry_ office Tesla was preparing the April issue of
+the magazine for the printer. It was night. A garrulous political poet
+named Myers was revising proofs at a smaller desk. Brander and a tall,
+thin woman stood talking quietly to each other in a gloomy corner of the
+office. Rachel, who had returned to the place after a hurried supper
+with Tesla, waited listlessly. He had promised to finish up in a
+half-hour, but there was more work than he had figured.
+
+"We're reprinting a part of the article on the White Terror in Germany
+that Erik Dorn has in the _New Opinion_," Tesla said. Rachel nodded her
+head. Later Tesla asked her, "This Dorn, what is he? His writing is
+amusing, sometimes violent, but always empty. He doesn't like life much,
+eh?"
+
+"I don't know," said Rachel.
+
+"Yes," Tesla smiled. "He hates us all--reds and whites, radicals and
+bourgeoisie. Yet he can write in a big way. But he isn't a big man. He
+has no faith. I remember him once in Chicago. He hasn't changed."
+
+Rachel's eyes remained steadily upon the socialist as he cleared his
+desk. He stood up finally and came to where she was sitting.
+
+"It's necessary to have something besides self," he said softly. "I was
+born in a room that smelled bad. Perhaps that's why the world smells bad
+to me now. I still live there. It's good to live where there are smells.
+Our radicals sit too much in hotel lobbies that other people keep clean
+for them."
+
+Brander thrust his large figure between them, the tall, thin woman
+moving vaguely about the room.
+
+"Sometimes I think you're a fake, Emil," he said. "You're too good to be
+true."
+
+He grinned at Rachel.
+
+"By the way," he went on, looking at her, "I brought something to show
+you." His hands dug a paper out of his coat pocket. "You see, I've
+preserved our correspondence."
+
+He held out a letter. Rachel's eyes darkened.
+
+"Oh, there's no hurry," Brander laughed. "So long as you keep the
+application on file, you know."
+
+Tesla, listening blankly, interrupted:
+
+"It's late. We should go home. I'll go home with you, Rachel, and talk."
+
+The thin woman, watching Brander anxiously, approached and seized his
+arm.
+
+"All right," the artist whispered. "We'll go now."
+
+Rachel felt a relief as Brander passed out of the door with the woman.
+
+"He disturbs you," Tesla commented. She nodded her head. Words seemed
+to have abandoned her. There was almost a necessity for silence. They
+walked out, leaving Myers still at his desk.
+
+In the deserted streets Rachel walked beside Tesla. She felt tired.
+"He's never tired," she thought, her eyes glancing at the stocky figure.
+He wasn't talking as he said he would.
+
+The night felt sad and cold. A dead March night. If not for Emil, what?
+"Perhaps I'll kill myself. There's nothing now. I'm always alone. No
+to-morrows."
+
+In the evenings she came to the office to meet Emil for supper because
+there was nothing else to do. Emil seemed like an old man, always
+preoccupied, his eyes always burning with preoccupations. After supper
+he usually walked home with her, talking to her of poor people. There
+seemed no hatred in him, no argument. Poor people in broken houses.
+Christ came and gave them a God. Now the revolution would come with
+flaming embittered eyes but wearing a gentle smile for the poor people
+in broken houses, and give them rest and happiness.
+
+But to-night he was silent. When they had walked several blocks he began
+to talk without looking at her.
+
+"Come with me," he asked. "I live alone in a little house. We can be
+happy there. You have nobody."
+
+Rachel repeated "Nobody."
+
+She looked at him but his eyes avoided her.
+
+"My mother died long ago," he went on. "She was an old woman. She used
+to live in this house where I live. We were always poor. I had brothers
+and sisters. They've all gone somewhere. Things happened to them. I have
+only my work now. Nobody else. But I'm alone too much. Since we have
+seen each other I have been thinking of you. Brander has told me
+something but that doesn't matter. I would like to marry you."
+
+He paused and seemed to grow bewildered.
+
+"Excuse me," he mumbled. Rachel took his hand and held it as they
+walked. Tears in her whispered "Nobody ... nobody." The homely face of
+Tesla was looking at her and saying something with its silence: "I am
+not for you as Erik was. But that is gone. Dead for always...."
+
+He was kind. It would be easy to live with him. But not married. A chill
+drifted through her. It didn't matter what she did. Life had ended one
+afternoon months ago. She remembered the sun shining on the sand, the
+burning sea, and Erik asleep. The memory said "I am the last picture of
+life."
+
+It would be easy with Tesla. He loved elsewhere ... a wild gentle
+thing--people. Poor people in broken houses. He would give her only
+kindness and companionship. And if he would let her cry to-night and
+make believe she was a child crying....
+
+They had taken a different direction. This was the neighborhood where
+Tesla lived. Rachel looked about her in fear. She remembered the
+district. Now she was coming to live here in these streets where people
+begin to give forth an odor.
+
+As she walked beside Tesla his silence became dark like the scene
+itself. She had always thought of him as somewhat strange. Now she
+understood why he had seemed strange to her. Because he carried an
+underworld in his heart. In his nose there was always the odor of the
+streets from which he had sprung, and in his mind there was always the
+picture of them. Other things did not fool him.
+
+"Is it far?" she asked.
+
+He looked at her, smiling.
+
+"No," he said. "Do you want to go?"
+
+She pressed his hand. It would be better. But her heart hurt. That was
+foolish. Emil was somebody different. Not like a man, but an old man--or
+an old background. There would be things to think about--Revolution.
+Before, revolution was people arguing and being dragged to jail.
+Sometimes people fighting. But it was something else--a thing hidden and
+spreading--and here in the dark street about them where Emil lived.
+
+Emil seemed to vanish into a background. She walked and thought of the
+streets in which Emil lived. Here in the daytime the rows of sagging
+little houses were like teeth in an old man's mouth. From them arose
+exhalations of stagnant wood, decaying stairways; of bodies from which
+the sweats of lust and work were never washed. Soft bubbling alleys
+under a stiff sun. The stench like a grime leadened the air. Something
+to think about in places like this. Revolution crawling up and down soft
+alleys ... something in the mud waiting to be hatched.
+
+In this street lived men and women whose hungers were not complicated by
+trifles. In this way they were, as they moved thick-faced and unsmiling,
+different from the people who lived in other streets and who had
+civilized their odors and made ethics of their hungers. The people who
+lived here walked as if they were being pushed in and out of the sagging
+houses. Shrieking children appeared during the daytime and sprawled
+about. They rolled over one another, their faces contorted with a
+miniature senility. They urinated in gutters, threw stones at one
+another in the soft alleys, ran after each other, cursing and gesturing
+with idiot violence. They brought an awkward fever into the street.
+Oblivious of them and the débris about them, barrel-shaped women
+strutted behind their protuberant bellies, great flapping shoes over the
+pavements. They moved as if unaccustomed to walking in streets.
+
+When it grew dark the men coming home from the factories began to crowd
+the street. They walked in silence, a broken string of shuffling figures
+like letters against the red of the sky. Their knees bent, their jaws
+shoved forward, their heads wagged from side to side. They vanished
+into the sagging houses, and the night came ... an unwavering gloom
+picked with little yellow glows from windows. The houses lay like
+bundles of carefully piled rags in the darkness. The shrieking of the
+children died, and with it the pale fever of the day passed out of the
+air. There were left only the odors.
+
+There were odors now, coming to them as they walked. Invisible banners
+of decay floating upon the night. Stench of fat kitchens, of soft
+bubbling alleys, of gleaming refuse. Indefinable evaporations from the
+dark bundles of houses wherein people had packed themselves away. They
+came like a rust into her nose.
+
+She was moving into a new world. Drunken men appeared and lurched into
+the darkness with cursings and mutterings. Sometimes they sang. The
+smoke of the factory chimneys was now invisible, but the chimneys, like
+rows of minarets, made darker streaks in the gloom. And in the distance
+blast furnaces gutted the night with pink and orange flares. Figures of
+girls not yet shaped like barrels came into the street and stood for
+long moments in the shadows. Rachel watched them as she passed. They
+moved away into the depths of the soft alleys and vanished. It was late
+night. The exhalations of alleys and houses increased as if some great
+disintegration was stewing in the night. A new world....
+
+Rachel's fingers reached for Tesla's hand. She felt surprised. There was
+no thought of Erik. This about her was a world untouched by the shadow
+Erik had left behind. So she could live here easily. And Emil was not a
+man like Erik. Erik, who stood alone, stark, untouched by life. Emil was
+a background. It would be easy. Her fingers, tightly laced in his, grew
+cold. Erik would come back. "Come back," murmured her thought. "Oh, if
+he should come back! No, I mustn't fool myself. It's over. And I can
+either live or die. I'll live a little while. Why? Because I still love
+him. Erik mine!"
+
+But it didn't sadden her to walk up the dark steps of Tesla's house.
+"Erik, good-bye!" Not even that mattered. Erik was gone. That was all
+something else. Not gone. Oh, God, no! Only Erik had died. She still
+lived with a dead name in her heart. But here were odors--strange
+people.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+It was barely furnished but clean inside. Later Rachel sat, her head in
+Tesla's arms, and wept. She was not sad. Her thought faltered, reaching
+for words, but drifting away. This is what had become of her--nothing
+else but this.
+
+Tesla looked quietly at her and kept murmuring, "Little girl, the world
+is big. There are other things than self. Must you cry? Cry, then. I
+know what sadness is."
+
+His hands moved gently through her loosened hair and he smiled
+sorrowfully.
+
+"Dear child," he whispered, "you can always cry in my arms and I will
+understand. It is the way the world sometimes cries in my heart. I
+understand.... Yes ... yes...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+A kaleidoscope of cities. A new garrulity. Words like busy little brooms
+sweeping up after a war. A world of foreigners. Europe was running about
+with empty pockets and a cracked head. England had had a nose-bleed,
+France a temporary castration, and the president of the United States
+was walking around in Paris in an immaculate frock-coat and a high silk
+hat. The President was closeted in a peace conference mumbling
+valorously amid lifted eyebrows, amused shoulder shruggings, ironic
+sighings. A long-faced virgin trapped in a bawdy house and calling in
+valiant tones for a glass of lemonade.
+
+Erik Dorn drifted through a haze of weeks. This was London. This, Paris.
+This, Rotterdam. And this, after a long, cold ride standing up in a
+windowless coach, Berlin. But all curiously alike. People in all of them
+who said, "We are strangers to you."
+
+There was nothing to see. No impressions to receive. More cities, more
+people, more words and a detachment. The detachment was Europe. In his
+own country there was no detachment. He was a part of crowds,
+newspapers, buildings. Here he was outside. Familiar things looked
+strange. The eyes busied themselves trying to forget things before
+them, scurrying after details and worried by an unrelation in
+architecture, faces, gestures.
+
+It was mid-December when he sat in a hotel room in Berlin one night and
+ate blue-colored fish, boiled potatoes, and black, soggy bread. He had
+been wandering for days through snow-covered streets. Now there was
+shooting in the streets.
+
+"Germany is starving," said an acquaintance. "Our children are dying off
+by the thousands, thanks to the inhuman blockade."
+
+But despite even the shooting in the streets Dorn noticed the Germans
+had lost interest in the war. The idea of the war had collapsed. In
+England and France the idea was still vaguely alive. People kept it
+alive by discussing it. But even there it had become something
+unnatural.
+
+One thing there was in common. Only a few people seemed to have been
+killed. London was jammed. Even though the newspapers summed it up now
+and then with "a generation has been killed." Paris, too, was jammed.
+And Berlin now, jammed also. The war had been fought by people who were
+dead. And the people who were alive were living away its memory.
+
+In Berlin a week, and he thought, "A circus has pulled down its tent,
+carted off its gaudy wagons, its naphtha lights, and its boxes of
+sawdust. And a new show is staking out the lot."
+
+The new show was coming to Berlin. Fences and building walls were
+plastered with its lithographs ... "The Spirit of Bolshevism Marches
+... Beware the Wrecker of Mankind...." Posters of gorillas chewing on
+bloody knives, of fiends with stringy hair setting the torch to
+orphanages and other nobly drawn edifices labeled "Kultur, Civilization,
+Humanitat...." The spielers were already on the job. Machine-guns barked
+in the snow-covered streets. A man named Noske was a _Bluthund_. A man
+named Liebknecht was a _Schweinhund_.
+
+In his hotel room Dorn, eating blue-colored fish, spoke to an
+acquaintance--an erudite young German who wore a monocle, whose eyes
+twinkled with an odd humor, and who under the influence of a bottle of
+Sekt was vociferating passionately in behalf of a thing he called _Welt_
+Revolution.
+
+"I don't understand it yet, von Stinnes," Dorn smiled. "I will later. So
+far I've managed to do nothing more than enjoy myself. Profundity is
+diverting in New York, but a bore in Berlin. There's too much of it.
+Good God, man, there are times when I feel that even the buildings of
+the city are wrapped in thought."
+
+Von Stinnes gestured with an almost English awkwardness. His English
+contained a slight French accent. His words, amused, careless, carried
+decision. He spoke knowingly, notwithstanding the Sekt and the smile
+with which he seemed to be belying his remarks. Thus, the Majority
+Socialists were traitors. Scheidemann had sold the revolution for a kiss
+from Graf Rantzau. The masses.... "Ah, m'sieur, they are arming. There
+will be an overthrow." And then, Ludendorff had framed the
+revolution--actually manufactured it. All the old officers were back.
+Noske was allowing them to reorganize the military. The thing was a
+farce. Social Democracy had failed. The country was already in flames.
+There would be things happening. "You wait and see. Yes, the
+Spartikusten will do something ..."
+
+Dorn nodded appreciatively. He felt instinctively that he had stumbled
+upon a man of value and service. But he listened carelessly. As yet the
+scene was more absorbing than its details. The local politik boiling
+beneath the collapse of the empire had not yet struck his imagination.
+There were large lines to look at first, and absorb.
+
+Snow in unfamiliar streets, night soldier patrols firing at shadows,
+eager-eyed women in the hotel lobbies, marines carousing in the Kaiser's
+Schloss--a nation in collapse. Teutonia on her rump, helmet tilted over
+an eye, hair down, comely and unmilitary legs thrust out, showing her
+drawers and laughing. Yes, the Germans were laughing. Where was there
+gayety like the Palais de Danse, the Fox Trot Klubs, Pauligs; gayety
+like the drunken soldiers patrolling Wilhelmstrasse where a paunchy
+harness-maker sat in Bismarck's chair?
+
+Gayety with a rumble and a darkness underneath. But such things were
+only wilder accents to laughter. If the detachment would leave him, if
+he could familiarize himself, he could lay hands on something; dance
+away in a macabré mardi-gras.
+
+Two bottles of Sekt had been emptied. A polite Ober responded with a
+third. Von Stinnes grew eloquent.
+
+"Not before March, Mr. Dorn. It will come only then. This that you hear
+now, pouf! Hungry men looking for crumbs with hand-grenades. The
+revolution is only picking its teeth. But wait. It will overturn, when
+it comes. And even if it does not overturn, if it fails, it will not
+end, but pause. You hear it whispering now in the streets. Hungry men
+with hand-grenades. Ah, m'sieur, if you wish we will work together. I am
+a man of many acquaintances. I am von Stinnes, Baron von Stinnes of a
+very old, a very dissolute, a very worthless family. I am the last von
+Stinnes. The dear God Himself glows at the thought. I will work for you
+as secretary. How much do you offer for a scion of the nobility?"
+
+"Three hundred marks."
+
+"A month?"
+
+"No, weekly," laughed Dorn, "and you buy half the liquor."
+
+Von Stinnes bowed.
+
+"An insult, Mr. Dorn. But I overlook it. One becomes adept in the matter
+of overlooking insults. You will need me. I am known everywhere. I was
+with Liebknecht in the Schloss when he slept in the Kaiser's bed. Ho! it
+was a symbol for you to see him crawl between the sheets. Alas! he
+slept but poorly, with the marines standing guard and frowning at the
+bed as if it were capable of something. For me, I would have preferred
+beds with more pleasant associations. And when Bode tried to be dictator
+in his father's chamber in the Reichstag--yes," von Stinnes closed his
+eyes and laughed softly, "he seized the Reichstag with a company of
+marines. And he sat for two days and two nights signing warrants,
+confiscation orders. Until a soldier brought him a document issued by
+Eichorn the mysterious policeman who was dictating from the Stadt House.
+And poor Bode signed it. He was sleepy. He could not read with sleep. It
+was his own death warrant. It was I who saved him by taking him to the
+house of Milly. He slept four days with Milly, in itself a feat."
+
+Von Stinnes swallowed another glass of wine. His eyes seemed to belie
+his unsteady, careless voice. His eyes remained intent and mocking upon
+Dorn.
+
+"You have come a few weeks too late. There were scenes, dear God, to
+make one laugh. In the Schloss. Yes, we bombarded the Schloss--but after
+we had captured it. The Liebknecht ordered. Everything was done in
+symbols. Therefore the symbol of the bombardment of the Schloss. So we
+rushed out one night and opened fire, and when we had knocked off the
+balcony and peeled the plaster from the walls, we rushed in again and
+sang the _Marseillaise_. What wine, m'sieur! Ho, you have come a few
+weeks too late. But there will be other comedies. And I will be of
+service. I belong to three officers' clubs. One of them is respectable.
+Women are admitted. The other two ... women are barred. And look...." He
+slapped a wallet on the table and extracted a red card, "'member of the
+Communist Partei--Karl Stinnes,'" he read. "Listen, there are 75,000
+rifles in Alexander Platz, waiting for the day."
+
+"Where did you learn your English, von Stinnes?"
+
+"Oxford. Italian in Padua. French, m'sieur, in Paris. During the war."
+The baron laughed. "Ah, _pendant la guerre, m'sieur, en Paris_."
+
+"And now," Dorn mused, "you are a Spartikust."
+
+The baron was on his feet, a wine glass raised in his hand.
+
+"_Es lebe die Welt Revolution_," he cried, "_es lebe das Rate
+Republik!_"
+
+"What did you do in Paris, von Stinnes?"
+
+"Pigeons, my friend. I played with pigeons and with vital statistics and
+made love to little French girls whose sweethearts were dying in the
+trenches. And in London. But I talk too much. Yes, my tongue slips, you
+say. But I am lonely and talk is easy.... I drink your health ...
+_hein!_ it was a day when we met...."
+
+Dorn raised his glass.
+
+"To the confusion of the seven deadly virtues!" he laughed.
+
+"I drink," the baron cried. "We will make a tour. We will amuse
+ourselves. I see that you understand Germany. Because you understand
+there is something bigger than Germany; that the world is the head of a
+pin spinning round in a glass of wine. I have been with the other
+correspondents. Pigs and donkeys. The souls of shopkeepers under the
+vests."
+
+The baron seated himself carefully and pretended an abrupt seriousness.
+
+"I have made up my mind to die behind the red barricades. Perhaps in
+March. Perhaps later. Another glass, m'sieur. Thanks. I shall die
+fighting for the overthrow of the tyranny of the bourgeoisie ... Noske
+and his _parvenu_ Huns. Ho! Dorn, we will amuse ourselves in a crazy
+world, eh, what? The tyranny of the bourgeoisie!"
+
+The baron laughed as he rolled over the phrase.
+
+"There will be great deal to enjoy," Dorn smiled. The wine was making
+him silent.
+
+"Yes, to enjoy. To laugh," the baron interrupted. "I cannot explain now.
+But you seem to understand. Or am I drunk? _Ein galgen gelachter, nicht
+wahr?_ I will take quarters at the hotel. I know the management well. I
+saved the place from being looted in the November excitement. Have you
+seen the Kaiser Salle? His Majesty dined there once. A witless popinjay.
+Liebknecht is a man. Flames in his heart. But a poor orator. He will be
+killed. They must kill him. A little Jew, Haase, has brains. You will
+meet him. And the Dadaists--they know how to laugh. The cult of the
+absurd. Perhaps the next emperor of Germany will be a Dada. An Ober
+Dada--who knows? Once the world learns to laugh we may expect radical
+changes. And in München I know a dancer, Mizzi. Dear God, what legs! You
+must come there to see legs. Faces in the Rhineland. Ankles in Vienna.
+But legs, dear God, in München! It is the Spanish influence. Let us
+drink to Mizzi...."
+
+The wine was vanishing. The baron paused out of breath and sighed. His
+face that seemed to grow firmer and more ascetic as he drank, took on a
+far-away shrewdness as if new ideas had surprised it.
+
+"I've felt many things," Dorn spoke, "but thought nothing yet. So far
+Europe has remained strange. I am in a theater watching a pantomime. I
+have entered in the middle of the second act and the plot is a bit
+hidden. But we will have to find some serious work to do. I must meet
+politicians, leaders; listen to laments and prophecies...."
+
+"All in time, all in time," the baron interrupted. "Am I not your
+secretary? Well, then, trust me. You will talk to-morrow with Ebert. We
+begin thus at the bottom. Of all men in Germany who know nothing, he
+knows least. Thursday, Scheidemann. Treachery requires some shrewdness.
+The man is not quite an imbecile. If your Roosevelt were a Socialist he
+would be a Scheidemann. Daumig, Pasadowsky, Erzburger--rely upon me,
+m'sieur. And Ludendorff. Ah, there we have real work. If Ludendorff will
+talk now. He is supposed to be in Berlin. I will find him and arrange
+for you. And so on. You will meet all the great minds, all the big
+stomachs. I will take you to Radek who is hiding with a price on his
+head. And Dr. Talheimer on the Rote Fahne, if they do not arrest him too
+soon. Bernstorff is in the hotel. A man with too much brains. Yes, an
+intelligent bungler. He will die some day with a sad smile, forgiving
+his enemies. And if we need women, mention your choice. Mine runs to the
+married woman of title. A small title is to be preferred. It is a slight
+insurance against disease. Others prefer the gamins. There is not enough
+difference to quarrel about. Or do you want a little red in your amours?
+A _sans culotte_ from Ehrfurst or Spandau? In Essen you will find
+Belgian women. They will love for nothing. For that matter, a bottle of
+wine and a bar of chocolate and you can have anyone. There is no virtue
+left, thank God. And yet, for variety, I sometimes think there should be
+a little. Ah, yes, yes! I miss the virgins of my youth. Another bottle,
+eh? Where's the button? What do you think of German plumbing? It is our
+Kultur. We are proud of our plumbing. It was the ideal for which we
+fought. To introduce our plumbing throughout Europe--make a German
+bathroom of the world."
+
+A sound of heavier firing in the streets interrupted. The two sat
+listening, the baron's face alive with an odd humor.
+
+"_Es lebe die Welt Revolution_," he whispered. "Do you hear it? Only a
+murmur. But it starts all over Germany again. Workingmen with guns. You
+will see them later. I among them. Stay in Europe, my friend, and see
+the ghost of Marat rising from a German bathtub."
+
+"Who are shooting?" Dorn asked.
+
+"Shadows," the baron laughed. "The government wishes to impress the good
+burgher that there is danger. So the government orders the soldiers to
+shoot at midnight. The good burgher wakes and trembles. _Mein Gott, das
+Bolshevismus treibt! Gott sei dank für den Regierung._ ... So the good
+burgher gives enthusiastic assent to the increase in the military
+budget. Dear God, did he not hear shooting at midnight? But they play
+with more than ghosts. Noske's politik will end in another color.
+To-night there are only shadows to shoot at. To-morrow ... remember what
+I tell you...."
+
+The telephone rang and Dorn answered. A voice in English:
+
+"The gentlemen will have to put out the lights. The Spartikusten are
+coming."
+
+"Thank you...."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"We must put out the lights."
+
+The baron laughed.
+
+"It is nonsense. Come, your hat. We will go have a look."
+
+They hurried down to the lobby. An iron door had been drawn across the
+entrance of the hotel. In the lobby the shooting seemed a bombardment of
+the building. A group of American and English correspondents were
+lounging in the heavy divans, drinking gin and talking to a trio of
+elaborately gowned women. The talk was in French.
+
+"Hello, Dorn," one of the Englishmen called. Dorn approached the table,
+von Stinnes following, and whispering, "I will request the porter to
+open the gate."
+
+"Baron von Stinnes, Mr. Reading."
+
+The Englishman shook hands and smiled.
+
+"I know the baron, Dorn. Rather old friends, what? Have a drink, damn
+it!"
+
+"Later, if you please," von Stinnes bowed stiffly. Reading beckoned Dorn
+aside with an air of secrecy. Walking him to another part of the lobby
+he began whispering:
+
+"I'd let that blighter alone if I were you, Dorn. I'm just telling you
+because you're rather new to these bloody swine."
+
+Dorn nodded.
+
+"I see," he said, and walked back to von Stinnes. Reading resumed his
+place with the party.
+
+"Perhaps it was a timely warning," the baron murmured as Dorn drew near
+him. The gate had been opened and the two emerged. "I make a guess at
+what Reading told you," the baron pursued.
+
+"It is immaterial," Dorn answered. "I engage you not for your honesty
+and many virtues, but because you're amusing...."
+
+"Thus you relieve my conscience," von Stinnes sighed.
+
+The wide avenue was deserted. Moonlight lay on the new-fallen snow. A
+line of soldiers wheeled suddenly out of the Brandenburger Tor and came
+marching quickly toward the walkers.
+
+"_Weiter gehen, weiter gehen_," a voice from the troop called. Two
+detached themselves from the ranks and approached rapidly.
+
+"_Ausweise...._"
+
+Von Stinnes glared through his monocle and answered in German, "What is
+the matter with you? Are you crazy? I am Baron von Stinnes. My friend is
+a member of the American Commission."
+
+Dorn extracted a bit of stamped paper--his special credentials from the
+German Foreign Office. The soldier glanced at it without troubling to
+read....
+
+"_Sehr gut, mein Herrschaften_," he mumbled. Dorn caught a glimpse of
+his face. Its importance had vanished. The line of soldiers marched on.
+When they had turned a corner the sound of firing suddenly resumed.
+
+"Shadows again," chuckled von Stinnes.
+
+Snow-covered streets, moonlight, waiting buildings, cold and
+shadows--here was reality. The thing under the gay tumult of the cafés.
+Under the baron's laughter. They were passing a stretch of empty shop
+windows.
+
+"It's cold," Dorn muttered. The baron looked at him with a smile.
+
+"It is cold everywhere in Germany," he said quietly. "Men's hearts are
+cold with hunger and fear. Brains are confused. Stomachs empty. The top
+has been knocked off. The soldiers in the streets are the sad little
+remains of a dead Germany. The new Germany lies cold and hungry in a
+workingman's bed. Life will come out of the masses. And I am always on
+the side of life. Not so? The old is dead. We drink wine to the new."
+
+The sound of dance music drifted out of a café.
+
+"Shall we stop?" the baron hesitated.
+
+Dorn shook his head.
+
+"Enough cafés. The streets are better. Dark windows."
+
+They walked in silence through the snow, the baron humming a Vienna
+waltz as the blurred echoes of machine-gun fire rose in the night around
+them.
+
+... Hours later Dorn lay sleepless in his bed. The smoke of wine was
+slipping out of his thought.
+
+"I'm alone," he murmured to himself. An emotionless regret came to him.
+
+"There are still years to live." He wrapped himself closer in the
+silk-covered quilts. "But how? Does it matter? I have loved, and that
+is over. Rachel is ended. Haven't thought of her for weeks. And now, I
+am like I was, only older and alone; yet not sad. So people adjust
+themselves to decay. Senses that could have understood and wept at
+sorrow die, along with the things whose death causes sorrow. Ergo, there
+is no sorrow. Wings gone, tears gone, everything gone. Empty again, yet
+content. I want nothing.... No desires...."
+
+His brain was mumbling sleepily as the cold wind from the opened window
+swept pleasantly through the room.
+
+"Women to divert me. Wine to make me glad. And a companion--the baron.
+Droll tragedian! And scenes for my eyes. Yes, yes.... They keep shooting
+outside. Still shooting after five years. Shooting each other. The world
+speaks a strange language. What imbecility! Yet life is in the masses.
+It'll come out, perhaps. From Russia. Russians--a pack of idealists ...
+a pack of illiterate Wilsons with whiskers. I'm like the baron. I admire
+revolution. Why? Because it diverts."
+
+He closed his eyes for moments. Still no sleep, and his thought resumed,
+"Rachel, I once loved you. I can say it now without hurt. Empty memories
+now--like drawings in outline. And some day even the outlines will leave
+me."
+
+A curious ache came into his heart. "Ah, she still touches me--still a
+little. Poor dear one! What a farce! A glorious farce! The nights when
+she whispered. Her face, I remember, yes, a little. Ghosts! Your eyes
+are the beckoning hands of dream. That was the best sentence.... The
+rest were good too--sometimes."
+
+He smiled sleepily on his pillow ... "still shooting. It will be amusing
+here. Some day when we're old, Rachel and I will see each other again.
+Old eyes questioning old eyes. Old eyes saying, 'So much has died. Only
+a little more remains to die.' Sleep ... I must sleep now. To-morrow,
+work, work! And forget. But nothing to forget. It forgets itself. It
+says good-bye. A sun gone down. What is it old Carl wrote?... 'The past
+is a bucket of ashes, a sun gone down ... to-morrow is another
+day....'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The detachment vanished. Streets familiarized themselves.
+
+"_Ich steh auf den Standpunkt_," said the politicians; and the racket of
+machine-guns offered an obligato.
+
+The new garrulity that had seemed strange to Dorn lost its strangeness.
+It became the victrola phrases of a bewildered diplomacy. But the
+diplomacy was not confined to frock-coats. It buzzed, snarled up and
+down the factory districts, in and out of the boulevard cafés and the
+squat resident sectors.
+
+The German waiting for the knife of Versailles to fall was vomiting a
+vocabulary of fear, hope, threat, despair. Under cover of a confused
+Social Democracy the German army was slowly reorganizing itself.
+
+It was three months after his arrival in Berlin that Dorn wrote his
+curious sketch of the German situation. The three months had witnessed a
+change in him. He had become a workman--industrious, inquisitive,
+determined. Under the guidance of von Stinnes he had managed to
+penetrate the heart of German _politik_. Tours through the provinces,
+daily interviews with celebrities, statesmen, leaders of the scores of
+political factions; adventures under the surface of the victrola phrases
+pouring from the government buildings and the anti-government buildings,
+had occupied even his introspections. Seemingly the empire had turned
+itself into a debating society. Life had become a class in economics.
+
+Three months of work. Unfocused talents drawn into simultaneous
+activity. And Dorn arose one morning to find himself an outstanding
+figure in the turmoil of comment and commentators about him. Von Stinnes
+had wheedled his history out of him for publication in Berlin. Its
+appearance was greeted with a journalistic shout in the capitol.
+Radicals and conservatives alike pounced upon it. Haase, leader of the
+Independent Socialists, declaimed it almost in full before the National
+Assembly in Weimar.
+
+Dorn had put into it a passionate sense of the irony and futility of his
+day. Its clarity arrested the obfuscated intellect of a nation groping,
+whining, and blustering under the shadow of the knife of Versailles.
+
+The writing of it had rid him for the time of Rachel, of Anna, of the
+years of befuddling emptiness that had marked his attitudes toward the
+surfaces of thought about him. The emotionless disillusion of his nature
+had finally produced an adventure for him--the adventure of mental
+fecundity.
+
+He had gone to Weimar to write. Here the new government of Germany had
+assembled. Delegates, celebrities, frock-coats, strange hair formations;
+messiah and magician had come to extricate the nation from its unhappy
+place on the European guillotine. The narrow streets stuttered with
+argument.... Von Stinnes and a girl named Mathilde Dohmann accompanied
+him to the town. The Baron, bored for the moment with his labors, had
+immersed his volatile self in a diligent pursuit of Mathilde. He had
+discovered her among communist councils in Berlin and naïvely attached
+her as a part of Dorn's secretarial retinue.
+
+"She will be of service," he announced.
+
+Dorn, preoccupied with the scheme of his history, paid little attention
+to her. Arrived in Weimar he became entirely active, viewing with
+amusement the Baron's sophisticated assault upon the ardent-voiced,
+red-haired political spitfire whom he called Matty. Alone in an old
+tavern room, he gave himself to the arrangements of words clamoring for
+utterance in his thought. Old words. Old ideas. Notions dormant since
+years ago. Phrases, ironies remembered out of conversations themselves
+forgotten. The book was finished towards the middle of March--a history
+of the post-war Germany; with a biography between the lines of Erik
+Dorn. Von Stinnes had forthwith produced two German scholars who, under
+his direction, accomplished the translation with astonishing speed.
+Excerpts from the thin red-and black-covered volume found their way
+overnight into the press of the nation. Periodicals seized upon the
+extended brochure as a _Dokument_. In pamphlet form the gist of it
+started upon the rounds of Europe. The garrulity of the day had been
+given for the moment a new direction.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+"We will go to Munich. There will be a revolution in Munich. I have news
+from secret sources."
+
+Baron von Stinnes, lounging wearily in front of a chess-board, spoke and
+raised a cup of mocha to his lips. Dorn, picking his way through a
+German novel, looked up gloomily and nodded.
+
+"Anywhere," he agreed. "Munich, Moscow, Peking."
+
+In a corner of the room Mathilde was curled on the luxurious hotel divan
+watching through half-closed eyes the figures of the men. The Baron
+turned toward her and frowned. In return her face, almost asleep, became
+vivid with a sneer. The Baron's love-making had gone astray.
+
+"Matty is going to try to carry a million marks into Munich for the
+Communists," he announced.
+
+The girl stared von Stinnes into silence.
+
+"How do you know that?" she asked slowly.
+
+He lowered his cup and with a show of polite deliberation removed his
+monocle and wiped it with a silk handkerchief.
+
+"I know many things," he smiled. "The money comes from Dr. Kasnilov and
+will be brought to Dr. Max Levine in Munich, and the good Max will buy a
+garrison of Landwehr with it and establish the soviet republic of
+Bavaria."
+
+"You know Levine?"
+
+"Very well," smiled the Baron.
+
+Mathilde sat up. Her voice acquired a vicious dullness.
+
+"You will not interfere with me, von Stinnes."
+
+"I, Matty?" The Baron laughed and resumed his mocha. "I am heart and
+soul with Levine. If Dorn cannot go I will have to go alone. It is
+necessary I be in Munich when the Soviets are called out."
+
+"You will not interfere with me, von Stinnes," the girl repeated, "or I
+will kill you."
+
+"You have my permission, Fräulein. The logical time for my death is long
+past."
+
+Mathilde's sharp young face had grown alive with excitement. She sat
+with her eyes unwaveringly upon the Baron as if her thought were groping
+desperately beneath the smiling weariness of the man.
+
+"Mr. Dorn," she spoke, "von Stinnes is a traitor."
+
+Dorn smiled.
+
+"If one million marks will cause a revolution, I'll take them to Munich
+myself," he answered. "I'm sick of Berlin. I need a revolution to divert
+me."
+
+"I fear I am in the way," von Stinnes interrupted. He arose with
+formality. "Mathilde would like to unburden herself to you, Dorn. I am,
+she will inform you, a secret agent of Colonel Nickolai, and Colonel
+Nickolai is the head of the anti-bolshevist pro-royalist propaganda in
+Prussia." He paused and smiled. "I will meet you in the lobby when you
+come down."
+
+He walked toward the door, halting before the excited face of the girl.
+
+"Ah, Matty, Matty," he murmured, "you will not in your zeal forget that
+I love you?"
+
+He bowed whimsically and passed out. Dorn laid aside his book and
+approached the divan. In the week since their return from Weimar he had
+become interested in the moody, dynamic young creature. The fact that
+she had resisted the expert persuasions of the Baron--a subject on which
+the nobleman had discoursed piquantly on their ride to Berlin--had
+appealed to him.
+
+"Karl is a good fellow," he said, seating himself next to her. "And if
+it happens he is employed by Noske and Nickolai it doesn't alter my
+opinion of him."
+
+"He is a scoundrel," she answered quietly.
+
+"That is impossible," Dorn smiled. "He is merely a man without
+convictions and therefore free to follow his impulses and his employers.
+I thank God for von Stinnes. He has made Europe possible. A revolution
+alone could rival him in my affections."
+
+The girl remained silent, and Dorn watched her face. He might embrace
+her and make love. It would perhaps flatter, please her. She fancied him
+a man of astounding genius. She had practically memorized his book.
+Thus, one had only to smile humorlessly, permit one's eyes to grow
+enigmatic, and think of a proper epigram. He recalled for an instant the
+two women who had succumbed to his technique since he had left America.
+They blurred in his memory and became offensive. Yet Matty had been of
+service and perhaps her moodiness was caused by a suppressed affection.
+As an amorous prospect she was not without interest. As a reality,
+however, she would obviously become a bore. In any case there was
+nothing to hinder polite investigation, mark time with kisses until von
+Stinnes brought on his promised revolution. He thought carefully.
+Pessimism was the proper note. Dramatize with an epigram the emptiness
+of life. His forte--emptiness. Not love but a hunger to live.
+
+"Matty, I regret sadly that you are not a prostitute."
+
+Startling!
+
+"It would save me the trouble of having to fall in love with you, dear
+child."
+
+She smiled, a sudden amusement in her eyes.
+
+"You too, Mr. Dorn. I had thought different of you."
+
+"As a creature beyond the petty agitations, eh?"
+
+"As a man."
+
+"It is possible for a Man, despite a capital M, to love."
+
+"Yes, love. It is possible for him only to love. And you do not."
+
+"Much worse. I am sad."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Perhaps because it is the only emotion that comes without effort."
+
+"So you would fall in love with me to forget that I bore you."
+
+"A broader ambition than that. To forget that living bores me,
+Mathilde."
+
+"There is someone else you love, Mr. Dorn."
+
+"There was." He smiled humorlessly. "Do you mind if I talk of love? I
+need a conversational antidote."
+
+"And if you talk of love you may be spared the trouble of having to make
+love," she laughed quietly. "But I would rather talk of von Stinnes. I
+am worried."
+
+"You are young," Dorn interrupted, "and full of political error. I am
+beginning to believe von Stinnes. The most terrible result of the war
+has been the political mania it has given to women."
+
+Mathilde settled back on the divan and stared with mocking pensiveness
+at her shoes. Dorn, speaking as if he desired to smile, continued:
+
+"Do you know that when one has loved a woman one grows sad after it is
+ended, remembering not the woman, but one's self? The memory of her
+becomes a mirror that gives you back the image of something that has
+died--a shadow of youth and joy that still bears your name. It is the
+same with old songs, old perfumes. All mirrors. So I walk through life
+now smiling into mirrors that give back not myself, but someone
+else--another Dorn."
+
+He arose and looked down at her.
+
+"Does that interest you?"
+
+"I understand you."
+
+"There are many ways of making love. Sorrowful phrases are the most
+entertaining, perhaps."
+
+"You make me think you have loved too much."
+
+"Yes, it would be difficult to kiss you. I would become sad with memory
+of other kisses. Because you are young--as I was then."
+
+"Was it long ago?"
+
+"Things that end are always long ago."
+
+"Then it was only yesterday."
+
+"Yes, yesterday," he laughed, pleased with the ironic sound of his
+voice. "And what is longer ago than yesterday?"
+
+She had risen and stood before him, an almost boyish figure with her
+fists clenched.
+
+"I have something else I am in love with," she whispered. "I am in love
+with----"
+
+"The wonderful revolution, I know."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And some day in the future you, too, will look into a mirror and see
+not yourself but a glowing-faced girl that was in love with what was
+once called the revolution."
+
+"But if things end it is only because we are too weak to hold them
+forever. So while we are strong we must hold them twice as eagerly."
+
+"Sad. All most deplorably sad, Mathilde. Hands shuffle us into new
+combinations, when we would prefer the old. Thus you, too, will some day
+listen to the cry that rises from all endings."
+
+"You are designing. You wish to make me sad, Mr. Dorn. And succeed."
+
+"Only that I may contemplate the futility of your love and smile. As I
+cannot quite smile at my own. We do not smile easily at corpses."
+
+His hands covered her fingers gently.
+
+"I will give myself to you, if you wish," she whispered.
+
+"And I prefer you like this," he smiled. "If you will come close to me
+and lay your head against me." He looked down at her as she obeyed.
+"There is an odor to your hair. And your cheek is soft. These things are
+similar things. You are almost like a phantom."
+
+"Of her."
+
+"No. She is forgotten. It's something else. A phantom of something that
+once lived in me, and died. It comes back and stares at me sometimes out
+of the eyes of strange women, out of the sounds of music. Now, out of
+your hair."
+
+"And you do not want me, Erik?"
+
+"I want you. But I prefer to amuse myself by fancying that you are
+unattainable."
+
+"I've liked you, Erik. The rest does not matter to me. I grew old
+during the war, and careless. My father and two brothers died. And
+another man."
+
+"So we both need diversion."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Diversion," he murmured, "the little drug. But what is there to drugs?
+No, come; we are lovers now."
+
+"We will go to Munich together."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And will you carry the money for Levine? They would never search you
+and they might recognize and search me. And besides, von Stinnes would
+not dare interfere if it was you, even if he is a spy, because he likes
+you too well."
+
+Her voice had become eager and vibrant. Dorn smiled ruefully, the faint
+mist of a sigh in his thought. The girl had worked adroitly. Of course,
+he was someone to carry the money to the Munich radicals.
+
+"It is just an ordinary-looking package. The station will be under a
+guard and all the roads coming in, too. They are expecting the
+revolution and ..." She paused and grew red. Dorn's eyes were looking at
+her banteringly. "You are thinking I have tricked you," she cried, "and
+that it was only to use you as a ... as a carrier that I ... Well,
+perhaps it is true. I do not know myself. I told you you could have me.
+Yes, I give myself to you now ... now.... Do you hear?"
+
+She laughed with bitterness.
+
+"I have never given myself before. I would rather you smiled and were
+kind. But if you wish to laugh ... and call it a bargain ... it does not
+matter."
+
+She had stepped away from him and stood with kindled eyes, waiting.
+
+"One can be chivalrous in the absence of all other impulses, Mathilde.
+And all other impulses have expired in me. So I will take the package.
+We will start to-morrow early. And as for the rest ... I will spare you
+the tedium of martyrdom."
+
+He moved toward the door. "Come, we'll go downstairs. Von Stinnes will
+be getting impatient."
+
+Mathilde came to him swiftly. He caught a glimpse of her face lighted,
+and her arms circled his neck. She was looking at him without words. A
+coldness dropped into his heart. There had been three of them
+before--he, Mathilde, and a phantom. Now there were only Mathilde and
+himself.
+
+"She was not tricking," he thought, and felt pleased. "At least not
+consciously."
+
+Her arms fell from him and she stared frightenedly.
+
+"Forgive me, Erik. I thought you loved me. And I would have liked to
+make you happy...."
+
+He nodded and opened the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+They sat in the compartment of the train crawling into Munich. The Baron
+drooped with sleep. Dorn stared wearily out of the window. Springtime. A
+beginning of green in the fields and over the roll of hills. Formal
+sunlight upon factories with an empty holiday frown in their windows.
+
+"I hear shooting," he smiled at Mathilde. "We're probably in time."
+
+The girl nodded. Despite the sleepless night sitting upright in the
+compartment, her eyes were fresh and alive. The desultory crack of a
+rifle drifting out of the town as if to greet them brought an impatience
+into her manner. The train was moving slowly.
+
+"Yes, we're in time," she murmured. "See, the white guards are still in
+possession."
+
+A group of soldiers with white sleeve-bands over the gray-green of their
+uniforms passed in an empty street.
+
+"There will be white guards at the station, too," she went on. "The
+attack will come to-night. It must."
+
+She looked intently at von Stinnes who, opening his eyes suddenly,
+whispered, "Ah, Mathilde ... there was once another München...."
+
+An uproar in the station. A scurry of guards and soldiers. White
+sleeve-bands. Machine-guns behind heaped bags of sand. A halloo of
+orders across the arc of the spacious shed. Passengers pouring out of
+the newly arrived train, smiling, weeping, staring indifferently.
+
+The officer desired the passengers to line themselves up against the
+train. A suggestive order, and confusion. Whispers in the crowd....
+"Personally, I prefer the guillotine.... No, no, madame. There is no
+danger. These are good boys. Soldiers of the government. You can tell by
+the sleeve-bands. White. Merely baggage inspection."
+
+Dorn waited his turn. A group of soldiers approached slowly, delving
+into pockets for weapons, peering into opened pieces of baggage. Babble,
+expostulation, eager politeness of innocent travelers, and outside the
+long crack of rifles, an occasional rip of a machine-gun. The group of
+soldiers paused before him.
+
+"I am an American," he spoke in English, "with the American commission."
+
+The announcement produced its usual effect. Bows, salutes, smiles. He
+pulled out his passport and foreign-office credentials. An officer
+stepped forward and glanced at them.
+
+"Very good," in courteous English, "you will pardon for the delay. We
+are having a little trouble here."
+
+He indicated the city with a nod of his head and smiled wryly. In German
+he continued sharply, "Gottlieb, Neuman, you will escort this gentleman
+and his friends to whatever place they wish to go. Take my car at post
+10."
+
+Two soldiers saluted. The officer bowed with a smile. The travelers
+moved off with their escort toward the street. Mathilde kept her eyes on
+von Stinnes as they entered a gray automobile.
+
+"Von Stinnes and I will sit in the back," she whispered to Dorn.
+
+The Baron nodded.
+
+"Careful of your Leugger," he whispered, "the soldiers will see it. You
+can shoot me just as easily if you keep it hidden. I have frequently
+fired through my pocket."
+
+In a hotel room a half-hour later, Mathilde, grown jubilant as a child,
+was clapping her hands and laughing.
+
+"It was too simple!" she cried.
+
+Dorn drew a small suitcase from under the bed and opened it.
+
+"Here it is," he laughed. He removed an oblong package. His eyes sought
+von Stinnes, standing near the window leisurely smoking a cigarette.
+
+"You will find Levine in the Gambrinus Keller," von Stinnes spoke
+without turning around. "I advise you to go at once, Matty, before the
+streets crowd up."
+
+He wheeled and held an envelope toward the girl.
+
+"Take this. It will make it easier for you to get in. They are very
+careful right now. It's a letter of credentials from Dr. Kasnilov."
+
+Mathilde opened the envelope mechanically, her eyes seeking the thought
+under the Baron's smile.
+
+"Thanks," she spoke in German. "I will go now. I will see you after. At
+dinner to-night. Here."
+
+She walked quickly from the room, the oblong package under her arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The thing hiding in the alleys and shops of the world--the dark, furtive
+hungers that Russia was thawing into life, emerged on a bright April day
+in the streets of Munich. Working men with guns. A sweep of
+spike-haired, deep-eyed troglodytes from the underworld of labor.
+Factories, shops, and alleys vomited them forth. Farm hovels and
+stinking bundles of houses sent them singing and roaring down the
+forbidden avenues, past the forbidden sanctuaries of satrap and burgher.
+
+From behind curtained windows the upper world looked on with amazement
+and disgust. A topsy-turvy April morning. A Spring day gone mad. Here
+were the masses celebrated in pamphlet and soap-box oration. An ungodly
+spectacle, an overturning. Grinning earth faces, roaring earth voices
+come swaggering into the hallowed precincts of civilization. Workingmen
+with guns marching to take possession of the world. An old tableau
+decked with new phrases--the underfed barbarian at the gate of the
+grainary.
+
+The singing and the roaring continued through the morning.
+
+"_Es lebe die Welt Revolution!_ _Es lebe das Rate Republik!_ _Hoch!_
+_die soviet von Bayern_ ... _Hoch!_ _Hoch!_"
+
+From the twisting, blackened streets, "_Hoch!_" Men and women squeezing
+aimlessly around corners. Closely packed drifts of bobbing heads. A
+crack of rifles dropping punctuations into the scene. "_Hoch!_ _Hoch!_"
+from faces clustered darkly about the grimacing, inaudible orators in
+the squares.
+
+Red flags, red placards like a swarm of confetti on the walls and in the
+air. A holiday war.... The morning hours marched away.
+
+With noon, a silence gradually darkened the scene. A silence of
+shuffling feet and murmuring tongues. The revolution had sung its songs.
+An end of songs and cheerings. Drifting, silent masses. An ominous,
+enigmatic sweep of faces. Red placards under foot in cubist designs down
+the streets.
+
+The afternoon waned, the hundred thousands closed in. Darkness was
+coming and the pack was welding itself together. Rifles were beginning.
+Machine-guns were beginning. Holiday was over. Quieter streets. The
+orators become audible. Still faces, raised and listening. The orators
+had news to give.... One of the garrisons had gone over to the soviets.
+Two garrisons had vanished. Treachery. A long murmur ... treachery. The
+armies of General Hoffmann were marching upon Munich ... twenty
+kilometers from Munich. They would arrive in the night. ... "We will
+show them, comrades, whether the revolution has teeth to bite as well as
+a song to sing."
+
+A growl was running through the twilight.... _Es lebe das Rate
+Republik!_ A fierce whisper of voices. Workingmen looking to their guns,
+massing about the government buildings. A new war minister in the
+uniform of a marine, speaking from a balcony. Workingmen with guns,
+listening. Women drifting back to the hovels and stinking bundles of
+houses. In the cafés, satraps and burghers eating amid a suppressed
+clamor of whispers, plans. The foolishness was almost over. The armies
+of General Hoffmann were coming ... Twenty kilometers out.... Arrive at
+night. The corps students themselves would saber the swine out of the
+city....
+
+Night. Darkened streets. Tattered patrols hurrying through mysteriously
+emptied highways, shouting, "Indoors! Inside, everybody!" Suddenly from
+a distance the bay of artillery. Workingmen with guns were storming the
+cannon of the artillery regiment outside the city. A haphazard
+cross-fire of rifles began to spit from darkened windows ... an upper
+world showing its teeth behind parlor barricades.
+
+In the shadows of the massive government buildings an army was forming.
+No ranks, no officers. Easy to drift through the sunny streets singing
+the _Marseillaise_ and the International ... to mooch along through the
+forbidden avenues dreaming in the daylight of a new world ... with red
+flags proclaiming the new masters of earth. Hundred thousands, then. But
+now, how many? Too dark to see, to count. An army, perhaps. Perhaps a
+handful....
+
+Feverish salutes in the shadows.... "_Gruss Gott, genosse!_"
+
+Was it alive? Did the revolution live? What was happening in the empty
+streets? Who was shooting? And the armies of Hoffmann? _Gruss Gott,
+genosse._ Under Rupprecht the armies had lain four years in the
+trenches. Great armies, swinging along like a single man, that had once
+battered their way almost into Paris against the English, against the
+French.
+
+"_Gruss Gott, genosse._ _Hoffmann kommt_ ... _Ja wohl, Gruss Gott!_"
+
+Now twenty kilometers away and coming down the highroad against
+Munich--against the drifting little clusters of lonely men whispering in
+the shadows--the great armies of the Kaiser, an iron monster clicking
+down the road toward Munich. Would there be artillery to meet them?
+_Gruss Gott, genosse, wer shusst dort?_ No, they had only guns, old guns
+that might not shoot. Old knives at their belts.... Darkness and
+rifle-spattered silences. Where was the revolution? The shadows
+whispered, "_Gruss Gott...._"
+
+The shadows began to stir. A voice was talking in the night. High up
+from a window. Egelhofer, the communist. No, Levine. Who? A light in
+the window.... Egelhofer, thin-faced, tall, black-haired. Egelhofer, the
+new war minister. 'Shh! what was he saying?... "_Vorwaerts, der
+Banhoff...._"
+
+Yes, the armies of Hoffmann had come. The shadows stirred wildly.
+Forward ... _es lebe die Welt Revolution!_ This time a battle-cry,
+hoarse, shaking. Men were running. Workingmen with guns, guns that would
+shoot ... _"Der Banhoff ... der Banhoff...."_
+
+The shadows were emptying themselves. A pack was running. Two abreast,
+three abreast, in broken strings of men. Groups, solitary figures,
+hatless, bellowing. The revolution was moving. The empty streets filled.
+An army? A handful? Let God show in the morning. Workingmen with guns
+were running through the night. Munich was shaking.... "_Der Banhoff,
+genosse, vorwaerts!_"
+
+The revolution was emptying itself into the great square fronting the
+station. Little lights twinkling outside the ancient weinstubes began to
+explode. There must be darkness. Pop!... pop!... a rattle of glass. A
+blaze of shooting. The railroad station was firing now.
+
+"_Es lebe das Rate Republik!_" from the darkness in the streets. A sweep
+of figures across the open square. Arms twisting, leaping in sudden
+glares of flame. The revolution hurled itself with a long cry upon the
+barricades of thundering lead.
+
+In the single lighted window of the government buildings a face still
+spoke ... _"Ich bin Egelhofer, ihr Krieg's minister ... Ich komm...."_
+
+Waving a rifle over his head, the war minister rushed from the building.
+A marine from Kiel. A new pack loosened itself from the shadows. A war
+minister was leading.
+
+Moving swiftly through the streets, Dorn hurried to the seat of the new
+government--the Wittelbacher Palais. Von Stinnes was waiting there. He
+had been delayed in joining the Baron by the sudden upheaval about the
+hotel.
+
+The wave had passed. Almost safe now to skirt the scene of battle and
+make a try for the Palais. As he darted out of the darkened hotel
+entrance, the thing seemed for a moment under his nose. An oppressive
+intimacy of tumult.
+
+"They're at the station," he thought. "I'll have to hurry in case they
+fall back."
+
+He ran quickly in an opposite direction followed by the leap of firing.
+Several blocks, and he paused. Here was safety. The revolution a good
+half-mile off. He walked slowly, recovering breath. The street was
+lighted. Shop windows blinked out upon the pavements. A few stragglers
+walked like himself, intent upon destinations made serious by the near
+sound of firing. An interesting evening, thus far. A stout, red-faced
+man with a heavily ornamented vest followed the figure of a woman. Dorn
+smiled. Biology versus politics.... "Excuse me, pretty one, you look
+lonely...." A charwoman. Black, sagging clothes. Dorn passed and heard
+her exclaim, "Who, me? You ask me to go with you? Dear God, he asks me!
+I am an honest workingwoman. Run along with you!" The woman, walking
+swiftly, drew alongside. She was chuckling and muttering to herself, a
+curious pride in her voice, "He asked me, dear God--me!"
+
+The abrupt sound of rifle-fire around the corner startled her. Dorn
+halted. The woman turned toward him, puzzled.
+
+"They are shooting a whole lot to-night," she spoke in German.
+
+"Quite a lot," he answered.
+
+She looked back at the red-faced man who had remained where she had left
+him.
+
+"What do you think of that dunce?" she whispered, and hurried on.
+
+Dorn followed leisurely in the direction of the Palais.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+A rabble of dictators, ministerial fledglings, freshly sprouted
+governors, organizers, departmental heads, scurried through the dimly
+lighted corridors of the old Palais. Dorn, with the aid of a handful of
+communist credentials that seemed to flow endlessly from the pockets of
+the Baron, passed the Palais guard--a hundred silent men squatting
+behind a hastily erected barricade of sandbags.
+
+Within he stumbled upon von Stinnes. The Baron drew him into a large
+empty chamber.
+
+"We must be careful," he whispered. His voice buzzed with an elation.
+"Already two ministries have fallen. There is talk now of Levine. He's
+of the extreme left. I thought you would like to see it. It has its
+amusing side." He laughed softly. "I was with the men in the streets for
+a while. There was something there, Dorn. Life, yes ... yes ... It was
+amazing. But here it is different. What is it the correspondents say?
+'All is confusion, there is nothing to report.' ... Yes, confusion.
+There are at present three poets, one lunatic, an epileptic, four
+workingmen and a scientist from Vienna, and two school teachers. They
+are the Council of Ten. Look, there is _Muhsam,_ the one with the red
+vandyke. A poet. He used to recite rhymes in the Cafe Stephanie."
+
+The red vandyke peered into the room. "Stinnes, you are wanted," he
+called. "I have my portfolio. I am the new minister to Russia. I leave
+for Moscow to-morrow."
+
+"Congratulations!" the Baron answered.
+
+A tall, contemplative man with a scraggly gray beard--an angular
+Christ-like figure--appeared. He spoke. "What are you doing here,
+Muhsam? There is work inside."
+
+"And you!" angrily.
+
+"I must think. We must grow calm." He passed on, thinking.
+
+"Landerdauer," smiled the Baron, "the Whitman translator."
+
+"Yes," the vandyke answered, "we have appointed him minister of
+education. What news from the station, Stinnes?"
+
+"It is taken."
+
+Dorn followed the Baron about the corridors, his ears bewildered by the
+screechings from unexpected chambers of debate. He listened, amused, to
+the volatile von Stinnes.
+
+"They are trying for a coalition. Nikish is at the top. A former
+schoolmaster. The communists under Levine won't come in. The workingmen
+are out overthrowing the world, and the great thinkers sit in conference
+hitting one another over the head with slapsticks. Life, Dorn, is a
+droll business, and revolution a charming comedy, _nicht wahr?_ But it
+will grow serious soon. Munich will be cut off. Food will vanish. Aha!
+wait a minute...."
+
+He darted after a swaggering figure. Dorn watched. The baron appeared to
+be commanding and entreating. The figure finally, with a surly shake of
+his head, hurried off. The Baron returned.
+
+"That was Levine," he said. "He won't come in unless Egelhofer is
+ratified as war minister. Egelhofer is a communist. Wait a minute. I
+will tell them to make Egelhofer minister. I will make a speech. We must
+have the Egelhofer."
+
+He vanished again. Dorn, standing against a window, watched frantic men
+scurry down the corridor bellowing commands at one another....
+
+"Yesterday they were garrulous little fools buzzing around café tables,"
+he thought. "To-night they boom. Rodinesque. And yet comic. Yes,
+comedians. But no more than the troupe of white-collared comedians in
+Wilhelmstrasse or Washington. The workers were different. There was
+something in the streets. Men in flame. But here are little matches."
+
+He caught sight of Mathilde and called her name. She came and stood
+beside him. Her body was trembling.
+
+"Did you spend the money?" he asked softly.
+
+"Yes, but they will buy the garrisons back again. They have more funds
+than we. Oh, we need more."
+
+"Who will buy them back?"
+
+"The bourgeoise. They have more money than we. And without the garrisons
+we are lost."
+
+She wrung her hands. Dorn struggled to become properly serious.
+
+"There, it may come out very fine," he murmured. "Anyway, von Stinnes is
+making a speech. It should help."
+
+"Stinnes...."
+
+"Yes, trying to bring Egelhofer in as war minister. He talked with
+Levine...."
+
+"I don't understand," she answered. "He is doing something I don't
+understand, because he is a traitor."
+
+She became silent and moved closer to Dorn.
+
+"Oh, Erik," she sighed, "I must cry. I am tired."
+
+He embraced her as she began to weep. Von Stinnes emerged, red-faced and
+elated.
+
+"It is settled," he announced. "Hello! what's wrong with Matty?"
+
+"Tired," Dorn answered.
+
+"We will go to the hotel."
+
+They started down the corridor. A group of soldiers emerged from a
+chamber, blocking their way.
+
+"Baron von Stinnes," one of them called. The Baron saluted.
+
+"You are under arrest by order of the Council of Ten."
+
+Von Stinnes bowed.
+
+"Go to the hotel with Matty, Dorn. I will be on soon."
+
+To the soldiers he added, "Very well, comrades. Take me to comrade
+Levine."
+
+"We have orders...."
+
+"To Levine, I tell you," he interrupted angrily. "Are you fools?"
+
+He removed a document quickly from his coat pocket and thrust it under
+the soldiers' eyes.
+
+"From Levine," he whispered fiercely. "Now where is Levine?"
+
+The soldiers led the way toward the interior of the Palais.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Outside, Dorn supported the drooping figure of the girl. Runners passed
+them crying out, "It is over! We have taken the station!"
+
+They arrived at the hotel. The lobby was thronged with people. A
+chocolate salesman from Switzerland was orating: "They have erected a
+guillotine in Marien Platz. They are shooting down and beheading
+everybody who wears a white collar."
+
+The hotel proprietor quieted the crowd.
+
+"Nonsense!" he cried. "Ridiculous nonsense! We are safe. They are all
+good Bavarians and will hurt nobody."
+
+Dorn led Mathilde to his room. She threw herself on the bed.
+
+"So tired!" she whispered.
+
+"But happy," he added. "Your beloved masses have triumphed."
+
+"Don't. I'm sick of talking...."
+
+"Too much excitement," he smiled.
+
+They became silent. Dorn, watching her carelessly in the dimly lighted
+room, began to think.... "Disillusionment already. The dream has died in
+her. A child's brain overstuffed with slogans, it begins now to ache and
+grow confused. Tyranny, injustice, seem far away and vague. The
+revolution in the streets has blown the revolution out of her heart.
+There will be many like that to-morrow. The over-idealized idealists
+will empty first. The revolution was a dream. The reality of it will eat
+up the dream. Justice to the dreamer is a vision of new stars. To the
+workingman--another loaf of bread."
+
+"Of what are you thinking, Erik?"
+
+"Of nothing ... and its many variants," he answered.
+
+"We've won," she sighed. "Oh, what a day!"
+
+He noted the listlessness in her voice.
+
+"Yes," he said, "another sham has had heroic birth. Out of workingmen
+with guns there will rise some day a new society which will be different
+than the old, only as to-morrow is different than to-day. The rivers,
+Mathilde, flow to the sea and life flows to death. And there is nothing
+else of consequence for intelligence to record."
+
+"You talk like a German of the last century," she smiled. "Oh, you're a
+strange man!"
+
+This pleased him. He thought of words, a ramble of words--but a knock at
+the door. Von Stinnes entered. He was carrying a basket.
+
+"Food," he announced cheerfully. "With food in our stomachs the world
+will seem more coherent for a while."
+
+He busied himself arranging plates of sandwiches on a small table.
+
+"Mathilde asleep?"
+
+He walked to the bed and leaned over her. The girl's eyes were closed.
+
+"Poor child, poor child!" the Baron whispered. He caressed her head
+gently. "We will not wake her up. But eat and leave her food. Do you
+mind if we go out for a while? It is still early and it will be hard to
+sleep to-night. I know a café where we can sit quietly and drink wine,
+perhaps with cookies."
+
+Their eating finished, Dorn accompanied his friend into the street.
+
+"It seems as if nothing had happened," he said, as they walked through
+the spring night. "People are asleep as usual, and there is an odor of
+summer in the dark."
+
+Von Stinnes silently directed their way. After a half-hour's walk he
+paused in front of an ancient-looking building.
+
+"We are in Schwabbing now," he said, "the rendezvous of the Welt
+Anschauers. I think this place is still open."
+
+He led the way through a narrow court and entered a large,
+dimly-lighted room. Blank white walls stared at them. Von Stinnes picked
+out a table in a corner and ordered two flasks of wine from a stout
+woman with a large wooden ring of keys at her black waist.
+
+They drank in silence. Dorn observed an unusual air about his friend. He
+thought of Mathilde's suspicions, and smiled. Yet there was something
+inexplicable about von Stinnes. There had been from the first.
+
+"Inexplicable because he is ... nothing," Dorn thought. "A chevalier of
+excitements, a Don Quixote of disillusion...."
+
+"You are thinking of me," the baron smiled over his wine-glass, "as I am
+thinking of you. Here's to our unimportant healths, Erik."
+
+Dorn swallowed more wine. To be called Erik by his friend pleased him.
+He looked inquiringly at the humorous eyes of the man, and spoke:
+
+"You are cut after my pattern."
+
+The Baron nodded.
+
+"Only I have had more opportunities to exercise the pattern," he
+replied. "For the pattern, dear friend, is scoundrelism. And I, God
+bless me ..." He paused and gestured as if in a hopelessness of words.
+
+"There is quality as well as quantity in scoundrelism," Dorn suggested.
+He was thinking without emotion of Anna.
+
+"I have decided to remain in Munich," von Stinnes spoke, "and that
+means that I will die here."
+
+"The day's melodrama has gone to your head," Dorn laughed.
+
+"No. There are people in Munich who know me quite well--too well. And
+among their virtues they number a desire for my death. In Berlin it is
+otherwise. Then too, this business of to-day can't last. It is already
+topheavy with thinkers, and will eventually evaporate in a dozen
+executions. It may come back, though. I cannot forget the workingmen who
+stormed the Banhoff."
+
+He paused and drank.
+
+"Yes, I have decided to stay and play awhile. There will be a few weeks
+more. One will find extravagant diversions in Munich during the next few
+weeks. I am already Egelhofer's right-hand man. I will organize the
+Soviet army, assist in the conduct of the government, try to buy coal
+from Rathenau in Berlin, make speeches, compose earth-shaking
+proclamations, and end up smoking a cigarette in front of a Noske
+firing-squad.... Do not interrupt. I feel it is a program I owe to
+humanity. And in addition, I am growing weary of myself."
+
+Dorn shook his head.
+
+"Romantics, friend. I do not argue against them."
+
+"I wonder," von Stinnes continued, "if you realize I am a scoundrel. I
+have thought at times that you did, because of the way you smile when I
+talk."
+
+"Scoundrels are creatures I do not like. And I like you. Ergo, you are
+not a scoundrel, von Stinnes."
+
+The Baron laughed.
+
+"A convenient philosophy, Erik. Well, I was in the German intelligence
+and worked in Paris during the second year of the war. Prepare yourself
+for a confession. My secrets bore me. And a little cocotte of a countess
+betrayed me. It is a virtue French women have. They are not to be
+trusted, and love to them is something which may be improved by the
+execution of a lover. But there was no execution. To save my skin I
+entered the French intelligence--without, of course, resigning from the
+German. Thus I was of excellent service to the largest number. To the
+French I was invaluable. German positions, plans, maneuvers, at my
+finger tips.... And to the Germans, unaware of my new and lucrative
+connection, I was also invaluable. Again positions, plans, maneuvers. I
+was transferred to Italy by the French and ... But it's a complicated
+narrative. I haven't it straight in my own mind yet. Do you know, I wake
+up at night sometimes with the rather naïve idea that I, von Stinnes,
+who prefer Turkish cigarettes to women, even brunettes ... But I
+stammer. It is difficult to be amusing, always. I think sometimes at
+night that I was personally responsible for at least half the
+casualties of the war."
+
+"Megalomania," said Dorn without changing his smile.
+
+"Yes, obviously. You hit it. A distorted conscience image. Ah, the
+bombardments I have perfected. The hills of men I have blown up.
+Frenchmen, Germans, Italians. Yes, a word from me ... I pointed the
+cannon straighter.... But disregarding the boast ... you will admit my
+superiority as a scoundrel."
+
+"It is immaterial," Dorn answered. "If you betrayed the French, you made
+amends by betraying the Germans, and vice versa. As for the Italians ...
+I have never been in Italy."
+
+Von Stinnes laughed.
+
+"You do not believe me, eh?"
+
+"You are lying only in what you do not say," Dorn laughed.
+
+"Yes, exactly. I will go on, if it amuses you."
+
+"It is better conversation than usual."
+
+"I am now with the English," von Stinnes continued. "They play a curious
+game outside Versailles, the English. They have entrusted me with a most
+delicate mission." He paused and drained his glass. "It is quite
+dramatic. I tell it to you because I am drunk and weary of secrets. Five
+years of secrets ... until I am almost timorous of thinking even to
+myself ... for fear I will betray something to myself. But--it is droll.
+The million marks you so gallantly carried in for Matty, they were
+mine, Erik." He laughed. "I gave them to Dr. Kasnilov, and a very
+mysterious Englishman gave them to me...."
+
+"Gifts of a million are somewhat phenomenal," Dorn murmured.
+
+"I stole only a hundred thousand," von Stinnes went on, "which, of
+course, everyone expected."
+
+"But why the English, Karl?"
+
+"A little plan to separate Bavaria from Prussia, and help break up
+Middle Europe. You know feeling between the two provinces is intense.
+There was almost a mutiny in the second war year. And anything to help
+it along. To-morrow, Franz Lipp the new foreign minister of the Soviets
+will telegraph to Berlin recalling the Bavarian ambassador; there _is_
+one, you know--a figurehead. And the good Franz will announce to the
+world that Bavaria has declared its independence of Prussia. This will
+be a politic move for the Soviets as well as England. For the
+bourgeoisie in Bavaria dislike Prussia as much as the communists dislike
+her. But I bore you with intrigue. We have had our little revolution for
+which you must allow me to accept an honest share of credit.... Let us
+have another flask."
+
+"An interesting story," Dorn agreed.
+
+"You still smile, Erik?"
+
+"More than ever."
+
+"Ah, then truly, we are of the same pattern."
+
+Von Stinnes stared at him sadly.
+
+"You are my first companion in five years," he added.
+
+"As you are mine," Dorn answered. "Here ... to the success of all your
+villainies and our friendship."
+
+"Which is not one of them," the Baron murmured. "You believe me?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Ah! it is almost a sensation to be believed ... for speaking the truth.
+I feel as if I have committed some exotic sin. Yes, confession is good
+for the soul."
+
+"Shall we go back to the hotel?"
+
+The Baron leaned forward and grasped Dorn's hand feverishly.
+
+"I do not wish to joke any more," he whispered. "I have told you the
+truth. And you still smile at me. You are a curious man. I have for long
+sat like an exile surrounded by my villainies and smiling alone at the
+world. But it is impossible to live alone, to become someone whom nobody
+knows, whom trusting people mistake for someone else. I have wanted to
+be known as I am ... but have been afraid. Ah! I am very drunk ... for
+you seem still amused."
+
+Dorn squeezed his hand.
+
+"Yes, you are my first friend," he said. The Baron followed him to his
+feet. They were silent on the way to the hotel. Von Stinnes walked with
+his arm linked in Dorn's. Before the latter's room he halted.
+
+"Good night, sweet prince," he mumbled drowsily, "and may angels guard
+thy sleep."
+
+Alone, he moved unsteadily down the hall.
+
+Mathilde was gone. Moving about the room, Dorn found a note left for
+him. He read:
+
+
+"A man was here asking for you. An American officer. I met him in the
+lobby and mentioned there was an American here and he asked your name.
+When I told him he seemed to be excited. He said his name is Captain
+Hazlitt and he is in the courier service on his way from Paris to
+Vienna. I do not like him. Please be careful.
+
+                                                "MATHILDE DOHMANN."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+In the days that followed Dorn sought to interest himself in the details
+of the situation. The thing buzzed and gyrated about him, tiring his
+thought with its innumerable surfaces. Revolution. A new state. New
+flags and new slogans.
+
+"I can't admire it," he explained to Mathilde at the end of the first
+week, "because its grotesqueries makes me laugh. And I cannot laugh at
+it because its intensity saddens me. To observe the business sanely is
+to come to as many conclusions as there are words."
+
+Mathilde had recovered some of her enthusiasm. But the mania that had
+illuminated her thought was gone. She spoke and worked eagerly through
+the days, moving from department to department, helping to establish
+some of the innumerable stenographic archives the endless stream of
+soviet pronouncements and orders were beginning to require. But at night
+her listlessness returned.
+
+"There is doubt in you too," Dorn smiled at her. "I am sorry for that.
+It has been the same with so many others. They have, alas! become
+reasonable. And to become reasonable ... Well, revolution does not
+thrive on reason. It needs something more active. You, Mathilde, were a
+revolutionist in Berlin. Now you are a stenographer. Alas! one collapses
+under a load of dream and finds one's self in an uninteresting Utopia,
+if that means anything. Epigrams lie around the street corners of Munich
+waiting new text-books."
+
+They were walking idly toward the café von Stinnes had appointed as a
+rendezvous. It was late and the dark streets were deserted. The shops
+had been closed all week. The Revolution was struggling in poorly
+ventilated council-rooms with problems of economics. Beyond the
+persistent rumors that the city, cut off from the fields, would starve
+in another two days and that the legendary armies of Hoffmann were
+within a stone's throw of the Hofbrau House, there was little
+excitement. "My employers," von Stinnes had explained on the fourth day,
+"are waiting to see if the Soviet can stand against the Noske armies
+from Prussia. The armies will arrive in a few weeks. If the Soviet can
+defeat them and thus establish its authentic independence, my employers
+in Versailles will then finance the Bavarian bourgeoisie and assist in
+the overthrow of the Communists. On the one condition, of course, that
+the bourgeoisie maintain Bavaria as an independent nation. And this the
+bourgeoisie are not at all averse to doing. It sounds preposterous,
+doesn't it? You smile. But all intrigue is preposterous, even when most
+successful."
+
+"I quite believe," Dorn had answered. "I've long been convinced that
+intrigue is nothing more than the fantastic imbecilities unimaginative
+men palm off on one another for cleverness."
+
+Now, walking with Mathilde, Dorn felt an inclination to rid himself of
+the week's political preoccupation. Mathilde was beginning to have a
+sentimental influence upon him.
+
+"Perhaps if she loved me something would come back," he thought. "Anyway
+it would be nice to feel a woman in love with me again."
+
+An innocuous sadness sat comfortably in his heart. Later he would
+embrace her. Kiss ... watch her undress. Things that would mean
+nothing.... But they might help waste time, and perhaps give him another
+glimpse of ... He paused in his thought and felt a dizziness enter his
+silence. Words spun. "The face of stars," he murmured under his breath,
+and laughed as Mathilde looked inquiringly up at him.
+
+The café was deserted. Von Stinnes, alone in a booth, called "Hello" to
+them as they entered.
+
+"We have the place almost to ourselves," he said. "There are some people
+in the other room."
+
+He looked affectionately at the two as they sat down, and added, "How
+goes the courtship?"
+
+"Gravely and with cautious cynicism," Dorn answered. "We find it
+difficult to overcome our sanities."
+
+He smiled at the girl and covered her hand with his. Her eyes regarded
+him luminously. They sat eating their late meal, von Stinnes chatting of
+the latest developments.... A mob of communist workingmen had attacked
+the poet Muhsam while he was unburdening himself of proletarian oratory
+in the Schiller Square.
+
+"They chased him for two blocks into the Palais," the Baron smiled, "and
+he lost his hat. And perhaps his portfolio. They are beginning to
+distrust the poets. They want something besides revolutionary iambics
+now. Muhsam, however, is content. He received a postal card this
+afternoon with a skull and cross-bones drawn on it informing him he
+would be assassinated Friday at 3 P.M. It was signed by 'The Society for
+the Abolition of Monstrosities.' He is having it done into an
+expressionist placard and it will undoubtedly restore his standing with
+the Council of Ten. Franz Lipp, the foreign minister, you know, has
+ordered all the telephones taken out of the foreign office building.
+It's an old failing of his--a phobia against telephones. They send him
+into fits when they ring. He has incidentally offered to sign a separate
+peace with the Entente. A crafty move, but premature. And the burghers
+have been ordered under pain of death to surrender all firearms within
+twenty-four hours."
+
+The talk ran on. Mathilde, feigning sleep, placed her head on Dorn's
+shoulder.
+
+"You play with the little one," whispered von Stinnes. "She is in love."
+
+Dorn placed his arm around her and smiled at her half-opened eyes.
+
+A man, walking unsteadily across the empty café, stopped in front of the
+booth.
+
+"I've been looking for you," he said. "You don't remember me, eh?"
+
+Dorn looked up. An American uniform. An excited face.
+
+"My name's Hazlitt. Come out here."
+
+Von Stinnes leveled his monocle witheringly upon the interloper and
+murmured an aside, "He's drunk...."
+
+Dorn stood up.
+
+"Yes, I remember you now," he said. The man's tone had oppressed him.
+"What do you want?"
+
+He detached himself from Mathilde and stepped into the room. Hazlitt
+stared at him.
+
+"I owe you something," he spoke slowly. "Come out here."
+
+Watching the man as he approached, Dorn became aware of a rage in
+himself. His muscles had tightened and a nervousness was shaking in his
+words. The man was a stranger, yet there was an uncomfortable intimacy
+in his eyes.
+
+Hazlitt stood breathing heavily. This was Erik Dorn--the man who had had
+Rachel. Wine swept a flame through his thought. God! this was the man.
+She was gone, but this was the man. Shoot him down like a dog! Shoot him
+down! Kill the grin of him. He'd pay. He'd killed something. Shoot him
+down! There was a gun under his coat--army revolver. Better than
+shooting Germans. This was the man.
+
+"You're going to pay for it," he spoke. "Go on, say something."
+
+Dorn's rage hesitated. A mistake. What the devil was up?
+
+"Oh, you've forgotten her," Hazlitt whispered. Shoot him! Voices inside
+demanded wildly that he shoot. Not talk, but kill.
+
+"Rachel," he cried suddenly. His eyes stopped seeing.
+
+Dorn jumped for the gun that had appeared and caught his arm in time.
+Rachel--then this was something about Rachel? Hazlitt ... Rachel. What?
+A fight over Rachel? Rachel gone, dead for always. Get the gun away,
+though....
+
+They were stumbling across the room, twisting and locked together. He
+saw von Stinnes rise, stand undecided. Mathilde's face, like something
+shooting by outside a car window. And a strong man trying to kill him
+... for Rachel. A Galahad for Rachel.
+
+His thought faded into a rage. A curse as the man grabbed at his throat.
+The gun was still in the air. His wrist was beginning to ache from
+struggling with the thing. This was part of the idiocy of things. But he
+must look out. Perhaps only a moment more to live. The man was weeping.
+Mumbling ... "you made a fool out of her ... You dirty...."
+
+As they continued their stumbling and clutching, a fury entered Dorn.
+He became aware of eyes blazing against him--drunken, furious eyes that
+were weeping. With a violent lunge he twisted the gun out of the man's
+hand. There was an instant of silence and the man came hurling against
+him.
+
+Dorn fired. Down ... "my head ..." He lay still. The body of Hazlitt
+sprawled over him. For a moment the two men remained embraced on the
+floor. Then the body of Hazlitt rolled slowly from on top. It fell on
+its back--a dead face covered with blood staring emptily at the ceiling.
+
+Dorn, with the edge of an iron table foot embedded in his head, lay
+breathing unevenly, his eyes closed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The blinds were drawn. Cheering drifted in through the open window.
+Mathilde sat in a chair. She was watching him.
+
+"Hello!" he murmured. "What's up?"
+
+"Erik ..."
+
+She fell to her knees beside the bed and began to weep. He lay quietly
+listening to her. Bandages around his head. A lunatic with a gun. Yes.
+Rachel. The man had been in love with Rachel. Pains like noises in his
+ears.
+
+"You mustn't talk...."
+
+"I'm all right. Where's von Stinnes?"
+
+"'Shh...."
+
+He smiled feebly. She was holding his hand, still weeping. A memory
+returned vividly. A man with blazing eyes. He had lost his temper. But
+there had been something more than that. Two imbeciles fighting over a
+thing that had died for both of them. Clowns at each other's throat. A
+background unfolded itself. Against it he lay watching the two men. Here
+was something like a quaint old print with a title, "Fate...."
+
+"Bumped my head," he murmured. But another thought persisted. It moved
+through the pain in his skull, unable to straighten itself into lines
+of words. It was something about fighting for Rachel. He would ask
+questions.
+
+"What happened, Mathilde? Where'd he go?"
+
+"You mean the man? 'Shh.... Don't talk now."
+
+"Come, don't be silly."
+
+The thinness of his voice surprised him.
+
+"What became of the fool?"
+
+"He's dead."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Yes, you shot him. Now be quiet."
+
+"Good God, so I did. I remember. When he jumped at me."
+
+A sinking feeling almost drifted him away. He felt as if he had become
+hungry. The man was dead.... "I killed him. Well ... what of it?"
+
+He opened his eyes and looked at the room. It was day--afternoon,
+perhaps.
+
+"The doctor says you'll be all right in a few days. But you must be
+quiet...."
+
+"Von Stinnes," he murmured. "There'll be trouble. Call him, will you?"
+
+Mathilde turned away. Now the pain was less. He could hear cheering
+outside. A demonstration. Workingmen marching under new flags.
+
+"Von Stinnes is under arrest, Erik."
+
+"What for? A new government?" What a crazy business.
+
+"No. Don't talk, please. Later...."
+
+He was too weak to sit up.
+
+"Things will have to be straightened out," he muttered. "The fool was an
+American officer. There'll be trouble."
+
+"No, don't worry. Von Stinnes has fixed things."
+
+His eyes grew heavy and closed. Sleep ... and let things, fixed or
+unfixed, go to the devil.
+
+When he awoke again the room was lighted. Mathilde, standing by the
+window, turned as he stirred.
+
+"Are you awake?"
+
+"Yes, and hungry."
+
+She brought a tray to his bed. He raised himself carefully, his head
+unbearably heavy. Mathilde watched him with wide eyes as he sipped some
+broth.
+
+"What did they arrest the Baron for?" he asked.
+
+She waited till he had finished, and cleared the bed, sitting down on
+the edge. Her face lowered toward him till her lips touched and kissed
+him.
+
+"For murder," she whispered. Another kiss. "Now you must be quiet and
+I'll tell you. He gave himself up when the police came. We carried you
+out first. And then I left him."
+
+"But," Dorn looked bewilderedly into the eyes of the girl.
+
+"It was easier for him than for you. They would take you away for trial
+to America. But he will be tried here. And he will come out all right.
+Don't worry. We thought your skull was fractured, but the doctor says
+it was only a hard blow."
+
+She lowered her head beside him on the pillow and whispered, "I love
+you! Poor Erik! He is defenseless--with a broken head."
+
+"You are kind," he answered; "von Stinnes, too. But we must set matters
+right...."
+
+"No, no, be still!"
+
+He grew silent. It was night again. In the morning he would be strong
+enough to get up. A misty calm, the pain almost gone, veins throbbing
+and a little split in his thought ... but no more.
+
+"I will sleep by you," Mathilde spoke. She stood up and removed her
+waist and shoes. He watched her with interest. Another woman curiously
+like Anna, like Rachel--like the two creatures in Paris. Shoulders
+suddenly bare. Possessive, unashamed gestures.... She lay down beside
+him with a sigh.
+
+"Poor Erik! I take advantage of a broken head."
+
+"No," he smiled.
+
+They lay motionless, her head touching his shoulder timidly.
+
+"I could live with you forever and be happy," she whispered.
+
+"We will see about forever--when it comes."
+
+"Do you like me--perhaps--now?"
+
+He would have preferred her silent. Silence at least was an effortless
+lie. To make love was preposterous. How many times had he said, "I love
+you?" Too many. But she was young and it would sound pretty in her ears.
+
+"Mathilde, dear one."
+
+Her arm trembled across his body.
+
+It was difficult, but he would say it.... "Yes, in an odd sort of way,
+Mathilde, I love you...."
+
+"Ah! you are only being polite--because I have fed you broth."
+
+"No. As much as I can love anything...."
+
+"Later, Erik. 'Shh! Sleep if you can. Oh, I am shameless."
+
+She had moved against him. He thought with a smile, "What an original
+way of nursing a broken head!"
+
+Later, tired with a renewed effort to straighten out words about the
+fool and Rachel and himself, he closed his eyes. Mathilde was still
+awake.
+
+"I'll see von Stinnes in the morning," he murmured drowsily. "Von
+Stinnes ... a gallant friend...."
+
+... Someone knocking on the door aroused him. Dawn was in the room.
+
+"Matty," he called. She slept. He found himself able to rise and his
+legs carried him unsteadily to the door. A tall marine, outside.
+
+"Herr Erik Dorn?"
+
+Dorn nodded dizzily.
+
+The man went on in German. "I come from Stinnes. I have a letter for
+you."
+
+He took the letter from his hand and moved hurriedly to a chair.
+
+"Thanks," vaguely. The marine saluted and walked off. Mathilde had
+awakened.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+She slipped out of bed and hurried to him.
+
+"A letter," he answered. He allowed her to help him back to his pillow.
+Reclining again, his dizziness grew less.
+
+"I'll read it for you," she said.
+
+"No. Von Stinnes...."
+
+"It may be important."
+
+"I'll be able to read in a moment."
+
+She shook her head and slipped the envelope from his weakening fingers.
+
+"I know about von Stinnes. Don't be afraid. May I?"
+
+He nodded and she began to read:
+
+
+"DEAR ERIK DORN:
+
+"I write this at night, and to-morrow I will be ended. You must not
+misunderstand what I do. It is a business long delayed. But I have made
+a full confession in writing for the Entente commission--ten closely
+written pages. A masterpiece, if I have to boast myself. And in order to
+avoid the anti-climax which your sense of honor would undoubtedly
+precipitate, I will put a period to it in an hour. A trigger pulled, and
+the nobility of my sad country loses another of its shining lights. I am
+overawed by the quaint justice of life. I end a career of villainy with
+a final lie. It would really be impossible for me to die telling a
+truth. The devil himself would appear and protest. But with a lie on my
+lips, it is easy. Indeed, somehow, natural. But I pose--a male Magdalene
+in tears. Do not misunderstand--too much. You are my friend, and I would
+like to live a while longer that we might amuse ourselves together. You
+have been an education. I find myself even now on this auspicious
+midnight writing with your words. But I mistrust you, friend. You would
+deny me this delicate martyrdom if I lived. For you are at bottom
+lamentably honorable. So now, as you read this, I am dead (a sentence
+out of Marie Corelli) and the situation is beyond adjustment. Please
+accept my service as gracefully as it is rendered. The confession, as I
+said, is a masterpiece. It would please my vanity if sometime you could
+read it. For in this, my last lie, I have extended myself. Dear friend,
+there is a certain awe which I cannot overcome--for the drama, or
+comedy, finishes too perfectly. You once called me a Don Quixote of
+disillusion. And now, perhaps, I will inspire a few new phrases. Let
+them be poignant, but above all graceful. I would have for my epitaph
+your smile and the whimsical irony of your comment. Better this than the
+hand-rubbing grunt of the firing-squad returning to barracks after its
+labors. Alas! that I will not be near you to hear it. But perhaps there
+will come to me as I submit myself to the opening tortures of hell, an
+echo of your words. And this will bring me a smile with which to cheat
+the devil. I bequeathe to you my silver cigarette-case. You are my
+brother and I say good-bye to you.
+
+                                     "KARL VON STINNES."
+
+"No postscript?" Dorn asked softly.
+
+Mathilde shook her head. There was silence.
+
+"Will you find out about him, please?" he whispered.
+
+The girl dressed herself quickly and left the room without speaking.
+Alone, Dorn lay with the letter in his hand.
+
+He spoke aloud after minutes, as if addressing someone invisible.
+
+"I have no phrases, dear friend. Let my tears be an epigram."
+
+
+
+
+
+PART V
+
+SILENCE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The sea swarmed under the night. A moon road floated on the long dark
+swells. From the deck of the throbbing ship Dorn looked steadily toward
+the circle of moving water. In the salon, the ship's orchestra was
+playing. A rollicking sound of music drifted away into the dark monotone
+of the sea.
+
+A romantic mood. A chair on an upper deck. Stars and a moon road over
+the sea. Better to sit mumbling to himself than join in the chatter of
+the cabin. The gayly lighted salon alive with laughter, music, and
+voices touched his ears--a tiny music-box tinkling valiantly through the
+dark sweep of endless yesterdays, endless to-morrows that sighed out of
+the hidden water. The night was an old yesterday, the sea an old
+to-morrow.
+
+A sadness in his heart that kept him from smiling, a strange comedy of
+words in his thought, a harlequin with the night sitting on his lap.
+There were things to remember. There were memories. Unnecessary to
+think. Words formed themselves into phrases. Phrases made dim pictures
+as if the past was struggling fitfully to remain somehow alive.... His
+good-bye to Mathilde. And long, stupid weeks in Berlin. The girl had
+been absurd. Absurd, an impulsive little shrew. With demands. Four
+months of Mathilde. Unsuspected variants of boredom. Clothed in her
+unrelenting love like an Indian in full war dress. Yet to part with her
+had made him sad.
+
+The sea rolled mystically away from his eyes.
+
+"An old pattern," his thought murmured, "holding eternities. And the
+little music keeps tinkling downstairs. A butterfly of sound in the
+night. Like a miniature of all living. Ah, I'm growing sentimental.
+Sitting holding hands with the sea. She was sad when I left her. What of
+it? Von Stinnes. Dear friend! No sadness there. He was right. New
+phrases, graceful emotions. What an artist! But Warren couldn't write
+the story. It has to be played by a hurdy-gurdy on a guillotine."
+
+He let his words wander gropingly over the water until a silence entered
+him. Thus life wandered away. The sea beat time to the passing of ships,
+changing ships. But always the same beat. It was the constancy of the
+stars that saddened him. September stars. The stars were yesterdays.
+Yes, unchanging spaces, unchanging yesterdays, and a ship's orchestra
+dropping little valses into the dark sea. He opened a silver
+cigarette-case--an heirloom with a crest on it. Von Stinnes again.
+Curious how he remembered him--a memory neither sad nor merry--but final
+like the sea. A phantom of word and incident that bowed with an
+enchanting irony out of an April day. The other, the fool with the
+gun.... Good God, he was a murderer! He smiled. Von Stinnes, a
+melancholy Pierrot doffing his hat with a gallant snicker to the moon.
+Hazlitt, a pantaloon. Yet tragic. Yes, there was something in the café
+that night--two men hurling themselves drunkenly against the taunting
+emptiness of life. The rage had come because he had remembered Rachel. A
+sudden mysterious remembering. A remembering that she was gone. It had
+torn for a moment at his heart, shouted in his ears and driven him mad.
+
+Something had taken Rachel out of him. Time had eaten her image out of
+him. He had remembered this in the café. But why had he fired at the
+stranger? Because the man's eyes blazed. Because he had become for an
+instant an intolerable comrade.
+
+"We fought each other for what someone else had done to us," Dorn
+murmured. "Not Rachel but someone that couldn't be touched. Absurd!"
+Hazlitt slipped like a shadow out of his mind--an unanswered question.
+
+The throbbing ship with its tinkling orchestra, its laughing, chattering
+faces, was carrying him home over a dark sea. At night he sat alone
+watching the circle of water. Four vanished nights. Four more nights. He
+sighed. The sadness that lay in his heart desired to talk to him. He
+struggled to change his thinking. Ideas that were new to him arose at
+night on the ship.
+
+"Not now," he whispered. He was postponing something. But the night and
+the rolling sea were swallowing his resistance. Words that would tell
+him the pain in his heart waited for him.... "Anna. Dear God, Anna! It's
+that. But why Anna now? It was easy before."
+
+Words of Anna waited for him. He stared into the dark.
+
+"I want her. I must go back to her. Anna, forgive me!"
+
+A murmur that the darkness might understand. The long rolling sea
+listened automatically. Weak fool! Yet he felt better. He could think
+now without hiding from words that waited.
+
+His heart wept in silence. The unbidden ones came.... Anna--standing
+looking at him. A despair, a death in her face. Something tearing itself
+out of her. What pain! But no sound. An agony deeper than sound in her
+eyes. He trembled at the memory. The crucified happy one....
+
+Dear God, would he always have to remember now? Other pictures were
+gone. They had drifted away leaving little phrases dragging in his
+thought. Now Anna had found him. Not a phantom, but the thing as he had
+left it, without a detail gone. The gesture of her agony intact. His
+thought shifted vainly away. He knew she was standing as he had left
+her--horribly inanimate--and he must go back. He would hold her in his
+arms, kiss her lips, kneel before her weeping for forgiveness. Ah! he
+would be kind. At night he would sit holding her head in his arms,
+stroking her hair; whispering, "Forget ... forget! A year or two of
+madness--gone forever. But years now waiting for us. New years.
+Everything is gone but us. That brought me back. Mists blew away. Dear
+Anna, I love you."
+
+He was making love to Anna, his wife. A droll finale. Tears came in his
+eyes. There lay happiness. She would move again. The rigid figure that
+he had left behind and that was waiting rigidly, would smile again. He
+plunged desperately into the dream of words to be. The music from the
+salon had ended. Better, silence. Nothing to remind one of the fugitive
+tinkle of life. A dark, interminable sea, a moon road, a sigh of rolling
+water and a ship throbbing in the night.
+
+"Dear Anna, I love you." And she would smile, her white face and eyes
+that were constant as the stars. Constant, eternal. Love that was no
+mystery but a caress of sea nights. Forgive him. And her sorrow would
+heal under his fingers. It would end all right. The two years--the
+halloo of strange sterile things--buried under the smile of her eyes ...
+deep, sorrowful, beautiful. Words to be. "Anna we will grow old
+together, holding to each other and smiling; lovers whom the years make
+always younger." Words that were to heal the strange sadness that had
+come to him and start a dead figure into life.
+
+He stood up and walked to the rail, staring into the churn of water
+underneath.
+
+"It's slow," he murmured. "Four more days."
+
+Anna's love would hide the world from him. But a fear loosened his
+heart. The smell of sea whirled in his veins.
+
+"Perhaps," he thought dreamily, "perhaps there will be nothing. She will
+say no."
+
+He hesitated, straightened with a sigh.
+
+"A wife deserter, a seducer, a murderer. I mustn't expect too much, eh,
+von Stinnes?"
+
+He smiled at the night. The sound of the Baron's name seemed to bring a
+strength into him. He walked toward his berth, his head unnecessarily
+high, smoking at his cigarette and humming a tune remembered from the
+Munich cafés.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+There were people in New York who came to Erik Dorn and said: "Tell us
+about Europe. And Germany. Is it really true that...." As if there were
+some inner revelation--a few precious phrases of undistilled truth that
+the correspondent of the _New Opinion_ had seen fit to withhold from his
+communications.
+
+The skyscrapers were intact. Windows shot into the air. Streets bubbled
+with people. A useless sky clung tenaciously to its position above the
+roof-gardens. The scene was amiable. Dorn spent a day congratulating
+himself upon the genius of his homeland. He felt a pride in the
+unbearable confusion of architecture and traffic.
+
+But in the nine months of his absence there had been a change; or at
+least a change seemed to have occurred. Perhaps he had brought the
+change with him. It was evident that the Niagara of news pouring out of
+Europe into the press and periodicals of the day had inundated the
+provincialism of his countrymen. People were floundering about in a daze
+of facts--groping ludicrously through labyrinths of information.
+
+It had been easy during the war. Democracy-Autocracy; a tableau to look
+at. Thought had been unnecessary. In fact, the popular intelligence had
+legislated against it. The tableau was enough--a sublimated symbol of
+the little papier-maché rigmarole of their daily lives, the immemorial
+spectacle of Good and Evil at death grips, limelighted for a moment by
+the cannon in France. The unreason and imbecility of the mob crowned
+themselves. Thought became _lèse majesté_.
+
+Dorn returned to find the tableau had suffered an explosion. It had for
+some mysterious reason glibly identified as reaction burst into
+fragments and vanished in a skyrocket chaos. Shantung, Poland, little
+nations, pogroms, plebiscites, Ireland, steel strikes, red armies,
+Fourteen Points, The Truth About This, The Real Story of That, the
+League of Nations, the riots in Berlin, in Dublin, Milan, Paris, London,
+Chicago; secret treaties, pacts, betrayals, Kolchak--an incomprehensible
+muddle of newspaper headlines shrieked from morning to morning and said
+nothing. The distracted mob become privy for the moment to the vast
+biological disorder eternally existent under its nose, snorted, yelped,
+and shook indignant sawdust out of its ears.
+
+In vain the editorial Jabberwocks came galloping daily down the slopes
+of Sinai bearing new tablets written in fire. The original and only
+genuine tableau was gone. The starry heavens which concealed the Deity
+Himself had become a junkpile full of its fragments.
+
+"In the temporary collapse of the banalities that conceal the world
+from their eyes," thought Dorn, "they're trying to figure out what's
+really what around them--and making a rather humorous mess of it."
+
+He went about for several days dining with friends, conferring with
+Edwards and the directors of the _New Opinion_, and slowly shaping his
+"experiences abroad" into phonograph records that played themselves
+automatically under the needles of questions.
+
+At night, he amused himself with reading the radical and conservative
+periodicals, his own magazine among them.
+
+"The thing isn't confined to the bloated capitalists alone," he laughed
+one afternoon while sitting with Warren Lockwood in the latter's rooms.
+"The radicals are up a tree and the conservatives down a cellar. What do
+you make of it, Warren?"
+
+"I haven't paid much attention to it," the novelist smiled. "I've been
+busy on a book. What's all this stuff about Germany, anyway? I read some
+things of yours but I can't figure it out."
+
+Dorn exploded with another laugh.
+
+"You're all a pack of simpletons and bounders, still moist behind the
+ears, Warren. The whole lot of you. I've been in New York three days and
+I've begun to feel that there isn't a remotely intelligent human animal
+in the place. I'm going to retreat inland. In Chicago, at least, people
+know enough to keep their mouths shut. I'll tell you what the trouble
+is in a nutshell. People want things straight again. They want black and
+white so's they can all mass on the white side and make faces at the
+evil-doers who prefer the black. They don't want facts, diagnosis,
+theories, interpretations, reports. They want somebody to stand up and
+announce in a loud, clear voice, 'Tweedledum is wrong. Tweedledee is
+right, everything else to the contrary is Poppycock.' Thus they'd be
+able to put an end to their own thinking and bury themselves in their
+own little alleys and be happy again. You know as well as I, it makes
+them miserable to think. Restless, irritable, indignant. It's like
+having bites--the more they're scratched the worse they itch. It's the
+war, of course. The war has been a failure. The race has caught itself
+red-handed in a lie. Now everybody is running around trying to confess
+to everybody else that what he said in the past was a lie and that the
+real truth is as follows. And there's where the trouble begins. There
+ain't no such animal."
+
+"I see," said Lockwood, smiling.
+
+"Yes, you do," Dorn grinned. "You don't see anything. The trouble is ...
+oh, well, the trouble is as I said that the human race is out in the
+open where it can get a good look at itself. The war raised a
+curtain...."
+
+"What about the radicals, though? They seem to be saying something
+definite?"
+
+"Yes, shooting one another down by the thousands in Berlin--as they will
+some day in New York. Yes, the radicals are definite enough.... The
+revolution rumbling away in Germany isn't a standup fight between
+Capital and Labor. It's Radical _versus_ Radical. Just as the war was
+Imperialist _versus_ Imperialist. One of the outstanding lessons of the
+last decade is the fact that the world's natural enemies haven't yet had
+a chance at each other, being too busy murdering among themselves. It's
+coming, though. Another tableau. All this hysteria and uncertainty will
+gradually simmer down into another right-and-wrong issue--with life
+boiling away as always under a black and white surface."
+
+"Do you think we're going to go red here?" Lockwood asked pensively.
+
+"It'll take a little time," Dorn went on. He had become used to reciting
+his answers in the manner of a schoolmaster. "But it's bound to happen.
+Bolshevism is a logical evolution of democracy--another step downward in
+the descent of the individual. Until the arrival of Lenine and Trotzky
+on the field, there's no question but what American Democracy was the
+most atrocious insult leveled at the intelligence of the race by its
+inferiors. Bolshevism goes us one better, however. And just as soon as
+our lowest types, meaning the majority of our politicians, thinkers, and
+writers, get to realizing that bolshevism isn't a Red Terror with a bomb
+in one hand and a dagger in the other, but a state of society surpassing
+even their own in points of weakness and abnormal silliness, they'll
+start arresting everybody who isn't a bolshevist. Capital will put up a
+fight, but capital is already doomed in this country. It isn't respected
+for its strength, vision, and creative powers. It is tolerated to-day
+for no other reason than that it has cornered the platitude market. I'm
+telling you, Warren, that when we get it drummed into our heads that
+bolshevism isn't strong and powerful, but weaker, more prohibitive, more
+sentimental, more politically inefficient, and generally worse than our
+own government, we'll have a dictator of the proletaire in Washington
+within a week."
+
+Lockwood sighed unhappily and lighted a pipe.
+
+"If you were talking about men and women maybe I could join you," he
+answered. "But I got a hunch you're just another one of those newspaper
+Neds. The woods are full of smart alecks like you and they make me kind
+of tired, because I never can figure out what they're talking about. And
+I'll be damned if they know themselves. They think in big hunks and keep
+a lot of words floating in the air.... What old Carl calls 'Blaa ...
+blaa....'"
+
+The two friends sat regarding each other critically. Dorn nodded after a
+pause.
+
+"You're right," he smiled. "I'm part of the blaa-blaa. I heard them
+blaa-blaa with guns in Munich one night. And up in the Baltic. You're
+right. Anything one says about absurdity becomes absurd itself. And
+talking about the human race in chunks is necessarily talking absurdly.
+Tell me about that fellow Tesla."
+
+"They deported him to Rooshia," Lockwood answered. "There was quite a
+romance about the girl. That was your girl, wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes, Rachel. She wouldn't tag along, eh?"
+
+"No. I suppose they wouldn't let her. I don't know. There was a lot of
+stuff in the newspapers."
+
+The novelist seemed to hesitate on the brink of further information. His
+friend smiled understandingly.
+
+"It doesn't matter, Warren. Go ahead. Shoot."
+
+"Cured, eh?"
+
+"No--dead."
+
+Lockwood nodded sagely, his mouth half open as if his words were staring
+at Dorn.
+
+"Well, there isn't much I know. I met a little girl the other day--Mary
+James; know her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She was quite excited. She told me something about an artist that used
+to hang around Tesla. It seems that he kidnapped her and carted her to
+Chicago. This James girl was all upset."
+
+An interruption in the person of Edwards the editor occurred. The talk
+lapsed once more into world problems with Lockwood listening,
+skeptically open-mouthed.
+
+Late in the evening Edwards suddenly declared, "You're making a big
+mistake leaving New York, Erik. You've got a market now. Your stuff
+went big."
+
+"I'm through," Dorn answered. He arose and took his hat. "I'm leaving
+for Chicago to-morrow."
+
+He paused, smiling at Lockwood.
+
+"I'm going home."
+
+The novelist nodded sagely and murmured, "Uh-huh. Well, good-night."
+
+Making his way slowly through the night crowds and electrophobia of
+lower Manhattan, Dorn felt peacefully out of place. His thought had
+become: "I want to get back to where I was." In the midst of the
+mechanical carnival of Broadway he caught a memory of himself walking to
+work with a stream of faces--of a sardonic Erik Dorn to whom the street
+was a pattern; to whom the mysteries tugging at heels that scratched the
+pavements were the amusing variants of nothing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+"Eddy."
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"I have some news for you."
+
+The round, smiling face of Eddy Meredith that refused to change with
+age, beamed at Anna.
+
+"Erik's back."
+
+The beam hesitated.
+
+"He wrote. He's coming to see me."
+
+"Anna...."
+
+"Yes, dear, I know. It sort of frightens me, too. But," she laughed
+quietly, "there is nothing to be frightened about. He didn't give any
+address or I would have written him telling him."
+
+"He must know you're divorced," Meredith spoke nervously.
+
+"I don't know if he does, Eddy."
+
+She reached her hand out and placed it over his, her eyes glancing at
+the figure of Isaac Dorn. He was asleep in a chair.
+
+"Please, dearest, don't worry," she whispered.
+
+"It'll be hard for you."
+
+Meredith's face acquired an abnormal expression.
+
+"Maybe you'll feel different." He sighed, and Anna shook her head.
+"When's he coming?"
+
+"To-morrow night."
+
+"Did he say anything in the letter?"
+
+She stood up and went to a desk.
+
+"Here it is." A smile touched her lips. "He always wrote curious
+letters. Words and words when there was nothing to say. And a single
+phrase when there was something." She read from a sheet of paper--"'Dear
+Anna, I am coming home. Erik.'"
+
+In the corner Isaac Dorn opened his watery eyes and stared at the
+ceiling.
+
+"Are you awake, father?"
+
+"Yes, Anna."
+
+"Did I tell you I'd heard from Erik?"
+
+The old man mumbled in his beard.
+
+"He'll be out to-morrow night," she said, smiling at him. He nodded his
+head, stared at her, and seemed to doze off again.
+
+"Father is failing," Anna whispered. Meredith had arisen. His face had
+grown blank. He walked toward the hall, saying, "I'll go now."
+
+Anna came quickly to him. Her hands reached his shoulders and she stood
+regarding him intently.
+
+"There's nothing any more, dear. It all ended long ago. Perhaps I'll be
+sad when I see him. But sad only for him."
+
+Meredith smiled and spoke with an effort at lightness.
+
+"Remember, I don't hold you to anything. I want you only to be happy. In
+your own way. Not in my way. And if it will mean happiness for you to
+... for you to go back, why ..." He shrugged his shoulders and continued
+to smile with hurt eyes.
+
+"Eddy...." Her face came close to his. He hesitated until her arms
+closed tightly around him. He felt her warm lips cling and open.
+
+"You've never kissed like that before, Anna." There was almost a fear in
+his voice.
+
+"Because I never knew I wanted you," she whispered, "till now--till this
+minute; till you said about my going back."
+
+Her face was alive with emotion. A laugh, and she was in his arms again.
+They stood embraced, murmuring tenderly to each other.
+
+Later in her bedroom Anna undressed slowly. Her thoughts seemed to be
+quarreling with her emotions, her emotions with her thoughts. This was
+Erik's room--ancient torture chamber. Something still clinging to its
+walls and furniture. Ah, nights of agony still in the air she breathed.
+Her words formed themselves quietly. They came to peer into her
+heart--polite visitors standing on tiptoe before a closed cell that hid
+something.
+
+"Is there anything?" she murmured. "No. I'm different."
+
+She thought of the day she had come out of a grave and resumed living.
+It had seemed as if she must learn to walk again, to breathe, to
+discover anew the meanings of words. At first--listless, uncertain. Then
+new steps, new meanings. Her mind moved back through the year. She had
+wept only once--on the night of the divorce. But that was as one weeps
+at an old grave, even a stranger's grave. The rest had been Eddy.
+
+"I've changed. And I've been happier in many ways."
+
+She was talking to herself. Why? "I'm a different Anna." But why think
+of it? It was settled.
+
+She lay in the bed and her eyes opened at the darkness. Here was where
+she had lain when she had died. Each night, new deaths. Here the lonely
+darkness that had once choked her, torn at her eyes and made her scream
+aloud with pain. Things on the other side of a grave. Memories become
+alien. Things of long ago, when the whisper of the dark came like an
+insanity into her brain. "Erik gone! Erik gone! Gone!" A word that beat
+at her until she died--to awake in the morning and stumble once more
+through a day.
+
+Now she regarded the dark quietly. Black. It had no shape. It lay
+everywhere about her. But it did not burn nor choke. A peaceful,
+harmless dark that could only whisper as if it were asking something.
+What was it asking? Long arms of night reaching out for something. But
+there was nothing to give, even if she wanted to. Not even tears.
+Nothing to give, even though it whispered for alms. Whispered, "Erik ...
+Erik!" But there was no little memory. No big memory. Dead. Torn out of
+her. So the dark whispered to a dead thing in her that did not stir. A
+smile like a tired little gesture passed over her. "Poor Erik, poor
+Erik!" she murmured. "He must be thinking things that are no more."
+
+She grew chill for an instant.... The memory of agonies, of the screams
+her love had uttered as it died.
+
+"Poor Erik!"
+
+She buried her cool cheek restlessly in the pillow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Everything the same as it had been. As if he had stepped out of the
+office for a walk around the block and come back. But a sameness that
+had lost its familiarity. Old furniture, old faces, intensely a part of
+his consciousness, yet grown strange. It was like forgetting suddenly
+the name of a life-long friend.
+
+His entrance created a stir of excitement. He had spent the preceding
+two days arranging with the chief for his return. Barring the
+Nietzschean who had functioned in his absence, none had expected him.
+
+He pushed open the swinging door with an old gesture, and walked to his
+desk. Here he sat fumbling casually with proofs and the contents of
+pigeonholes. An old routine saying, "Pick me up." Familiar trifles
+rebuked him. The staff sauntered up one by one to greet him. Crowley,
+Mortinson, Sweeney.
+
+"Well, glad to see you back. We've sure missed you around here."
+
+Handshakes, smiles, embarrassed questions. A few strange faces to be
+resented and ignored. A strange locker arrangement in a corner to be
+frowned at. But the rest of it familiar, poignant--a world where he
+belonged, but that somehow did not seem to fit as snugly as once.
+Handshakes in the hall. A faint cheer in the composing-room as he
+sauntered for the first time to the stone. Slaps on the back. Busy men
+pausing to look at him with suddenly lighted faces. "Well, Mr. Dorn,
+greetings! How are ye? You're looking fine...."
+
+His world. It was the same, only now he was conscious of it. Before he
+had sat in its midst unaware of more than a detail here, a gesture
+there. Now he seemed to be looking down from an airplane--a strange
+bird's-eye view of things un-strange.
+
+He returned to his desk. The scene again reached out to embrace him.
+Familiar colored walls, familiar chatter and flurry of the afternoon
+edition going to press. He felt its embrace and yet remained outside it.
+There were things in him now that could never be a part of the
+unchanging old shop.
+
+During a lull in the forenoon he leaned back in his chair and stared
+into the pigeonholes. Memories like the unfocused images of a dream one
+remembers in the morning jumbled in his thought. The scene around him
+made things he recalled seem unreal. And the things he recalled made the
+scene around him seem unreal. He tried to divert himself by remembering
+definitely.... "We lay in a moon-lighted room and I whispered to her:
+'You have given me wings.' I held a gun and pulled the trigger as he
+jumped at me.... Then von Stinnes took the blame.... There's a
+restaurant in Kurfursten Damm where Mathilde and I.... What a night in
+Munich!... at the Banhoff. What do I remember most? Let me see.... Yes
+... there was a note pinned on the blanket saying she was gone and I ...
+But there's something else. What? Let me see...."
+
+He tried to evoke clearer pictures. But the sentences that passed
+through his mind seemed sterile, impotent. The past, set in motion by
+his effort, evaded him. Its details blurred like the spokes of a swiftly
+turning wheel. He smiled.
+
+"A sinner's darkest punishment is forgetting his sins," he murmured to
+himself. He thought of the evening before him. "Better not think of
+that. Read proofs." He had deferred his meeting with Anna until he
+should be able to come to her from his desk in the office.
+
+As the day passed an impatience seized him. The unfinished event brought
+a fear with it.... "I must put it out of my mind until to-night." But it
+remained and grew.
+
+In the afternoon he sat for an hour talking to Crowley and Mortinson. He
+listened to them chuckle at his anecdotes. Their faces beaming with
+affectionate interest seemed nevertheless to say, "All this is
+interesting, but not very important. Not as important as sitting in the
+office here and sending the paper to press day after day."
+
+The words he was uttering bored him. He had heard them too often. Yet he
+kept on talking, trying to bury his impatience and fear in the sound of
+his voice. His anecdotes were no longer memories. They seemed to have
+become complete in themselves, related to nothing that had ever
+happened. He wondered as he talked if he were lying. These things he was
+saying were somehow improvisations--committed to memory. He kept on
+talking, eagerly, amusingly.
+
+The afternoon passed. A walk through familiar streets and it was time
+for dinner.
+
+"I'm not hungry. I'll eat, though."
+
+Yes, the evening ahead was important--very important. That accounted for
+the tedium of the day. But it would be dark soon. There would be a
+to-morrow. There had been other important evenings. It was not necessary
+to get too nervous. He had writhed before in the embrace of interminable
+hours, hours that seemed never to arrive. Then suddenly they came,
+looming, swelling into existence like oncoming locomotives that opened
+with a sudden rush from little discs into great roaring shapes. And once
+arrived they had seemed to be present forever. But suddenly the roaring
+shapes were little discs again. Hours died as people died--with an
+abrupt obliteration. Yet each new moment, like each new face, became
+again interminable. Time was an endlessness whose vanishing left its
+illusion unchanged.
+
+But now it was night.
+
+"At the end of this block is a house. Two doors more. I have no key.
+Ring the bell. God, but I'm an idiot. She'll answer the door herself.
+What'll I say? That's her step. Hello? No. Walk in. Naturally."
+
+He stopped breathing. The door opened. His legs were made of whalebone.
+But there was a new odor in the hallway.... And something new here in
+her face. He stood looking at the woman with whom he had lived for seven
+years and when he said her name it sounded like that of a stranger. His
+features had a habit of smiling. An old habit of narrowing one of his
+eyes and turning up the right corner of his lips. He stood unconscious
+of his expression, his smile a mask that had slapped itself
+automatically over his face.
+
+But they must talk. No, she had him at a disadvantage. Her silence could
+say everything for her. His silence could say nothing. He reached
+forward and took her hands.
+
+"Anna...."
+
+She was different. A rigidness gone. When he had left her she was
+standing, stiffened. Now her hands were limp. Her face too, limp. Her
+eyes that looked at him seemed blind.
+
+"I've come back, as you see."
+
+That was banal. One did not talk like that to a crucified one. Her hands
+slipped away and she preceded him into the room. He looked to see his
+father, but forgot to ask a question about him. Anna was standing
+straight, looking straight at him. Not as if he were there, but as if
+she were alone with something.
+
+"You must let me talk first, Erik."
+
+Willingly. It was difficult to breathe and talk at the same time. He sat
+down as she moved into a chair opposite.
+
+Something was happening but he couldn't tell yet. She was changed. Older
+or younger, hard to tell. But changed. It was confusing to look at
+someone and look at a different image of her. The different image was in
+his mind. When she talked he could tell.
+
+"Did you know that I had gotten a divorce, Erik?"
+
+That was it, then. She wasn't his wife any more. A sort of hocus-pocus
+... now you are my wife, now you aren't my wife.
+
+"No, Anna."
+
+"Four months ago."
+
+"I was in Germany...." Mathilde, von Stinnes, _es lebe die Welt
+Revolution_, made a circle in his head.
+
+"Yes, I know. I'm sorry you didn't find out."
+
+It was impossible. Something impossible was happening. Of course, he had
+known it would happen. But he had fooled himself. A clever thing to do.
+He was talking like a little boy reciting a piece from a platform.
+
+"I've come back to you because everything but you has died. I begin with
+the end of what I have to say. I came back from Europe ... because I
+wanted you...."
+
+She interrupted. "I wrote you a letter when I found out about her. I
+sent it to New York."
+
+"I never got it."
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+Quite a formal procedure thus far. A letter had miscarried. One could
+blame the mails for that. And a divorce. Yes, that was formal too ...
+"whereas the complainant further alleges ..." He felt that his legs were
+trembling. If he spoke again his voice would be unsteady. He did not
+want that. But someone had to speak. Not she. She could be silent.
+
+"Anna"--let his voice shake. Perhaps it would help matters. "You've
+changed...."
+
+"Yes, Erik...."
+
+"I haven't much right to ask for anything else...."
+
+Why in God's name could he think clearly and yet only talk like a
+blithering fool? He would pause and gather his wits. But then he would
+start making a speech ... four-score and seven years ago our
+forefathers....
+
+"I'm sorry you came, Erik...."
+
+This couldn't be Anna. He closed his mouth and stared. A dream full of
+noises, voices, Anna saying:
+
+"We mustn't waste time regretting or worrying each other about
+things.... It's much too late now."
+
+He wanted to say. "It is impossible that you do not love me because you
+once loved me, because we once lay in each other's arms ... seven
+years." But there was no Anna to say that to. Instead, a stranger-woman.
+An impulse carried him away. He was kneeling beside her, burying his
+face in her lap. It didn't matter. There was no one to see. Perhaps her
+hand would move gently over his hair. No, she was sitting straight.
+Still alone with something. She was saying:
+
+"I'm sorry. Please, Erik, don't."
+
+"I love you."
+
+"No. No! Please, let's talk...."
+
+He raised his face. It was easier now that he was crying. He wouldn't
+have to be grammatical ... or finish sentences.
+
+"I understand, Erik. I was afraid of this. For you. But you mustn't.
+'Shh! it's all over."
+
+"No, Anna. It can't be. You are still Anna."
+
+"Yes. But different."
+
+He stood up.
+
+"Really, Erik," she was shaking her head and smiling without expression,
+"everything is over. I would rather have written it to you. I could have
+made it plain. But I didn't know where to reach you."
+
+He let her talk on and stood staring. Her face was limp. There was
+nothing there. He was looking at a corpse. Not of her, but somehow of
+himself. There in her eyes he lay dead--an obliteration. He had come
+back to a part of him that had died. It was buried where one couldn't
+see, somewhere behind her eyes.
+
+"I have nothing more to say, Erik. But you must understand what I have
+said. Because it means everything."
+
+He listened, staring now at the room, remembering. They had lived
+together once in this room. There was something beautiful about the
+room. A face that held itself like a lighted lamp to his eyes. "Erik,
+Erik, I love you. Oh, I love you so. I would die without you. Erik, my
+own!" The walls and books and chairs murmured with echoes. The familiar
+slanting books on their shelves. The large leather chairs under the
+light. He must weep. The little things that were familiar--mirrors in
+which he saw images and words ... a white body with copper hair fallen
+across its ivory; white arms clinging passionately to him; a voice,
+rapturous, pleading. He must weep because he had come back to a world
+that had died, that looked at him whispering with dead lips, "Erik, my
+beloved. Oh, I'm so happy ... so happy when you kiss me ... my
+dearest...."
+
+He closed his eyes as tears burned out of them. Anna in a blur. Still
+talking quietly. Embarrassed by his weeping. He was offering her his
+silence and his tears. He had never stood like this before a woman. But
+it was something other than a woman--an ending. As if one came upon a
+figure dead in a room and looked at it and said without surprise, "It is
+I."
+
+"So you see, Erik, it's all over. I can't tell you how. It took a long
+time, but it seemed sudden. I don't know what to say to you, but it will
+be better to leave nothing unsaid. I'm trying to think of everything.
+I'm going to be married next month. Remember, I'm not the Anna you knew.
+She isn't getting married again. I'm somebody totally different. I feel
+different. Even when I walk. You never knew me. I can remember our years
+together clearly. But it seems like a story that was once told me. Do
+you understand, Erik? I am not bitter or sad, and I have no blame for
+you. You are more than forgiven...."
+
+No words occurred to him. Somewhere behind the smooth face of her he
+fancied lived a woman whose arms were about his neck and whose lips were
+hungering for him.
+
+"It's all very clear to me, Erik. I've thought of it often. You made me
+a part of yourself and when you deserted me, you took that with you, and
+left me as I am; as I was born...."
+
+"Will you play something on the piano for me, Anna?"
+
+"No, Erik."
+
+He seated himself slowly and remained with his head down. There was
+nothing to think.
+
+"I'll go in a few minutes," he muttered.
+
+Anna, standing straight, watched him as if she were curious. He felt her
+eyes trying to acquaint themselves with him, and failing. He was growing
+angry. Better leave before he spoke again. Anger was in him. It was she
+who had been the unfaithful one. He could smile at that. He stood up
+then, and smiled. This was a part of life, to be felt and appreciated. A
+handshake, a smile that von Stinnes would have applauded, and he would
+have lived another hour.
+
+"On the boat I made love to you," he said softly, "and I am not unhappy.
+It is only--my turn to weep a bit."
+
+He regarded her calmly. Yes, if he wanted to ... there was something
+waiting.... Even though she thought it dead. If he wanted to, there was
+a grave to open, slowly, with tears and old phrases.
+
+She let him approach her. He felt her body grow rigid as he placed his
+arms around her. His lips touched her cold cheek.
+
+"It was to make sure that you were dead," he whispered.
+
+She nodded.
+
+... Another hour ended. He had returned. Now he was going away again and
+the hour was a disc whirling away, already lost among other discs.
+
+The street was chilly. He walked swiftly. His thoughts were assembling
+themselves. Words that had lain under the tears in the room thawed out.
+
+"She will marry Meredith and the old man will come to live with me. I
+should have gone upstairs and said hello. But he was probably asleep.
+I'll take my books and furniture. She won't need them with Meredith.
+Get an apartment somewhere. How old am I? About forty. Not quite.
+Changed completely. Curious, I didn't want her after she'd talked about
+it. I suppose because I didn't really come for her--for somebody else.
+Conrad in quest of his youth. Lost youth. How'd that damn book end?
+Well, what of it, what of it? Things die without saddening one. Yet one
+becomes sad. A make-believe. That's right. No matter what happens you
+keep right on thinking and breathing as if it were all outside. Yes,
+that's it--outside; a poignant comedy outside that talks to one. Death
+is the only thing that has reality. We must not take the rest too
+seriously. If I get too bored I can remember that I killed a man and
+develop a stricken conscience. Poppycock!... The old man'll be a
+nuisance. But he's quiet, thank God! Well, well ... I'm too civilized. I
+suppose I made an ass of myself. No.... A few tears more or less...."
+
+His thought paused. He walked, looking at things--curbings, houses,
+street trees, lights in windows. He resumed, after blocks:
+
+"Good God, what a thing happened to her! To change like that. An
+awfulness about it. Death in life. Have I changed? No. I'm the same. But
+that's a lie. I was in love once ... a face like a mirror of stars. The
+phrase grows humorous with repetition. It doesn't mean anything. What
+did it mean? Like trying to remember a toothache ... which tooth ached.
+But it only lasted ... let's see. Rachel, Rachel.... Nothing. It was
+gone a week after I came to her. The rest was--a restlessness ...
+wanting something. Not having it. Well, it doesn't matter now."
+
+In his hotel room he undressed without turning on the lights. He felt
+nervous, vaguely afraid of himself.
+
+"I might commit suicide. Rather stupid, though. I'll die soon enough.
+Maybe a few more things left to see and feel and forget. Who knows? I'll
+have to look up some of the ladies."
+
+He crawled into bed and grew promptly sleepless.
+
+"If I'm honest I'll be able to amuse myself. If not ... oh, Lord, what a
+mess! No. Why is it? Life runs away like that--hits you in the eye and
+runs away."
+
+He closed his eyes and sighed. Like himself, the world was full of
+people who lived on. Things ended for them and nobody could tell the
+difference, not even themselves. Being happy--what the devil was that?
+Happiness--unhappiness--you slept as soundly and ate as heartily.
+
+"I'm a little tired to-night." An excuse for something. He was afraid.
+He reached over to the small table near the bed and secured a cigarette.
+Lighting it, he lay on his back, blowing smoke carefully into the dark
+and watching the tobacco glow under his nose.
+
+"Damn good thing I'm not an author. End up as a cross between
+Maeterlinck and Laura Jean. One could write a volume on a cigarette
+glowing in the dark."
+
+He puffed until the tobacco was almost ended. He placed the
+still-kindled stub on the table and sighed:
+
+"Yes, that's me. Life has had its lips to me blowing smoke and fire out
+of me. And now a table top on which to glow reminiscently for a moment.
+And cool into ashes. Apologies to Laura Jean, Marie Corelli--and God."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Rachel, removing her heavy coat, walked briskly to the grate fire
+burning in the rear of the studio. She stood looking into the flames and
+rubbing the cold out of her hands.
+
+"Well, I kept the appointment, Frank."
+
+Brander, the artist, sprawled on a cushion-littered couch, sat up
+slowly. His heavy eyes regarded her.
+
+"We had quite a talk. You know his wife has remarried."
+
+"That so?" Rachel laughed.
+
+"Mr. Dorn sends you his regards."
+
+"That'll be enough."
+
+"I must say he's much cleverer than you, Frank."
+
+"What did you talk about? Soul stuff, eh?"
+
+"Oh, not entirely."
+
+She came over to the couch and patted his cheeks.
+
+"My hands--feel how cold they are."
+
+"Never mind your hands. What did our good friend have to say for
+himself?"
+
+"Oh, talk." Her dark eyes glanced enigmatically from his stare.
+
+Brander swore. "I want to know, d'you hear?"
+
+"Dear me! Soulmate bares all." She laughed and walked with a sensual
+swing down the long room.
+
+Brander, without stirring, repeated, "Yes, everything."
+
+Rachel's face sobered.
+
+"Why, there's nothing Frank--of interest."
+
+"Hell, I've caught you crying over him."
+
+"Well, what of that? A woman's tears, you know, a woman's tears, don't
+mean anything."
+
+"They don't, eh?"
+
+"No." The sight of him hunched amid the cushions seemed to appeal to her
+humor. A large, strong monkey face against blue, green, and yellow
+pillow faces. She laughed.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you something. There's going to be no soul stuff in
+this. You're mine. And if you start any flapdoodle hand-holding with our
+good friend, I'll knock your heads together into a pulp."
+
+He raised his large shoulders and glowered majestically. Rachel, paused
+beside a canvas, regarded him with half-closed eyes and smiling lips.
+
+"He sent his kindest wishes to you."
+
+Brander left his seat and strode toward her.
+
+"That's enough."
+
+"And asked us to call. And if we couldn't come together, I might call
+alone," she spoke quickly. Her eyes were mocking. An oath from Brander
+seemed to amuse her.
+
+"You're in love with him," he muttered, his fingers tightening about
+her wrist. "Come, out with it! I want to know."
+
+"Yes." Rachel's eyes grew taunting. "He is the knight in shining armor,
+fairy prince, and the man in the moon."
+
+"Never mind laughing. I want to know."
+
+"Well, listen then." Her voice grew vibrant as if a laugh were talking.
+"His eyes are the beckoning hands of dream. Poor Frank doesn't know what
+that means."
+
+Brander swung her toward the couch. She fell amid the cushions with a
+laugh. He stood looking at her and then walked slowly.
+
+"Don't touch me. Don't you dare!"
+
+A grin crossed the artist's face.
+
+"I know you and your kind," he answered, "mooney girls. Mooney-headed
+girls. I've had 'em before."
+
+"Keep away...."
+
+Her face as he bent over her glowed with a sudden terror.
+
+"Mooney girls," repeated Brander.
+
+His hands reached her shoulders and held her carelessly as she squirmed.
+
+"You're hurting me."
+
+"I'll hurt you more. Talk out now. Are you in love with that loon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"More than me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Brander's face reddened. His hand struck her chin. Rachel shut her eyes
+to hold back tears.
+
+"Are you still?"
+
+"Yes. Always." Her teeth clenched. "Go on, hit me, if you want to. I
+love him. Love him always. Every minute. As I did. Do you hear? I love
+him."
+
+She opened her eyes and shivered. He was going to kill her. He tore at
+her clothes, beating her with his fists until her head rattled on her
+neck.
+
+"I'll fix your love for him," Brander whispered. The pain of his blows
+and shakings were making her dizzy.
+
+"Frank ... dear, please...."
+
+"Do you love him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She tried to bury her head in her arms, but he untwisted her gesture.
+His hands, striking and clawing at her, made her scream. A mist--he had
+seized her.
+
+"Frank! Frank!"
+
+"Do you love him now?"
+
+She opened her eyes and stared wildly into Brander's face. It grinned at
+her. Her arms clutched his body.
+
+"No, no!" she cried, her mouth gasping. "Don't talk. Don't ask
+questions. Love ..." she laughed aloud eagerly, brazenly. Her thin arms
+tightened fiercely about him. "I love this."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Isaac Dorn was sitting in a chair beside the gas-log fire in his son's
+apartment. His thin fingers lay motionless on his knees. His head had
+fallen forward.
+
+It was early evening when his son entered the room. Dorn paused and
+looked at the silent figure in the chair. The old man raised his head as
+if he had been spoken to and muttered. "Eh?"
+
+He saw his son and smiled. He would like to talk to him. It was lonely
+all day in the house. And things were beginning to fade from his eyes.
+It was hard even to see if Erik was smiling. Yes, his face was happy.
+That was good. People should look as Erik did--amused. Wait ... wait
+long enough and it all blurred and faded gently away.
+
+"What made you so late, Erik?" he asked. Now his son was laughing. That
+was a good sign.
+
+"A lot of work at the office. The Russians are at it again. And I met an
+old friend this afternoon. A dear old friend. Old friends make one
+sentimental and garrulous. So we talked."
+
+He noticed the old man's eyes close but continued addressing him.
+
+"We discussed problems in mathematics. How many yesterdays make a
+to-morrow. That gas-log smells to high heaven."
+
+He leaned over and turned out the odorous flames. He noticed now that
+the old man had dozed off again. But his talk went on. It had become a
+habit to keep on talking to his father who dozed under his words. "She's
+going to drop around and visit us. And we will perform a gentle autopsy.
+Stir a little cloud of dust out of the bucket of ashes, eh? And perhaps
+we will come to life for a moment. Who knows? At least, we shall weep.
+And that is something. To be able to weep. To know enough to weep. Her
+name is Rachel."
+
+He paused and walked toward the window.
+
+"Rachel," he repeated, his eyes no longer on the old man. "Her name is
+unchanged...."
+
+He opened von Stinnes's silver case and removed a cigarette. He stood
+gazing at the snow on roofs, on window ledges, on pavements. Crystalline
+geometries. Houses that made little puzzle pictures against the stagnant
+curve of the darkening sky. A zigzag of leaden-eyed windows, and windows
+ringed with yellow light peering like cat eyes into the winter dusk. The
+darkness slowly ended the scene. Night covered the snow. The city opened
+its tiny yellow eyes.
+
+A street of houses before him. A cigarette under his nose. An old man
+asleep. Outside the window the snow-covered buildings stood in the dark
+like a skeleton world, like patterns in black and white.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERIK DORN***
+
+
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Erik Dorn, by Ben Hecht</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Erik Dorn</p>
+<p>Author: Ben Hecht</p>
+<p>Release Date: August 19, 2007  [eBook #22358]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERIK DORN***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Eric Eldred<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>ERIK DORN</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>BEN HECHT</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS<br />
+NEW YORK AND LONDON<br />
+The Knickerbocker Press<br />
+1921<br /><br />
+Copyright, 1921<br />
+by<br />
+Ben Hecht<br /><br />
+<i>Printed in the United States of America</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h3><br /><br />To</h3>
+
+<h2>MARIE<br /><br /></h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PART_I">PART I&mdash;SLEEP</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PART_II">PART II&mdash;DREAM</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PART_III">PART III&mdash;WINGS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PART_IV">PART IV&mdash;ADVENTURE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PART_V">PART V&mdash;SILENCE</a></td></tr>
+
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><br /><br /><a name="ERIK_DORN" id="ERIK_DORN"></a>ERIK DORN<br /><br /></h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I</h2>
+
+<h2>SLEEP</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>An old man sat in the shadows of the summer night. From a veranda chair
+he looked at the stars. He wore a white beard, and his eyes, grown small
+with age, watered continually as if he were weeping. Half-hidden under
+his beard his emaciated lips kept the monotonous grimace of a smile on
+his face.</p>
+
+<p>He sat in the dark, a patient, trembling figure waiting for bedtime. His
+feet, though he rested them all day, grew heavy at night. Of late this
+weariness had increased. It reached like a caress into his mind.
+Thoughts no longer formed themselves in the silences of his hours.
+Instead, a gentle sleep, dreamless and dark, came upon him and left him
+sitting with his little eyes, open and moist, fastened without sight
+upon familiar objects.</p>
+
+<p>As he sat, the withered body of this old man seemed to grow always more
+motionless, except for his hands. Resting on his thighs, his twig-like
+hands remained forever awake, their thin contorted fingers crawling
+vaguely about like the legs of 8 long-impaled spiders.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of a piano from the room behind him dropped into the old man's
+sleep, and he found<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> himself once more looking out of his eyes and
+occupying his clothes. His attitude remained unchanged except for a
+quickened movement of his fingers. Life returned to him as gently as it
+had left. The stars were still high over his head and the night, cool
+and murmuring, waited for him.</p>
+
+<p>He lowered his eyes toward the street beyond the lawn. People were
+straying by, seeming to drift under the dark trees. He could not see
+them distinctly, but he stared at their flowing outlines and at moments
+was rewarded by a glimpse of a face&mdash;a featureless little glint of white
+in the shadows: dark shadows moving within a motionless darkness with
+little dying candle-flame faces. "Men and women," he thought, "men and
+women, mixed up in the night ... mixed up."</p>
+
+<p>As he stared, thoughts as dim and fluid as the people in the street
+moved in his head. But he remembered things best not in words. His
+memories were little warmths that dropped into his heart. His cold thin
+fingers continued their fluttering. "Mixed up, mixed up," said the
+night. "Dark," said the shadows. And the years spoke their memories. "We
+have been; we are no more." Memories that had lost the bloom of words.
+The emaciated lips of the old man held a smile beneath the white beard.</p>
+
+<p>This was Isaac Dorn, still alive after eighty years.</p>
+
+<p>The music from the house ended and a woman's voice called through an
+open window.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it's chilly outside, father."</p>
+
+<p>He offered no answer. Then he heard Erik, his son, speak in an amused
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the old man be. He's making love to the stars."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get him a blanket," said Erik's wife. "I can't bear to think of
+him catching cold."</p>
+
+<p>Isaac Dorn arose from his chair, shaking his head. He did not fancy
+being covered with a blanket and feeling Anna's kindly hands tucking its
+edges around his feet. They were too kindly, too solicitous. Their
+little pats and caressings presumed too much. One grew sad under their
+ministrations and murmured to oneself, "Poor child, poor child." Better
+a half-hour under the cold, amused eyes of his son, Erik. There was
+something between Erik and him, something like an unspoken argument. To
+Anna he was a pathetic little old man to be nursed, coddled, defended
+against chills and indigestions, "poor child, poor child." But Erik
+looked at him with cold, amused eyes that offered no quarter to age and
+asked for nothing. Good Erik, who asked for nothing, whose eyes smiled
+because they were too polite to sneer. Erik knew about the stars and the
+mixed-up things, the dim things old senses could feel in the night
+though he chose to laugh at them.</p>
+
+<p>But one thing Erik didn't know, and the old man, turning from his chair,
+grew sad. What was that? What? His thought mumbled a question. Sitting
+motionless in a corner of the room<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> he could smile at Erik and his smile
+under the white beard seemed to give an answer to the mumble&mdash;an answer
+that irritated his son. The answer said, "Wait, wait! it is too early
+for you to say you have lived." What a son, what a son! whose eyes made
+fun of his father's white hair.</p>
+
+<p>The old man moved slowly as if his infirmities were no more than
+meditations, and entered the house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>The crowds moving through the streets gave Erik Dorn a picture. It was
+morning. Above the heads of the people the great spatula-topped
+buildings spread a zigzag of windows, a scribble of rooftops against the
+sky. A din as monotonous as a silence tumbled through the streets&mdash;an
+unvarying noise of which the towering rectangles of buildings tilted
+like great reeds out of a narrow bowl, seemed an audible part.</p>
+
+<p>The city alive with signs, smoke, posters, windows; falling, rising,
+flinging its chimneys and its streets against the sun, wound itself up
+into crowds and burst with an endless bang under the far-away sky.</p>
+
+<p>Moving toward his office Erik Dorn watched the swarming of men and women
+of which he was a part. Faces like a flight of paper scraps scattered
+about him. Bodies poured suddenly across his eyes as if emptied out of
+funnels. The ornamental entrances of buildings pumped figures in and
+out. Vague and blurred like the play of gusty rain, the crowds darkened
+the pavements.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn saluted the spectacle with smiling eyes. As always, in the aimless
+din and multiplicity of streets he felt himself most securely at home.
+The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> smear of gestures, the elastic distortion of crowds winding and
+unwinding under the tumult of windows, gave him the feeling of a
+geometrical emptiness of life.</p>
+
+<p>Here before him the meanings of faces vanished. The greedy little
+purposes of men and women tangled themselves into a generality. It was
+thus Dorn was most pleased to look upon the world, to observe it as one
+observes a pattern&mdash;involved but precise. Life as a whole lay in the
+streets&mdash;a little human procession that came toiling out of a yesterday
+into an interminable to-morrow. It presented itself to him as a
+picture&mdash;legs moving against the walls of buildings, diagonals of
+bodies, syncopating face lines.</p>
+
+<p>Things that made pictures for his eyes alone diverted Dorn. Beyond this
+capacity for diversion he remained untouched. He walked smiling into
+crowds, oblivious of the lesser destinations of faces, pleased to dream
+of his life and the life of others as a movement of legs, a bobbing of
+heads.</p>
+
+<p>His appreciation of crowds was typical. In the same manner he held an
+appreciation of all things in life and art which filled him with the
+emotion of symmetry. He had given himself freely to his tastes. A creed
+had resulted. Rhythm that was intricate pleased him more than the
+metronomic. In art, the latter was predominant. In life, the former. Out
+of these decisions he achieved almost a complete indifference to
+literature and especially toward painting. No drawn picture stirred him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+to the extent that did the tapestry of a city street. No music aroused
+the elation in him that did the curious beat upon his eyes of window
+rows, of vari-shaped building walls whose oblongs and squares translated
+themselves in his thought into a species of unmelodious but perfect
+sound.</p>
+
+<p>The preoccupation with form had developed in him as complement of his
+nature. The nature of Erik Dorn was a shallows. Life did not live in
+him. He saw it as something eternally outside. To himself he seemed at
+times a perfect translation of his country and his day.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm like men will all be years later," he said to his wife, "when their
+emotions are finally absorbed by the ingenious surfaces they've
+surrounded themselves with, and life lies forever buried behind the
+inventions of engineers, scientists, and business men."</p>
+
+<p>Normal outwardly, a shrewd editor and journalist, functioning daily in
+his home and work as a cleverly conventional figure, Dorn had lived
+since boyhood in an unchanging vacuum. He had in his early youth become
+aware of himself. As a young man he had waited half consciously for
+something to happen to him. He thought of this something as a species of
+contact that would suddenly overtake him. He would step into the street
+and find himself a citizen absorbed by responsibilities, ideas,
+sympathies, prejudices. But the thing had never happened. At thirty he
+had explained to himself, "I am complete. This business of being empty
+is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> all there is to life. Intelligence is a faculty which enables man to
+peer through the muddle of ideas and arrive at a nowhere."</p>
+
+<p>Private introspection had become a bore to him. What was the use of
+thinking if there was nothing to think about? And there was nothing. His
+violences of temper, his emotions, definite and at times compelling, had
+always seemed to him as words&mdash;pretences to which he loaned himself for
+diversion. He was aware that neither ideas nor prejudices&mdash;the residues
+of emotion&mdash;existed in his mind. His thinking, he knew, had been a
+shuffle of words which he followed to fantastic and inconsistent
+conclusions that left him always without convictions for the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>There was a picture in the street for him on this summer morning. He was
+a part of it. Yet between himself and the rest of the picture he felt no
+contact.</p>
+
+<p>Into this emptiness of spirit, life had poured its excitements as into a
+thing bottomless as a mirror. He gave it back an image of words. He was
+proud of his words. They were his experiences and sophistications. Out
+of them he achieved his keenest diversion. They were the excuse for his
+walking, his wearing a hat and embarking daily for his work, returning
+daily to his home. They enabled him to amuse himself with complexities
+of thought as one improvising difficult finger exercises on the piano.</p>
+
+<p>At times it seemed to Dorn that he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> even incapable of thinking, that
+he possessed a plastic vocabulary endowed with a life of its own. He
+often contemplated with astonishment his own verbal brilliancies, which
+his friends appeared to accept as irrefutable truths of the moment.
+Carried away in the heat of some intricate debate he would pause
+internally, as his voice continued without interruption, and exclaim to
+himself, "What in hell am I talking about?" And a momentary awe would
+overcome him&mdash;the awe of listening to himself give utterance to
+fantastic ideas that he knew had no existence in him&mdash;a cynical magician
+watching a white rabbit he had never seen before crawl na&iuml;vely out of
+his own sleeve. Thus his phrases assembled themselves on his tongue and
+pirouetted of their own energy about his listeners.</p>
+
+<p>Smiling, garrulous, and impenetrable&mdash;garrulous even in his silences, he
+daily entered his office and proceeded skillfully about his work. He
+was, as always, delighted with himself. He felt himself a man ideally
+fitted to enjoy the little spectacle of life his day offered. Emotion in
+others invariably roused in him a sense of the ludicrous. His eyes
+seemed to travel through the griefs and torments of his fellows and to
+fasten helplessly upon their causes. And here lay the ludicrous&mdash;the
+clownish little mainspring of tragedy and drama. He moved through his
+day with a vivid understanding of its excitements. There was no mystery.
+One had only to look and see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> and words fitted themselves. A pattern
+twisted itself into precisions&mdash;precisions of men loving, hating,
+questing. The understanding swayed him between pity and contempt and
+left the balance of an amused smile in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Intimacy with Erik Dorn had meant different things to different people,
+but all had derived from his friendship a fascinated feeling of loss.
+His wife, closest to him, had after seven years found herself drained,
+hollowed out as by some tenaciously devouring insect. Her mind had
+emptied itself of its normal furniture. Erik had eaten the ideas out of
+it. Under the continual impact of his irony her faiths and
+understandings had slowly deserted her. Her thought had become a shadow
+cast by his emptiness. Things were no longer good, no longer bad. People
+had become somehow non-existent for her since she could no longer think
+of them as symbols incarnate of ideas that she liked or ideas that she
+disliked. Thus emptied of its natural furniture, her mind had borrowed
+from her heart and become filled, wholly occupied with the emotion of
+her love for Erik Dorn. More than lover and husband, he was an
+obsession. He had replaced a world for her.</p>
+
+<p>It was of his wife that Dorn was thinking when he arrived this summer
+morning at his desk in the editorial room. He had remembered suddenly
+that the day was the anniversary of their marriage. Time had passed
+rapidly. Seven years! Like seven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> yesterdays. He seemed able to remember
+them in their entirety with a single thought, as one can remember a
+column of figures without recalling either their meaning or their sum.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>The employees of the editorial room&mdash;a loft-like chamber crazily crowded
+with desks, tables, cabinets, benches, files, typewriters; lighted by a
+smoke-darkened sun and the dim glow of electric bulbs&mdash;were already
+launched upon the nervous routine of their day. An excited jargon filled
+the place which, with the air of physical disorder as if the workers
+were haphazardly improvising their activities,&mdash;gave the room a vivid
+though seemingly impermanent life.</p>
+
+<p>On the benches against a peeling wall sleepy-faced boys with precocious
+eyes kept up a lazy hair-pulling, surreptitious wrestling bout. They
+rose indifferently in response to furiously repeated bellows for their
+assistance&mdash;a business of carrying typewritten bits of paper between
+desks a few feet apart; or of sauntering with eleventh-hour orders to
+the perspiring men in the composing room.</p>
+
+<p>In the forward part of the shop a cluster of men stood about the desk of
+an editor who in a disinterested voice sat issuing assignments for the
+day, forecasting to his innumerable assistants the amount of space
+needed for succeeding editions, the possible development in the local
+scandals. His eye unconsciously watched the clock over his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> head, his
+ear divided itself between a half-dozen conversations and a tireless
+telephone. With his hands he kept fumbling an assortment of clippings,
+memoranda, and copy.</p>
+
+<p>Oldish young men and youngish old men gravitated about him, their faces
+curiously identical. These were the irresponsible-eyed, casual-mannered
+individuals, seemingly neither at work nor at play, who were to visit
+the courts, the police, the wrecks, the criminals, conventions,
+politicians, reformers, lovers, and haters, and bring back the news of
+the city's day. A common almost racial sophistication stamped their
+expression. They pawed over telephone books, argued with indifferent,
+emotionless profanity among themselves on items of amazing import;
+pounded nonchalantly upon typewriters, lolled with their feet upon
+desks, their noses buried in the humorous columns of the morning
+newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>"Make-up" men and their assistants, everlastingly irritable as if the
+victims of pernicious conspiracies, badgered for information that seemed
+inevitably non-existent. They desired to know in what mysterious manner
+one could get ten columns of type into a page that held only seven and
+whether anyone thought the paper could go to press at half-past ten when
+the bulk of the copy for the edition arrived in the composing room at
+twenty minutes of eleven.</p>
+
+<p>Proof-readers emerged from the bowels of somewhere waving smeared bits
+of printed paper and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> triumphantly demanded explanation of ambiguous
+passages.</p>
+
+<p>Re-write men "helloed" indignantly into telephones, repeating with
+sudden listlessness the pregnant details of the news pouring in; and
+scribbling it down on sheets of paper ... "dead Grant park bullet
+unknown 26 yrs silk stockings refinement mystery."</p>
+
+<p>Idlers lounged and discussed loudly against the dusty windows hung with
+torn grimy shades.</p>
+
+<p>Copy-readers, concentrated under green eye-shades, sat isolated in a
+tiny world of sharpened pencils, paste pots, shears, and emitted sudden
+embittered oaths.</p>
+
+<p>Editors from other departments, na&iuml;vely excited over items of vast
+indifference to their nervous listeners, came and went.</p>
+
+<p>An occasional printer, face and forearms smeared with ink, sauntered in
+as if on a vacation, uttering some technical announcement and
+precipitating a brief panic.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the center of the room, seated at desks jammed against one
+another in defiance of all convenience, telegraph editors, their hands
+fumbling cables and despatches from twenty ends of the earth, bellowed
+items of interest into the air&mdash;assassinations in China, probes,
+quizzes, scandals, accusations in far-away places. They varied their
+bellows with occasional shrieks of mysterious significance&mdash;usually a
+misplaced paste pot, a borrowed shears, a vanished copy-boy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These folk and a sprinkling of apparently unemployed and undisturbed
+strangers spread themselves through the shop. Outside the opened windows
+in the rear of the room, the elevated trains stuffed with men and women
+roared into a station and squealed out again. In the streets below, the
+traffic raised an ear-splitting medley of sound which nobody heard.</p>
+
+<p>Against this eternal and internal disorder, a strange pottering,
+apparently formless and without beginning or end, was guiding the latest
+confusions and intrigues of the human tangle into perfunctory groups of
+words called stories. A curious ritual&mdash;the scene, spreading through the
+four floors of the grimy building with a thousand men and women
+shrieking, hammering, cursing, writing, squeezing and juggling the
+monotonous convulsions of life into a scribble of words. Out of the
+cacophonies of the place issued, sausage fashion, a half-million papers
+daily, holding up from hour to hour to the city the blurred mirrors of
+the newspaper columns alive with the almost humorous images of an
+unending calamity.</p>
+
+<p>"The press," Erik Dorn once remarked, "is a blind old cat yowling on a
+treadmill."</p>
+
+<p>It was a quarter to nine when Dorn arrived at his desk. He seated
+himself with a complete unconsciousness of the scene. A litter of
+correspondence, propaganda, telegrams, and contributions from Constant
+Reader lay stuffed into the corners and pigeonholes of his desk. He sat
+for a mo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>ment thinking of his wife. Call her up ... spend the evening
+downtown ... some unusual evidence of affection ... the vaudeville
+wouldn't be bad.</p>
+
+<p>The thought left him and his eyes fastened themselves upon a sheaf of
+proofs.... Watch out for libel ... look for hunches ... scribble
+suggestion for changes ... peer for items of information that might be
+expanded humorously or pathetically into Human Interest yarns.... These
+were functions he discharged mechanically. A perfect affinity toward his
+work characterized his attitude. Yet behind the automatic efficiency of
+his thought lay an ironical appreciation of his tasks. The sterile
+little chronicles of life still moist from the ink-roller were like
+smeared windows upon the grimacings of the world. Through these windows
+Dorn saw with a clarity that flattered him.</p>
+
+<p>A tawdry pantomime was life, a pouring of blood, a grappling with
+shadows, a digging of graves. "Empty, empty," his intelligence whispered
+in its depths, "a make-believe of lusts. What else? Nothing, nothing.
+Laws, ambitions, conventions&mdash;froth in an empty glass. Tragedies,
+comedies&mdash;all a swarm of nothings. Dreams in the hearts of men&mdash;thin
+fever outlines to which they clung in hope. Nothing ... nothing...." His
+intelligence continued a murmur as he read&mdash;a murmur unconscious of
+itself yet coming from the depths of him. Equally unconscious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> was the
+amusement he felt, and that flew a fugitive smile in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The perfunctory hysterics of the stories of crime, graft, scandal, with
+their garbled sentences and wooden phrases; the delicious sagacities of
+the editorial pages like the mumbling of some adenoidal moron in a gulf
+of high winds; headlines saying a pompous "amen" to asininity and a
+hopeful "My God!" to confusion&mdash;these caressed him, and brought the
+thought to him, "if there is anything worthy the absurdity of life it's
+a newspaper&mdash;gibbering, whining, strutting, sprawled in attitudes of
+worship before the nine-and-ninety lies of the moment&mdash;a caricature of
+absurdity itself."</p>
+
+<p>His efficiency aloof from such moralizing moved like a separate
+consciousness through the day, as it had for the sixteen years of his
+service. His rise in his profession had been comparatively rapid. Thirty
+had found him enshrined as an editor. At thirty-four he had acquired the
+successful air which distinguishes men who have come to the end of their
+rope. He had become an editor and a fixture. The office observed an
+intent, gray-eyed man, straight nosed, firm lipped, correctly shaved
+down to the triangular trim of his mustache, his dark hair evenly
+parted&mdash;a normal-seeming, kindly individual who wore his linen and his
+features with a certain politely exotic air&mdash;the air of an identity.</p>
+
+<p>The day's vacuous items in his life passed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> quickly, its frantic routine
+ebbing into a lull toward mid-afternoon. Returning from a final uproar
+in the composing room, Dorn looked good-humoredly about him. He was
+ready to go home. Arguments, reprimands, entreaties were over for a
+space. He walked leisurely down the length of the shop, pleased as
+always by its atmosphere. It was something like the streets, this
+newspaper shop, broken up, a bit intricate, haphazard.</p>
+
+<p>A young man named Cross was painstakingly writing poetry on a
+typewriter. Another named Gardner was busy on a letter. "My dearest...."
+Dorn read over his shoulder as he passed. Promising young men, both,
+whose collars would grow slightly soiled as they advanced in their
+profession. He remembered one of his early observations: "There are two
+kinds of newspapermen&mdash;those who try to write poetry and those who try
+to drink themselves to death. Fortunately for the world, only one of
+them succeeds."</p>
+
+<p>In a corner a young woman, dressed with a certain ease, sat partially
+absorbed in a book and partially in a half-devoured apple. "The Brothers
+Karamasov," Dorn read as he sauntered by. He thought "an emancipated
+creature who prides herself on being able to drink cocktails without
+losing caste. She'll marry the first drunken newspaperman who forgets
+himself in her presence and spend the rest of her life trying to induce
+him to go into the advertising business."</p>
+
+<p>Turning down the room he passed the desk of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> Crowley, the telegraph
+editor. A face flabby and red with ancient drinking raised itself from a
+book and a voice spoke,</p>
+
+<p>"Old Egan gets more of a fool every day." Old Egan was the make-up man.
+Dorn smiled. "The damned idiot crowded the Nancy story off page one in
+the Home. Best story of the day." Crowley ended with a vaguely conceived
+oath.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn glimpsed the title of the book on his desk, <i>L'Oblat</i>. Crowley had
+been educated for the priesthood but emerged from the seminary with a
+heightened joy of life in his veins. A riotous twenty years in night
+saloons and bawdy houses had left him a kindly, choleric, and respected
+newspaper figure. Dorn caught his eye and wondered over his sensitive
+infatuation of exotic writing. In the pages of Huysmans, De Gourmont,
+Flaubert, Gautier, Symons, and Pater he seemed to have found a subtle
+incense for his deadened nerves. Inside the flabby, coarsened body with
+its red face munching out monosyllables, lived a recluse. "Too much
+living has driven him from life," Dorn thought, "and killed his lusts.
+So he sits and reads books&mdash;the last debauchery: strange, twisted
+phrases like idols, like totem poles, like Polynesian masks. He sits
+contemplating them as he once sat drunkenly watching the obscenities of
+black, white, and yellow bodied women. Thus, the mania for the rouge of
+life, for the grimace that lies beyond satiety, passes in him from
+bestiality to asceticism and esthetics. Yesterday a bac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>chanal of flesh,
+to-day a bacchanal of words ... the posturings of courtezans and the
+posturings of ornate phrases become the same." He heard Crowley
+repeating, "Damned idiot, Egan! No sense of human values. Crowded the
+best story of the day off page one." ... Some day he'd have a long talk
+with Crowley. But the man was so carefully hidden behind perfunctories
+it was hard to get at him. He resented intrusion.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn passed on and looked around for Warren&mdash;a humorous and didactic
+creature who had with considerable effort destroyed his Boston accent
+and escaped the fact that he had once earned his living as professor of
+sociology in an eastern university. Dorn caught a memory of him sitting
+in a congenial saloon before a stein and pouring forth hoarsely oracular
+comments upon the activities of men known and unknown. The man had a
+gift for caricature&mdash;Rabelaisean exaggerations. Dorn was suddenly glad
+he had gone for the day. The office oppressed him and the people in it
+were too familiar. He walked to his desk thinking of the South Seas and
+new faces.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you what," a voice drawled behind him, "Nietzsche has it on the
+whole lot of them." Cochran, the head of the copy desk, was talking&mdash;a
+shriveled little man with a bald face and shoe-button eyes. "You've got
+to admit people are more dishonest in their virtues than in their vices.
+Of course, there's a lot of stuff he pulls that's impractical."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dorn shrugged his shoulders, smiled and lifted his hat out of a locker.
+He remembered again to telephone his wife, but instead moved out of the
+office. A refreshing warmth in the street pleased his senses and he
+turned toward the lake. Walk down Michigan avenue, take a taxi
+home&mdash;what else was there to do? Nothing, unless talk. But to whom? He
+thought of his father. A tenacious old man. Probably hang on forever.
+God, the man had been married three times. If it wasn't for his damned
+infirmities he'd probably marry again. Looking for something. What was
+it the old man had kept looking for? As if there was in existence a
+concrete gift to be drawn from life. A blithering, water-eyed optimist
+to the end, he'd die with a prayer of thankfulness and gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>Thus innocuously abstract, moving in the doldrum which sometimes
+surrounded him after his day's work, he turned into the boulevard along
+the lake. The day grew abruptly fresher here. An arc of blue sky rising
+from the east flung a great curve over the building tops. Dorn paused
+before the window of a Japanese art shop and stared at a bulbous wooden
+god stoically contemplating his navel.</p>
+
+<p>During his walks through the streets he sometimes met people he knew.
+This time a young woman appeared at the window beside him. He recognized
+her with elation. His thought gave him an index of her ... Rachel
+Laskin, curious girl ... makes me talk well ... appreciative ... unusual
+eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>They walked together down the avenue. Dorn felt a return of interest in
+himself. Introspection bored him. His insincerity made self thought
+meaningless. Listeners, however, revived him. As they walked he caught
+occasional glimpses of his companion&mdash;vivid eyes, dark lips, a cool,
+shadow-tinted face that belonged under exotic trees; a morose little
+girl insanely sensitive and with a dream inside her. She admired him; or
+at least she admired his words, which amounted to the same thing. Once
+before she had said, "You are different." As usual he held his cynicism
+in abeyance before flattery. People who thought him different pleased
+him. It gave them a certain intellectual status in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>His thought, as he talked, busied itself with images of her. She gave
+him a sense of dark waters hidden from the moon&mdash;a tenuous fugitive
+figure in the pretty clamor of the bright street.</p>
+
+<p>"You remind me," he was saying, "of a nymph among dowagers and
+frightened to death. There's really nothing to be frightened of, unless
+you prefer fear to other more tangible emotions."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head. He recalled that the gesture had puzzled him at
+first. It gave an eager<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> assent to his words that surprised him. It
+pretended that she had understood something he had not said, something
+that lay beneath his words. Dorn pointed at the women moving by them.</p>
+
+<p>"Poems in shoe craft, tragedies in ankles and melodramas in legs," he
+announced. "Look at their clothes! Priestly caricatures of their sex.
+You're still drawing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But you don't like my drawing."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw one of your pictures&mdash;an abominable thing&mdash;in some needlework
+magazine. A woman with a spindly nose, picking flowers."</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at her and caught an eager smile in her eyes. She was someone
+to whom he could talk at random. This pleased him; or perhaps it was the
+sense of flattery that pleased him. He wondered if she was intelligent.
+They had met several times, usually by accident. He had found himself
+able to talk at length to her and had come away feeling an intimacy
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the windows," he continued. "Corsets, stockings, lingerie. Shop
+windows remind me of neighbors' bathrooms before breakfast. There's
+something odiously impersonal about them. See, all the way down the
+street&mdash;silks, garments, ruffles, laces. A saturnalia of masks. It's the
+only art we've developed in America&mdash;over-dressing. Clothes are
+peculiarly American&mdash;a sort of underhanded female revenge against the
+degenerate puritanism of the nation. I've seen them even at revival
+meetings clothed in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> seven tailored sins and denouncing the devil
+with their bustles. Only they don't wear bustles any more. But what's an
+anachronism between friends? Why don't you paint pictures of real
+Americans?&mdash;men hunting for bargains in chastity and triumphantly
+marrying a waistline. If that means anything."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and wondered vaguely what he was talking about. Vivid eyes
+and dark lips, a face that belonged elsewhere. He was feeding its
+poignancy words. And she admired him. Why? He was saying nothing. There
+was a sexlessness about her that inspired vulgarity.</p>
+
+<p>"You remind me of poetry," she answered without looking at him. "I
+always can listen to you without thinking, but just understanding. I've
+remembered nearly everything you've said to me. I don't know why. But
+they always come back when I'm alone, and they always seem unfinished."</p>
+
+<p>Her words jarred. She was too na&iuml;ve to coquette. Yet it was difficult to
+believe this. But she was an unusual creature, modestly asleep. A
+fugitive aloofness. Yes, what she said must be true. There was nothing
+unreasonable about its being true. She made an impression upon him. He
+undoubtedly did upon her. He would have preferred her applause, however,
+somewhat less blatant. But she was a child&mdash;an uncanny child who cooed
+frankly when interested.</p>
+
+<p>"I can imagine the millennium of virtue in Amer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>ica," he went on. "A
+crowd of painted women; faces green and lavender, moving like a
+procession of bizarre automatons and chanting in Chinese, 'We are pure.
+We are chaste and pure.' A parade of psychopathic barbarians dressed in
+bells, metals, animal skins, astrologer hats and Scandinavian ornaments.
+A combination of Burmese dancer and Babylonian priest. I ask for nothing
+more."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. He had half consciously tried to give words to an image the
+girl had stirred in him. She interrupted,</p>
+
+<p>"That's me."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her face in a momentary surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate people, too," she said. "I would like to be like one of those
+women."</p>
+
+<p>"Or else a huntress riding on a black river in the moon. I was trying to
+draw a picture of you. And perhaps of myself. You have a faculty of ...
+of ... Funny, things I say are usually only reflections of the people I
+talk to. You don't mind being a psychopathic barbarian?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," she laughed quietly, "because I understand what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean anything."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. You talk because you have nothing to say. And I like to listen
+to you because I understand."</p>
+
+<p>This was somewhat less jarring, though still a bit crude. Her admiration
+would be more pleasant were it more difficult to discover. He became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+silent and aware of the street. There had been no street for several
+minutes&mdash;merely vivid eyes and dark lips. Now there were
+people&mdash;familiar unknowns to be found always in streets, their faces
+withholding something, like unfinished sentences. He had lost interest
+and felt piqued. His loss of interest in his talk was perhaps merely a
+reflection of her own.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember hearing you were a socialist. That's hard to believe."</p>
+
+<p>There was no relation between them now. He would have to work it up
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"No, my parents are. I'm not."</p>
+
+<p>"Russians?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Jews."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm curious about your ideals."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't any."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even art?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"A wingless little eagle on a barren tree," he smiled. "I advise you to
+complicate life with ideals. The more the better. They are more
+serviceable than a conscience, in which I presume you're likewise
+lacking, because you don't have to use them. A conscience is an
+immediate annoyance, whereas ideals are charming procrastinations. They
+excuse the inanity of the present. Good Lord, what do you think about
+all day without ideals to guide you?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorn looked at her and felt again delight with himself. It was because
+her interest had returned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> Her eyes were flatteries. He desired to be
+amusing, to cover the eager child face beside him with a caress of
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think," she answered. "Do people ever think? I always imagine
+that people have ideas that they look at and that the ideas never move
+around."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he agreed, "moving ideas around is what you might call thinking.
+And people don't do that. They think only of destinations and for
+purposes of forgetting something&mdash;drugging themselves to uncomfortable
+facts. I fancy, however, I'm wrong. It's only after telling a number of
+lies that one gets an idea of what might be true. Thus it occurs to me
+now that I can't conceive of an intelligent person thinking in silence.
+Intelligence is a faculty which enables people to boast. And it's
+difficult boasting in silence. And inasmuch as it's necessary to be
+intelligent to think, why, that sort of settles it. Ergo, people never
+think. Do you mind my chatter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please ..."</p>
+
+<p>A perfect applause this time. Her sincerity appealed to him as an
+exquisite mannerism. She said "Please" as if she were breathless.</p>
+
+<p>"You're an entertaining listener," he smiled. "And very clever. Because
+it's ordinarily rather difficult to flatter me. I'm immensely delighted
+with your silence, whereas ..." Dorn stumbled. He felt his speech was
+degenerating into a compliment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Because you tell me things I've known," the girl spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet I tell you nothing."</p>
+
+<p>He stared for an instant at the people in the street. "Nothing" was a
+word his thought tripped on. He was used to mumbling it to himself as he
+walked alone in streets. And at his desk it often came to him and
+repeated itself. Now his thought murmured, "Nothing, nothing," and a
+sadness drew itself into his heart. He laughed with a sense of treating
+himself to a theatricalism.</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't talked about God," he announced.</p>
+
+<p>"God is one of my beliefs."</p>
+
+<p>She was an idiot for frowning.</p>
+
+<p>"I dislike to think of man as the product of evolution. It throws an
+onus on the whole of nature. Whereas with a God to blame the thing is
+simple."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, which was doubly idiotic, inasmuch as there was nothing to
+nod to. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Life is too short for brevities&mdash;for details. I save time by thinking,
+if you can call it thinking, <i>en masse</i>&mdash;in generalities. For instance,
+I think of people frequently but always as a species. I wonder about
+them. My wonder is concerned chiefly with the manner in which they
+adjust themselves to the vision of their futility. Do they shriek aloud
+with horror in lonely bedrooms? There's a question there. How do people
+who are important to themselves reconcile themselves to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> their
+unimportance to others? And how are they able to forget their
+imbecility?"</p>
+
+<p>They were walking idly as if dreamily intent upon the spectacle of the
+avenue. The nervous unrest that came to Dorn in streets and fermented
+words in his thought seemed to have deserted him. Assured of the
+admiration of his companion, he felt a quiet as if his energies had been
+turned off and he were coasting. He recognized several faces and saluted
+them as if overcome with a desire to relate a jest.</p>
+
+<p>"Notice the men and women together," he resumed easily, almost
+unconscious of talking. "Observing married couples is a post-graduate
+course in pessimism. There's a pair arm in arm. Corpses grown together.
+There's no intimacy like that of cadavers. Yet at this and all other
+moments they're unaware of death. They move by us without thought,
+emotion, or words in them."</p>
+
+<p>"They look very proud," she interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the set expression of vacuity. Just as skeletons always seem
+mysteriously elate. Their pride is an absence of everything else&mdash;a sort
+of rigid finery they put on in lieu of a shroud. Never mind staring
+after them, please. They are Mr. and Mrs. Jalonick who live across the
+street from my home. I dislike staring even after truths. Listen, I have
+something more to say about them if you'll not look so serious. Your
+emotions are obviously infantile. I can give you a picture of marriage:
+two little husks bowing metronomically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> in a vacuum and anointing each
+other with pompous adjectives. Draw them a little flattened in the rear
+from sitting down too much and you'll have a masterpiece. It's amusing
+to remember that Mr. and Mrs. Jalonick were once in love with each
+other!" Dorn laughed good-naturedly. "Fancy them on a June night ten
+years ago before their eyes had become cotton, holding hands and trying
+to give a meaning to the moon. Are you tired?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, please. Let's walk, if you haven't anything else to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing." It was the seventh anniversary of his marriage. An annoying
+thought. "You're an antidote for inertia. I marvel, as always, at my
+garrulity. Women usually inspire me with a desire to talk. I suppose
+it's a defensive instinct. Talk confuses women and renders them
+helpless. But that isn't it. I talk to women because they make the best
+sounding-boards. Do you object to being reduced to an acoustic? Yes, sex
+is a sort of irritant to the vocabulary. It's amusing to converse
+profoundly with a pretty woman whose sole contributions to any dialogue
+are a bit of silk hose and an oscillation of the breasts."</p>
+
+<p>"You make me forget I'm a woman and agree with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Because you're another kind of woman. The reflector. Or acoustic. I
+prefer them. I sometimes feel that I live only in mirrors and that my
+thoughts exist only as they enter the heads of others. As now, I speak
+out of a most complete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> emptiness of emotion or idea; and my words seem
+to take body in your silence&mdash;and actually give me a character."</p>
+
+<p>"I always think of you as someone hiding from himself," she answered.
+Dorn smiled. They were old friends&mdash;a union between them.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no place of concealment in me," he said after a pause. He had
+been thinking of something else. "But perhaps I hide in others. After
+talking like this I come away with a sort of echo of what I've said. As
+if someone had told me things that almost impressed me. I talk so damned
+much I'm unaware of ever having heard anybody else but myself express an
+opinion. And I swear I've never had an opinion in my life." He became
+silent and resumed, in a lighter voice, "Look at that man with whiskers.
+He's a notorious Don Juan. Whiskers undoubtedly lend mystery to a man.
+It's a marvel women haven't cultivated them&mdash;instead of corsets. But
+tell me why you've disdained art as an ideal. You're curious. It's a
+confessional I should think would appeal to you. I'm almost interested
+in you, you see. Another hour with you and you would flatter me into a
+state of silence."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn paused, somewhat startled. Her dark lips parted, her eyes glowing
+toward the end of the street, the girl was walking in a radiant
+abstraction. She appeared to be listening to him without hearing what he
+said. Dorn contemplated her confusedly. He frowned at the thought of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+having bored her, and an impulse to step abruptly from her side and
+leave became a part of his anger. He hesitated in his walking and her
+fingers, timorous and unconscious of themselves, reached for his arm. He
+wondered with a deeper confusion what she was dreaming about. Her hand
+as it lay on his forearm gave him a sense of companionship which his
+words sought clumsily to understand.</p>
+
+<p>"I was saying something about art when you fell asleep," he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel threw back her head as if she were shaking a dream out of her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't asleep," she denied. They moved on in the increasing crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Men and women," Dorn muttered. "The street's full of men and women
+going somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Except us," the girl cried. Her eyes, alight, were thrusting against
+the cold, amused smile of his face. He would be late. Anna would be
+waiting. An anniversary. Anniversaries were somehow important. They
+revived interest in events which had died. But it was nice to drift in a
+crowd beside a girl who admired him. What did he think of her? Nothing
+... nothing. She seemed to warm him into a deeper sleep. It was a relief
+to be admired for one's silence. Admired, not loved. Love was a bore.
+Anna loved him, bored him. Her love was an applause that did not wait
+for him to perform&mdash;an unreasonable ovation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He looked at the girl again. She was walking beside him, vivid eyes,
+dark lips&mdash;almost unaware of him, as if he had become a part of the
+dream that lived within her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p>When she was a child she used to see a face in the dark as she was
+falling asleep. It was crude and misshapen, and leered at her, filling
+her heart with fear. Later, people had become like that to her.</p>
+
+<p>When she was eighteen Rachel came to Chicago and studied art at an art
+school. She learned nothing and forgot nothing. She read books in
+English and in Russian&mdash;James, Conrad, Brusov, Tolstoi. Her reading
+failed to remove her repugnance to the touch of life. Instead, it lured
+her further from realities. She did not like to meet people or to hear
+them talk. At twenty she was able to earn her living by drawing posters
+for a commercial art firm and making occasional illustrations for
+magazines designed for female consumption.</p>
+
+<p>As she matured, the repugnance to life that lay like a disease in her
+nerves, developed dangerously. She would sit in her room in the evening
+staring out of the window at the darkened city and thinking of people.
+There was an endless swathing of people, buildings, faces, words, that
+wound itself tightly about her. She would cover her face suddenly and
+whisper, "Oh, I must go away. I must."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She hurried through dragging days as if she were running away. But there
+were things she could not escape. Men smiled at her and established
+themselves as friends. Women were easy to get rid of. One had only to be
+frank and women vanished. But this same frankness, she found, had an
+opposite effect upon men. Insults likewise served only to interest men.
+They would become gradually more and more acquainted with her until it
+became impossible to talk to them. Then she would have to ignore them,
+turning quickly away when they addressed her and saying, "Good-bye, I
+must go."</p>
+
+<p>At times she grew ashamed of her sensitiveness. She would sit alone in
+her room surrounded by a whimpering little silence. A melancholy would
+darken her heart. It wasn't because she was afraid of people. It was
+something else. She would try to think of it and would find herself
+whispering suddenly, "Oh, I must go away. I must."</p>
+
+<p>To men, Rachel's beauty seemed always a doubtful quality. Her appeal
+itself was doubtful. The Indian symmetry of her face lay as behind a
+luminous shadow&mdash;an ill-mannered, nervous face that was likely to lure
+strangers and irritate familiars. In the streets and restaurants people
+looked at her with interest. But people who spoke to her often lost
+their interest. There was a silence about her like a night mist. She
+seemed in this silence preoccupied with something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> that did not concern
+them. Men found the recollection of her more pleasing than her presence.
+Something they remembered of her seemed always to be missing when they
+encountered her again. Lonely evening fields and weary peasants moving
+toward the distant lights of their homes spoke from her eyes. An exotic
+memory of simple things&mdash;of earth, sky, and sea&mdash;lay in her sudden
+gestures. A sense of these things men carried away with them. But when
+they came to talk to her they grew conscious only of the fact that she
+irritated them. These who persisted in their friendship grew to regard
+her solicitously and misunderstand their emotions toward her.</p>
+
+<p>It was evening when Rachel came to her room after her walk with Erik
+Dorn. The long stroll had given her an aversion toward work. She glanced
+at several unfinished posters and moved to a chair near a window.</p>
+
+<p>A glow of excitement brightened the dusk of her face. Her eyes, usually
+asleep in distances, had become alive. They gave themselves to the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the scratch of houses and the slant of home lights she watched
+the darkness lift against the sky. The city had dwindled into a huddle
+of streets. Noise had become silence. The great crowds were packed away
+in little rooms. Sitting before the window, unconscious of herself, she
+laughed softly. Her black hair felt tight and heavy. She shook her head
+till its loose coils<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> dropped across her cheeks. She had felt confused
+when she entered the room, as if she had grown strange to herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Who am I?" she whispered suddenly. She raised her hand and stared at
+it. Something intimate had left her. She remembered herself as in a
+dream. There had been another Rachel who used to sit in this chair
+looking out of the window. A memory came of people and days. But it was
+not her memory, because her mind felt free of the nausea it used to
+bring.</p>
+
+<p>She stood up quickly and turned on a light. Her dexterous hands twisted
+her hair back into loose coils on her head. Strange, she did not know
+herself. That was because things seemed different. Here was her room,
+littered with books and canvasses and clothes, and the bed in which she
+slept, half hidden by the alcove curtains. But they were different. She
+began to hum a song. A tune had come back to her that men sang in Little
+Russia trudging home from the wheat fields. That was long ago when the
+world was a bad dream that frightened her at night. Now there was no
+world outside, but a darkness without faces or streets&mdash;a darkness with
+a deep meaning. It was something to be breathed in and felt.</p>
+
+<p>She opened the window and stood wondering. She was lonely. Loneliness
+caressed her heart and drew dim fingers across her thought. She could
+never remember having been lonely before. But now there was a
+difference. She smiled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> Of course, it was Erik Dorn. He had pleased
+her. The things he had said returned to her mind. They seemed very
+important, as if she had said them herself. She would go out and walk
+again&mdash;fast. It was pleasant to be lonely. Her throat shivered as she
+breathed. Bewildered in the lighted room she laughed and her lips said
+aloud, "I don't know. I don't know!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Among the men who had established themselves as friends of Rachel was a
+young attorney named George Hazlitt. He had gone to school with her in a
+small Wisconsin town. A year ago he had discovered her again in Chicago.
+The discovery had excited him. He was a young man with proprietary
+instincts. He had at once devoted them to Rachel. After several months
+he had begun to dream about her. They were correct and estimable dreams
+reflecting credit upon the correct and estimable stock from which he
+came.</p>
+
+<p>He fell to courting Rachel tenaciously, torn between a certainty that
+she was insane and a conviction that a home, a husband's love, and the
+paraphernalia of what he termed clean, healthy living would restore her
+to sanity. Their meetings had been affairs of violence. In her presence
+he always felt a rage against what he called her neurasthenia&mdash;a word he
+frequently used in drawing up bills for divorce. He regarded
+neurasthenia not as a disease to be condoned like the mumps, but as a
+deliberate failing&mdash;particularly in Rachel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> The neurasthenia of the
+defendants he pursued in courts annoyed him only slightly. In Rachel it
+outraged him. It was his habit to inform her that her sufferings were
+nothing more than affectations and that her moods were shams and that
+the whole was a part and parcel of neurasthenia.</p>
+
+<p>This unhappy desire of his to browbeat her into a state which he defined
+as normal, Rachel had accepted in numb helplessness. She had given up
+commanding him to leave her alone. His presence frequently became a
+nausea. Her enfevered senses had come to perceive in the conventionally
+clothed and spoken figure of the young attorney, a concentration of the
+repugnant things before which she cowered. During his courtship he had
+grown familiar to her as a penalty and his visits had become climaxes of
+loathsomeness.</p>
+
+<p>But a stability of purpose peculiar to unsensitive and egoistic young
+men kept Hazlitt to his quest. His steady rise in his profession, the
+growing respect of his fellows for his name, fired him with a sense of
+success. Rachel had become the victim of this sense. Of all the men she
+knew Hazlitt grew to be the most unnecessary. But his persistence seemed
+to increase with her aversion for him. In a sort of mental self-defense
+against the nervous disgust he brought her, she forced herself to think
+of him and even to argue with him. By thinking of him she was able to
+keep the memory of him an impersonal one, and to convert him from an
+emotionally unbearable influence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> into an intellectually insufferable
+type. A conversion by which Hazlitt profited, for she tolerated him more
+easily as a result of her ruse. She thought of him. His youth was fast
+entrenching itself in platitudes and acquiring the vigor and directness
+that come as a reward of conformity. Life was nothing to wonder at or
+feel. Life shaped itself into definite images and inelastic values
+before him. To these images and values he conformed, not submissively,
+but with a militant enthusiasm. On summer mornings he saw himself as a
+knight of virtue advancing clear-eyed upon a bedeviled world. When he
+was among his own kind he summed up the bedevilments in the word "bunk."
+The politer word, to be used chivalrously, was "neurasthenia." The
+victims of these bedevilments were "nuts." A dreadful species like
+herself, given to wrong hair cuts, insanities, outrages upon decency and
+above all, common sense.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt's attraction to Rachel in the face of her neurasthenia did not
+confuse him. Confusion was a quality foreign to Hazlitt. He courted her
+as a lover and proselyter. His proselyting consisted of vigorous
+denunciations of the things which contributed to the neurasthenia of his
+beloved. He declaimed his notions in round, rosy-cheeked sentences.
+There was about Hazlitt's wooing of Rachel the pathos which might
+distinguish the love affair of a Baptist angel and the hamadryad
+daughter of a Babayaga.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yet, though in her presence he denounced her art, taste, sufferings,
+books, friends, affectations, away from her she came to him&mdash;beautiful
+eyed and fragile&mdash;bringing a fear and a longing into his heart. Dreaming
+of her over a pipe in his home at night, he saw her as something
+bewilderingly clean, different&mdash;vividly different from other women, with
+a difference that choked and saddened him. There was a virginity about
+her that extended beyond her body. This and her fragility haunted him.
+His youth had caught the vision of the night mist of her, the lonely
+fields of her eyes, the shadow dreams toward whose solitudes she seemed
+to be flying. Beside Rachel all other women were to him somehow coarse
+and ungainly fibered, and somehow unvirginal.</p>
+
+<p>Out of his dream of her arose his desire to have her as his own, to come
+home and find her waiting, to have her known as Mrs. George Hazlitt. The
+thought of the Rachel he knew&mdash;mysterious, fugitive,
+neurasthenic&mdash;established normally across a breakfast table, smiling a
+normal good-bye at him with her arms normally about his neck, was a
+contrast that sharpened his desire. It offered a transformation that
+would be a victory not only for his love but for the shining, militant
+platitudes behind which Rachel had correctly pointed out to herself, he
+lived.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Bewildered in the lighted room, Rachel turned suddenly to the door.
+Someone was knocking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>&mdash;loud. She hurried eagerly forward, wondering at
+an unfinished thought ... "perhaps it is...." Hazlitt, smiling with
+steady, solicitous eyes confronted her.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been knocking for five minutes," he announced. "I heard you or I'd
+have gone away."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel nodded. Of course, it would be Hazlitt. He was always appearing
+when least expected. But it would be nice to talk to someone. She
+smiled. This was surprising and she shook her head as if she were
+carrying on a conversation with herself. George Hazlitt was always
+unbearable. But that was a memory. It no longer applied.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you came," she greeted him. "I was lonely."</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt looked at her in surprise. Visiting Rachel was a matter that
+required an extreme of determination. He had come prepared as usual for
+the sullen, uncomfortable hour she offered.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going out," she continued, "but I won't now. If you'll sit down
+I'll do some work. You won't mind."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him eagerly as if to tell him he must forget she had
+always hated him and that she was different now. At least for the
+moment. He understood nothing and remained staring at her. His manner
+proclaimed frankly that he was bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, certainly," he answered at length, and sat down. She hurried
+about, securing her paints<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> and setting up one of the unfinished
+posters. Drawing a deep breath Hazlitt lighted a pipe and watched her.
+She was beautiful. He admitted it with less belligerency than usual. He
+sat thinking, "what the deuce has happened to her. She said she was glad
+to see me." He was afraid to start an inquiry. She had never before
+smiled at him, let alone voiced pleasure over his presence. It was a
+mistake of some sort but he would enjoy it for awhile. But perhaps it
+was the beginning of something.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt sighed. He smoked, waited, and struggled to avoid the thoughts
+that crowded upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"That's rather nice," he said. He would follow her mood, whatever it
+was. Rachel's eyes laughed toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it doesn't bore you. If you hadn't come I would never have
+thought of working."</p>
+
+<p>The thing was unbelievable. Yet he contemplated it serenely. He would
+talk to her soon and find out what was the matter. There was undoubtedly
+something the matter. His eyes stared at her furtively as she returned
+to her work. "There's something the matter," his thought cautioned him.
+Rachel resumed her talking. A na&iuml;vet&eacute; and freshness were in her voice.
+She was letting her tongue speak for her and laughing at the sound of
+the curious remarks it made.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that women are becoming barbarians? The way they mess up
+their hair and go in for savage colors! Sometimes I get to feeling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> that
+they will end up as&mdash;as psychopathic barbarians. With astrologer hats."</p>
+
+<p>She regarded Hazlitt carelessly. Hazlitt, with fidgets in his thought,
+smiled. His eyes lost their solicitous air. They began to search
+shrewdly for some reason. The spectacle of a coquettish Rachel was
+beyond him, even as the sound of her laugh was an amazing music to his
+senses. But his shrewdness evaporated. It occurred to him that women
+were peculiar. Particularly Rachel. A direct and vigorous Hazlitt
+concluded that Rachel had succumbed to his superior guidance. There was
+nothing else to explain her tolerance. He called it tolerance, for he
+was still wary and her eyes shining eagerly, hungrily at him might be no
+more than a new kind of neurasthenia. He let her talk on without
+interruption. She would like to paint streets, houses, lights in the
+dark, city things. Blowing puffs of smoke carelessly toward the ceiling
+he answered finally, "If you didn't have to support yourself, perhaps
+you could." A fear whirled in his heart with the sentence. He had never
+asked her outright to marry him. The thought that he had almost asked
+her, now made him feel dizzy.</p>
+
+<p>"There! I guess that can rest now."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel put aside her painting. She sat down near him. Her eyes narrowed
+and she listened with a sleepy smile as he began carefully to recite to
+her incidents that had happened during his day. But he became silent.
+She didn't mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> that. She desired to sit as she was, her emotion a
+dream that escaped her thought. Hazlitt fumbled with his pipe. It was
+out. He dropped it into a pocket. His shrewdness and his weariness had
+left him. He felt almost that he was alone.</p>
+
+<p>"You're wonderful," he whispered; and he grew frightened of his voice.
+Rachel saw his face light with an unusual expression. He would be kind
+now and let her smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you came," she sighed. "I don't know why. I feel different
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>She had a habit of short, begrudging sentences delivered in a quick
+monotone&mdash;a habit of speech against which Hazlitt had often raged. But
+now her words&mdash;flurried, breathless, begrudging as always&mdash;stirred him.
+They could be believed. She was a child that way. She spoke quickly
+thoughts that were uppermost in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought I could be glad to see you. But I am."</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt felt suddenly weak. Her face before him was something in a
+dream. It was turned away and he could watch her breathing. Bewilderedly
+he remembered a thousand Rachels, different from this one, who was glad
+he had come. But the beauty of her burned away uncomfortable memories.
+She was the Rachel of his loneliness. Out of George Hazlitt vanished the
+vigor and directness of a young man who knows his own soul. There came a
+vision&mdash;a thing uncertain and awesome, and he sat humbled before it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He reached her hand and closed his fingers over it. An awe squeezed at
+his throat. Her hand lay without protest within his. He had never
+touched her before. She had been a symbol and a dream. Now he felt the
+marvel of the fact that she was a woman. Her hand, warm and alive,
+astonished him with the news.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel, during his speechlessness, looked at him unbelievingly. The grip
+of his fingers was bringing an ache into her heart. It was sad. The
+night and the room were sad. She could feel sadness opening little
+wounds in her breasts. And before she had been happy. She heard him
+whispering, "I can't talk to you. I can't. Oh, you are beautiful!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes made her think he was suffering. Then he was sad, too. She
+stood up because his hand drew her. Why did he want her to stand up? His
+body touched her and she heard him gasp. Her heart seemed adrift. She
+was unreal. There was another Rachel somewhere else. He was saying, but
+he was not talking to her, "Oh, Rachel, I love you. I love you, Rachel!"</p>
+
+<p>Still she waited unbelievingly, the ache in her dragging at her senses.
+She had fallen asleep and was dreaming something that was sad. But his
+face was suddenly too close. His eyes were too near and bright. They
+awakened her.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go, quick."</p>
+
+<p>His hands clung. For an instant she failed to understand his resistance.
+He was saying jerkily, "No ... no!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She twisted out of his arms and stood breathless, as if she were
+choking. Hazlitt looked at her, a bit pensively. His heart lost in a
+dream and a rapture could only grimace a child's protest out of his
+stare. He hadn't kissed her. But that would come soon. Not everything at
+once. He must not be a brute. He smiled. His good-natured face glowed as
+if in a light. Then he heard her talking,</p>
+
+<p>"Go away. At once. I never want to see you again. I'll die if I see you
+again."</p>
+
+<p>Her hands were in her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Go away. Please.... Oh, God, I can't stand you. You&mdash;horrify me!"</p>
+
+<p>The panic in Rachel's voice seemed to dull his ears to her words. He saw
+her for a vivid moment against the opened window and then he found
+himself alone, looking into a night that was haunted with an image of
+her. He remembered her going, but it seemed to him he still saw her
+against the window, his eyes bringing to him a vision of her face as she
+had looked.</p>
+
+<p>He had grown white. In the memory of her face, as in an impossible
+mirror, he saw a loathsome image of himself. Her eyes had blazed with
+it. He sickened and his thought grew faint. Then the night came before
+him and the echo of the words Rachel had spoken beat in his head. He
+walked with his hat politely in his hand out of the door.</p>
+
+<p>On the stairs his eyes grew weak and warm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> Tears rushed from them. He
+stumbled and clutched at the banister. She had led him on. She had
+looked at him with love. Love ... but he had dreamed that. What was it,
+then? Her eyes burning toward him had told him he was loathsome. There
+was something wrong with him. He wept. He put his hat on mechanically.
+He dried his eyes. There was something wrong.</p>
+
+<p>On her bed Rachel lay mumbling to herself, mumbling as if the words were
+a pain to her ears. "Erik Dorn ... Erik Dorn."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The world in which Erik Dorn lived was compounded of many surfaces. Of
+them Anna, his wife, was the most familiar. It was a familiarity of
+absorption. Weeks of intimacy passed between them, of lover-like
+attentiveness during which Dorn remained unconscious of her existence.
+Her unending talk of her love for him&mdash;words and murmurs that seemed an
+inexhaustible overflow of her heart&mdash;passed through his mind as a part
+of his own thought. Hers was a more definite contribution to the
+emptiness of the life through which he moved.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in his unconsciousness of her there lived a shadowy affection. On
+occasions in which they had been separated there had always awakened in
+him an uneasiness. In his nights alone he lay sleepless, oppressed, a
+nostalgia for her presence growing in him. With his eyes opened at the
+darkness of a strange room he experienced then an incompleteness as if
+he himself were not enough. The emptiness in which he was living became
+suddenly real. He would feel a despair. Words unlike the sophisticated
+patter of his usual thought would come to him.... "What is there ... I
+would like something ... what?..." A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> sense of life as an unpeopled
+vastness would frighten him vaguely. Night sounds ... strange,
+shadow-hidden walls. They made him uneasy. Memories then; puzzling,
+mixed-up pictures that had lost their outlines. Things that had left no
+impression on his thought&mdash;sterile little incidents through which he had
+moved with automatic gestures&mdash;returned like sad little outcasts
+pleading with him. Faces he could not remember and that were yet
+familiar peered at him in his sleeplessness with poignant eyes that
+frightened.</p>
+
+<p>There would come to him the memory of the time he had been a boy and had
+lain like this in his mother's home, startled with fears that sat like
+insanities in his throat. The memory of his being a boy seemed to
+restore him to the fears long forgotten. Words would come ... "I was a
+boy ..." and he would lie thinking of how people grew old; of how he had
+grown old without seeming to change, and yet changing&mdash;as if he had been
+gently vanishing from himself and even now was moving slowly away. He
+was like a house from which issued a dim procession of guests never
+pausing for farewells. He had been a boy, a youth, a man ... each
+containing days and thoughts. And they moved slowly away from
+him&mdash;completed figures fully dressed. Slowly, without farewells, with
+faces intensely familiar yet no longer known. Thus he would continue to
+vanish from himself, remaining unchanged but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> diminishing, until there
+were no more guests to forsake and he stood alone waiting a last
+farewell&mdash;a curious, unimaginable good-bye to himself. Nothing ...
+nothing. A long wait for a good-bye. And then nothing again. Already he
+was half shadow&mdash;half a procession of Erik Dorns walking away from him
+and growing dimmer.</p>
+
+<p>In the dark of the strange room, his eyes staring and fearful, he would
+reach suddenly for Anna, embracing her almost as if she were beside him.
+Her smile that forever shone upon him like the light of lilies and
+candles from a sad, quiet altar; her words that forever flowed like a
+dream from her heart, the warmth of her body that she offered him as if
+it no longer existed for herself&mdash;to these his loneliness sought vainly
+to carry him. And he would find himself tormented by a desire for her,
+lying with her name on his lips and her image alone alive in the empty
+dread of his thought.</p>
+
+<p>United again in their home, he lapsed into the unconsciousness of her,
+sometimes vaguely startled by the tears he felt on her cheeks as they
+lay together at night. Out of this unconsciousness he made continual
+love to her, giving her back her endearments and caresses. Of this he
+never tired. His kisses unaware of her, his tendernesses without meaning
+to him, he yet felt in her presence the shadow of a desire. The love
+that filled his wife seemed to animate his phrases with an amorous
+diction that echoed her own. He would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> hold her in his arms, bestowing
+kisses upon her, and watch as in wonder of some mysterious make-believe,
+the radiance that his meaningless gestures brought to her.</p>
+
+<p>There were times, however, when Dorn became aware of his wife, when she
+thrust herself before him as a far-away-eyed and beautiful-faced
+stranger. He had frequently followed her in the street, watching her
+body sway as she walked, observing with quickening surprise her trim,
+lyre-like shoes, her silken ankles, the agile sensualism of her
+litheness under a stranger's dress. He had noticed that she had coils of
+red hair with bronze and gold lights slipping over it, that her face
+tilted itself with a hint of determination and her eyes walked proudly
+over the heads of the crowd. He watched other men glimpse her and turn
+for an instant to follow with their stares the promise of her body and
+lighted face. Dorn, walking out of her sight, got a confused sense of
+her as if she were speaking to the street, "I am a beautiful woman. In
+my head are thoughts. I am a stranger to you. You do not know what my
+body looks like or what dreams live in me. I have destinations and
+emotions that are mysterious to you. I am somebody different from
+yourselves."</p>
+
+<p>On top of this sense of her had come each time a sudden vivid
+picture&mdash;Anna in their bedroom attaching her garters to the tops of her
+stockings; Anna tautening her body as she slipped out of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> nightgown
+... or a picture of her pressing his head against her breasts and
+whispering passionately, "Erik, I adore you." The strangeness then would
+leave her and again she was something he had absorbed. When he looked
+for her she had vanished in the scribble of the crowd and he walked with
+the same curious unconsciousness of her existence as of his own.</p>
+
+<p>There were times too in their home when Anna became a reality before his
+eyes&mdash;an external that startled him. This was such a time now. Rachel
+had come to visit them. She sat silent, fugitive-bodied amid overfed,
+perspiring-eyed guests. And he stood looking at Anna and listening to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered why he looked at Anna and not at Rachel. But his wife in
+black velvet and silken pumps, like a well-limned character out of some
+work of stately fiction, held his attention. He desired to talk to her
+as if she were a stranger. She sat without surprise at his unusual
+verbal animation in her behalf, listening to his banter with an intent,
+almost preoccupied smile in her eyes. While he talked, asking her
+questions and pressing for answers, he thought. "She's not paying any
+attention to my words, but to me. Her love is like a robe about her,
+covering her completely." Yet she seemed strange. Behind this love lived
+a person capable of thinking and reasoning. Dorn, as sometimes happened,
+grew curious about her thoughts. He increased his efforts to rivet her
+attention, as if he were trying to coax a secret out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of her. The
+easiest way to arouse her was to say things that frightened her, to make
+remarks that might give her the feeling he had some underlying idea in
+his head hostile to their happiness.</p>
+
+<p>The company of faces in the room emitted laughter, uttered words of
+shocked contradiction, pressed themselves eagerly forward upon his
+phrases. A red-faced man whose vacuity startled from behind a pair of
+owlish glasses exclaimed, "That's all wrong, Dorn. Women don't want war.
+Your wife would rather cut off her arm than see you go to war. And mine,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>The wife of the red-faced man giggled. A younger, unmarried woman posed
+carelessly on the black piano bench in an effort to exaggerate the
+charms of her body, spoke with a deliberate sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't agree with you, Mr. Harlan. Women are capable of
+sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>She thrust forward a lavender-stockinged leg and contemplated it with a
+far-away sacrificial light in her eyes. The red-faced one observed her
+with sudden owlish seriousness. His argument seemed routed.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course that's true," he agreed. Mr. Harlan came of a race whose
+revolutionary notions expired apologetically before the first platitude
+to cross their path. "We must always bear in mind that women are capable
+of sacrifice; that women ..." The lavender stocking was withdrawing
+itself and Mr. Harlan stammered like an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> orator witnessing a sudden
+exodus of his audience, "that women are really capable of remarkable
+things," he concluded.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn was an uncommonly clever fellow, but a bit radical. He'd like to
+think of something to say to him just to show him there was another side
+to it. Not that he gave a damn. Some other time would do. The red face
+turned with a great attentiveness toward the hoarsely oracular Mr.
+Warren, his eyes dropping a furtive curtsy in the direction of the
+vanished stocking.</p>
+
+<p>"I never agree with Dorn," Warren was remarking, "for fear of
+displeasing him."</p>
+
+<p>He gazed belligerently at Anna whose eyes were attracting attention. She
+was watching her husband in a manner unbecoming a hostess. A middle-aged
+youth toying politely with the blue sash of a girl in a white dress&mdash;he
+had recently concluded a tense examination of the two antique rings on
+her fingers&mdash;saw an occasion for laughter and embraced it. The girl
+glanced somewhat timidly toward Anna and addressed her softly, as if
+desiring to engage in some conversation beyond the superficial
+excitement of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm just mad about blue sashes," she whispered. "I think the sash is
+coming back, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Anna nodded her head. Erik had resumed his talk, his eyes still on her.</p>
+
+<p>"Women are two things&mdash;theory and fact," he was saying. "The theory of
+them demands war.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> If we get into this squabble you'll find them
+cheering the loudest and waving the most flags. War is something that
+kills men; therefore, it is piquantly desirable to their subconscious
+hate of our sex." He smiled openly at Anna. "It's also something that
+plays up the valor and superiority of man and therefore offers a
+vindication for her submission to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," the lavender stocking was indignantly in evidence, "how awful!"</p>
+
+<p>Dorn waited until the young woman had shifted her hips into a more
+protesting outline.</p>
+
+<p>"I agree," the red face chimed in. "It's nonsense. Dorn's full of clever
+nonsense. I quite agree with you, Miss Dillingham." Miss Dillingham was
+the lavender stocking. The wife of the red face fidgeted, politely
+ominous. She announced pertly:</p>
+
+<p>"I agree with what Mr. Dorn says." Which announcement her husband
+properly translated into a warning and a threat of future conversation
+on the theme, "You never pay any attention to me when there's anybody
+else around."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn continued, "And it gives them a sense of generalities. Women live
+crowded between the narrow horizons of sex. They don't share in life.
+It's very sad, isn't it, Miss Williams?" Miss Williams removed her sash
+gently from the hands of the elderly youth and pouted. She was always
+indignant when men addressed her seriously. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> gave her an
+uncomfortable feeling that they were making fun of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know," she answered. The elderly youth nodded his head
+enthusiastically and whispered close to her ear, "Exactly."</p>
+
+<p>"The things that are an entirety to women," pursued Dorn, "milk bottles,
+butcher bills, babies, cleaning days, hello and good-bye kisses, are
+merely gestures to their husbands. So in a war they find themselves able
+to share what is known as the larger horizon of the male. One way is
+through sacrifice. They sacrifice their sons, lovers, husbands, uncles,
+and fathers with a high, firm spirit, announcing to the press that they
+are only sorry their supply of relatives is limited. The sacrificing
+brings them in contact with the world in which their males live. That's
+the theory of it."</p>
+
+<p>Anna's smile continued to deny itself to his words. It said to him,
+"What does it matter what you say? I love you." And yet there was a
+thought behind it holding itself aloof.</p>
+
+<p>"But the fact of woman is always denying her theory," he added. "That's
+what makes her confusing. The fact of her weeps at departures, shell
+shocks, amputations; grows timid and organizes pacifist societies. It's
+a case of sex instinct versus the personal complex."</p>
+
+<p>The elderly young man straightened in his chair, removing his eyes from
+Miss Williams with the air of one returning to masculine worldliness.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about that," he said. "It's all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> very well to talk about
+such things flippantly. But when the time comes, we must admit ..."</p>
+
+<p>"That talk is foolish," interrupted Warren. He looked at Rachel and
+laughed. "As a matter of fact, if anybody else but Dorn said it, I'd
+believe it. But I never believe Dorn. Do you, Miss Laskin?"</p>
+
+<p>Rachel answered, "Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn, piqued by the continual silence of his wife, felt a sudden
+discomfiture at the sound of Rachel's voice. Was Anna aware he was
+talking to her so as to avoid talking to Rachel? Perhaps. But Rachel's
+presence was diluted by the company. He caught a glimpse of her dark
+eyes opened towards him, and for a moment felt his words disintegrate.
+He continued hurriedly:</p>
+
+<p>"War, in a way, is a noble business, in that it reduces us to a
+biological sanity&mdash;much the same as does Miss Dillingham's lavender
+stocking!"</p>
+
+<p>The company swallowed this with an abrupt stiffening of necks. Isaac
+Dorn, who had been airing himself on the veranda, relieved a tension by
+appearing in the doorway and moving quietly toward an unoccupied chair.
+Anna reached her hand to the old man's and held it kindly. Miss
+Dillingham, surveying the stretch of hose which had been honored in her
+host's conversation, raised her eyes and replied quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dorn is too clever to be really insulting."</p>
+
+<p>The red-faced one clung to a sense of outrage. His cheeks had grown
+slightly distended, and with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> the grimace of indignant virtue bristling
+on his face, he turned the expression toward his wife for approval. She
+nodded her head and tightened the thin line of her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I only meant," laughed Dorn, "that it reduces us to the sort of sanity
+that wipes out the absurd, artificial notions of morality that keep
+cluttering up the thought of the race. War reminds us that civilization
+and murder are compatible. Lavender stockings, speaking in generalities,
+are reminders that good and evil walk on equally comely legs."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Harlan, having registered indignation, now struggled vainly against
+the preenings of his wit, and finally succumbed.</p>
+
+<p>"In these days you can't tell Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's lady apart
+by their stockings, eh?" He hammered his point home with a laugh. Warren
+winked at Rachel as if to inform her of the mixed company they were in,
+and Mrs. Harlan endeavored to put an end to the isolated merriment of
+her husband with a "John, you're impossible!" The elderly youth,
+conscious of himself as the escort of a young virgin, lowered his eyes
+modestly to her ankles. Dorn, watching his wife's smile deepen, nodded
+his head at her. He knew her momentary thought. She labored under the
+pleasing conviction that his risqu&eacute; remarks were invariably inspired by
+memories of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Barring, of course, the unembattled stay-at-homes," he continued. "The
+sanity of battlefields is in direct ratio to the insanity of the
+non-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>combatants. You can see it already in the press. We who stay at
+home endeavor to excuse the crime of war by attaching ludicrous ideals
+and purposes to its result. Thus every war is to its non-combatants a
+holy war. And we get a swivel-chair collection of nincompoops raving
+weirdly, as the casualty lists pour in, of humanity and democracy. It
+hasn't come yet, but it will."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you don't believe in war?" said the red face, emerging
+triumphantly upon respectable ground.</p>
+
+<p>"As a phenomenon inspired by ideals or resulting in anything more
+satisfactory than a wholesale loss of life, war is always a joke," Dorn
+answered. He wondered whether Rachel was considering him a pompous ass.
+"I have a whole-hearted respect for it, however, as a biological
+excitement."</p>
+
+<p>The blue sash winced primly at the word biological, and appealed to her
+escort to protect her somehow from the indecencies of life. The elderly
+youth answered her appeal with a tightening of his features.</p>
+
+<p>"War isn't biological," he retorted in her behalf.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn, wearying of his talk, waited for some one of the company to
+relieve him of the burden. But the elderly youth had subsided, and
+fulfilling his functions as host&mdash;a business of diverting visitors from
+the fact that there was no reason for their presence in his home&mdash;Dorn
+was forced to continue:</p>
+
+<p>"I can conceive of no better or saner way to die<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> than crawling around
+in the mud, shrieking like a savage, and assisting blindly in the
+depopulation of an enemy. But unless a man is forced to fight, I can
+conceive of nothing more horrible than war. Don't you think that, Anna?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know what I think, Erik," she answered. "I hate it."</p>
+
+<p>He was startled by a sudden similarity between Rachel and Anna. She too
+was looking at him with the indignant aloofness of his wife&mdash;with a rapt
+attention seemingly beyond the sound of his words. He caught the two
+women turn and smile to each other with an understanding that left him a
+stranger to both. He thought quickly, "Anna is the only one in the room
+intelligent enough for Rachel to understand." He felt a momentary pride
+in his wife, and wondered.</p>
+
+<p>As the conversation, playing with the theme of war, spread itself in
+spasmodic blurs about the room, bursting in little crescendoes of
+conviction, pronouncements, suddenly serious and inviolable truths, Dorn
+found himself listening excitedly. An unusual energy pumped notions into
+his thought. But it was impossible to give vent to ideas before this
+collection of comedians. He desired to look at Rachel, but kept his eyes
+away. If they were alone, he could talk. He permitted himself the luxury
+of an explosive silence.</p>
+
+<p>He sat for a time thinking. "Curious! She knows I have things to say to
+her. They are unimportant but I can say them to no one else.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> She knows
+I avoid looking at her. There must be something&mdash;an attraction. She's a
+fool. I don't know. I should have put an end to our walks long ago."</p>
+
+<p>His vocabulary, marshaling itself under a surprising force, charged with
+a rush through his thought. Sentences unrelated, bizarre combinations of
+words&mdash;a kaleidoscopic procession of astounding ideas&mdash;art, life, war,
+streets, people&mdash;he knew what they were all about. An illumination like
+a verbal ecstacy spread itself through him. Under it he continued to
+think as if with a separate set of words, "I don't know. She isn't
+beautiful. A stupid, nervous little girl. But it hasn't anything to do
+with her. It's something in me."</p>
+
+<p>He stood up, his eyes unsmiling, and surveyed the animated faces as from
+a distance. Paper faces and paper eyes&mdash;fluttering masks suspended
+politely above fabrics that lounged in chairs. They were unreal&mdash;too
+unreal even to talk to. Beyond these figures in the room and the noises
+they made, lay something that was not unreal. It pulled at the sleep in
+him. He stood as if arrested by his own silence. The night outside the
+window came into his eyes, covering the words in his brain and leaving
+him alone.</p>
+
+<p>He heard Anna speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you thinking about, Erik?"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes seemed to him laden with forebodings. Yet she was smiling.
+There was something that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> made her afraid. He turned toward Rachel and
+found her standing as if in imitation of himself, her face lifted toward
+the window, the taut line of her neck an attitude that brought him the
+image of a white bird's wing soaring. He felt himself unable to speak,
+as if a hand had been laid threateningly on his throat. Rachel was
+indiscreet to stand that way, to look that way. There was no mistaking.
+His thought, shaking itself free of words ... "In love with me. In love
+with me!" He paused. A bewildering sense of infidelity. But he had done
+nothing&mdash;only walk with her a few afternoons. And talk. "A stupid,
+nervous little girl." It was some sort of game, not serious necessarily.
+He stepped abstractedly toward his wife, aware that the conversation had
+flattened.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't thinking," he answered, searching guiltily for an epigram.
+"Won't you play?"</p>
+
+<p>Anna stood up and brought her eyes to a level with his own. Again the
+light of foreboding, of unrevealed shadows flashed at him out of her
+smile. She understood something not clear in his own head; nor in hers.
+He grasped her hand as she passed and with a dolorous grimace of his
+heart felt it unresponsive in his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Anna was playing from a piano score of <i>Parsifal</i>. The music dropped a
+curtain. Dorn became conscious of himself in an overheated room
+surrounded by a group of awed and saccharine faces. Rachel was smiling
+at him with a meaning that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> seemed to have forgotten. He stared back,
+pleasantly aware that a familiar sneer had returned to his eyes. In a
+corner his father sat watching Anna and he noticed that the old man's
+watery eyes turned in, as if gazing at images in his own thought. His
+father's smile, as always, touched Dorn with an irritation, and he
+hurried from it.</p>
+
+<p>The others were more amusing. The spectacle of the faces wilting into
+maudlin abstractions under the caress of the music brought a grin to
+him. The sounds had drugged the polite little masks and left them poised
+morosely in a sleepy dream. The lavender stocking crept tenderly into
+evidence. The owlish glasses focused with noncommittal stoicism in its
+direction. The blue sash looked worried and the raised eyebrows of the
+elderly youth asked unhappy questions. Music made people sad and caused
+sighs to trickle from their ludicrously inanimate features. Melting
+hearts under lacquered skins, dissolving little whimpers under
+perfunctory attitudes.</p>
+
+<p>He remembered his own mood of a few moments ago, and explained to
+himself. Something had given him a dream. The night shining through the
+window, the curve of Rachel's neck. Rachel ... Rachel ... He grew
+suddenly sick with the refrain of her name. It said itself longingly in
+his thought as if there was a meaning beyond it.</p>
+
+<p>The playing had stopped. The listeners appeared to be lingering
+dejectedly among its echoes. Rachel slipped quickly to her feet, her
+arms thrust<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> back as if she were poised for running. She passed abruptly
+across the room. Her behavior startled him. The faces looked at her
+curiously. She was running away.</p>
+
+<p>Anna followed her quietly into the vestibule and the company burst into
+an incongruous babble. Dorn listened to their voices, again firm and
+self-sufficient, chattering formalities. He watched Rachel adjusting her
+hat with over-eager gestures. Her eyes were avoiding him. She seemed
+breathless, her head squirming under the necessity of having to remain
+for another moment before the eyes of the people in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go," she said suddenly. Her hand extended itself to Anna. A
+frightened smile widened her mouth. Dorn felt her eyes center excitedly
+on him. A confused desire to speak kept him silent. He stood up and
+entered the hall to play his little part as host. But Rachel was gone.
+The door had closed behind her and he stared at the panels, feeling that
+the house had emptied itself. Things were normal again. Anna was
+speaking to her guests, smoothly garrulous. They were putting on hats
+and saying good-bye. They would have to hurry to escape the rain. He
+assisted with wraps, his eyes furtively watching the door as if he
+expected to see it open again, with Rachel returning.</p>
+
+<p>"I've really had a wonderful time," the lavender stocking was shrilling.
+He became solicitous and followed her to the door, walking with her
+down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> the housesteps. A moist summer night, promising rain.</p>
+
+<p>But the street was empty of Rachel, and he returned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>They were in their bedroom undressing. Outside, the night rustled with
+an approaching storm. On the closed windows the rain began a rattle of
+water. A wind filled the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you act so strangely to-night, Erik?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him as she stood uncovering herself. She desired to speak
+with a disarming casualness. Instead, her words came with a sound of
+tears in them. He was always strange&mdash;always going away from her until
+she had to close her eyes and love in the dark without trying to see
+him. Now he might go to war and be killed. Something would happen.
+"Something ... something ..." kept murmuring itself in her thought.</p>
+
+<p>"I love to hear you play to a crowd," he answered good-humoredly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" She could not get the languor out of her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"When people listen to music it always reminds me we are descended from
+fish. God, what dolts! Minds like soft-bodied sea growths. I can
+actually see them sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"You always dislike my friends."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She would argue with him, and in his anger his strangeness would go
+away.</p>
+
+<p>"Your friends?" He seemed pleased at the chance of growing angry. "Allow
+me to point out to you that the assemblage to-night had the distinction
+of being my friends. I discovered the collection. I brought them to the
+house first."</p>
+
+<p>"They think you're wonderful." She would get him angry that way.</p>
+
+<p>"A virtue, I admit. But it doesn't excuse their other stupidities."</p>
+
+<p>They seemed to have nothing to argue about. Anna loosened her hair. The
+sight of it rolling in glistening bronzes and reds from her head
+invariably gave her a desire to cover Erik's face in it. With his face
+buried in the disordered masses of her hair she would feel an exquisite
+fullness of love.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think Rachel stupid, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorn felt a relief at the sound of her name. His thought was full of
+her, but he had been afraid to talk.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Laskin," he replied, concealing his eagerness for the topic with a
+drawl, "is partially insane."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you like insane people, though. I can always tell when you like
+people. You never pay any attention to them then, but sort of come
+hanging around me&mdash;as if you were apologizing to yourself for liking
+them, and doing penance. Or you call them names."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Laskin," Dorn answered, delighted to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> protract the conversation,
+"is a vivid sort of imbecile suffering from vacuous complexities. An
+hour alone in a room with her would drive even a philosopher to madness.
+She's one of the kind of people given to inappropriate silences. She
+reminds me of an emotion undergoing a major operation. Good Lord, Anna,
+don't tell me you're jealous of her?"</p>
+
+<p>It was immaterial whether he denounced or upheld Rachel. To talk of her
+even with indignation was a delight.</p>
+
+<p>Thunder rolled, and he became silent. Anna turned her nakedness to him.
+Her eyes, grown dark, beheld a yearning and a sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk about people," she whispered. "I'm glad you hate them&mdash;all
+of them."</p>
+
+<p>Her nudity always surprised Dorn. Her body seemed always to have grown
+more beautiful and impersonal. A shout of rain sounded in the night and
+a chill wind burst with a clatter in the darkness. He thought of Rachel
+as he darkened the room. There came to him a picture of her walking in
+the rain with her head raised and laughing.</p>
+
+<p>Anna lay for a moment, awed by the suddenness of the storm. She turned
+quickly, her arms reaching hungrily about her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you," she whispered. "Oh, I love you so much. My own, my
+dearest!"</p>
+
+<p>She felt his lips touch hers, and closed her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me...."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn murmured back to her, "I adore you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A little laugh came, and tears reached her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"You're so wonderful," she whispered. "Think of it! It's been the same
+since the first night. You love me&mdash;just as you did."</p>
+
+<p>She paused questioningly&mdash;an old question to which he gave an old
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you more."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it. I can feel it. You won't ever get tired of loving me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never&mdash;never as long as I live."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you make me so happy!"</p>
+
+<p>A sigh almost like a moan came from her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm a fool. I get frightened sometimes&mdash;when I hear you talk.
+Something takes you away. You mustn't ever go away. Promise me. Listen,
+Erik." She dropped into a panic. "Promise me you won't go to war."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"That was only talk," he whispered. "You should know my talk by this
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never know you."</p>
+
+<p>"Please, Anna, don't. You hurt me when you say that."</p>
+
+<p>"And when you were silent," she went on softly, "I felt&mdash;I felt
+something had happened. Erik, darling Erik. Oh, you're my whole life!"</p>
+
+<p>"I adore you, sweetest," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't live except in you, Erik. And, oh, I'm a fool. Such a fool!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You're wonderful," he interrupted. He was making responses in an old
+ritual.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not. I'll make you tired of me. Tell me, please. Tell me you
+love me. I feel you've never told me it."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you more than everything else in life. More than everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do you, Erik?"</p>
+
+<p>She pressed herself closer to him, and he felt her body like the heat of
+a flame avidly caress him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want you any different, though," she whispered. "When I see
+other men I get horrified to think that you might become like them&mdash;if
+you didn't love me. Dead, creepy things. Oh, men are horrible. Talk to
+me, Erik."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't. I love you. What else is there to say?" His voice trembled and
+her mouth pressed upon his.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't deserve such happiness," she said. Tears from her eyes fell
+like warm wax on his shoulder. Her hands were fumbling distractedly over
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Erik," she gasped, "my Erik! I worship you."</p>
+
+<p>The storm pounded through the night, leaping and bellowing in a halloo
+of sounds. Dorn tightened his arms mechanically about her warm flesh.
+His lips were murmuring tensely, dramatically, "I love you. I love you."
+And a sadness made a little warmth in his heart. He was alone in the
+night. His arms and words were engaged in an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> old make-believe. But this
+time he felt himself further away. There was no meaning....</p>
+
+<p>He tried vainly to think of Anna, but an emptiness crowded even her name
+out of his mind. His hands were returning her caresses, mimicking the
+eager distraction of her own. His mind, removed as if belonging
+elsewhere, was thinking aimless little words.</p>
+
+<p>There was a storm outside. Lightning.... The war was taking up too much
+space in the paper. Crowding out important local news. The Germans would
+probably get to Paris soon and put an end to it.... Why did Rachel run
+away? Should he ask her? Sometime. When he saw her. Ask her. Ask her....
+His thought drifted into a blank. Then it said ... "The thing is
+meaningless. Meaningless. Houses, faces, streets. Nothing, nothing.
+There's nothing...."</p>
+
+<p>His wife lay silent, quivering with an ecstasy. Her arms were hungrily
+choking him. Dorn closed his eyes as if to hide himself. His lips still
+murmured in a monotone, vague as the voice of a stranger in his
+ears&mdash;responses in an old ritual&mdash;"I love you, I love you! Oh, I love
+you so much!..."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+<h2>DREAM</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I2">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II2">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III2">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV2">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V2">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I2" id="CHAPTER_I2"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the evening when women stand washing dishes in the kitchens of the
+city, men light their tobacco and open newspapers. Later, the women
+gather up the crumpled sheets and read.</p>
+
+<p>The streets of the city spell easy words&mdash;poor, rich&mdash;neither.</p>
+
+<p>Here in one part live the grimy-faced workers, their sagging, shapeless
+women and their litters of children. Their windows open upon broken
+little streets and bubbling alleys. Idiot-faced wooden houses sprawl
+over one another with their rumps in the mud. The years hammer
+away&mdash;digesting the paint from houses. The years grind away, yet life
+persists. Beneath the grinding of the years, life gropes, shrieks,
+sweats. And in the evening men light their tobacco and open newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>Around a corner the boxes commence. One, two, three, four, and on into
+thousands stand houses made of stone, and their regimental masonry is
+like the ticking of a clock. Unvarying windows, doors identical&mdash;a
+stereotype of roofs and chimneys&mdash;these hold the homes of the crowds.
+Here the vague faces of the streets, the hurrying, enigmatic figures
+pumping in and out of offices and stores gather to sleep and breed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> In
+the evening the crowds drift into boxes. The multiple destinations
+dwindle suddenly into a monotone. The confusions of the city's traffic;
+the winding and unwinding herds that made a picture for the eyes of Erik
+Dorn, individualize into little human solitudes. The stone houses stand
+ticking away the years, and within them men and women tick. Doors open
+and shut, lights go on and off, day and night drop a tick-tock across
+miles of roofs. And in the hour of the washing of dishes men kindle
+their tobacco and read the newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, timidly, the city moves away from the little stone boxes.
+Automobiles and trees appear. Here begin the ornaments. Marble, bronze,
+carved and painted brick&mdash;a filigree and a scrollwork&mdash;put forth claims.
+The lords of the city stand girthed in ornaments. Knight and satrap have
+changed somewhat. Moat and battlement grimace but faintly from behind
+their ornaments. The tick-tock sounds through the carouse. Sleek, suave
+men and languorous, desirable women sit amid elaborations, sleep and
+breed in ornamental beds. Power wears new masks. Leadership has improved
+its table manners, its plumbing, and its God.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful clocks, massive with griffiens and gargoyles, nymphs and
+scrollwork&mdash;they shelter heroes. But heroes have changed. Destiny no
+longer passes in the night&mdash;a masked horseman riding a lonely road.
+Instead, an old watchmaker<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> winds up clocks, sleek men and desirable
+women. In the inner offices of the city the new heroes sit through the
+day, watchmakers themselves, winding and unwinding the immemorial crowds
+with new devices. But in the evening they too return to their ornamental
+boxes, and under Pompeian lamps, amid Renaissance tapestries, open
+newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>Alley box and manor, the tick-tock of the city has them all. Paved
+streets and window-pitted walls beat out a monotone. Lust and dream turn
+sterile eyes to the night. The great multiple tick-tock of the city
+waits another hour to pass.</p>
+
+<p>Wait, it reads a newspaper. On the west side of the city a man named
+Joseph Pryzalski has murdered a woman he loved, beating her head in with
+an ax, and subsequently cut his own throat with a razor. At the inquest
+there will be exhibited a note scribbled on a piece of wrapping-paper
+still redolent with herring ... "God in heaven, forgive me! She is dead.
+It is better. Oh, God, now my turn!" Deplorable incident.</p>
+
+<p>In the next column the exploits of three young men armed with guns.
+Entering a bank, the three young men shot and killed Henry J. Sloane,
+cashier; held half a dozen other names at bay, loaded their pockets with
+money, and escaped in a black automobile. The police are, fortunately,
+combing the city for the three young men and the black automobile. Thank
+God for the police moving cautiously through the streets with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> large,
+a magnificent comb that will soon pick the three young men, their three
+guns, and their symbolical black automobile out of the city.</p>
+
+<p>Next, the daily report of excitements in Europe. The Austrian army has
+been annihilated. A part of the German army, seemingly the most
+important part, has also been annihilated. Day by day the armies of the
+Allies continue to devour, obliterate, grind into dust the armies of the
+Kaiser. Bulletin&mdash;black type demanding quick eye&mdash;twenty thousand
+unsuspecting Prussians walking across a bridge on the Meuse were blown
+up and completely annihilated. This occurred on a Monday. In the teeth
+of these persistent and vigorous annihilations, the Huns still continue
+their atrocities. Shame! In Li&eacute;ge, on a Tuesday, the blood-dripping Huns
+added another horror to their list of revolting crimes. Three citizens
+of Li&eacute;ge were executed. They died like heroes. There are other items on
+this general subject, including a message from the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Alongside the war, as if in a next room, a woman has shot her lover on
+learning he was a married man. "Beauty Slays Soul-Mate; Shoots Self."
+... Annihilation on a smaller but more interesting scale, this.</p>
+
+<p>A street-car has crashed into a brewery wagon and at the bottom of the
+column a taxi has run over a golden-haired little girl at play.</p>
+
+<p>But why has Raymond S. Cotton, wealthy clubman and financier and
+prominent in north-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>shore society circles, disappeared? Society circles
+are agog. Sometimes society circles are merely disturbed. But they are
+always active. Society circles are always running around waving
+lorgnettes and exclaiming, "Dear me, and what do you think of this? I am
+all agog." The police are combing the city for a woman in black last
+seen with the prominent Mr. Cotton in a notorious caf&eacute;. But a man is to
+be hanged in the County Jail. "The doomed man ate a hearty breakfast of
+ham and eggs and seemed in good spirits." Fancy that!</p>
+
+<p>"Flames Destroy Warehouse, Two Firemen Hurt." This, in small apologetic
+type like a footnote on a timetable. Inconsiderate firemen who take up
+important space on a crowded day!</p>
+
+<p>Apology ceases. Here is something that requires no apology. It is
+extremely important. Wilbur Jennings, prominent architect, has defied
+the world and departed for a Love Bungalow in Minnesota with another
+man's wife. A picture of Wilbur in flowing bow tie and set jaws defying
+the world. Also of his inamorata in a ball gown, eyes lowered to a rose
+drooping from her hand. Various wives and chubby-faced children, and the
+inamorata's Siberian hound, "Jasper." What he said. What she said. What
+they said. Opinions of three ministers, roused on the telephone by
+inquiring reporters. The three divines are unanimous. But Wilbur's tie
+remains defiant.</p>
+
+<p>Arm in arm with Wilbur, his tie and his troubles, his epigrams and his
+Love Bungalow, sits an epi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>demic of clairvoyants. There is an epidemic
+of clairvoyants in the city. Five widows have been swindled. The police
+are combing the city for ... a prominent professor of sociology on the
+faculty of the local university interrupts. The prominent professor has
+been captured in a leading Loop hotel whither he had gone to divert
+himself with a suitcase, a handbook on sex hygiene, and an admiring
+co-ed.</p>
+
+<p>This, waiting for an hour to pass, the city reads. Crimes, scandals,
+horrors, holocausts, burglaries, arsons, murders, deceptions. The city
+reads with a vague, dull skepticism. Who are these people of the
+newspaper columns? Lusting scoundrels, bandits, heroes, wild lovers,
+madmen? Not in the streets or the houses that tick-tock through the
+night.... Somewhere else. A troupe of mummers wandering unseen behind
+the great clock face of the city&mdash;an always unknown troupe of rascally
+mummers for whom the police are continually combing and setting large
+dragnets.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening men light their tobacco and read the little wooden
+phrases of the press that squeal and mumble the sagas of the
+lawbreakers. Women come from the washing of dishes and eating of food
+and pick up the crumpled pages.... A scavenger digging for the disgusts
+and abnormalities of life, is the press. A yellow journal of lies,
+idiocies, filth. Ignoring the wholesome, splendid things of life&mdash;the
+fine, edifying beat of the tick-tock. Yet they read, glancing dully at
+headlines,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> devouring monotonously the luridness beneath headlines. They
+read with an irritation and a vague wonder. Tick, say the streets, and
+tock, say the houses; and within them men and women tick. To work and
+home again. Home again and to work. New shoes grow old. New seasons
+vanish. Years grind. Life sinks slowly away with a tick-tock on its
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>Yet each evening comes the ragged twopenny minstrel&mdash;a blear-eyed,
+croaking minstrel, and the good folk give him ear. No pretty words in
+rhythms from his tongue. No mystic cadences quaver in his voice. Yet he
+comes squealing out his song of an endless "Extra! All about the
+mysteries and the torments of life. All about the raptures, lusts, and
+adventures that the day has spilled. Read 'em and weep! Read 'em and
+laugh! Here's the latest, hot off the presses, from dreamers and
+lawbreakers. Extra!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus the city sits, baffled by itself, looking out upon a tick-tock of
+windows and reading with a wonder in its thought, "Who are these
+people?..."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II2" id="CHAPTER_II2"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>At ten o'clock the courts of the city crowd up. The important gentlemen
+who devote themselves to sending people to jail and to preventing them
+from being sent to jail, appear with fat books under their arms and
+brief-cases in their hands. They have slept well and eaten well and have
+arrived at their tasks with clear heads containing arguments. These are
+arguments vastly more important than poems that writers make or
+histories that dreamers invent. For they are arrangements of words which
+function in the absence of God. God is not exactly absent, to be sure,
+since the memory of Him lingers in the hearts of men. But it is a vague
+memory and at times unreliable. It would appear that He was on earth
+only for a short interval and failed to make any decided impression.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, at ten o'clock, the courts crowd up and the important
+gentlemen bristling with substitute arrangements of words, address
+themselves to the daily business of demonstrating whether people have
+done right or wrong, and proving, or disproving also, how extensive are
+the sins which have been committed. Arrangements of words palaver with
+arrangements of words. There en<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>sues a vast shuffling of words, a drone
+and a gurgle of syllables. The Case of the State of Illinois Versus Man.
+Order in the Court Room. "No talking, please...." "If it Please Your
+Honor, the Issue involved in this case is identical with the Issue as
+explicitly set forth in the Case of Matthews Versus Matthews, Illinois
+Sixth, Chapter Eight, Page ninety two, in which in the Third Paragraph
+the Supreme Court decided." The Court Instructs the Jury, "You are to be
+Guided by the Law as given You in these instructions and by the Facts as
+admitted in Evidence of the Case; the court Instructs the jury they are
+the judges of the law as well as of the fact but the Court further
+instructs the Jury before You decide for Yourselves that the Law is
+Otherwise than as given you by the Court, you are to exercise great Care
+and Caution in arriving at your decision...." "Gentlemen, have you
+arrived at your verdict?" "We have." "Let the clerk be handed the
+verdict." "We the Jury find the Defendant...."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the tick-tock of the great city grown stern and audible, grown
+verbose and insistent, speaks aloud in the courts. And here huddled on
+benches are the little troupes of mummers who have committed crimes. The
+mysterious sprinkling of marionettes not wound up by the watchmaker.
+Names that solidify for a moment into the ink headlines. Lusts, dreams,
+greeds, and manias sitting sad-faced and dolorous-eyed listening to a
+drone and a gurgle of words. Alas! The evil-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>doers and the doers of good
+bear a fatuous resemblance to each other. God Himself might well be
+confused by this curious fact. But fortunately there are arrangements of
+words capable of adjusting themselves to confusion, capable of
+tick-tocking in the midst of disorder. Tick, say the words and tock say
+the juries. Tick-tock, the cell door and the scaffold drop. Streets and
+windows, paintings of the Virgin Mary, beds of the fifty-cent
+prostitutes, cannon at Verdun and police whistles on crossings; the Pope
+in Rome, the President in Washington, the man hunting the alleys for a
+handout, the languorous women breeding in ornamental beds&mdash;all say a
+tick-tock. Behind the arrangements of words, confusion strikes a posture
+of guilt, strikes a posture of innocence. God Himself were a dolt to
+interfere. For if the song of the angels is somehow other than the
+tick-tock of men, the song of the angels is a music for heaven and the
+tick-tock of men is a restful drone in which the city hides the
+mysteries non-essential to the progress and pattern of its streets.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III2" id="CHAPTER_III2"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>In and out of the crowded courtrooms of the city George Hazlitt pursued
+his career. Buried in the babble of words, his voice sounded from day to
+day with a firm, self-conscious vigor. To the thousand and one droners
+about him, the law was a remunerative game in which one matched
+platitude with bromide, legal precedent of the State of Illinois with
+legal precedent of the State of Indiana; in which right and wrong were a
+shuffle of words and the wages of sin dependent upon the depth of a
+counselor's wits.</p>
+
+<p>There was in Hazlitt, however, a puritanical fervor which withstood the
+lure of expediency. He entered the courts not to juggle with words,
+fence for loopholes out of which to drag dubious acquittals for his
+clients. His profession was a part of his nature. He saw it as a battle
+ground on which, under the babbling and droning, good and evil stood at
+unending grips. Good always triumphing. Evil always going to jail
+despite habeas corpuses, writs, and duces tecums.</p>
+
+<p>To question the nobility of the Hazlitt soul would be a sidestepping.
+There were among his friends, men of dubious integrity with elastic
+scruples and pliable consciences. But skepticism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> thrust in vain at the
+Hazlitt armor. In him had been authentically born the mania for
+conformity. He was a prosecutor by birth. Against that which did not
+conform, against all that squirmed for some expression beyond the
+tick-tock of life, he was a force&mdash;an apostle with a sword. Men
+pretending virtues as relentless as his own were often inclined to eye
+him askance. Virtue breeds skepticism among the virtuous. But there was
+a difference about Hazlitt.</p>
+
+<p>The basis of his philosophy was twofold. It embraced a rage against
+dreamers and a rage against lawbreakers. Lawbreakers were men and women
+who sacrificed the welfare and safety of the many for the sating of
+their individual greeds and lusts. He viewed the activities of
+lawbreakers with a sense of personal outrage. He, Hazlitt, was a part of
+society&mdash;a conscious unit of a state of mind, which state of mind was
+carefully written out in text-book editorials, and on tablets handed
+down by God from a mountaintop. Men who robbed, cheated, beat their
+wives, deserted their families, seduced women, shirked responsibilities,
+were enemies on his own threshold. They must be punished, mentally, by
+him; physically by the society to which he belonged.</p>
+
+<p>The punishing of evil-doers did more than eliminate them from his
+threshold. It vindicated his own virtue. Virtue increases in direct
+proportion with its ability to distinguish evil. The denunciation of
+evil-doers was the boasting of George<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> Hazlitt, "I am not one of them."
+The more vigorous the denunciation, the more vigorous the boast. The
+hanging of a man for the crime of murder was a reward paid to George
+Hazlitt for his abstinence from bloodshed. The jailing of a seducer
+offered a tangible recompense for the self-denial which he, as a
+non-seducer, practiced.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the satisfactions his virtue derived in establishing its
+superiority by assisting spiritually in the punishment of the
+unvirtuous, his rage against lawbreakers found itself equally on his
+devotion to law. He perceived in the orderly streets, in the miles of
+houses, in the smoothly functioning commerce and government of his day,
+a triumph of man over his baser selves. The baser selves of man were
+instincts that yearned for disorder. Of this triumph Hazlitt felt
+himself a part.</p>
+
+<p>Disorder he thought not only illegal, but debasing. The same virtue
+which prevented him from promenading in his pajamas in the boulevard
+stirred with a feeling of outrage against the confusion attending a
+street-car strike. His intelligence, clinging like some militant
+parasite to the stability of life, resented all agitations, material or
+spiritual, all violators who violated the equilibrium to which he was
+fastened.</p>
+
+<p>Against dreamers his rage was even deeper and more a part of his fiber.
+In the tick-tock of life Hazlitt saw a perfection&mdash;an evolution out of
+centuries of mania and disorder. The tick-tock was a perfection whose
+basic principle was a re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>spect for others. This respect evolved out of
+man's fear of man and insuring a mutual protection against his predatory
+habits, was to Hazlitt a religion. He denied himself pleasures and
+convenient expressions for his impulses in order to spare others
+displeasure and inconvenience. And his nature demanded a similar
+sacrifice of his fellows&mdash;as a reward and a symbol of his own
+correctness. Such explanation of his conduct as, it is easier to follow
+the desires of others than to give expression to the desires of one's
+self, would have been, to Hazlitt, spiritual and legal sacrilege.</p>
+
+<p>In dreamers, the rising young attorney sensed a poorly concealed effort
+to evade this primal responsibility toward him and the society of which
+he was an inseparable part. Men who walked with their heads in the
+clouds were certain to step on one's feet. Dreamers were scoundrels or
+lunatics who sought to justify their unfitness for society by ridiculing
+it as unworthy and by phantasizing over new values and standards which
+would be more amiable to their weaknesses. There were political dreamers
+and dreamers in morals and art. Hazlitt bunched them together, branded
+them with an identical rage, and spat them out in one word, "nuts."</p>
+
+<p>Dreamers challenged his sense of superiority by hinting at soul states
+and social states superior to those he already occupied. Dreamers
+disturbed him. For this he perhaps hated them most. Their phantasies
+sometimes lifted him into mo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>ments of disorder, moments of doubt as
+revolting to his spirit as were sores revolting to his skin. Then also,
+dreamers had their champions&mdash;men and women who applauded their lunatic
+writings and cheered their lunatic theories.</p>
+
+<p>The punishment of lawbreakers vindicated his own virtue. But his rage
+against dreamers was such that their punishing offered him no sense of
+satisfactory vindication. His railing and ridicule against creatures who
+yearned, grimaced&mdash;neurasthenics, in short&mdash;left him with no fine
+feeling of the victorious sufficiency of himself. Thus to conceal
+himself from doubts always threatening an appearance, it was necessary
+for him to assume a viciousness of attitude not entirely sincere. So he
+read with unction political speeches and art reviews denouncing the
+phantasts of his day, and from them he borrowed elaborate invective. Yet
+his invective seemed like a vague defense of himself who should need no
+defense and thus again doubt raised a dim triumph in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm a reactionary," he would say. "I'm for the good old things of
+life. Things that mean something." And even this definition of faith
+would leave him unsatisfied.</p>
+
+<p>The paradox of George Hazlitt lay in the fact that he was himself a
+dreamer. Champions of order and champions of disorder share somewhat in
+a similarity of imaginative impulses.</p>
+
+<p>Six months had passed since Hazlitt had wept on the stairs as he left
+Rachel's room. Dry-eyed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> now and clear-headed, he sat one winter
+afternoon against his chosen background&mdash;the swarm and clutter of a law
+court. His brief-cases were packed. His law books had been bundled back
+to his office.</p>
+
+<p>He was waiting beside a vivid-faced young woman who sat twisting a
+tear-damp handkerchief in her hands. The jury that had listened for
+three weeks to the tale of the young woman's murder of a hospital
+interne who had seduced and subsequently refused to marry her, had
+sauntered out of the jury-box to determine now whether the young woman
+should be hanged, imprisoned, or liberated. The excitements attending
+the trial had brought a reaction to Hazlitt. He seemed suddenly to have
+lost interest in the business of his defense of the wronged young woman.
+This despite that he had for three weeks maintained a high pitch of rage
+against the scoundrel who had violated his client and subsequently
+driven her insane by even more abominable cruelties.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt's concluding remarks to the jury on the subject of dishonored
+womanhood and the merciless bestiality of certain male types had been
+more than a legal oration. He had expressed himself in it and had spent
+two full days lost in admiration of the echoes of his bombast.... "Men
+who follow the vile dictates of their lower natures, who sow the
+whirlwind and expect to reap the roses thereby; cynical, soulless men
+who take a woman as one takes a glove, to wear, admire, and discard;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+depraved men who prowl like demons at the heels of virtue, fawning their
+ways into the pure heart of innocence and glutting their beastly hungers
+upon the finest fruits of life&mdash;the beauty and sacrifice of a maiden's
+first love&mdash;are such creatures men or fiends, gentlemen of the jury?"
+And then ... "spurned, taunted by the sneers of one of these vipers, her
+pleadings answered with laughter and blows of a fist, the soul of
+Pauline Pollard grew suddenly dark. Where had been sanity, innocence,
+and love, now came insanity. Her girl's mind&mdash;like sweet bells jangled
+out of tune&mdash;brought no longer the high message of reason into her
+heart. We sitting here in this sunny courtroom, gentlemen, can think and
+reason. But Pauline Pollard, struggling in the embrace of a leering
+savage, listening to his fiendish mockeries of her virtue&mdash;the virtue he
+had stolen from her&mdash;ah! the soul and brain of Pauline Pollard vanished
+in a darkness. The law is the law, gentlemen. There is no one respects
+it more than I. If this girl killed a man coldly and with reason
+functioning in her mind, she is guilty. Hang her, gentlemen of the jury!
+But, gentlemen, the law under which we live, you and I and all of us,
+also says, and says wisely, that a mind not responsible for its acts, a
+soul whose balance has been destroyed by the shrieking voices of mania,
+shall not be held guilty...."</p>
+
+<p>The jury that had listened with ill-concealed envy to the recital of the
+amorous interne's promis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>cuous exploits, listened to Hazlitt and
+experienced suddenly a fine rage against the deceased. Out of the young
+attorney's florid utterings a question fired itself into the minds of
+the jurors. The deceased had done what they all desired to do, but dared
+not. This grinning, unscrupulous fiend of a hospital interne had
+blithely taken what he desired and blithely discarded what he did not
+desire. The twelve good men and true bethought them of their wives whom
+they did not desire and yet kept. And of the young women and the things
+of flesh and spirit they desired with every life-beat in them and yet
+did not take. Was this terrible denial which, for reasons beyond their
+incomplete brains, they imposed upon themselves, a meaningless,
+profitless business? The bland interne was dead and unfortunately beyond
+their punishment. Yet the fact that he had lived at all called for a
+protest&mdash;some definitely framed expression which would throw a halo
+about their own submission to women they did not desire, and their own
+denial to women they did desire. The law, whose arrangements of words
+are omniscient, provided such a halo.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Hamel, the interne under discussion, was dead and buried, and
+therefore, properly speaking, not on trial. Nor yet was Pauline Pollard
+on trial. The persons on trial were twelve good men and true who were
+being called upon to decide, somewhat dramatically, whether they were
+right in living in a manner persistently repugnant to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> them; whether
+somebody else could get away with something which they themselves, not
+daring to attempt, bitterly identified as sin.</p>
+
+<p>In thirty minutes the still outraged jury was to file in and utter its
+dignified protest. Pauline Pollard would again be free. And twelve men
+would return to their homes with a high sense of having meted out
+justice, not to Pauline or her amorous interne, but to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Enticing speculation, the yes or no of these twelve men, three days ago.
+But now Hazlitt sat with an odd indifference in his thought. The crowd
+waiting avidly for the dramatic moment of the verdict; living
+vicariously the suspense of the defendant&mdash;depressed him. The newspaper
+reporters buzzing around, forming themselves into relays between the
+press table and the door, further depressed him. He felt himself
+somewhere else, and the scene was a reality which intruded.</p>
+
+<p>There was a dream in Hazlitt which sometimes turned itself on like a
+light and revealed the emptiness of life without Rachel, the emptiness
+of courtrooms, verdicts, crowds. Yes, even the emptiness of the struggle
+between good and evil. He sat thinking of her now, contrasting the
+virginal figure of her with the coarseness of the thing in which he had
+been engaged. There was something about her ... something ... something.
+And the old refrain of his dream like a haunting popular ballad, started
+again here in the crowded courtroom.</p>
+
+<p>He remembered the eyes of Rachel, the quick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> gestures of her full-grown
+hands that moved always as in sudden afterthoughts. Virginal was the
+word that came most often to his thought. Not the virginity that spells
+a piquant preface to sensualism. She would always be virginal, even
+after they were married. In his arms she would remain virginal, because
+there was something in her, something beyond flesh. His heart choked at
+the memory of it, and his face saddened. Something he could not see or
+place in a circle of words, that did not exist for his eyes or his
+thought, and yet that he must follow. Even after he had won her there
+would be this thing he could not see; that trailed a dream song in his
+heart and kept him groping toward the far lips of the singer. Yes, they
+would marry. She had refused to see him twice since the night he had
+wept on the stair, leaving her. But the memories of that night had
+adjusted themselves. He had seen love in the eyes of Rachel as he held
+her hand. She had laughed love to him, given him for an instant the
+vision of beauty-lighted places waiting for him. The rest had been ...
+neurasthenia. Thus he had forgotten her words and his tears and the
+vivid moment when he had seen himself reflected in her eyes as a horror.
+He had tried twice to see her. He would continue trying, and some day
+she would again open the door to him, laughing, whispering ... "I'm so
+lonely. I'm glad you've come." In the meantime he would continue sending
+her letters. Once each week he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> had been writing her, saying he loved
+her. No answers had come. But this, curiously, did not anger him. He
+wrote not so much to Rachel as to a dream of her. She remained intact in
+her silence ... as he knew her ... an aloof, virginal being whose
+presence in the world was its own song.</p>
+
+<p>There was a commotion. Hazlitt looked about him and saw strange faces
+light up, strange eyes gleam out of the electric-glowing dusk. Snow was
+falling outside. Pauline's hand gripped his forearm. Her fingers burned.
+Raps of a gavel for silence. The judge spoke. A sad-faced man, with a
+heavy mustache combating his words, stood up in the jury-box and spoke.
+In a vast silence a clerk beside the judge's bench cleared his voice,
+moistened his lips, and spoke.</p>
+
+<p>So he had won another case. Pauline was free. Snow outside and rows of
+lighted windows. She was overwrought. Let her weep for a spell. Snow
+outside. Three weeks and one day. Everybody seemed happy with the
+verdict. People were good at heart. A triumph for decency cheered them.
+People were not revengeful at heart, only decent. Congratulations ...
+"Thank you, thank you! No, Miss Pollard has nothing to say now. She is
+too overcome. To-morrow...." The persistent press! What did they expect
+her to say? Absurd the way they kept interviewing her. The snow would
+probably tie up traffic. Eat downtown....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If you're ready, Miss Pollard."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I must thank the jurors."</p>
+
+<p>Handshakes. Twelve good men with relaxed faces. "There, there, little
+woman. Start over. We only did our duty and what was right by you."</p>
+
+<p>Everybody stretched his legs. Mrs. Hamel was sobbing. Well, she was his
+mother. It would only have satisfied her lower instincts of vengeance to
+have jailed Pauline.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Miss Pollard." He took her arm. Curious, what a difference
+the verdict had made in her. She was a woman like any other woman
+now.... His overcoat might do for another season.... Pretty girl. Hard
+to get used to the idea she wasn't a defendant.</p>
+
+<p>"This way, Miss Pollard".... Take her to a cab and send her home. If
+she'd ever get started. What satisfaction did women find in kissing and
+hugging each other? "Thank God, Pauline. Oh, I'm so glad".... Girl
+friends. Well, she'd be back among them in a few days, and in a month or
+so the thing would be over.</p>
+
+<p>At last! Hazlitt blinked. The whirl of snow and crowds emptying out of
+buildings gave him a sense for an instant of having stepped into a
+strange world. The sharp cold restored his wandering energies and a
+realization of his victory in the courtroom brought him a belated glow.
+He was young, on an upgrade, able to command success.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt felt a sudden lusty kinship toward the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> swarm of bodies
+unwinding itself through the snowfall. A contact with other ... a
+pleasant, comforting contact. What more was life, anyway? A warmth in
+the heart that came from the knowledge of work well and honestly done.
+Look the world squarely in the eyes and say, "You have no secrets and I
+have no secrets. We're friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go to your office, Mr. Hazlitt?"</p>
+
+<p>Why there? Hazlitt smiled at the young woman. She was free. He patted
+the gloved hand on his arm and was surprised to see her eyes grow alive
+with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"I would like to talk to you&mdash;now that it's over. I feel lost. Really."
+She returned his smile as one determined to be brave, though lost.</p>
+
+<p>The snow hid the buildings and left their window lights drifting. Faces
+passing smiled as if saying, "Hello, we're all together in the same snow
+with no secrets from each other.... All friends".... Hazlitt walked with
+the girl through the streets. The traffic and the crowds were intimate
+friends and he spoke to them by patting Pauline's hand. An
+all's-well-with-the-world pat.</p>
+
+<p>"Eighth floor, please...."</p>
+
+<p>The elevator jiggled to a stop and they stepped into the corridor.
+Scrawny-faced women were crawling patiently down the floor. They slopped
+wet brushes before them, wrung mops out over pails, and crawled an inch
+farther down the floor. Hazlitt smiled. This, too, was a part of
+life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>&mdash;keeping the floors of the building scrubbed. He won law cases.
+Old women scrubbed floors. It fitted into an orderly pattern with a
+great meaning to its order. He paused for a moment to admire the
+cleanliness of the washed surface. Homage to the work of others&mdash;of old
+women on their knees scrubbing floors.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's all over, Miss Pollard."</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting beside the desk where she had sat the first time they
+had discussed her defense. Hazlitt, unloading his brief-case, looked at
+her. Uncommonly pretty. Trusting eyes. What a rotten fellow, the
+interne!</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why I wanted to come here." Pauline's eyes stared sadly
+about the room. "I'm free, but ..." She covered her face and wept.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, now, Miss Pollard!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's still awful."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll forget soon."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go away. Somewhere. Alone." A louder sob.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't cry."</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt watched her tenderly. The weeping increased. A lonesomeness and
+a vagueness were in the girl's heart. The tick-tock of the city had a
+foreign sound. She was a stranger in its streets. There had been
+something else, and now it was gone. A wilderness, a tension, the
+familiar face of Frankie Hamel telling her to go to hell one night and
+stop bothering him with her damned wailing ... and Frankie dying at her
+feet whispering,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> "What the devil, Pauline?" Then the trial. Hot and
+cold hours. A roomful of silent, open-mouthed faces listening to her
+weep, watching her squirm with proper shame and anguish as she told her
+story to the jurors ... the details of the abortion. "And then I
+couldn't stand it. I don't remember what happened. Oh, I loved him! I
+don't remember. He cursed me. He called me a ... Oh, God, names. Awful
+names! I told him I was going to kill myself. I couldn't live, disgraced
+... without his love. I'd bought a gun to kill myself. And he laughed. I
+don't remember after that; except that somehow he was ... he was dead.
+And I wasn't...."</p>
+
+<p>These things were gone. The trial was over and done. Now there was
+nothing left but the city with its street-cars and offices.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, everything's so changed," she murmured. Hazlitt stood behind her
+chair, hand on her shoulder. Poor child! The law could not free her from
+the remorse for her crime and mistake. Lawlessness carried its own
+punishment. Virtue its own rewards, sin its own torments.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll forget," he answered softly. The law sometimes punished. But
+after all this was the real punishment ... beyond the power of the law
+to mete out. Punishment of sin. Conscience. Poor child! Inexorable fruit
+of evil. Despair, remorse....</p>
+
+<p>"You must forget. You're young. You can begin over. Please don't cry."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus Hazlitt comforted her who was weeping not with remorse for what had
+been, but that it had gone. No word consciousness stirred her grief. An
+unintelligible sorrow, it swelled in her heart and filled her with
+helplessness. Life had gone from her. She was mourning for it. Mourning
+for a murderess and a sinner who had gone, abandoned her and left her a
+naked, uninteresting Pauline Pollard again&mdash;a nobody surrounded by
+nobodies. And once it had been different. Lighted faces listening to her
+in a room. Frankie whispering, "What the devil, Pauline?"</p>
+
+<p>A fresh burst of tears brought Hazlitt in front of her. Gently he moved
+her hands from her face.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't," he began over again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I won't ever be able to...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes you will, little girl."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!"</p>
+
+<p>She was standing. Snow outside. Rows of lighted windows drifting.
+Thoughts slipped out of his head. Traffic probably tied up.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't cry."</p>
+
+<p>She dropped her head against his shoulder and wept anew. It was nice to
+have somebody asking her not to cry. It made it easier and more
+purposeful to weep.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt sighed. Tears ... tears ... the live odor of hair. Arms that
+felt soft. She was mumbling close to him, "I can't help it. Please
+forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes! There, there!" Of course he would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> forgive her. Forgiveness
+made him glow. But as he spoke his voice depressed him. What should he
+do? Could he help her? What was life, anyway? Snow outside and rows of
+lighted windows drifting. Her body close, warm, and saddening. The
+firmness of his nerves dissolved. He had his sorrow too ... Rachel. Far
+away. Drifting like the snow outside. Rachel ... the odor of hair
+brought her back. Should he cry? Her knees had touched him once like
+this. She had held her arm about his shoulder once, like this. But, oh,
+so different!... The girl seemed to come closer to him.</p>
+
+<p>He had been holding a stranger politely. Now the stranger relaxed. Soft,
+warm, familiar body. He grew frightened. Somehow the clinging of the
+girl's body, the murmur of her tears, brought a sorrow into his heart. I
+am not Rachel, but I am like her.... What made him think that? Yes, she
+was like her, warm, soft, and woman. Like her&mdash;like her. Why had they
+kissed? And her hands clasping nervously at his shoulders? She was not
+in love? Not Rachel. But she wanted something. And he too. Something
+that was a dream song. Here were the lips of the singer, eager, reaching
+to his own. Pressing, asking more. How had this happened? Should he
+speak? But what? Nothing to say. Had he forgotten Rachel? Remembering
+Rachel? Who was this? The questions blurred. Rachel, sang his heart. For
+a moment he embraced the warm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> shadow of a dream. And then a woman was
+offering herself to him. No dream now. Her thighs riveted themselves
+against him. Under her clothes her body seemed to be moving, coming to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt grew dizzy. He had been consoling her. No more. Now what? He
+threw his strength into his embrace. Their bodies moved together.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh ..." A moan as if she were still weeping. Her lips parted in
+desperate surrender. Her kiss took the breath out of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest!" His voice carried him out of her arms. He knew suddenly that
+but for the word and the familiar sound of his voice he would have
+possessed her. But the word rang an alarm in his ears. Fright, nausea,
+relaxed muscles. A wiliness in his thought.... "Do you feel better now?"</p>
+
+<p>She failed to hear. Her fingers still clutched.</p>
+
+<p>"There ... there, don't cry!" He felt cold. His hands on her arms
+pressed them gently away, his fingers patting them with a fatherly
+diapason. George Hazlitt, attorney-at-law.</p>
+
+<p>"Better now, Pauline?" An error to have called her Pauline. Look bad in
+the record. Committed him to "Pauline."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, George!"</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Rachel listened in amazement ... George ... Pauline.
+Dearest! He must be careful. She had grown numb against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> him. A numb
+woman sewed to his lapels. He lowered her as if she were lifeless and he
+fearful of disturbing her. She looked harmless in a chair. Was it
+possible to talk now? Not yet. Take her hand; careful not to squeeze it.
+Pat it as he'd done in the street. An all's-well-with-the-world pat.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody rattled the doorknob. Hazlitt started eagerly. Relief. But,
+good God, no lights in the office. The cleaners would come in and think
+things. Her hair in disorder and her face smeared with weeping would
+make them think things. An oath disentangled itself from his confusion.
+The door opened. Two scrawny-faced women with mops and brooms....</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right. Go ahead. We're just leaving. Are you ready, Miss
+Pollard?"</p>
+
+<p>The Miss Pollard was a masterpiece. But did it deceive the mops and
+brooms? Damn them! They walked arm in arm down the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>"I think the elevators have stopped. Wouldn't it be a joke if we had to
+walk down?"</p>
+
+<p>She refused to answer. Witness remains silent. Why couldn't she be
+interested in jokes?... the woman of it. Nothing had happened. She had
+nothing to think about. Why not jokes? He frowned at the grilling of the
+elevator door. An elevator bobbed up.</p>
+
+<p>In the street, "I'll get a cab, Miss Pollard." Take a firm stand and not
+call her Pauline again. But she was silent. Nothing had happened. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+grew frightened. She was trying to bulldoze him by pretending. Bundle
+her into a cab and get rid of her.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, as if he'd been thinking it out when he hadn't, "You must
+forgive me for&mdash;that. I didn't mean to, please."</p>
+
+<p>Anything rather than her silence. Even an apology. Nothing had happened,
+but he would apologize anyway to be on the safe side. She looked at him
+and said, "Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"Please, Miss Pollard, you make me feel like a cur."</p>
+
+<p>A chauffeur leaned forward from his seat and thrust open the cab door.
+Pauline entered without hesitation. She might have the decency to
+hesitate when he was apologizing for nothing. Hazlitt stuck his head in
+after her. The thing was ludicrously unfinished and he was making an ass
+of himself. She should have hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell your mother I hope she'll be better soon."</p>
+
+<p>"Where to, mister?"</p>
+
+<p>He gave an address and added, "Just a minute, please."</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt re&euml;ntered the cab with his head. The thing was still unfinished.
+Wishing good health to her mother made it worse&mdash;as if he were trying to
+cover up something. He must be frank. Drag everything into the open and
+show he wasn't afraid. But she was weeping again. He paused in
+consternation. Her hand reached toward him. A voice, vibrant and soft
+with tears, whispered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> in the gloom of the cab. A love voice. "Good-by,
+George!"</p>
+
+<p>He watched the tail light dart through the traffic and then began his
+defense. Gentleman of the jury ... jury ... he had done nothing. It was
+she who had suggested the office. A low, vulgar ruse to trap him. The
+evidence was plain on that point. Overruled. But he had attempted only
+to console her. Irrelevant and immaterial to the facts at issue in the
+case. But she had flung her arms around him. Not he! Never he! The woman
+was mad. Yes, a mad woman. Dangerous. She had done the same to the
+interne. Overruled. Overruled. What? Frank Hamel, gentleman of the jury,
+glutting his beastly hungers on the finest fruit of life&mdash;the innocence
+and sacrifice of a maiden's first love. No, not Hamel. Hazlitt. Are such
+creatures men or fiends? What was he thinking about Oh, yes, the
+interne. Dead, buried ... we, the jury, find the defendant not
+guilty.... But the dead interne was saying something.</p>
+
+<p>For moments George Hazlitt looked out upon a new world&mdash;a miserable
+world&mdash;vast, blurred, upside down. People were moving in it. Dead
+internes. They passed with faces intent upon their own solitudes.
+Buildings were in it. They burst a skyrocket of windows into the night.
+There was snow. It fell twisting itself out of the darkness. Familiar
+faces, buildings, snow. Theater fa&ccedil;ades making a jangle of light through
+the storm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> Entrances, exits, cars clanging, figures hurrying, signs
+sputtering confusion in the snow. All familiar, all a part of the great
+tick-tock of the city.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt stopped and stared at the familiar night of the streets. A gleam
+and a flurry were sweeping his eyes. Snow. But faces and buildings and
+lights were a part of it. They swarmed and danced about him, sending a
+shout to his heart. "We're upside down ... we're upside down ... heels
+in air.... She made love to the interne as she did to you ... and the
+fiend is dead. Lies ... lies ... but who gives a damn?"</p>
+
+<p>The horn of a motor screeched. A woman and a man pattered by on a run,
+leaving a trail of laughter. From afar came the sound of voices&mdash;of
+street evangels singing hymns on a corner. The soul of George Hazlitt
+grew sick. Night hands fastened themselves about his throat. Upside down
+... heels in air. The things he had said to the jury were lies. Lies and
+disorder. Right and wrong. God in heaven, what were they, if not right
+and wrong?</p>
+
+<p>The thing came to Hazlitt without words, with a gleam and a flurry as of
+snow. He stood blind&mdash;a little snow-covered figure shivering and lost in
+a lighted, crowded street. All because a woman, warm and clinging, had
+kissed him on the mouth and moved her body. But once she had kissed
+another man thus&mdash;on the mouth, with her body moving, and therein lay a
+new world&mdash;a world of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> flying-haired M&aelig;nads and growling satyrs that
+lived behind the tick-tock of windows. Standing in the snowstorm an
+insane notion took possession of Hazlitt. It had to do with Evil. Order
+was an accident. Men and women were evil. The tick-tock was a pretense.</p>
+
+<p>The notion passed. Doubt needs thought to feed upon, and Hazlitt gave it
+none. Or he would have ended as Hazlitt and become someone else. He
+walked again with a silence in his head. Another block, and life had
+again focused itself into tableaux. The moment of doubt had shaken him
+as if rough hands had reached from an alley and clutched wildly at his
+throat. But it had gone, and the memory of it too was gone. Hands that
+had nobody behind them; emotion that came without the stabilizing
+outline of words. So the world stood again on its feet. Tick-tock, said
+the world to George Hazlitt; and his brain gave an answer, "Tick-tock!"</p>
+
+<p>For the paradox of Hazlitt was not that he was a thinker, but a dreamer.
+His puritanism had put an end to his brain. Like his fellows for whose
+respect and admiration he worked, he had bartered his intelligence for a
+thing he proudly called Americanism, and thought for him had become a
+placid agitation of platitudes. But he could still dream. His emotions
+avenged his stupidity. Walking in the street&mdash;he felt a desire to
+walk&mdash;he shut himself in. It seemed to him now that his love had become
+a part of the snow and the far-away dark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> of the sky. Rachel ... Rachel,
+his thought called as if summoning something back.</p>
+
+<p>It came to him slowly&mdash;the image of the virginal one&mdash;doubly sweet and
+beautiful now that he was unclean. How had it happened? She had been
+weeping; he comforting her. Two strangers, they had sat in his office.
+One a murderess weeping for her sins; the other a kindly hearted,
+clean-minded attorney consoling her, pointing to her the way of hope.
+And then like two animals they had stood sucking at each other's breath.
+God, what could he do? Nothing. He was unclean. He recalled with a dread
+the thought that had come to him in the embrace ... was she Rachel? Yes,
+she had been Rachel and he had lowered his dream to her lips, as if in
+the lust of a strange woman's kiss there lay the image of Rachel, the
+virginal mystery of Rachel. If he had been man enough not to drag the
+memory of Rachel into it, it would be easy now. But he would look
+squarely at the facts, anyway. That must be his punishment and his
+penance. Yes, say it ... it was with his love for Rachel he had embraced
+and almost possessed the body of a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt quickened his walking. He was confronted with the intricate
+business of forgiving himself. He felt shame, but shame was something
+that could be walked off. Faster ... with an amorous mumble soothing him
+and the hurt. After all, was it so important? Yes ... no. Forgive
+himself, but not too quickly. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> walked.... Words made circles in his
+head&mdash;abject and sorrowful circles about the dream of the virginal one.</p>
+
+<p>A man with a curious smile stopped in front of him to light a pipe.
+Hazlitt paused and looked at the street. He would take a car. His legs
+were tired. The wind and snow put out the match of the man who was
+lighting a pipe. Hazlitt looked at him. What was he smiling about? We're
+all in the snow ... all without secrets in the snow. Hail fellows of the
+street ... Curious, he should feel sad for a man who was smiling on a
+street corner. Tiredness. The man was cursing the snow good-humoredly.
+Suddenly the pipe was lighted and the man seemed to have forgotten it.
+His eyes gleamed for an instant across Hazlitt's face, and with an
+abrupt nod of recognition the man passed on. Walking swiftly, bent
+forward, vanishing behind a flurry of snow.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt peered down the track for his car. He wondered how the man knew
+him. It pleased his vanity to be recognized by people he couldn't place.
+It showed he was somebody. Yes, George Hazlitt, attorney-at-law. He
+recalled ... they had met once in an office. A newspaperman&mdash;editor or
+something. Probably looking for news. Hazlitt was glad he had been
+recognized. The man would think of him as he walked on in the snow&mdash;of
+his victory in the courtroom and his future. That was part of life, to
+be thought of and envied by others.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Beside him a newsboy raised a shout ... "Extra! Pauline Pollard
+acquitted!..." People would read about it in their homes. His name.
+Wonder who he was. A voice across the street answered, "Extra! Germans
+bombard Paris!..." The damned Huns! Why didn't America put an end to
+their dirty business by rushing in?</p>
+
+<p>He stepped into the warm street-car and sat staring moodily out of the
+window. He was a part of life, but there was something
+beyond&mdash;a&mdash;mystery. "Extra!..." He should have bought a paper. There was
+the newspaper fellow again, still walking swiftly, bent forward, staring
+into the snow.... Oh, yes, Erik Dorn. He had met him once.... The car
+passed on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV2" id="CHAPTER_IV2"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Erik Dorn laughed as he walked swiftly through the snow in the street.
+It seemed to him he had been laughing incessantly for a week, and that
+he would continue to laugh forever. His thought played delightedly with
+his emotions ... a precocious child with new fantastic toys. He was in
+love. A laughable business!</p>
+
+<p>Five months of uncertainty had preceded the laugh. An irritated,
+inexplicable moodiness as if the shadow of a disease had come into his
+blood. On top of this moodiness a violence of temper, a stewing,
+cursing, fuming about. A five months' quarrel with his wife....</p>
+
+<p>His love-making had been somewhat curious. Walks with Rachel&mdash;a
+whirligig of streets, faces, words. A dance and a flash of words, as if
+he were exploding into phrases. As if his vocabulary desired to empty
+itself before Rachel. His garrulity amazed him. Everything had to be
+talked about. There was a desperate need for talk. And when there was
+nothing to talk about for the moment, his words abhorring idleness, fell
+to inventing emotions&mdash;a complete set of emotions for himself and for
+Rachel. These were discussed, explained, and forgotten.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Finally the strange talk that had ended a week ago&mdash;a last desperate
+concealment of emotion and desire in a burst of glittering phrases.
+Phrases that whirled like the exotic decorations about the wild body of
+a dancer, becoming a dance in themselves, deriving a movement and a
+meaning beyond themselves. Then the end of concealment. An exhausted
+vocabulary sighed, collapsed. A frantic discarding of ornaments and the
+nude body of the dancer stood posturing na&iuml;vely, timidly. Therewith an
+end to mystery. The thing was known.</p>
+
+<p>It had happened during one of their walks. Leaden clouds over day-dark
+pavements. Warehouses, railroad tracks, factories&mdash;a street toiling
+through a dismantled world. Their hands together, they paused and
+remained staring as if at a third person. He had reached out rather
+impersonally and taken her hand. The contact had shocked him into
+silence. It was difficult to breathe.</p>
+
+<p>"Rachel, do you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head and pressed his hand against her cheek. They walked
+on in silence. This brought an end to talk. Talk concealed. There was
+nothing more to conceal. His vocabulary sighed as if admitting defeat
+and uselessness. At a corner grown noisy with wagons and trucks Rachel
+stopped. Her eyes opened to him. He looked at her and said, as if he had
+fallen asleep "I too am in love." He laughed dreamily. "Yes, I've been
+since the beginning. Curious!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She might laugh at him. It was evident he had avoided making love to her
+during the five months in fear of that. The only reason he hadn't
+embraced, kissed, and protested affection five months ago was the
+possibility that she would laugh&mdash;and perhaps go away.</p>
+
+<p>Even now, despite the absence of laughter, a part of the fear he had
+still lingered. He was no longer Erik Dorn, man of words and mirror of
+nothings. He had said he loved her. Avoiding, of course, the direct
+remark. But he had indicated it rather definitely. It would undoubtedly
+lessen him to her, make him human. She had admired him because he was
+different. Now he was like everybody else saying an "I love you" to a
+woman. Perhaps he should unsay it. Again, a dreamy laugh. But it made
+him happy. A drifting, childish happiness. He looked at her. Her eyes
+struck him as marvelously large and bright. Yet in a curious way he
+seemed unaware of her. No excitement came to him. Decidedly there was
+something unsensual about his love&mdash;if it was love. It might be
+something else. It is difficult for an extremely married man to
+distinguish offhand. He desired nothing more than to stand still and
+close his eyes and permit himself to shine. Vague words traced his
+emotions. A fullness. A completion. An end of nothing. Thrills in his
+fingers. Remarkable disturbance of the diaphragm. To be likened to the
+languorous effects of some almost stimulating drug.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In a great calm he slowly forgot himself, his words, and Rachel.
+Standing thus he heard her murmur something and felt his hand once more
+against her cheek. A pretty gesture. Then she was walking down the dark
+street, running from him. She had said good-bye. He awoke and cursed. A
+bewildering sensation of being still at her side as if he had gone out
+of himself and were following her. He remained thus watching the figure
+of Rachel until it disappeared and the street grew suddenly cold and
+empty. A strange scene mocked him. Strange smoke, strange warehouses,
+strange railroad tracks. Cupid awaking in a cinder patch.</p>
+
+<p>He walked on, still bewildered. Nothing had happened to him. Instead,
+something had happened to the streets. The city had suffered an
+amputation. There was something incomplete about its streets and crowds.
+His eye felt annoyed by it. He was not thinking of Rachel. He felt as if
+she had suddenly ceased to exist and left behind her an unexistence. It
+was this emptiness outside that for the moment annoyed and then
+frightened him. An emptiness that had something to give him now. His
+senses reached eagerly toward the figures of people and buildings and
+received nothing. What did he want of them? They were a pattern,
+intricate and precise, with nothing to give. Yet he wanted. Good God, he
+wanted something out of the streets of the city. Then he remembered, as
+if recalling some algebraic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> formula, "I'm in love." His laughter had
+started at that moment.</p>
+
+<p>At home it continued in him. Anna had gone to visit relatives in
+Wisconsin. He spent an hour writing her a long amorous letter. He was in
+love with Rachel, but a new notion had planted itself in him. Whatever
+happened, Anna must not be made unhappy. Love was not a reality. Anna
+and her happiness were the realities that must be carefully considered.
+This thing that had popped into life in the cinder patch was a
+mood&mdash;comparable to the mood of a thirsty man taking his first sip of
+water.</p>
+
+<p>" ... the memory of you comes before me," he scribbled to his wife, "and
+I feel sad. I am incomplete without you. Dear one, I love you. The
+streets seem empty and the hours drag...."</p>
+
+<p>In writing to his wife he seemed to recover a sense of virtue. He smiled
+as he sealed the envelope. "It must be an old instinct," he thought.
+"People are kindest to those they deceive. Thus good and evil balance."</p>
+
+<p>His father, sitting before a grate fire, desired to talk. He would talk
+to him in circles that would irritate the old man and make his eyes
+water more.</p>
+
+<p>"People don't live," he began. "To live is to have a dream behind the
+hours. To have the world offering something."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my son. Something ..."</p>
+
+<p>"Then the people outside one take on meaningful outlines. There comes a
+contact. One is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> part of something&mdash;of a force that moves the stars,
+eh?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man nodded, and mumbled in his beard. Dorn felt a warmth toward
+his father. His stupidity delighted him. He would be able henceforth to
+talk to the old man and say, "I love Rachel," and the old man would
+think he was coining phrases for a profitless amusement. It would be the
+same with Anna. He would be able to make love to Anna differently
+hereafter. A rather cynical idea. He laughed and beamed at Isaac Dorn.
+Did it matter much whom one kissed as long as one had a desire for
+kissing? In fact, his desire for Rachel seemed at an end, now that he
+had mentioned it to her. A handclasp, a silence trembling with emotion,
+a sudden light in the heart&mdash;properly speaking, this was all there was
+to love. The rest was undoubtedly a make-believe. As he walked out to
+post the letter he tried to recall the emotions or ideas that had
+inspired him to marry Anna. There had undoubtedly been something of the
+sort then. But it had left no memory. Their honeymoon, of which she was
+always speaking, even after seven years, with a mist in her eyes&mdash;good
+Lord, had there been a honeymoon?</p>
+
+<p>He spent the next afternoon with Rachel. A silence of familiarity had
+fallen upon them. There was a totality in silence. Walking through the
+streets beside her, Dorn mused, "Undoubtedly the thing is over. It
+begins even to bore a bit."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> He noted curiously that he was unconscious
+of the streets. No tracing their pictures with phrases. They were
+streets, and that was an end of it. They belonged where they were.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes dropped to his companion. A face with moonlight grown upon it.
+Beautiful, yes. Sometime he would tell her. Pour it out in words. There
+was a paradox about the situation. He was obviously somewhat bored. Yet
+to leave her, to put an end to their strolling through the strange
+moments, would hurt. Had he ever lived before? Banal question. "No, I've
+never lived before. Living is somewhat of a bore, a beautiful bore."</p>
+
+<p>When they parted she stood looking at him as one transfixed.</p>
+
+<p>"Erik!"</p>
+
+<p>She made his name mean something&mdash;a world, a heaven. For an instant his
+laughter ended and a sadness engulfed him. Then once more he was alone
+and laughing. Rachel was walking away, something rather ridiculously
+normal about her step. Yes, he would laugh forever. Lord, what a jest!
+Like water coming out of a stone. Laugh at the crowds and buildings that
+desired to annoy him by sweeping toward him the memory of Rachel saying
+"Erik!" He diverted himself, as he hurried to his home, by staring into
+people's eyes and saying, "This one has a dream. That one hasn't. This
+one loves. The streets hurt him. That one is dead. The streets bury
+him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the third day the bombardment of Paris interfered with his plans. He
+remained too late in the office to walk with Rachel. As he sauntered
+about the shop, assisting and directing at the extras and replates, he
+vaguely forgot her. Word had come from the chief to hold the paper open
+until nine o'clock. If Paris failed to fall by nine everybody could go
+home and spend the rest of the night wrangling with his wife or looking
+at a movie. If it fell by nine there would be a final extra.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope the damned town falls five minutes after nine," growled Warren,
+"if it's got to fall. Let it fall for the morning papers. What the hell
+are they for, anyway? I've got a rotten headache."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn told him to run along. "I'll handle the copy, if there is any. A
+history of Paris out of the almanac will answer the purpose, I guess."</p>
+
+<p>Warren folded his newspapers and left. Dorn sat scribbling possible
+headlines for the next re-plate: "Germans Bombard Paris ..." and then a
+bank in smaller type: "French Capital Silent. Communication Cut Off." He
+paused and added with a sudden elation, "Civilization on Its Knees."</p>
+
+<p>The hum and suspense of the night-watch pleased him. He liked the idea
+of sitting in a noisy place waiting to flash the news of the fall of
+Paris to the city. And the next day the four afternoon papers would
+carry a small box on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> front page announcing to the public that, as
+usual, each of them had been first on the street with the important
+announcement. The fall of Paris! His thought mused. Babylon Falls....
+Civilization on Its Knees. The City Wall of Jericho Collapses. Carthage
+Reduced to Ashes. Rome Sacked by Huns. Yes, there had been magnificent
+headlines in the past. Now a new headline&mdash;Paris. There would be a
+sudden flurry; boys running between desks; Crowley trying to shout and
+achieving a frightful whisper; a smeared printer announcing some ghastly
+mistake in the composing room; and Paris would be down&mdash;fallen. Nothing
+left to do except grin at the idea of the morning papers cursing their
+luck. He sat, vaguely hoping there might be tidal waves, earthquakes,
+cataclysms. On this night his energies seemed to demand more work than
+the mere fall of Paris would occasion. "Might as well do the thing up
+brown and put an end to the world&mdash;all in one extra," he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>A messenger boy brought a telegram. He opened it and read,</p>
+
+<p>"I am going away. <span class="smcap">Rachel.</span>"</p>
+
+<p>All a part of the night's work. Killing off Paris. Answering telegrams
+to vanishing sweethearts. He stuffed the message into his pocket. On
+second thought he tore it up. Anna was coming home the next day. "Wife
+Finds Tell-tale Telegram...." Another headline.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute, boy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The messenger lounged into an editor's chair. Dorn scribbled on a
+telegraph blank:</p>
+
+<p>"Wait till Friday. I must see you once more. I will call for you at
+seven o'clock Thursday. We have never been together in the night. <span class="smcap">Erik.</span>"</p>
+
+<p>The messenger boy and the telegram disappeared. Still the laughter
+persisted. There was a jest in the world. Paris seemed a part of it.
+Everything belonged to it.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what the writers of Paris are saying," Crowley inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Enjoying themselves, as usual," Dorn answered. "I'll tell you a secret.
+We live in a mad and inspiring world."</p>
+
+<p>There was no final headline that night. Wednesday brought problems of
+conduct. It was obvious that Rachel was going away because of Anna. Her
+departure was a fact which presented itself with no finality. It
+resembled an insincere thought of suicide. Rachel, having gone, would
+still remain. The emotional prospects of the farewell closed his thought
+to the future. He spent Wednesday waiting for a seven o'clock on
+Thursday. An hour had detached itself from hours that went before and
+that followed. At home in the evening he endeavored to avoid his wife.
+His letters to her during her visit in Wisconsin had brought her back
+violently joyous. She desired love-making. He listened to her pour out
+ardent phrases and wondered why he felt no sense of betrayal toward her.
+"Conscience," he thought,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> "seems to be a vastly over-advertised
+commodity." He sat beside Anna, caressing her hand, smiling back into
+her passion-filled eyes, and gently checking an impulse in him to
+confide to her that he was in love with Rachel. It would be pleasant to
+tell her that, provided she would nod her head understandingly, smile,
+and stroke his hair; and answer something like, "You mean Rachel is in
+love with you. Well, I can't blame her. I'm horribly jealous, but it
+doesn't matter." An incongruous sanity warned him to avoid confessions,
+so he contented himself by rolling the situation over on his tongue,
+tasting the jealousy of his wife, the drama of the d&eacute;nouement, and
+remaining peacefully smiling in his leather chair.</p>
+
+<p>Thursday arrived. The afternoon dragged. He sat at his desk wondering
+whether he was sorrowful or not. The thought of meeting Rachel elated
+him. The thought that she was leaving and that he would not see her
+again seemed a vague thing. He put it out of his mind with ease and
+devoted himself to dreaming what he would say, the manner in which he
+would bid farewell.</p>
+
+<p>Walking now swiftly in the street toward Rachel's home his thought still
+played with his emotions. It was this that partially caused his
+laughter. Also, now that he was going to see her, there was again the
+sense of fullness. An unthinking calm, complete and vibrant, wrapped him
+in an embrace. The fullness and the calm brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> laughter. His thought
+amused him with the words, "There's a flaming absurdity about
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>He delighted in dressing his emotions in absurd phrases, in words that
+grimaced behind the rouge of tawdry ballads. Thinking of Rachel and
+feeling the sudden lift of sadness and bewilderment in his blood, he
+murmured aloud: "You never know you have a heart till it begins to
+break." The words amused him. There were other song titles that seemed
+to fit. He tried them all. "I don't know why I love you, but I do-o-o."
+Delightful diversion&mdash;airing the mystic desires of his soul in the
+tattered words of the cabaret yodelers. "Just a smile, a sigh, a
+kiss...." A sort of revenge, as if his vocabulary with its intricate
+verbal sophistications were avenging itself upon interloping emotions.
+And, too, because of a vague shame which inspired him to taunt his
+surrender; to combat it with an irony such as lay in the ridiculous
+phrases. This irony gave him a sense of being still outside his emotions
+and not a submissive part of them. "I am still Erik Dorn, master of my
+fate and captain of my soul," he smiled. But perhaps it was most of all
+the reaction of a verbal vanity. His love was not yet pumping rhapsodies
+into his thought. Instead, the words that came seemed to him somehow
+banal and commonplace. "I love you. I want to be with you all the time.
+When we are together things grow strange and desirable." Amorous
+mediocrities! So he edited them into a further banality and thus
+concealed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> his inability to give lofty utterance to his emotions by
+amusing himself with deliberately cheapened insincerities. "Saving my
+linguistic face," he thought suddenly, and laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel was sad. They left her home in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go toward the park," he announced. It irritated him to utter
+matter-of-fact directions. Why when he had had nothing to talk about had
+he been able to talk? And now when there was something, there seemed
+little to say? Words were obviously the delicate fruit of insincerity.
+Silence, the dark flower of emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go away." Rachel slipped her arm into his. He stared at her. She
+seemed more sorrowful than tears. This annoyed. It was ungrateful for
+her to look like weeping. But she was going from him. He tried to think
+of her and himself after they had parted, and succeeded only in
+remembering she was at his side. So he laughed quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to-morrow the guillotine falls," he answered. "To-night we dance
+in each other's arms. Immemorial tableau. Laughter, love, and song
+against the perfect background&mdash;death. Let's not cheat ourselves by
+being sad. To-morrow will be time enough."</p>
+
+<p>He realized he was collapsing into a pluck-ye-the-roses-while-ye-may
+strain, and stopped, irritated. There was something he should talk to
+her about&mdash;the causes of her departure. Plans. Their future. Was there a
+future? Undoubtedly some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>thing would have to be arranged. But his mind
+eluded responsibilities.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm happy," he whispered. "I talk like a fool because I feel like one.
+Heedless. Irresponsible. You've given me something and I can only look
+at it almost without thought."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems so strange that you should love me," she answered. "Because
+I've loved you always and never dreamed of you loving." She had become
+melting, as if her sadness were dissolving into caresses. "Let's just
+walk and I'll remember we're together and be happy, too."</p>
+
+<p>Thoughts vanished from him. He released her hand and they walked in
+silence with their arms together. A sleep descended. Their faces,
+tranquil and lighted by the snow, offered solitudes to each other.</p>
+
+<p>It was now snowing heavily. A thick white lattice raised itself from the
+streets against the darkness. The little black hectagonals of night
+danced between its spaces. Long white curtains painted themselves on the
+shadows of the city. The lovers walked unaware of the street. The snow
+crowded gently about them, moving patiently like a white and silent
+dream over their heads. Phantom houses stared after them. Slanting
+rooftops spread wings of silver in the night and drifted toward the
+moon. The half-closed leaden eyes of windows watched from another world.</p>
+
+<p>The snow grew heavier, winding itself about the yellow lights of street
+lamps and crawling with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> sudden life through the blur of window rays.
+Beneath, the pavements opened like white and narrow fans in a far-away
+hand. Black figures leaning forward emerged for an instant from behind
+the falling snow and disappeared again.</p>
+
+<p>Still the lovers moved without words&mdash;two black figures themselves, arms
+together, leaning forward, staring with burning hearts and tranquil
+faces out of a dream, as if they did not exist, had never existed; as if
+in the snow and night they had become an unreality, walking deeper into
+mists&mdash;yet never quite vanishing but growing only more unreal. Snow and
+two lovers walking together with the world like a dream over their
+heads, with life lingering in their eyes like a delicately absent-minded
+guest&mdash;the thought drifted like a memory through their hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Then slowly consciousness of themselves returned, bringing with it no
+relief of words. Their hearts seemed to have grown weak with tears, and
+in their minds existed nothing but the dark vagueness of despair&mdash;the
+despair of things that die with their eyes open and questing. Faces
+drifting like circles of light in the storm. At the end of the street a
+park. Here they would vanish from each other. The snow would continue
+falling gently, patiently, upon an empty world.</p>
+
+<p>The cold of Rachel's fingers pressed upon his hand. Her face turned
+itself to him. A moment of happiness halted them both as if they had
+been embraced. A wonder&mdash;the why and where of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> her leaving. But an
+indifference deprived him of words.</p>
+
+<p>"This is all of life," he muttered. Rachel staring at him nodded her
+head in echo. They were standing motionless as if they had forgotten how
+to live. Beyond this there were no gestures to make, nowhere to go. They
+had come to a horizon&mdash;an end. Here was ecstasy. What else? Nothing.
+Everything, here. Sky and night and snow had fallen about their heads in
+an ending. They stood as if clinging to themselves. Dorn heard a soft
+laugh from her.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I had died," Rachel was murmuring. He nodded his head in
+echo.</p>
+
+<p>A lighted window lost in the snow drew their eyes. People sat in a
+room&mdash;warm, stiff figures. The lovers stood smiling toward it. Words,
+soft and mocking, formed themselves in Dorn. A pain was pulling his
+heart away. The ecstasy that had raised him beyond his emotions seemed
+suddenly to have cast him into the fury of them. He would say mocking
+things&mdash;absurd phrases to which he might cling. Or else he must weep
+because of the pain in him. "Two waifs adrift in a storm, peering into a
+bakery window at the cookies." That was the key. A laugh at the dolorous
+asininity of life. "Face to face with the Roman Pop U Lace. We who are
+about to die salute you." Laugh, a phrase of laughter or he would stand
+blubbering like an imbecile.</p>
+
+<p>He struggled for the theatric gesture and found<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> himself shivering at
+Rachel's side, his arm clinging about her shoulders. Lord, what a jest!
+After the moment they had lived through, to stand round-eyed and
+blubbering before the gingerbread vision of joys behind a lighted
+window. The whine of a barrel-organ. The sentimental whimpering of a
+street-corner <i>Miserere</i>. And he must weep because of it&mdash;he who had
+stood with his head thrust through the sky. His thought, like an
+indignant monitor, collapsed with scoldings. Let it come, then! With a
+sigh he gave himself to tears, and they stood together weeping.</p>
+
+<p>The little lighted room seemed an enchantment floating in the scurry of
+the storm. It reached with warm fingers into their hearts, whispering a
+broken barrel-organ lullaby to them. Life shone upon them out of the
+lighted window and behind it the world of rocking-chairs and fireplaces,
+wall pictures and table lamps, lay like a haven smiling a good-by to
+them. Their hearts become tombs, closed slowly and forever upon a
+vision.</p>
+
+<p>"The world will be a black sky and the memory of you like a shining star
+that I watch endlessly." He listened to his words. They brought a dim
+gladness. His phrases had finally capitulated to his love. He could talk
+now without the artifice of banality to hide behind. Talk, say the
+unsayable, bring his love in misty word lines before his eyes; look and
+forget a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel's voice at his side said, "I love you so. Oh, I love you so!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yes, he could talk now. His heart wagged a tongue. The pain in him had
+found words. The mystic desires and torments&mdash;words, words.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll remember, years later, and be grateful we didn't bury our love
+behind lighted windows, but left it to wander forever and remain forever
+alive. Rachel, my dear one."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you so!" she wept.</p>
+
+<p>More words ... "it would have been always the same. We've lived one
+moment and in all of life there's nothing more than what we've had.
+Lovers who grow old together live only in their yesterdays. And their
+yesterdays are only a moment&mdash;till the time comes when their yesterdays
+die. Then they become little, half-dead people, who wait in lighted
+rooms, empty handed, fumbling greedily with trifles...."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you!" She made a refrain for him. "I don't know the things you
+do. I only love you."</p>
+
+<p>"Rachel ..." He had no belief in what he was saying. The things he knew?
+What? Nothing but pain and torment. Yet his heart went on wagging out
+words: "All life is a parting&mdash;a continual and monotonous parting. And
+most hideous of all, a parting with dead things. A saying good-by to
+things that no longer exist. We part with living things, and so keep
+them, somehow. Your face makes life for the moment familiar. Visions
+bloom like sad flowers in my heart. Your body against mine brings a
+torment even into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> my words. Oh, your weeping's the sound of my own
+heart dying. Rachel, you are more wonderful than life. I love you! I
+feel as if I must die when you go away. Crowds, streets, buildings&mdash;all
+empty outlines. Empty before you came, emptier when you have gone."</p>
+
+<p>He paused. His thought whispered: "I'll remember things I say. I mustn't
+say too much. I'm sad. Oh, God, what a mess!"</p>
+
+<p>They walked into the park. A sudden matter-of-factness came into Dorn's
+mind. He had sung something from his heart. Yet he remembered with
+astonishment it had been a wary song. He had not asked her to stay. Had
+he asked her she would have remained. Curious, how he acquiesced in her
+going. A sense of drama seemed to demand it. When he had received her
+message the night in the office he had agreed at once. Why? Because he
+was not in love? This too, a make-believe, more colored, more persuasive
+than the others? Wrong. Something else. Anna. Anna was sending her away.
+The figure of Anna loomed behind their ecstasies. It stood nodding its
+head sorrowfully at a good-by in the snow.</p>
+
+<p>They were deep in the park. Trees made still gestures about them. The
+ivory silhouettes of trees haunted the distance. A spectral summer
+painted itself upon the barren lilac bushes. Beneath, the lawn slopes
+raised moon faces to the night. Deep in the storm the ghost of a bronze
+fountain emerged and remained staring at the scene.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was cold. The wind had died and the snow hung without motion, like a
+cloud of ribbons in the air. The white park gleamed as if under the
+swinging light of blue and silver lanterns. The night, lost in a dream
+wandered away among strange sculptures. In the distance a curtain of
+porphyry and bisque drew its shadow across the moon.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel pointed suddenly with her finger.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" she whispered. She remained as if in terror, pointing.</p>
+
+<p>Three figures were converging toward them&mdash;black figures out of the
+distant snow. Figures of men, without faces, like three bundles of
+clothes, they came toiling across the unbroken white of the park, an air
+of intense destinations about them. Above the desolate field of white
+the three figures seemed suddenly to loom into heroic sizes. They reared
+to a height and zigzagged across a nowhere.</p>
+
+<p>"See, see!" Rachel cried. She was still pointing. Her voice rang
+brokenly. "They're coming for me, Erik. Erik, don't you see? People
+wandering toward me. Horrible strangers. Oh, I know, I know!" She
+laughed. "My grandmother was a gypsy and she's telling my fortune in the
+snow. Things that will jump out of space and come at me, after you're
+gone."</p>
+
+<p>The three men, puffing with exertion, converged upon the walk and passed
+on with a morose stare at the lovers. Dorn sighed, relieved. He had
+caught a strange foreboding sense out of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> tableau of the white field
+and the three converging black figures.... If he loved her why was he
+letting her go? If he loved her....</p>
+
+<p>He walked on suddenly wearied, saddened, uncertain. It was no more than
+a dream that had touched his senses, a breath of a dream that lingered
+for a moment upon his mirror. It would pass, as all things pass. And he
+would fall back into the pattern of streets and faces, watching as
+before the emptiness of life make geometrical figures of itself. Yes, it
+was better to have her go&mdash;simpler. Perhaps a desire would remain, a
+breath, a moonlit memory of her loveliness to mumble over now and then,
+like a line of poetry always unwritten. Let her go. Beautiful ...
+wonderful.... These were words. Was he even sad? She was&mdash;what? Another
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>In the shadow of a snow-covered wall he paused. The snow had ended.</p>
+
+<p>"Come closer," he whispered. She remained silent as he removed her
+overcoat. He dropped it in the snow and threw his own beside it.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll be warm for a minute against each other."</p>
+
+<p>She was a flower in his arms. She seemed to vanish and become mist.
+Slowly he became aware of her touch, of her arms holding him and her
+lips. She was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"I am yours&mdash;always&mdash;everywhere. I will be a shrine to you. And whenever
+you want me I will come crawling on my knees to you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dying, dying! She was dying. Another moment and the mist of her would be
+gone. "Rachel.... Rachel. I love you. I send you away. Oh, God, why do I
+send you away?"</p>
+
+<p>She was out of his arms. Undressed, naked, emptied, he stood unknown to
+himself. No words. Her kiss alone lived on his lips. She was looking at
+him with burning wild eyes. Expression seemed to have left her. There
+was something else in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"I must look at you. To remember, to remember!" she gasped. "Oh, to
+remember you! I have never looked at you. I have never seen you. It's a
+dream. Who is Erik Dorn? Who am I? Oh, let me look at you...."</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of Rachel grew marvelously bright. Burned ... burned.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn stared into an empty park. Gone! Her coat still in the snow. His
+own beside it. He stood smiling, confused. His lips made an apology. He
+walked off. Oh, yes, their coats together in the snow. A symbol. He
+stumbled and a sudden terror engulfed him. "Her face," he mumbled, "like
+a mirror of stars." He felt himself sicken. What had her eyes said? Eyes
+that burned and devoured him and vanished. "Rachel," he wept, "forever!"
+He wondered why he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>The park, white, gleaming, desolate, gave him back her face. Out of the
+empty night, her face. In the trees it drifted, haunting him. The print
+of a face was upon the world. He went stumbling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> toward it in the snow.
+He covered his eyes with his hands as he walked.</p>
+
+<p>"Her face," he mumbled, "her face was beautiful...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V2" id="CHAPTER_V2"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p>In a dining-room of the city known as the Blue Inn, Anna Dorn sat
+waiting for her husband. Opposite her a laughing-eyed man was talking.
+She listened without intelligence. He was part of old memories&mdash;crowded
+rooms in which lights had been turned off. They had danced together in
+their youth. She had worn his fraternity pin and walked with him one
+night under a moon and kissed him, saying: "I will always love you. The
+other boys are different. You are so nice and kind, Eddie." And Eddie
+had gone away east to continue a complacent quest for erudition in a
+university. Almost forgotten days and places when there had been no Erik
+Dorn, and when one debated which pumps to wear to the dance. Erik had
+blotted them out. A whimsical, moody young Mr. Dorn, laughing and
+carousing about the city and singling her out one night at a party....
+"We must get out of here or we'll choke to death. Come, we'll go down to
+the lake and laugh at the stars. They're the only laughable things in
+the world."</p>
+
+<p>She looked sadly at the man whose kindly voice sought to rally her out
+of a gloom. Before the laughing stars there had been another day&mdash;other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+stars, another Anna. All part of another world. Eddie Meredith and
+another world sat dimly apparent across the white linen of the table.
+Anecdotes of old friends they had shared, forgotten names and incidents
+reached through the shadows of her thought and stirred an alien memory.
+He hadn't changed. Ten years&mdash;and he was still Eddie Meredith, with eyes
+that looked for simple pleasures and seemed to find them. He had always
+found something to laugh about. Not the way Erik laughed. Erik's laugh
+was something that had never ceased to hurt. Strange that Eddie's voice
+had never grown tired of laughing during the ten years.</p>
+
+<p>The ache in her heart lightened and she listened with almost a
+smile&mdash;the ghost of another Anna smiling. It was the other Anna who had
+walked through youth with a joyous indifference to life, to everything
+but youth. Buried now deep under years, Eddie warmed it back. Eddie sat
+talking to the ghost that had been Anna Winthrop and that could not
+answer him.</p>
+
+<p>He was a poor talker. She was too used to Erik. Simple, threadbare
+phrases, yet she had once thought him brilliant. Perhaps he was&mdash;a
+different kind of brilliance. She noted how his words seemed stimulated
+with an enthusiasm beyond their sense. Trifles assumed an importance.
+For moments she felt herself looking at the joyousness of an old friend
+and forgetting. Then as always through the day and night.... "Erik,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+Erik," murmured itself in her mind ... "he doesn't love me. Erik, dear
+Erik!" Over and over, weaving itself into all she said and saw.
+Sometimes it started a panic in her. She would feel herself grow dark,
+wild. Often it seemed to bring death. Things would become vague and she
+would move through the hours unaware of them.</p>
+
+<p>The joyousness of Eddie drifted away. She remained smiling blankly at
+him. His words slipped past her ear. Inside, she was
+wandering&mdash;disheveled thoughts were wandering through a darkness. At
+night she lay beside him as he slept, with her eyes wide open and her
+lips praying, "Dear Jesus, sweet brother Jesus, give Erik back to me!"
+... Or she would crawl out of bed and walk into a deserted room to weep.
+Here she could mumble his name till the anguish of her tears choked her.
+As the cold streets grew gray she would hurry to bathe her face, even
+rouging her cheeks, and return to their bed to wait for Erik to awake,
+that she might caress him, warm something back in him with her kisses,
+and perhaps hear him whisper her name as he used to do. But he drew
+himself away, his eyes sometimes filling with tears. "It's nothing,
+Anna, nothing. Please don't ask. I don't know what it is. My head or
+something. I feel black inside...." And he would hurry to work, not
+waiting for her to join him at breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Then there had been nights when he held her in his arms thinking she was
+asleep, and she felt his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> tears dropping over her face&mdash;tears of
+silence. She would lie trembling with a wild joy, yet not daring to open
+her eyes or speak, knowing he would move away. These moments, feigning
+sleep and listening to Erik weeping softly against her cheek, had been
+her only happiness in the four black months since the change had come to
+him. He still loved her. Yes.... Oh, God, it was something else. Perhaps
+madness. She would drift to sleep as his weeping ceased, long after it
+ceased, and half dreams would come to her of nursing him through
+terrible darknesses, of warming him with her life, of magically driving
+away the things that were tormenting him out of his mind&mdash;great black
+things. Through the day she hungered for his return from work, that she
+might look at him again, even though the sight of him, dark and aloof,
+tore at her heart till she grew faint.</p>
+
+<p>She had never thought of questioning him calmly. There had been no
+suspicion of "someone else." That was a thing beyond even the wildest
+disorder of her imaginings. It was only that Erik was restless, perhaps
+tired of his home, of her too much loving and longing to go
+somewhere&mdash;away. Her awe of his brain, of his strange, always
+impenetrable character, adjusted itself to the change in him. There were
+mysterious things in Erik&mdash;things she couldn't hope to understand. Now
+these unknown things had grown too big in him. He was different from
+other men, not to be questioned as one might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> question other men. So she
+must wander about blindly, carefully, and drive things away.</p>
+
+<p>She came out of her sorrow reveries and smiled. Eddie was still talking.
+The music of a violin, harp, and piano was playing with a rollicking
+wistfulness through the clatter and laughter of the caf&eacute;. Eddie was
+saying, "There, that's better. That makes you look like Anna. You were
+looking like somebody else."</p>
+
+<p>His jolly eyes had a keenness. She must dissemble better. Erik would
+come in a moment and Eddie must never think....</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard about your husband, the lucky dog!" Eddie beamed at her
+impudently. "Think," he exploded, "of meeting you accidentally after ten
+years. Wow! Ten years! They say themselves quickly, don't they? By the
+way, there's a curious fellow coming to meet me here. I'll drag him in.
+If your Erik don't like it I'll sit on him till he does. His name's
+Tesla&mdash;Emil Tesla. Bomb-thrower or something. I don't know exactly. He's
+helped me with my collection. Oh, I forgot. You don't know about that. I
+keep thinking that you know me. You see nothing has changed in me. I'm
+still the same Eddie&mdash;richer, balder, foolisher, perhaps. It seems you
+ought to know all about the ten years without being told. But I'll tell
+you. I'm an art collector on the sly. Pictures&mdash;horrible things that
+don't look like anything. I don't know why I collect them, honestly.
+Pictures mean nothing to me. Never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> did. Particularly the kind I pick
+up. But it's a habit that keeps me cheerful. Better than collecting
+stamps. Cubist, futurist, expressionist. Ever see the damn things? I
+gobble them up. I guess because they're cheap. Here he is&mdash;the young
+fellow with the soft face."</p>
+
+<p>Meredith rose and jubilantly waved a napkin. A stocky man in loose
+clothes nodded at him and approached.</p>
+
+<p>"Not Mrs. Erik Dorn," he repeated. Anna nodded. The sound of her
+husband's name on others' lips always elated her, even now. She lost for
+a moment the aversion she felt at the touch of Tesla's hand. It seemed
+boneless.... They would all eat together. Anna was an old school friend.
+Years ago, ah! many years.</p>
+
+<p>Tesla fastened a repugnantly appreciative eye upon her, as if he were
+becoming privy to an exclusive secret. She frowned inwardly. An ugly man
+with something bubbly about him.</p>
+
+<p>"I was telling Mrs. Dorn you were a bomb-thrower or something," Meredith
+announced. His good spirits frisked about the table like a troupe of
+frolicsome puppies.</p>
+
+<p>"Only an apprentice," Tesla's soft voice&mdash;a voice like his
+hands&mdash;answered. "But why talk of such things in the presence of a
+beautiful lady." He bowed his head at her. She thought, "An unbearable
+man, completely out of place. How in the world could Eddie...."</p>
+
+<p>The music had changed. Muted cornets,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> banjos and saxophones were
+wailing out a tom-tom adagio. People were rising from tables and moving
+toward a dancing space. Eddie stood beside her bowing with elaborate
+stiffness.</p>
+
+<p>"My next dance, Miss Winthrop."</p>
+
+<p>Anna looked up blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord, have you forgotten your own name? Come on. You know Dorn,
+don't you, Emil? Well, throw a fork at him when he shows up. Come, we
+haven't danced together for ten years. The last time was...."</p>
+
+<p>"The last time was the senior prom," Anna interrupted quickly. "You see
+I haven't forgotten." She stood mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>As they walked between tables and diners, he said, "I sure feel like a
+boy again seeing you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I've almost forgotten how to dance, Eddie. My husband
+doesn't dance much."</p>
+
+<p>"Here we are! Like old days, eh? Remember Jimmie Goodland, my deadly
+rival for your hand?"</p>
+
+<p>They were dancing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's married. Three kids."</p>
+
+<p>"And how many children have you, Eddie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me?" He laughed. "Have I forgotten to tell you that? Well, I'm still at
+large, untrammeled, free. There've been women, but not <i>the</i> woman."</p>
+
+<p>His voice put on a pleasing facetiousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Mustn't mind an old friend getting senti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>mental. But after you they had
+to measure up to something&mdash;and didn't."</p>
+
+<p>Since the night Erik had singled her out at the party no man had spoken
+to her that way. She listened slightly amazed. It confused her. His
+eyes, as they danced, were jolly and polite. But they watched her too
+keenly. Erik might misunderstand. Her love somehow resented being looked
+at and spoken to like that. She hurried back to their first topic.</p>
+
+<p>"What became of Millie Pugh, Eddie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Married. A Spaniard or something. Two kids and an automobile. Saw them
+in Brazil somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"And Arthur Stearns?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fatter than an alderman. Runs a gas works or something in Detroit.
+Married. One kid."</p>
+
+<p>Anna laughed. "You sound like an almanac of dooms."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, all married but me&mdash;little Eddie, the boy bachelor, faithful unto
+death to the memories of his childhood. Do you remember the night we ran
+Mazurine's out of ice-cream?"</p>
+
+<p>This was another world, another Anna. She closed her eyes dreamily to
+the movement of the dance and music&mdash;delicious drugs.</p>
+
+<p>"Faster," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>They broke into quicker steps. "Erik.... Erik.... my own. Love me again.
+Come back to me...." Still in her thought, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> fainter, deeper down.
+Not words but a sigh that moved to the rhythm of the music.</p>
+
+<p>"And how may children have you?"</p>
+
+<p>She answered without emotion, as if she were talking with a distant part
+of herself. "There was a little boy. He died as a baby. We haven't any."</p>
+
+<p>Deep, kindly eyes looking at her as they danced. "I'm so sorry, Anna."</p>
+
+<p>She whispered again, "Faster!" A shadow over his face. She must be
+careful of his eyes&mdash;eyes that laughed, but keen, almost as keen as
+Erik's. "My Erik ... my own...." It was all a dream, a nightmare of her
+own inventing. Nothing had happened. Imaginings. Erik loved her. Why
+else should he weep and kiss her when he thought her asleep? He loved
+her, he loved her!</p>
+
+<p>Her face grew bright. Faster. Always to dance and dream of Erik. She
+must tell Eddie....</p>
+
+<p>"Erik is wonderful. I'm dying to have you meet him. Oh, Eddie, he's
+wonderful!"</p>
+
+<p>Now she could laugh and enjoy herself. Something had emptied out of her
+breasts&mdash;cold iron, warm lead. She was lighter, easy to bend and glide
+to the music. Everything was easy. Her face lighted by something deeper
+than a smile, she danced in silence. Eddie was far away&mdash;ten years away.
+His eyes that were smiling at her were no eyes at all. They were part of
+the music<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> and movement that caressed her with the sweetness of life, of
+being loved by Erik....</p>
+
+<p>Tesla watched his friend lead the red-haired lady away to dance. For a
+while there lingered about him the air of unctious submission that had
+revolted Anna. Then it vanished. His face as he sat alone seemed to
+tighten. The flabbiness of his eyes became something else. Diners at
+other tables caught glimpses of him while they ate. A commanding figure,
+rugged, youthful-faced. Features that made definite lines, compelling
+lines, in the blur of other features. A man of certainties, yet with
+something weak about him. His eyes were like a child's. They did not
+quite belong in his face. There, eyes should have gleamed, stared with
+intensities. Instead, eyes purred&mdash;abstract, tender eyes; the kind that
+attracted women sometimes because they were almost like a women's eyes
+dreaming of lovers.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Tesla!"</p>
+
+<p>Again the fawning lights, smiles, bowings. This was Dorn&mdash;a Somebody.
+Somebodies always changed Tesla. There was a thing in him that smirked
+before Somebodies, as if he were a timorous puppy wagging its tail and
+leaping about on flabby legs.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Dorn is sitting here with a friend. They're dancing. We're all at
+this table, Mr. Dorn."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn caught the eager innuendo of his voice. He knew Tesla vaguely as a
+radical, an author of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> pamphlets. Tesla continued to talk, a sycophantic
+purr in his words.... The war was financed by international bankers.
+Didn't he think so? America was being drawn in by Wall Street&mdash;to make
+the loans to the Allies stand up. But something was going to happen. The
+eyes of the workers were opening slowly all over the world. In Russia
+already a beginning of realities. Ah, think of the millions dying for
+nothing, advancing or improving nothing by their death. Soldiers,
+heroes, workingmen, all blind acrobats in another man's circus. But
+something was happening. Revolution. This grewsome horseplay in Europe's
+front yard would start it. And then&mdash;watch out!</p>
+
+<p>The voice of Emil Tesla, eager, fawning, had yet another quality in it.
+It promised, as if it could not do justice to the things it was saying
+and must be careful, soft, polite. Dorn felt the man and his power. Not
+a puppy on flabby legs but a brute mastiff with a wild bay that must
+come out in little whines, because the music was playing, because he was
+talking to Somebody. A man physically beaten by life, his body scraping,
+bowing; his words mumbling confusedly in the presence of other words.
+Yet a powerful man with a tremendous urge that might some day hurl him
+against the stars. He had something....</p>
+
+<p>To Tesla's sentences Dorn dropped a yes or no. Tesla needed no replies.
+He purred on eagerly before his listener, seeming to whine for his
+appre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>ciation and good will, yet unconscious of him. A waiter brought
+wine. Dorn stared at the topaz tint in his glass. His eyes had changed.
+They no longer smiled. A heaviness gleamed from them. The thing in his
+heart would not go. Heavy hands turning him over and over, as if life
+were tearing him, crowds and streets pulling at him. There had been no
+rest since Rachel had gone.</p>
+
+<p>He sat almost oblivious of Tesla. In the back of his brain the city
+tumbled&mdash;an elephantine grimace, a wilderness of angles, a swarm of
+gestures that beat at his thought. But before his eyes there were no
+longer the precise patterns of another day. He was no longer outside. He
+had been sucked into something, the something that he had been used to
+refer to condescendingly as life. People sitting in a room like this had
+been furniture that amused him. Now they were alive, repulsive, with a
+meaning to them that sickened him. Streets had once been stone and
+gesture. Now they, too, were meanings that sickened. A sanity in which
+he alone was insane, surrounded him; a completion in which he alone
+seemed incomplete. Men and women together&mdash;tired faces, lighted
+faces&mdash;all with destinations that satisfied them. And he wandering,
+knocked from place to place by heavy hands, pushed through crowds,
+dropped into chairs. Time itself a torment into which he kept thrusting
+himself deeper.</p>
+
+<p>The change in Erik Dorn had come to him with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> a cynicism of its own. It
+laughed with its own laughter. A mind foreign to him spoke to him
+through the day.... "You would smile at life, Erik; well, here it is.
+Easy for a sleeper to smile. But smile now. Life is a surface, eh?
+shifting about into designs for the delectation of your eyes. Watch it
+shifting then. Darkness and emptiness in a can-can. Watch the tumbling
+streets that have no meanings. No meanings? Yet there's a torment in
+them that can hoist you up by your placid little heels and swing you
+round ... round, and send you flying. A witch's flight with the scream
+of stars whistling through it. Flight that has no ending and no
+direction ... no face of Rachel at its ending. Burning eyes, devouring
+eyes ... face like a mirror of stars. There's a face in the world and
+you go after it, heels in air, tongue frozen, breathing always an
+emptiness that chokes. Easy for sleepers to dawdle with words and say
+carelessly life is this, life is that. What the hell's the difference
+what life is? It means nothing to me. People and their posturings mean
+nothing. But what about now? A contact, a tying up with posturings, and
+the streets and crowds tearing you into gestures not your own...."</p>
+
+<p>Aloud he would say, "My love for her has given me a soul and I've become
+a fool along with other fools."</p>
+
+<p>He did not think of Rachel in words. There were moments of dream when he
+made plans&mdash;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> fantastic amorous rigmarole of Rachel and himself walking
+together over the heads of the world; child dreams that substituted
+themselves for the realities he demanded. But these were infrequent. He
+was learning to avoid them as one avoids a drug that soothes and then
+doubles the hunger of the nerves.</p>
+
+<p>As now in the caf&eacute;, listening to Tesla, watching with dark eyes the
+scene, there was a turning of heavy hands in him to which he must not
+give thought. Watch the caf&eacute;, listen to Tesla, talk, eat and spit out a
+disgust for the things of which he was a part&mdash;things from which he
+demanded Rachel and a surcease to the pain in him. And that only stifled
+with the emptiness of her.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the wretchedness of garbled emotions that had become the whole of
+Erik Dorn, his vocabulary arose with a facile paint brush and painted
+upon his thought. His phrases wandered about looking for subjects as if
+he must taunt himself with details that forever brought him loathing.</p>
+
+<p>Before he had seen pictures complete, rhythmic pictures of streets and
+crowds, pleasantly blurred and in motion. Now he saw them as if life was
+in a state of continual pause&mdash;an arrested cinematograph; grotesquely
+detailed and with the meaning of motion out of it. A picture waiting
+something to set it moving. This something he could not give it.
+Helplessly his words continued to trace themselves over the outlines of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+scenes about him, as if trying to stir them into a life.</p>
+
+<p>This scene consciousness had become almost a mania in the four months.
+But in the mechanical, phraseological movement of his thought he was
+able to hide himself. Thus he listened to Tesla and looked at the caf&eacute;.
+The inn was filled with people&mdash;elaborately dressed women and shiningly
+groomed men&mdash;grouped about white-linened, silver-laden tables; an
+ornamental grimacing little multitude come to the caf&eacute; as to some grave
+rite, moving to the tables with an unctious nonchalance. Women dressed
+in effulgent silks, their flesh gleaming among the spaces of exotic
+plumage, gleaming through the flares of luxurious satin distortions. A
+company that gestured, grimaced with the charm of lustful marionettes.
+Flesh reduced to secrecy. Lust, dream in hiding. From the secret world
+they inhabited, moist bodies beckoned with a luscious, perverse denial
+of artifice.</p>
+
+<p>The picture of it shot into his eyes, arousing a hate in his thought. He
+heard Tesla ... "life has changed with the industrialization of society.
+It is no longer a question of who shall run the court. The court is an
+atrophied institution, a circus surviving in the backyard of history.
+It's a question of who shall run the factory. Democracy is a thing that
+touches only politicians. The factory touches people. Democracy cleared
+the way but it's not a way in itself. It's still the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> court idea of
+government. Steam, gas, and electricity made the French revolution
+obsolete even before it was ended. This war ... good God, Dorn, blood
+pouring over toys we've outgrown!..."</p>
+
+<p>Still fawning voiced, but with a bay underneath. Dorn listened and
+remained elsewhere&mdash;among a turning of heavy hands. Yet he thought of
+Tesla, "He makes an impression on me. I'll remember his words. A man of
+power, rooted in visions." He replied suddenly, "I'm convinced the weak
+will rule some day, if that's what you're driving at. The race can
+survive only as long as its weakest survive. Christianity started it.
+Socialism will carry it a step further. The fight against the
+individual. What else is any institutionalism? A struggle to circumvent
+the biological destiny of man, which is the same as the biological
+destiny of fish&mdash;extinction. That's what we're primarily engaged in. The
+race must protect its weak, so it invents laws to curb the instincts and
+power of its strong. And we obey the laws&mdash;a matter of adjusting
+ourselves ludicrously to our weaknesses and endowing these adjustments
+with high names. Bolshevism will be the law of to-morrow and wear even a
+higher name than Christianity. Yesterday it was, 'only the poor shall
+inherit heaven, only crippled brains and weaker visions shall see God.'
+To-morrow the slogan will have been brought down to earth. Yes, they'll
+run the factories&mdash;your masses. There's the strength in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> them of
+logic&mdash;a logic opposed to evolution. They'll run the factories as they
+now run heaven&mdash;an Institution nicely accommodated to their fears and
+weaknesses."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn paused. He was not thinking. People said things. An automatic box
+of phrases in him released answers. Tesla was replying, not so
+fawningly, the bay beneath his soft words mastering his sycophantic
+tones. Let him talk. He had something to talk about. He saw something.
+There was a new tableau in Tesla's brain. Let him keep murmuring things
+about it&mdash;suavely, unctuously letting off steam.</p>
+
+<p>Like a man returning drearily to his game of solitaire, Dorn fastened
+his eyes again upon the scene. Looking at things would keep him from
+thinking. To think was to cry out. He had learned this. His eyes, dark
+and heavy, fastened themselves upon the walls of the inn lost in
+shadows, painted with nymphs and satyrs sprawling over tapestried
+landscapes. He devoured their details, his heart searching in them for
+the mystery of Rachel and finding only a deeper emptiness&mdash;insistently
+naked bodies of nymphs lying like newly bathed housemaids amid stiff
+park sceneries. Miracles of photographic lechery. Would people about him
+look like that naked? Thank God they were dressed! An ankle in silk was
+better than a thigh in sunlight. An old saw ... beauty lay in the
+imagination. Women removed their beauty with their clothes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> The nymphs
+on the wall reminded one chiefly that they were careful to scrub their
+legs all the way up.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed and watched the eyes of diners look at the walls. Her face&mdash;a
+mirror of stars. What else was there but her face? Other faces, of
+course. A revulsion of other strange faces. Men studying the naked
+figures on the walls with profound but aloof interest, eyeing the women
+near them shrewdly as they turned away. Women with serious,
+unconcentrated eyes upon the paintings, turning tenderly towards their
+escorts. He would die of looking at faces that were not hers. A
+love-sick schoolboy. God, what an ass! Tesla was becoming an
+insufferable bore. What in God's name did he have to do with masses
+raising their skinny arms from a smoking field and crying aloud,
+"Bread!" Tesla had a lot to do with it. The skinny arms, the smoking
+field, and the balloon with the word "bread" in it were Tesla's soul.
+But his soul was different&mdash;heavy hands turning.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn drank wine from his glass. Anna, dancing with a plump, laughing
+stranger, flitted through the distance. A deeper turning over of iron in
+his heart at the glimpse of her. The scene no longer could divert him.
+The thought of Anna dropped like a curtain upon a picture. What could he
+do? What? At night he grew sick lying beside her. It wasn't conscience.
+There was nothing wrong about loving someone else. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> there was an
+uncanniness about it. Lying beside a woman who didn't know what was in
+his mind. He would lie thinking, "Oh, Rachel, I love Rachel," repeating
+almost idiotic love words for Rachel in his mind. And Anna would smile
+patiently at him, unaware. That was the most intolerable thing. The fact
+she didn't know. And also the fact that he must remain inarticulate. He
+must sit with his heart choking him and his head in a blaze, and keep
+stuffing words back down his throat. Through the day he tormented
+himself with the thought, "I must tell her. I can't keep this thing up
+any longer." But when he saw her it was impossible to tell her. A single
+phrase would end it. He held the phrase on his lips&mdash;as if it were a
+knife balanced over Anna's heart. "I love Rachel." That would end it.
+But it was impossible. He couldn't say it. Why? He sat, trying to get a
+glimpse of her dancing again and tried to avoid answering himself. It
+was something he mustn't answer. He must get away from his damned
+thought. His eyes fastened themselves upon the fountain in the center of
+the room. It was Anna that tormented him, not Rachel. Anna ... Anna....
+The tension broke. He was looking at the fountain surmounted by a marble
+nude crouched in a posture of surprise; probably disturbed by her
+nudity. It was necessary for nudity to be disturbed by itself. Did
+virgins eyeing themselves in mirrors blush with shame? Unquestionably.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+The nude peered into the water of a large tiled basin. A gush of water
+over her managed to veil her unsuccessfully in an endless spray. Water
+filled the air with an odorless spice.</p>
+
+<p>" ... the first blow will come out of Russia, Dorn. The Russians have
+not been side-tracked into the phantasms of democracy. They still think
+straight. Civilization hasn't crippled them with phrases. They are still
+what you would call biological. And dreams live in them. Yes, I know
+what you'll say ... heavy dreams. But here in America there are no
+dreams&mdash;yet. Nothing but paper. Paper thoughts. Paper morals. Everything
+paper. Russia will send out fire to burn up this paper. Destroy it.
+Leave nothing behind&mdash;not even ashes."</p>
+
+<p>True enough. Why answer it? But what difference did it make if paper
+burned? Was man after all a creature consecrated to institutions, doomed
+to expend himself upon institutions? A hundred million nervous systems,
+each capable of ecstasies and torments, devoting themselves to the
+business of political brick-laying. Always yowling about new bricks.
+Politics&mdash;a deformity of the imagination; a game of tiddledy-winks
+played with guns and souls.</p>
+
+<p>He breathed with relief. Abstractions were a drug. But his thinking
+ended. Blue electric lights cast an amorous glow&mdash;an artificial
+moonlight&mdash;upon tables surrounding the fountain. Beneath the cobalt
+water of the basin, colored fish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> gliding like a weaving procession of
+little fat Mandarins. The remainder of the room also blue from shaded
+lights. That was why they dubbed it the Blue Inn. Blue lights made the
+Blue Inn. The air was heavy with the uncoiling lavender tinsel of
+tobacco smoke. A luxurious suppression as about some priapic altar ...
+artificial shadows, painted lights, forlorn fountain ripplings.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Erik, I've been dancing. This is Mr. Meredith. I once told you
+about him. The music is simply wonderful here."</p>
+
+<p>Tesla, flabby-eyed and almost maliciously polite, as if he would expose
+the innate absurdity of politeness, tipped over a water glass in his
+floppings. Anna, still alive with the joyousness that had come to her,
+seated herself beside her husband. Her hand rested eagerly on his arm.
+He must love her ... must. Must. It had been only a nightmare she'd
+invented. Oh, God, did anything matter as long as they loved each other?</p>
+
+<p>"Tired, dearest?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her and tried to lighten his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a little. The damned war."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry."</p>
+
+<p>She mustn't ask him to dance. He was tired. She would coddle him. He was
+only a baby&mdash;tired, sleepy, sad. She must ask no questions. Only love.
+Before her love the darkness of his face would clear away as before
+sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so happy, Erik darling!"</p>
+
+<p>Her fingers quivered on his arm. He looked at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> her and smiled out of
+misty eyes. Of all the unbearable things in an unbearable world her
+happiness was the most unbearable. She nodded, as if she understood. Her
+pretense of understanding was a ghastly business. But Anna smiled. Poor
+Erik, he was only a boy. If only they were alone! If Eddie and Tesla and
+the whole world would go away and leave her with him, to kiss his eyes
+and stroke his hair. Sleep, baby, sleep.... What a crazy, wild thing,
+thinking that Erik no longer loved her. No longer loved her! Dear God,
+she was only a part of him. He must love her.... Must!</p>
+
+<p>The talk kept on&mdash;words bubbling from Tesla, Eddie frisking with
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"You must dance with me, Erik. It's been so long since we danced."
+There&mdash;she shouldn't have asked. She didn't mean to. Her eyes
+apologized. When he answered, "No, I'm tired," there was wine from a
+glass that warmed the little coldness his words dropped into her.</p>
+
+<p>Listening to her, answering with words he tried to soften and make
+alive, Dorn tried to occupy himself with the details of the scene again.
+Could he keep on living as two persons&mdash;one of them turning over and
+over in a fire that consumed him&mdash;and the other making phrases,
+gestures, as if there were no fire consuming him? If he kept his eyes
+working, perhaps. He hated Anna. But that was because he couldn't bear
+the thought of her suffering. He hated her because he must be kind to
+her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meredith was ordering the dinner. Dorn stared out over the room.</p>
+
+<p>Anna was watching him with her senses. Why didn't he speak to her as
+Eddie did? Perhaps he was going mad. His eyes suffered. He looked at
+things and seemed to hurt himself with looking. She kept her voice
+vibrant with a hope of joyousness. "I mustn't give in to the nightmare.
+It's only imagining...."</p>
+
+<p>"Erik, dearest, do eat something. Let me order for you."</p>
+
+<p>Talk, talk! Dorn listened. Anna was saying, "Eddie thinks as you do
+about the war, Erik. Isn't that odd?" Yes, that anybody should be able
+to think as he did. He was a God. A super-God. If only she hated him. A
+moment of hate in her eyes would be heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"A plain case of accepting an evil and making the best of it," laughed
+Meredith. "If we go in all I ask is for God's sake let's keep our eyes
+open and not slobber around."</p>
+
+<p>Soft remonstrances from Tesla with polite references to Wall Street.
+Food on platters. An air of slight excitement with Anna directing the
+talk and serving. What made her so vivacious? The sight of an old
+friend, Meredith? Meredith ... oh, yes, school days, long ago. A wild
+hope unfolded itself in Dorn. He looked at the man anew. Fantastic
+notion. But throw them together, day and night. Caf&eacute;s, dancing, music,
+propinquity. He was her type&mdash;kindly, unselfish, prosperously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> elate
+over life. He'd help her on with her wraps and be polite over doorways.
+Perhaps. He turned to his wife and laughed softly. A way out. Give her
+to the man. Give her away. End her love for him&mdash;her damned, torturing
+love that made him turn over inside and weep at night when she was
+asleep; that hounded him like an unclean memory. It was only her love
+that made him unclean. He looked at her with his eyes lighted.</p>
+
+<p>"Dancing makes a difference, doesn't it, dear? I'd dance myself, only my
+legs are tired."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled as he spoke with the unctuousness of a villain administering
+poison in a bouquet of roses. But a way to get rid of her love. He
+didn't mind her, but the thing in her. That was the whole of it. Why
+hide from it? God, if he could only kill it he'd be free. Otherwise he'd
+never be free. Even if he went away there'd be the thought of her
+love.... Anna's face bloomed with joy at his words.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll come here another night when you're not tired, honey."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered, "make a party of it. How about that, Mr. Meredith?"</p>
+
+<p>"Surest thing."</p>
+
+<p>They forgot Tesla.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Erik!" She embraced his arm with both her hands. Under the table
+she pressed her thigh trembling against him.</p>
+
+<p>The music from the platform had changed. Cornets, banjos, saxophones,
+again. The boom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> and jerk of voices arose as if in greeting. Foreheads
+of diners glistening with a fine sweat. Sweat on the backs of women's
+necks, on their chins, under their raised arms; gleaming on the cool
+intervals of breasts, white and bulbous breasts peeping out of a secret
+world.</p>
+
+<p>"If I may, Anna...."</p>
+
+<p>Eddie was taking her away. The plot was working. Dorn's heart warmed
+toward the man. A rescuer, a savior. He nodded his head at his wife. He
+must make it look as if he were sorry it wasn't he going to dance with
+her; smile with proper wistfulness; shake his head sadly.</p>
+
+<p>Anna, suddenly beside herself, laughed, and, leaning over touched his
+hair quickly with her lips. Damned idiot, he'd overdone it! No. Perhaps
+she was guilty. Apologizing for impulses away from him toward Meredith?
+He sat hoping feverishly, caressing a diagnosis as if he could establish
+it by repeating it over and over.</p>
+
+<p>Tesla again, this time on art. Art of the proletaire. Damn the
+proletaire and Tesla both! He had a plot working out. Would their hands
+touch, linger, sigh against each other? Of course. They were human&mdash;at
+least their hands were. And then, dances every night. What a miserable
+banal plot! Another day-dream. Forget. Beyond Tesla's soft voice ... an
+opening and shutting of mouths swollen in delicious discomforts. Look at
+them. Identify mouths. Tell himself the angles they made. People ...<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+people ... a wriggling of bodies in a growing satiety of tepid lusts.</p>
+
+<p>"True art, Dorn, is something beyond decoration. Dreams made real. But
+the right kind of dreams&mdash;things that touch people. The other art was
+for sick men. That is&mdash;men sickened of life. The new art will be for
+healthy men, men reaching out of everything about them. And we must give
+them bread, soup, and art."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, that might as well be true as anything else. Anything was truth.
+Anything and everything. Here he was in a scene that had no relation to
+him. Yet he wasn't detached.</p>
+
+<p>"Speaking of art, Dorn, we've found a new artist, a wonder. She's going
+to do some things for <i>The Cry</i>. I got her interested. I must tell
+Meredith about her. Maybe you know her&mdash;Rachel Laskin. One of her things
+is coming out in the next issue. I'll send you a copy."</p>
+
+<p>Coolly, amazedly, Dorn thought, "What preposterous thing makes it
+possible for this man to talk of Rachel as if she were a reality ...
+like the people in the caf&eacute;? To him she's like the people in the caf&eacute;.
+He knows her like the people in the caf&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>He answered carelessly, "Oh, yes; Miss Laskin. I remember her well. That
+reminds me: you don't happen to have her address? I've got some things
+she left at the office we can't use."</p>
+
+<p>Tesla dug an address out of a soiled stack of papers. His pockets seemed
+alive with soiled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> papers. Rachel's address was a piece of soiled paper
+like any other piece of soiled paper. Mumbling silently, Dorn sighed.
+Just in time. Anna again, and Meredith. He looked at them, recalling his
+plot. Were they in love? Tesla&mdash;the blundering idiot&mdash;"I was telling
+Dorn of a new artist I've found, Eddie. Rachel Laskin, a sort of Blake
+and Beardsley and something else. Thin lines, screechy things. You'll
+like them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I always like them," Meredith smiled.</p>
+
+<p>And Anna, "Oh, I know Rachel Laskin well. We're old friends. She's a
+charming, wonderful girl. I liked her so much. Where is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"In New York."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have to look at her work," Meredith added. "That's me. Always
+looking at other people's work and saying, fine, great, and never
+knowing a thing about it. Ye true art collector, eh, Emil?"</p>
+
+<p>Anna went on, "Erik was amused with her. She is rather odd, you know,
+and sort of wearing on the nerves. But you can't help liking her."</p>
+
+<p>An amazing description of a face of stars. Dorn smiled.</p>
+
+<p>Tesla said, "I only saw her once. A nervous girl, and she seemed upset."</p>
+
+<p>More from Anna: "I hope she'll come back to Chicago. She was such fun. I
+really miss her...."</p>
+
+<p>All mad. Babbling of Rachel. Dorn stared cautiously about him. The
+torment in him became a secret swollen beyond its proper dimen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>sions.
+They would look at him now and understand that he was not Erik Dorn, but
+somebody else huddled up, burning and flopping around inside. Love was a
+virulent form of idiocy. It meant nothing to people outside. Everything
+inside. Anna talking about Rachel started a panic in him. She was
+playing with memories of Rachel. Do you remember this? and that? As if
+he, of course, had forgotten her. Yes, there was an "of course" about
+it. A gruesome "of course." Gruesome&mdash;an excellent word. It meant Anna
+petting and laughing over a knife that was to plunge itself into her
+heart. When? Soon ... soon. He had an address copied from a soiled piece
+of paper.</p>
+
+<p>They bundled out of the caf&eacute;. Waiters, wraps. Eddie helped with the
+wraps. Alien streets, dark waiting buildings, lights, and then
+good-nights. The moments whirled mysteriously away. What did the moments
+matter? He was going to Rachel. Ah! When had he decided that? He didn't
+remember reaching any decision in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>They entered a cab alone. The cab rolled away over snow-packed streets.
+But he couldn't leave Anna. Yes he could. Why not? No. Impossible. A
+faint thought like a storm packed into a nutshell.... "I will."</p>
+
+<p>"You were wonderful to-night, Erik. When I see you with other men I just
+thank God for you."</p>
+
+<p>That was the intolerable thing&mdash;his wonderful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>ness, his damned
+wonderfulness. It existed in her. He couldn't leave it behind.</p>
+
+<p>Her hand lay warm in his.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss me, dearest!"</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her and laughed. He was happy, then? Oh, yes, he was going to
+Rachel. Simple. Four months of misery, making a weeping idiot out of
+himself. And now, a decision had been reached. His head on her shoulder,
+she wanted it so, she was whispering caresses to him. This was Anna. But
+it would soon be Rachel. What difference did such things make? One
+woman, another woman....</p>
+
+<p>"You're like Jimmie was."</p>
+
+<p>Happy tears filled her eyes, to be noted and remembered now that he was
+going to Rachel. Jimmie was a baby who had died&mdash;his baby. Offspring was
+a more humorous word. To be noted and remembered. What a dream!</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so happy, Erik. Everything seems wonderful again when you smile and
+laugh like this. Your cheeks make such a nice little curve and your head
+on my shoulder, where it belongs ... for always and ever...."</p>
+
+<p>Let her sing. He could stand it. What did it matter? But would she die
+when he left. He would have to say something outright. God, what a thing
+to say outright. Kill not only her but the wonderful selves of him that
+lived in her. That didn't mean anything. Anyway, it was rather silly to
+waste time thinking.... To-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>night, after the ride ... going to Rachel.
+He had her address. He would walk up, ring the bell. She would answer
+and her face would look in surprise at him.</p>
+
+<p>"My Erik, my own sweet little one!"</p>
+
+<p>Dreaming of Jimmie, of him and Jimmie together.... "I don't ever want to
+move. I want us to keep on riding like this forever and ever...."</p>
+
+<p>Quite exquisite tragedy. A bit crude. But reality was always rather
+crude. Crude or not, what was more exquisite than happiness laughing
+with an unseen knife moving toward its heart? At least he was an
+appreciative audience. With his head on her shoulder. Why not? Life
+demanded that one be an audience sometimes ... sit back and listen to
+the fates whispering. What a ride! Dark waiting houses moving by. Seven
+years together, growing closer and more subtly together&mdash;yet not
+together at all. Anyway, he was sick of living that way. Even without
+Rachel ... a mess. Night lies. Passion lies. A dirty business. No, not
+that. She was beautiful. Anna, not Rachel. He was the unclean one.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you happy, beloved?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Lord, what an answer to give her. A prayer! Insufferably exquisite gods
+of drama&mdash;she was praying. Tears rushing from her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Sweet Jesus ... sweet brother Jesus ... thanks for everything. Oh, I've
+been so unfaith<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>ful. Not to believe. Thanks for my wonderful Erik."</p>
+
+<p>He must kill her, swiftly, before she could know that prayers were vain.
+Easier to kill her body than to listen to this. How, though? With his
+hands about her throat. Murder was an old business. It would be mercy to
+her. But he was too much a coward. A cowardly audience listening to
+words ... far away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Beloved ... darling. Oh, it's so good to have you back again."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk." He put his arm tightly around her, his fingers fumbling at
+her bare neck. But that was only a pretense, a bit of insipid
+melodrama&mdash;his fingers. He was an actor frightened by his part.</p>
+
+<p>The taxi driver was demanding $4.50&mdash;an outrage.</p>
+
+<p>"That's too much, Erik."</p>
+
+<p>But he paid. Should he tell him to wait? He would need him in a few
+minutes. No, too cold-blooded to tell him to wait. And anyway, Anna was
+listening. He was still an audience. He would jump on the stage and
+begin acting later. Soon.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep the change."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, sir."</p>
+
+<p>An insane world ... a polite and jovial taxi-cab driver carrying
+lunatics about the streets.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear, look! Father's sitting up." She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> was disappointed. "And I
+wanted to kiss and hug you before we went upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn unlocked the door of his house. He still had a house and could
+unlock its door without its meaning anything. To-morrow he would have no
+house. That was the difference between to-day and to-morrow. The old man
+would be there. That would make it easier. He shivered. "I'm going to do
+something then".... This was alarming.</p>
+
+<p>Anna's arms were around him before he could remove his coat. She clung,
+laughing, kissing. Let her.... "The doomed man ate a hearty breakfast of
+ham and eggs and seemed in good spirits." Reporters, with a sense of the
+dramatic, usually wrote it that way. Ham and eggs were a symbol. Should
+he mull around for extenuating epigrams&mdash;a fervid rigmarole on the
+mysteries and ethics of life? Or strike swift, short?... "Death was
+instantaneous. The drop fell at 10:08 A.M. sharp." Always sharp. Damn
+his reporters!</p>
+
+<p>"Anna ..."</p>
+
+<p>She bloomed at the sound of her name.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to talk, Anna."</p>
+
+<p>"No, let's not talk. I'm so happy.... Aren't you up rather late,
+father?"</p>
+
+<p>Thank God she was getting nervous. One can't kill a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Anna, come to me."</p>
+
+<p>An old phrase of their love-making. He hadn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> meant to use it. But
+phrases that have been used for seven years get so they say themselves.
+She moved quickly toward him. His father&mdash;smiling beyond her shoulder.
+Now for the slaughter....</p>
+
+<p>"Do you love me enough to make me happy, Anna?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would give my life for you."</p>
+
+<p>He was deplorably calm&mdash;too calm. His eyes were looking at books on
+shelves, at chairs, at pictures on the walls, as if everything was of an
+identical importance.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, but that isn't it."</p>
+
+<p>"What then, Erik?"</p>
+
+<p>He couldn't say it. Particularly with his father smiling&mdash;an irritating
+old man who would never die. Should he fall at her feet and whimper? He
+couldn't. Her face was his, her eyes his. It wasn't leaving Anna.
+Himself, though. Yes, he was confronting himself. Seven years of selves.
+All wonderful. Everything he had said and done for seven years lived in
+Anna. So he must kill seven years of himself with a phrase. No. Yet he
+was talking on. It soothed him, untightened the agony in him.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Anna. I can't tell you, but I must. My words circle away from
+me. They run away from what I want to tell you. Anna ... I must go
+away&mdash;leave you."</p>
+
+<p>Tears in his eyes, over his face. His voice, warm, blurring with tears.
+He choked, paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Erik...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A white sound. Something bursting.</p>
+
+<p>"If I stay, I'll go mad."</p>
+
+<p>"No ... no ... Erik ..."</p>
+
+<p>Still white sounds, only whiter. Blank sounds, caused by speechlessness.
+Sounds of speechlessness.</p>
+
+<p>"I may come back, if you'll take me back sometime...."</p>
+
+<p>A man was always an imbecile. Imbecility is a trademark. But there were
+no sounds now. His eyes tried to turn away from her. A face had ceased
+to live and give forth sounds. He remained looking at it. A cold,
+emptied face, like a picture frame with a picture recently torn out of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Anna, for God's sake, hate me. Hate me. Loathe me the rest of your
+life. I've lied and lied to you&mdash;nothing but lies.... No, that's not
+true. But now it is. Think of me as vile when I go away.... Otherwise
+..."</p>
+
+<p>Tears blubbered out of him.</p>
+
+<p>... "otherwise I'll die thinking of you. Don't look at me that way. Yell
+at me.... You've known it. I can't help it.... It's something. I can't
+help it."</p>
+
+<p>Behind this voice he thought: "It's not me alone. Nights of love ...
+kisses ... Jimmie ... seven years.... Little things. Oh, God, little
+things. We're all leaving her&mdash;pulling ourselves out of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going, my son?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Could he lie now? Yes, anything that made it easier.</p>
+
+<p>"Nowhere. Anywhere. I must go. Otherwise I'll choke to death. Take care
+of her. There's money. All hers. I'll write later about it. Anna ...
+don't please."</p>
+
+<p>The thing was a botch. Wrong, all wrong. But that didn't matter. His
+coat and hat mattered more than phrases. Looking for a coat and hat when
+he should be winding up the scene properly. These were preposterous
+banalities that distinguished life, unedited, from melodrama. Where was
+his hat? His hat ... hat ... Life, Fate, Tragedy had mislaid his
+insufferable hat. Ah ... on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>She was standing staring at him. Would she die on her feet? Quick,
+before the shriek. It was coming ... a madness that would frighten him
+forever if he heard it. What a scoundrel he was! Why deny it? But in a
+few years he would be dead and no longer a scoundrel, and all this so
+much forgotten dust.</p>
+
+<p>"Write to us, my son. And come back soon."</p>
+
+<p>He closed the door softly behind him and started to walk. But his legs
+ran. It had been easy ... easy. He stumbled, sprawled upon the iced
+pavement, bruising his face. He picked himself up unaware that he had
+stopped running. Night, houses, streets, what matter? In a few
+years&mdash;dust. But he had left in time. That was the important thing.
+Another minute and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> would have heard her. A terrible unheard sound.
+He had left it behind. He had left her unfinished. Why was he running?
+Oh, yes&mdash;Anna.</p>
+
+<p>He paused and held his eyes from staring back at his house. His eyes
+would pull him back to the door. Little things&mdash;oh, the little things
+made hurts. He must turn a corner. Light does not travel around corners.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+<p>Gone. The house was gone with all its little things. One jerk and he had
+ripped away....</p>
+
+<p>He walked slowly. A coldness suddenly fell into him. Rachel. He had
+forgotten about Rachel. Never a thought for Rachel. Disloyal. Where was
+she&mdash;the mirror of stars? Nowhere. He didn't love her. Was he insane? He
+loved Anna, not Rachel. He must go back. The thing was
+lopsided&mdash;pretense. He'd been pretending he was in love with Rachel.
+Love ... schoolboy business. Mirror of stars! Something scribbled on a
+valentine. That was love. Rachel. No.... There was another face. Cold,
+emptied&mdash;a circle of deaths. Anna's face. But he must remember Rachel
+because he was going to Rachel&mdash;remember something about her. Say her
+name over and over. But that wasn't Rachel. That was a word like ...
+like pocketbook. Something about her....</p>
+
+<p>Ah! yes. Her coat lying in the snow. He sighed with a determined effort
+at sadness ... her little coat in the snow!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III</h2>
+
+<h2>WINGS</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I3">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II3">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III3">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV3">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V3">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI3">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII3">CHAPTER VII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII3">CHAPTER VIII</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I3" id="CHAPTER_I3"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Boom, boom," said the city of New York, "we have gone to war!"</p>
+
+<p>And all the other cities, big and little, said a boom-boom of their own.
+A mighty nation had gone to war.</p>
+
+<p>A time of singing. Songs on the lips of crowds. Lights in their eyes.
+High-pitched, garbled words, brass bands, flags, speeches.... Mine eyes
+have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord but we don't want the
+Bacon, All we Want is a Piece of the Rhine(d).... A brass monkey playing
+"Nearer, My God, to Thee" on a red banjo.... <i>Allons, les enfants</i> ...
+<i>le jour de gloire est arriv&eacute;!</i> You tell 'em, kid! Store fronts,
+cabarets, hotel lobbies, sign-boards, office buildings all become
+shining citadels of righteousness beleaguered by the powers of darkness.
+Newspaper headlines exploding like firecrackers on the corners. A
+bonfire of faces in the streets. A bonfire of flags above the streets.</p>
+
+<p>Boom, boom!... societies for the relief of martyred Belgium. Societies
+for Rolling Cigarettes, Bandages, Exterminating Hun Spies, Exterminating
+Yellow Dogs and Slackers.... Wah, don't let anybody be a slacker! A
+slacker<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> is a dirty dog who does what I wanna do but am afraid to do.
+Who lies down. Who won't stand up on his hind legs and cheer when he's
+supposed to.... Societies for Knitting Sweaters, Giving Bazaars,
+Spotting Hun Propaganda. A bonfire of committees, communes, Jabberwocks,
+clubs, Green Walruses, False Whiskers, Snickersnees, War Boards, and
+Eagles Shrieking from their Mountain Heights with an obligato by the
+Avon Comedy Four&mdash;I'm a Jazz Baby....</p>
+
+<p>A mighty nation had gone to war. Humpty Dumpty and the March Hare
+wheeled out the Home Guards. Said the D&eacute;butante to her Soldier Boy in
+the moonlight, "To Hell with the chaperone, War is War...." Somebody
+lost Eighty Hundred Billion Dollars trying to build aeroplanes out of
+Flypaper and a new kind of Cement. And the Press, slapping Fright Wig
+No. 7 on its bald head, announced to the Four Winds, " ... once more
+glory, common cause, sacrifice, welded peoples of America, invincible
+host, lay common blood, altar liberty, sacred principle, government of
+the people by the people for the people perish earth" ... And the
+Pulpits obliged with an "O God who art in Heaven girthed in shining
+armor before Thee Thy cause Liberty Humanity Democracy Thy blessing
+inspire light of sacrifice brave women and hero men give us strength O
+Lord not falter see way of Righteousness stern hearts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> bear great burden
+Thou has given us carry on till powers of darkness routed virtue again
+triumphant. Thy will done on earth as it is in Heaven...."</p>
+
+<p>And the soldiers entraining for the cantonments&mdash;clerks and salesmen,
+rail-splitters and window-washers with the curve of youth on their
+faces&mdash;the soldiers said, "Whasamatter with Uncle Sam? Rah ... Wow ...
+Good-bye ... We'll treat 'em rough ... ashes to ashes and dust to dust
+if the Camels don't get you the Fatimas must...." And in the cantonments
+the soldiers said, " ... this lousy son of a badwoman of a shavetail
+can't put nothin' over on me ... say ... oh, I hate to get up in the
+morning, oh, how I long to remain in bed...." And in France the soldiers
+sang " ... there are smiles that make you happy there are smiles that
+make you sad.... The Knights of Columbus are all right but the Y. M. C.
+A. is a son of a badwoman of a grafting mess...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yanks Land in France ... Yanks in Big Battle ... Yanks Sink Submarines"
+... bang banged the headlines. Don't eat meat on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
+Help the Red Cross buy Doughnuts for the Salvation Army and keep an eye
+on Your Austrian Janitor.... Elephants, tom-cats, and chorus-girls; a
+hallelujah with a red putty nose, Seventy-six Thousand Press Agents
+Walking on their Hands, Jabberwocks, Horned Toads, and Prima Donnas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> ...
+here comes the Liberty Loan Drive ...</p>
+
+<p>A mighty nation had gone to war. Boom! Boom!</p>
+
+<p>And in a moon-lighted room overlooking a fanfare of roofs, Erik Dorn
+whispered one night to Rachel,</p>
+
+<p>"You have given me wings!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II3" id="CHAPTER_II3"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>Time to get up. An oblong of sunlight squeezing through beneath the
+drawn blind and slapping itself boldly on the gloomy carpet ... "shame
+on all sleepy heads. Here's another day...."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel smiled as she opened her eyes. She lay quietly, smiling. It was
+as it was yesterday&mdash;as the day before. One opened one's eyes and life
+came quickly back with a "Hello, here I am&mdash;where you left me." So one
+lay, fearful to move, like a cup of wine that is too full and mustn't be
+joggled with even a kick at the bed sheets.</p>
+
+<p>One lay and smiled. Thoughts and stockings side by side somewhere on the
+floor. Put on stockings in a minute. Put on thoughts in a minute. Dress
+oneself up in phrases, hats, skyscrapers, and become somebody.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel's eyes livened slowly. Pleasant to be nobody&mdash;a bodyless,
+meaningless smile awake in the morning. Opened eyes on a pillow. A deep,
+deep sigh on a pillow. An oblong of sunshine on the floor. A happy bed.
+A happy ceiling. A happy door. Nothing else. Nobody else.</p>
+
+<p>But a hat, a blue straw hat with a jauntily curved brim, sat on a
+candlestick and winked. Which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> reminded one that one was alive. After
+all, one was somebody. Time to get up. All the king's horses and all the
+king's men demanded of one to arise and get dressed and go out and be
+somebody. Rachel kicked at the sheets. Protest against the Decrees of
+Destiny. " ... those are my feet kicking. Hello, here I am."</p>
+
+<p>There was a note on the pillow adjacent. It read: "At eight o'clock
+to-night I'll return. Please don't get run over in the streets. <span class="smcap">Erik</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Well, why not kiss the note, embrace the pillow and sigh? Why try to be
+anything but an idiot?... "Yes, Mr. Erik Dorn, I will be very careful
+and not let myself get run over in the streets."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel's head fell on the adjacent pillow and she lay whispering, "I
+love you," until the sound of her voice caused her to laugh.... Time to
+get up. Dear me! She closed her eyes and rolled herself out of bed....
+"Ouch!..." She sat up on the floor, legs extended, and stared at a shoe.
+Alas! a shoe is a crestfallen memory. A crestfallen yesterday lurks in
+old shoes. Shoes are always crestfallen. Even the shoes of lovers
+waiting under the bed weep and snivel all night. But why sit naked on
+the floor, stark, idiotically naked on the floor with legs thrust out
+like a surprised illustration in <i>La Vie Parisienne</i> and toes curling
+philosophically toward a shoe?... "I'll do as I please. Very well."</p>
+
+<p>Sanity demanded clothes. But a sudden memory started her to her feet.
+She stood up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> lightly and hurried toward the large oval mirror.... "Your
+breasts are white birds dreaming under the stars. Your body is like the
+Queens of China parading through the moon...."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at herself in the mirror. Yes. But why not the Emperors of
+Afghanistan Walking on Their Hands? Thus ... "my Body is like the
+Presidents of the United States Riding Horseback...."</p>
+
+<p>She placed her hands on her slim hips and tautened her figure. When Erik
+was away all one could do was play with the things he had said. Was she
+as beautiful as he thought? A joyousness flowed through her. The mirror
+gave her back a memory of Erik. She was a memory of Erik.</p>
+
+<p>When she looked at herself in the mirror she saw only something that
+lived in the admiring eyes of Erik. Beautiful legs, beautiful body and
+"eyes like the courts of Solomon at night, like circles of incense." ...
+All were memories of Erik.</p>
+
+<p>She whispered softly to the figure in the mirror, "Erik knows your eyes.
+They are the beckoning hands of dreams." Thus Erik spoke of them. "I
+mustn't laugh at myself. I am more beautiful than anything or anybody in
+the whole world. There is nobody as beautiful as the woman Erik Dorn
+loves."</p>
+
+<p>If she were only in a forest now where she could run, jump in the air,
+scream at birds, and end by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> hurling herself into dim, cool water.
+Instead, an absurd business of fastening her silk slip.</p>
+
+<p>She seated herself on the bed, her stockings hanging from her hand, and
+fell again to listening to Erik. His word made an endless echo in her
+head.... "Perins a droll species. A sort of indomitable ass. Refuses to
+succumb to his intelligence. If you think he's in love with your Mary
+you're a downright imbecile. The man adjusts his passions to his phrases
+as neatly as a pretty woman pulling on her stockings...." She didn't
+like Erik to refer to pretty women pulling on their stockings. What an
+idiot! If Erik wanted to he could go out and help all the pretty women
+in New York pull on their stockings. As if that had anything to do with
+their love. Somebody else's stockings! A scornful exclamation point. Now
+her skirt, waist, shoes, and hat, and she was somebody.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody walking out of a house, in a street, looking, smiling, swinging
+along. The beautiful one, the desired one out for a promenade,
+embarrassed somehow by the fact that she was alive, that people looked
+at her and street-cars made frowning overtures to her. This was not her
+world. Yet she must move around in it as if she were a fatuous part of
+its grimacings and artifices. Shop windows that snickered into her eyes
+... "shoes $8 to-day. Hats, $10.50.... Traveling-cases only $19...." She
+must be polite and recognize its existence by composing her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> features,
+wearing a hat, saying "pardon me" when she trod on anyone's feet or
+bumped an elbow into a stomach. A stranger's world&mdash;gentlemen in straw
+hats; gentlemen in proud uniforms marching off to war; a fretwork of
+gentlemen, signs, windows, hats, and automobiles and a lot of other
+things, all continually tangling themselves up in front of her nose. A
+city pouring itself out of the morning sky and landing with a splash and
+a leap of windows around her feet. Thus the beautiful one, out for a
+promenade and moving excitedly through a superfluous world.</p>
+
+<p>She plunged into a perilous traffic knot and emerged unscathed. But that
+was wasting time. Time&mdash;another superfluous element, a tick-tock for the
+little wingless ones to crawl by. Then she remembered&mdash;a moon-lighted
+room ... "you have given me wings!" Her thought traced itself excitedly
+about the memory. This had happened. That had been said. Yesterday,
+to-day and to-morrow&mdash;all the same. Memories mixing with dreams. Wings!
+Yes, wings that beat, beat on the air and left one moving behind a blue
+dress, under a jaunty hat like all other jaunty hats. But something else
+moved elsewhere. There were two worlds for her. But not for Erik. One
+world for Erik. Where would his wings take him? Beyond life there was
+still life. A wall of life that never came to an end or a top. That was
+the one world for Erik. Hurl himself against it, higher, higher. Soar
+till the super<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>fluous ones became little dots on a ribbon of streets.</p>
+
+<p>Tears came into her eyes. The strange world drifted away&mdash;a flutter of
+faces. A silence seemed to descend upon the streets as if their roaring
+were not a noise but the opened mouth of a dumb man. Erik had come to
+her. Arm in arm, smiling tears at him she walked through the spinning
+crowd in a path hidden from all snickering windows and revolving faces.
+A dream walk. These were her wings.</p>
+
+<p>Consciousness returned. She rubbed her eyes with the knuckles of her
+hands and laughed softly. She must not excite herself with hysterical
+worries. Wondering about Erik. There had been days when she had moved
+like a corpse through the streets, a corpse always finding new and
+further deaths. Death days with her heart tearing at empty hours, with
+time like a disease in her veins. Days before he had come. Now all life
+was in her. Why invent new causes of grief? She must talk sane words to
+herself. But the sane words bowed a polite adieu and putting on their
+hats walked away and sat down behind the snickering windows.... Other
+words arrived quickly, breathlessly.... There was something in his eyes
+that frightened, something that did not rest with her but seemed to
+reach on further. In the midst of their ecstasies his eyes, burning,
+unsatisfied, making her suddenly chill with fear, would whisper to her,
+"There is something more."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> In each other's arms it was she who came to
+an ending, not he. His kisses, his "I love you," were the clawing of
+fingers high up on the wall. For her they were the obliteration, the
+ending beyond life.</p>
+
+<p>The street unraveled itself about her with a bang of crowds and a whirl
+of flags, a zigzag of eyes like innumerable little tongues licking at
+the air. The tension of her thought relaxed. She remembered that when he
+walked in streets he was always making pictures. She thought of his
+words.... "It's a part of me that love hasn't changed, except to
+increase. A pestiferous sanity keeps demanding of me that I translate
+incoherent things into words. The city keeps handing itself to me like a
+blank piece of paper to write on. And I scribble away."</p>
+
+<p>She would do as he did, scribble words over faces and buildings as she
+walked. The city was a ... a swarm of humanity. Swarm of humanity. My
+God, had she lost the power of thought? Imagine telling Erik, "A crowd
+of people I saw to-day reminded me of a swarm of humanity." There was no
+sanity in her demanding words. Because there was no incoherence outside.
+Things weren't incoherent but non-existent. The city was no mystery.
+There was nothing to translate. It was an alien, superfluous world. That
+was the difference between them. To Erik it was not alien or
+superfluous. Even in their ecstasies there was still a world for him,
+like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> some mocking rival laughing at him, saying, "You can embrace
+Rachel. But what can you do to me? See if you can embrace me and swallow
+me with a kiss...."</p>
+
+<p>That's why he stayed away till eight o'clock, moving among men, writing,
+talking, doing work on the magazine. But there was nothing for her to
+do. She inhabited a world named Erik Dorn, a perfect world in which
+there was no room even for thought.</p>
+
+<p>Erik had written her a note from the office once ... "my heart is a
+dancing star above the graves of your absence...." But that was almost a
+lie because it was true only for one moment. Things occupied him that
+could not occupy her.</p>
+
+<p>Another block. Four more blocks. Noisy aliveness of streets that meant
+nothing. She thought, "People look at me and envy me because I'm in a
+hurry as if I had somewhere important to go. People envy everybody who
+is in a hurry to get somewhere. Because for them there are no
+destinations&mdash;only halting places for their drifting. Perhaps I should
+go home and paint something so as to have it to show him when he comes;
+or sit down somewhere and think up words to give him. I won't be able to
+talk to-night. I must just be ... without thinking ... of anything but
+him. Why doesn't he sometimes mention Anna? Is he afraid it might offend
+me to remind me of Anna? Would it? No. Many people live in the world.
+Another woman lived<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> in Erik Dorn and he was unaware of her as the sky
+is unaware of me. And she died. But she isn't dead. Only her world died.
+Her sky fell down...."</p>
+
+<p>Tears came to Rachel's eyes. Her hands clenched.... "Anna, Anna, forgive
+me! I'm so happy. You must understand...."</p>
+
+<p>She felt a revulsion. She had thought something weak, silly. "Who is
+Anna that I must apologize to her? A woman. A woman Erik never loved. Do
+I ask apologies of her for having lived with him&mdash;kissed him?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a luncheon appointment with Mary James. Mary would bring a
+man. Perrin, maybe. Mary always brought a man. Without a man, Mary was
+incomplete. With a man she was even more incomplete. Mary insisted on
+lunching. Rachel hurried toward the rendezvous. She thought, "People can
+make me do anything now. Mary or anybody else. I was able once to walk
+over them. Now they lead me around. Because nothing matters. And people
+don't sicken me with their faces and talk. They're like noises in
+another room that one hears, sometimes sees, but never listens to or
+looks at. They ask questions. And you sit in a secret world beyond them
+with your hat and dress, properly attentive."</p>
+
+<p>Here was the hotel for the rendezvous. Mary out of breath,</p>
+
+<p>"Rachel! Hello! Wait a minute. Whee! What do you think you're doing?
+Pulling off a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> track meet or something? Been tryin' to catch up to you
+for an hour."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel looked at her. She was a golden-haired monkey full of words.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie's at the Red Cat." A man. "We're going to lunch there. What in
+God's name's the matter with you?" A pause in the thick of the crowd.
+"Heavens, Rachel, are you well? I mean...."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel laughed. If you laughed people thought you were making answers.</p>
+
+<p>They arrived at the Red Cat. Small red circular tables. Black walls. A
+painstaking non-conformity about the decoration. A sprinkling of diners
+saying, "We eat, but not amid normal surroundings. We are emancipated
+from normal surroundings. It is extremely important that we eat off
+little red circular tables instead of big brown square tables in order
+to conform with our mission, which is that of non-conformity."</p>
+
+<p>Mary led the way to a table occupied by a tall, broad-shouldered youth
+with a crooked nose and humorously indignant eyes. He resembled a
+football player who has gone into the advertising business and remained
+a football player. Mary referred to him with a possessive "Charlie."</p>
+
+<p>Charlie said, "Why do you always pick out these joints to eat in, Mary?
+Been sittin' here for ten minutes scared to death one of these females
+would begin crawlin' around on the walls. There's a waiter here with
+long hair and two teeth missin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> that I'm goin' to bust in the nose if
+he doesn't stop."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop what, Charlie?'</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, lookin' at me...."</p>
+
+<p>The luncheon progressed. Olives, watery soup, delicate sandwiches....</p>
+
+<p>An air of breathlessness about Rachel seemed to discommode her friends.
+Charlie, piqued at her inattentiveness, essayed a volubility foreign to
+his words. He was not so "nice a young man" as Hazlitt. But he boasted
+among friends that girls had had a chance with him. They could stay
+decent if they insisted but he let them understand it wouldn't do them
+any good so far as marrying them was concerned because he wasn't out for
+matrimony. There was too much to see.</p>
+
+<p>Mary interspersed her eating with quotations from advanced literature,
+omitting the quotation marks. A slim, shining-haired girl&mdash;men adored
+her hair&mdash;pretty-faced, silken-ankled, Mary had a mission in life. It
+was the utilizing of vivacious arguments on art, God, morals, economics,
+as exciting preliminaries for hand-holding and kissing with eyes closed,
+lips murmuring, "Ah, what is life?" Technically a virgin, but devoted
+exclusively to the satisfying of her sex&mdash;a satisfying that did not
+demand the completion of intercourse but the stimulus of its suggestion,
+Mary utilized the arts among which she dabbled as a bed for artificial
+immoralities. In this bed she had managed for several years to remain an
+adroitly chaste<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> courtesan. Her pride was almost concentrated in her
+chastity. She guarded it with a precocious skill, parading it through
+conversation, hinting slyly of it when its existence seemed for the
+moment to have become unimportant. Her chastity, in fact, had become
+under skillful management the most immoral thing about her. She had
+learned the trick of exciting men with her virginity.</p>
+
+<p>The thing had become for her an unconscious business. After several
+years of it she evolved into a flushed, nervous victim of her own
+technique. She managed, however, to preserve her self-esteem by looking
+upon the perversion of her normal sexual instincts into a species of
+verbal nymphomania as an indication of a superior soul state. Radical
+books excited her mind as ordinarily her body might have been excited by
+radical caresses. Amateur theatricals, publicity work for charitable
+organizations, an allowance from her home in Des Moines, provided her
+with a practical background.</p>
+
+<p>Charlie was her latest catch. Later he would hold her hand, slip an arm
+around her, press her breasts gently and with a proper unconsciousness
+of what he was doing, and she would let him kiss her ... while music
+played somewhere ... preferably on a pier. Then she would murmur as he
+paused, out of breath, "Ah, what is life, Charlie?" And if instead of
+playing the game decently Charlie abandoned pretense and made an
+adventurous sortie, there would ensue the usual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> d&eacute;nouement ... "Charlie
+... Oh, how could you? I'm ... I'm so disappointed. I thought you were
+different and that love to you meant something deeper and finer
+than&mdash;just that." And she would stand before him, her body alive with a
+sexual ardor that seemed to find its satisfaction in the discomfiture of
+the man, in his apologetic stammers, in her own virtuous words; and
+reach its climax in the contrite embrace which usually followed and the
+words, "Forgive me, dearest. I didn't mean.... Oh, will you marry me?"</p>
+
+<p>These were things in store for Charlie. But he must listen first. There
+were essential preliminaries&mdash;a routine of the chase. Her trimly shod
+foot crawled carefully against his ankle. There were really two types of
+men. Men who blushed when you touched their ankle under the table, and
+men who pretended not to blush. Charlie blushed with a soup-spoon at his
+lips. He glanced nervously at Rachel but she seemed breathlessly asleep
+with her eyes open&mdash;a paradoxical condition which baffled Charlie and
+caused him to withdraw disdainfully from further consideration of her.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel, eating without hunger, was remembering an actress in vaudeville
+making a preliminary curtain announcement to her "Moments from Great
+Plays" ... "Lady Godiva accordingly rode na-aked through the streets of
+Coventry, but, howevah, retained her vuhtue...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Charlie, you're not listening," ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>plained Mary. "I was saying
+that chastity in woman is something man has insisted upon in order to
+show his capacity for waste. He likes the world to know that all his
+possessions are new and that he can command the purchase of new things
+because it shows his capacity for waste by which his standard of
+respectability is gauged in the eyes of his fellows...."</p>
+
+<p>Charlie lent an ear to the garbled veblenisms and gave it up. The
+mutterings and verbal excitements of women in general were mysteries
+beyond Charlie's desire to comprehend. They had, for Charlie, nothing to
+do with the case. It was pleasing, though, to have her talk of chastity.
+Chastity had a connection with the case. It was closely related to
+unchastity. He nodded his head vaguely and focused his attention on
+questing for the foot under the table that had withdrawn itself. The
+long-haired waiter with the missing teeth was an annoyance. He turned
+and glowered at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think so, Rachel?" Mary pursued.</p>
+
+<p>A monkey chattering. Another monkey kicking at her toes under the table.
+A room full of monkeys and all the monkeys looking at her, talking to
+her, kicking her foot, inspired by the curious hallucination that she
+was a part of their monkey world. Rachel laughed and eyes turned to her.
+People were always startled by laughter that sounded so sudden. There
+must be preliminaries to laughter so as to get the atmosphere prepared
+for it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Rachel, I'm talking to you, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>Mary, puckering her forehead very importantly, was informing her that
+Mary existed and was demanding proof of the fact. That was the secret of
+people. They didn't really exist to themselves until somebody recognized
+them and proved they were alive&mdash;by answering their questions. People
+lived only when somebody talked to them&mdash;anybody. The rest of the time
+they went along with nothing inside them except stomachs that grew
+hungry.</p>
+
+<p>She answered Mary, "Oh, there are lots of things you don't know." And
+laughed, this time careful of not sounding too sudden. She meant there
+was something that lived behind hours, there was a dream world in which
+the words and faces of people were ridiculously non-existent. But Mary
+was a literal-minded monkey and thought she was referring to quotations
+from books superior to the ones she used.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, is that so?" said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>Charlie, also literal-minded and still after the foot, echoed Rachel,
+"You bet your life it is."</p>
+
+<p>"And I suppose you know all about them, Miss Laskin." Very sarcastic. An
+inflection that had made her a conversational terror in the Des Moines
+High School.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was always conscious of not having read enough and of therefore
+being secretly inferior to more omnivorous readers. She did not think
+Rachel read much, but Rachel was different.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> Rachel was an artist and
+had ideas. Mary respected artists and was always sarcastic toward them.
+It usually made them talk a lot&mdash;particularly male artists&mdash;and thus
+enabled her to find out what their ideas were and use them as her own.
+Nevertheless, despite her most careful parrotings the artists always
+managed to have other ideas always different from the ones she stole
+from them. Fearing some devastating rejoinder from Rachel&mdash;Rachel was
+the kind of person who could blurt out things that landed on you like a
+ton of bricks&mdash;she sought to fortify Charlie's opinion of her by
+replacing her foot against his ankle.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what are they, Rachel?"</p>
+
+<p>What were the things Mary knew nothing about? A large order. Rachel's
+tongue began to wag in her mind. Stand up and make a speech. Fling her
+arms about. High-sailing words. Absurd! A laugh would answer. Laughs
+always answered. Rachel laughed. She would suffocate among such people,
+exasperating strangers with inquisitive faces and nervous feet.</p>
+
+<p>At the conclusion of the luncheon Charlie had reached a new stage in his
+amorous maneuverings. He had paid no further attention to Rachel,
+although vividly conscious of her. But Mary offered definite horizons. A
+bird in the hand. There was something exciting about Mary not to be
+encountered in the Junos and Aphrodites of his cabaret quests. Mary
+appeared virtuous&mdash;and yet promised otherwise. She used frank
+words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>&mdash;lust, chastity, virginity, sexuality. Charlie quivered. The
+words sticking out of long, twisted sentences, detached themselves and
+came to him like furtively indecent caresses. Mary promised. So he
+agreed to go with her to the Players' Studio where she was rehearsing in
+some kind of nut show.</p>
+
+<p>"You must come too, Rachel. Frank Brander has done some gorgeous
+settings for the next bill."</p>
+
+<p>Long hours before eight o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got some important things on at the office," Charlie hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'll go," Rachel answered. This, mysteriously, seemed to decide
+Charlie. He would go too.</p>
+
+<p>In the buzzing little auditorium of the Players' Studio, Charlie
+endeavored to further his quest. But the atmosphere seemed,
+paradoxically enough, a handicap. A free-and-easy atmosphere with men
+and women in odd-looking rigs sauntering about. The place was as immoral
+as a honky-tonk. Charlie stared at the young women in smocks and bobbed
+hair, smoking cigarettes, sitting with their legs showing. They should
+have been prostitutes but they weren't. Or maybe they were, only he
+wasn't used to that kind. Too damn gabby. Mary had jumped up on the
+small stage and was talking with a group of young men and women. He
+moved to follow, but hesitated. He didn't have the hang of this kind of
+thing. The sick-looking youths loitering around, casually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> embracing the
+gals and rubbing their arms, seemed to know the lingo. Charlie sat down
+in disgust and yielded himself to a feeling of stiffly superior virtue.</p>
+
+<p>In a corner Rachel listened to Frank Brander.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got quite a promising outfit here, Miss Laskin. Why don't you
+come around and help with the drops or something? The more the merrier.
+We're putting on a thing by Chekov next week and a strong thing by
+Elvenah Jack. Lives down the street. Know her? Oh, it isn't much." He
+smiled good-naturedly at the miniature theater. "But it's fun. I'll show
+you around."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel submitted. Brander was a friend of Emil Tesla. He drew things for
+<i>The Cry</i>. He had a wide mouth and ugly eyes that took things for
+granted&mdash;that took her for granted. She was a woman and therefore
+interested in talking to a man. He held her arm too much and kept saying
+in her thought, "We've got to pretend we're decent, but we're not. We're
+a man and woman." But what did that matter? Long hours before eight
+o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>On the stage Brander became a personality. A group of nondescript faces
+deferred to him. A woman with stringy hair and an elocutionist's mouth,
+grew dramatic as he passed. They paused before Mary. Brander had stopped
+abruptly in his talk. He turned toward Mary and stared at her until she
+began to grow pink. Rachel won<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>dered. Mary wanted to run away, but
+couldn't. Brander finally said shortly, "Hello, you!" His eyes blazed
+for an instant and then grew angry.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Miss Laskin." He jerked her and she followed. In the wings
+half hidden from the group that crowded the tiny stage Brander said, "Do
+you know that girl?"</p>
+
+<p>Rachel nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"She's no good," he grinned. "I like women one thing or the other. She's
+both. And no good. I got her number."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel noticed that he had moved his hand up on her arm and was gently
+pressing the flesh under her shoulder. He kept saying to her now in her
+thought, "I've got a man's body and you've got a woman's body. There's
+that difference between us. Why hide it?" His voice became soft and he
+said aloud, "Don't you like men to be one kind or the other? And not
+both?"</p>
+
+<p>Rachel looked at him blankly. She must pretend she didn't know what he
+was talking about. Otherwise she would begin to talk. He was a man to
+whom one talked because he demanded it. His face, ugly and boyish,
+seemed to have rid itself of many expressions and retained a certainty.
+The certainty said, "I'm a man looking for women."</p>
+
+<p>Brander laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you're one of the other kind," he said. "Beg pardon. No harm done.
+Let's go out front."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Out front in the half-lighted auditorium Brander suddenly left her. She
+saw him a few minutes later standing close to a nervous-voiced woman who
+was saying, "Oh, dear! Dear me! I'll never get this part. I won't! I
+just know it!"</p>
+
+<p>Brander was toying idly with a chain that hung about the woman's neck.
+He was looking at her intently. Mary approached, bearing Charlie along.
+She began whispering to Rachel, "That man's a beast. I hate him. He
+thinks he's an artist, but he's a beast. You'll find out if you're not
+careful."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel asked, "Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Brander," Mary answered.</p>
+
+<p>Charlie interrupted, indignation rumbling in his voice,</p>
+
+<p>"A bunch of freaks, all of them. I don't see why a decent girl wants to
+hang around in a dump like this."</p>
+
+<p>He was more grieved than indignant. A woman with dark hair and long
+gypsy earrings had suddenly laughed at him when he sat down beside her.
+Mary patted his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Charlie. But you don't understand. My turn in a few minutes,
+Rachel. We'll wait here till the Chekov thing comes on. Do you know
+Felixson? He's got a wonderful thing for the bill after this. A
+religious play. Awfully strong. That's him with the bushy hair. You must
+know him."</p>
+
+<p>Charlie grunted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean you act in this damn joint?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm just helping out for next week. It's lots of fun, Charlie."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel stood up suddenly from the uncomfortable bench seat.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go," she murmured. "I'm sorry."</p>
+
+<p>Turning quickly she walked out of the place. Behind her Charlie laughed.
+"A wild little thing."</p>
+
+<p>Mary with her body pressed closely against him combated an influence
+that seemed at work upon Charlie.</p>
+
+<p>"She's changed a great deal, poor girl," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"What is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"An artist. She says wonderful things sometimes. Awfully strong things
+and just hates people."</p>
+
+<p>"A nut," agreed Charlie.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she's sort of strange. Puts on a lot, of course." Mary felt
+uncomfortable. Rachel had managed to leave behind a feeling of the
+unimportance of everybody but Rachel. She was leaning against Charlie
+for vindication. His body, trembling at the contact, provided it; but
+his words annoyed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she's different from the gang in here&mdash;I'll say that for her."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, let's forget her," Mary whispered. "I don't like this place.
+Really, I ..." She hesitated and thought, "Rachel thinks she's
+mysterious and enigmatic and everything, but she's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> an awful fool. She
+can't put it over on me." Yet she sat, despite the vindication of
+Charlie's amorous embarrassment, and wondered, parrot fashion, "Ah, what
+is life?"</p>
+
+<p>Outside Rachel was walking again. The memory of her meeting with Mary,
+of Brander's ugly appealing face that whispered frankly of his sex, was
+dead in her. Little toy people playing at games. Erik hated them. Erik
+said ... well, it was something too indecent to repeat. She couldn't get
+used to Erik's indecent comparisons. But they were like that&mdash;the toy
+people in the little toy village. She didn't hate them the way Erik did.
+Some of them were just playing. But there were others. Why think of
+them? Walk, walk. Just be. A perfect circle.... "There's nothing to do.
+I don't want anything. To-night he'll talk to me. And I'll make real
+answers." Why did she want to be kissed? Kisses were for people like
+Mary. "Oh, he'll kiss me and I'll become alive."</p>
+
+<p>It was late afternoon. Still, long hours before eight o'clock. It
+pleased Erik when she told him how empty the day had been. But she
+mustn't harp too much on that. It would sound as if she were making
+demands on him. No demands. He was free. They weren't married. A crowd
+was solidifying in 10th Street. She walked slowly, watching the people
+gathering at the corner. The office of <i>The Cry</i> was there. She
+remembered this and hurried forward.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Something was happening. An excitement was jerking people out of their
+silences. Blank, silent faces around her suddenly opened and dropped
+masks. Bodies drifting carelessly up and down the street broke into
+runnings.</p>
+
+<p>Around the corner people were shouting, pressed into a ball of wild
+faces and waving arms. It was in front of the office of <i>The Cry</i> that
+something was happening.</p>
+
+<p>"Kill the dirty rascal! Make the son-of-a&mdash;&mdash;kiss the flag!"</p>
+
+<p>Words screeched out of a bay of sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Kill him! Kill the son-of-a&mdash;&mdash; String him up!"</p>
+
+<p>On the edge of the ball that was growing larger and seeming about to
+burst into some wild activity, Rachel stood tip-toed. She could see two
+burly-looking men dragging a bloody figure out of a doorway. Blood
+dropped from him, leaving stains on the top step. The two men were
+twisting his wrists as if they wanted them to come off. Yet they didn't
+act as if they were twisting anybody's wrists off. They seemed to be
+just waiting.</p>
+
+<p>It was Tesla between them. His face was cut. One of his arms hung limp.
+Blood began to spurt from his wrists and drop from his fingers as if he
+were writing something on the top step in a foolish way. At the sight of
+him the noises increased. The ball of faces grew angrier. Policemen
+swung sticks. They yelled, "Back, there! Everybody<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> back!" Runners were
+coming from all directions as if the city had suddenly found a place to
+go and was pouring itself into 10th Street.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey ... hey ... they've got him!"</p>
+
+<p>Nobody asked who, but came running with a shout.</p>
+
+<p>The street broke over Rachel. Tesla vanished. Roaring in her ears, faces
+tumbling, lifting in a wildness about her. A make-believe of horror. Her
+thought gasped, "Where am I? What is this?" Her feet were carrying her
+into the boiling center of a vat of bodies. Then she saw Tesla again,
+standing above them. A blood-smeared man with a broken arm, his head
+raised. But he was somebody else.</p>
+
+<p>Caught in the pack she became far away, seeing things move as with an
+almost lifeless deliberateness. Tesla's face was the center. His swollen
+eyes were trying to open. His paralyzed mouth was trying to form itself
+back into a mouth. A mist covered him as if the raging street and the
+many voices focused into a film and hid him. Behind this film he was
+doing something slowly. Then he became vivid. He was shouting,</p>
+
+<p>"Comrades ... workers ..."</p>
+
+<p>A roar from the street concealed him and his voice. But the vividness of
+him lingered and emerged again.</p>
+
+<p>"Comrades!"</p>
+
+<p>A fist struck against his mouth. His head wabbled. Another fist struck
+against his eye.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> The two men holding his wrists were striking into his
+uncovered face with their fists. A gleeful, joyous sound went up. Rachel
+stared at the wabbling head of Tesla. The street laughed. Fists hammered
+at an uncovered face. People were coming on a run to see. A bell
+clanged. Beside her a man shrieked, "Make him kiss the flag, the dirty
+anarchist!"</p>
+
+<p>Things slowed again. A film was over the scene. Tesla was being dragged
+down the steps. His head kept falling back as if he wanted to go to
+sleep. Then something happened. A laugh, high like a scream, lit the
+air. It made her cold. The men dragging Tesla down the steps paused, and
+their fists moving with a leisureliness struck into his face, making no
+sound and not doing anything. It was Tesla who had laughed. The fists
+kept moving through a film. But he laughed again&mdash;a high laugh like a
+scream that lit the air with mystery.</p>
+
+<p>When the pack began to sift and sweep her into strange directions she
+felt that Tesla was still laughing, though she could no longer hear him.
+The street became shapeless. Something had ended. A bell clanged away.
+People were again walking. They had dull faces and were quiet. She
+caught a glimpse of the step on which Tesla had stood behind a mist and
+cried, "Comrades!" She remembered often having stood on the step herself
+in coming to the office of <i>The Cry</i>. This made her sicken. It was her
+wrists that had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> twisted, her uncovered face that had been struck
+by fists.</p>
+
+<p>The emotion left her as a hand tugged eagerly at her arm. It pulled her
+up on the crowded curbing.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, Rachel, what are you doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked up and saw Hazlitt in uniform. He kept pulling her. Why
+should Hazlitt be pulling her out of a crowd in 10th Street? She tried
+to jerk away. She must run from Hazlitt before he began talking. He
+would make her scream.</p>
+
+<p>Turning to him with a quiet in her voice she said carefully:</p>
+
+<p>"Please let me go. You hurt my arm."</p>
+
+<p>But his hand remained. His eyes, shining and indignant, prodded at
+her.... The street was quiet. Nothing had happened. Unconscious
+buildings, unconscious traffic, faces wrapped in solitudes&mdash;these were
+in the streets again. She turned and looked with amazement at her
+companion. People do not fall out of the sky and seize you by the arm.
+There was something stark about Hazlitt pulling her out of the street
+mob and holding her arm. He was an amputation. You pulled yourself out
+of a filth of faces and sprawled suddenly into a quiet, cheerful street
+holding an arm in your hand, as if it had come loose from the pack. It
+seemed part of some arrangement&mdash;Tesla, the pack, Hazlitt's arm. Her
+amazement died. Hazlitt was saying:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I knew you'd be in that mob. I thought when I saw them haul that dirty
+beggar out ..."</p>
+
+<p>He halted, pained by a memory. Rachel nodded. The curious sense of
+having been Tesla came again to her. He had laughed in a way that
+reminded her of herself. She would laugh like that if they struck at her
+face. Her eyes turned frightenedly toward Hazlitt. What was he going to
+do? Arrest her? He was in uniform. But why should he arrest her? His
+eyes had the fixed light of somebody performing a duty. He was arresting
+her, and Erik would come home and not find her. Her lithe body became
+possessed of an astounding strength. With a vicious grimace she tore
+herself from his grip and confronted him, her eyes on fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, Rachel. Come with me till I can talk. You must ..."</p>
+
+<p>A white-faced Hazlitt, with suffering eyes. Then he was not arresting
+her. The street bobbed along indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going away in an hour. You'll maybe never see me again. But I can't
+go away till I've talked to you. Please."</p>
+
+<p>It didn't matter then. She would be home in time. And it was easier to
+obey the desperate whine of his voice then run into the crowd. He would
+chase after her, whining louder and louder. They entered a hotel lobby.
+Hazlitt picked out a secluded corner as if arranging for some rite.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> He
+was going to do something. Rachel walked after him, annoyed,
+indifferent. What did it matter? This was George Hazlitt&mdash;a name that
+meant nothing and yet could talk to her.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting opposite her the name began, "Now you must promise me you won't
+get up and run away till I'm through&mdash;no matter what I say."</p>
+
+<p>She promised with a nod. She must be polite. Being polite was part of
+the idiotic penalties attached to adventuring outside her real world, in
+unreal superfluous streets. What had made Tesla laugh? His laugh had not
+been unreal. Almost as if it were a part of her. Blood dropping from his
+fingers. A bleeding man.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm leaving for France, Rachel. I couldn't go away without seeing you.
+I've spent a week trying to find you and this morning they told me to
+inquire at <i>The Cry</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Was he apologizing for Tesla? She remembered the faces that had swept by
+in 10th Street. His had been one of them. Hazlitt had twisted Tesla's
+wrists and struck into his uncovered face.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel slipped to her feet and stared about her. A hand caught at her
+arm and pulled her into the chair.</p>
+
+<p>"You promised. You can't leave till you hear me."</p>
+
+<p>She sank back.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me five minutes. I'm unworthy of them. But I've found you and must
+talk now. I can't go across without telling you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She looked up. Tears almost in his eyes. His voice grown low. He seemed
+to be whispering something that didn't belong to the sanity of the hotel
+lobby and the two large potted palms in the corner.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm unclean. I've been looking for you to ask you to forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt's hands crept over his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God, you must listen and forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>This was a mad monkey uttering noises too unintelligible for even an
+attentive hat, dress, and pair of shoes to make anything of.</p>
+
+<p>"Rachel, I love you. I don't know how to say it. There's something I've
+got to say. Because ... otherwise I can't love you. I can't love you
+with the thing unsaid."</p>
+
+<p>He looked bewilderedly about him and gulped, his face red, his eyes
+tortured.</p>
+
+<p>"It's about a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," she thought, "he's going to boast. No, he's going to cry.
+What does he want?"</p>
+
+<p>The sound of his voice made her ill. If he were going to make love why
+didn't he start instead of gulping and covering his face and choking
+with tears in a hotel lobby as if he were an actor?</p>
+
+<p>"I was drawn into it. I couldn't help it. One afternoon in my office
+after the trial. Then she kept after me. The thought of you has been
+like knives in me. I've loved you all through it and hated myself for
+thinking of you, dragging you into it. I dragged the thought of you down
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> me. But she wouldn't let me go. God, I could kill her now. I broke
+away after weeks. She got somebody else. I've been living in hell ever
+since&mdash;on account of you. I'm unclean and can't love you any more. If it
+hadn't been for my going across I'd not have come to you. But the war's
+given me my chance. I can't explain it. I went in to&mdash;to wipe it out.
+But I had to find you and tell you. I didn't want to think of dying and
+having insulted you and not ..."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, overcome. Rachel was nodding her head. She must make an
+answer to this. It was a riddle asking an answer.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, Rachel, don't look like that. Oh, you're so clean and
+pure. I can't tell you. You're like a star shining and me in the mud.
+You've always hated me. But it's different now. I'm going to France to
+die. I don't want to live. If you forgive me it'll be easier. That's why
+I had to talk, Rachel, forgive me. And then it won't matter what
+happens."</p>
+
+<p>She let him take her hand. It was an easy way to make an answer. A
+desire to giggle had to be overruled. The words he had spoken became
+absurd little manikins of words, bowing at each other, striking idiotic
+postures before her. But he had done something and for some astounding
+reason wanted her to forgive him for what he had done. He was a fool. An
+impossible fool. He sat and looked like a fool. Not even a man.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt raised her hand to his face. Tears fell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> on it. Rachel felt them
+crawling warmly over her fingers. They were too intimate.</p>
+
+<p>"You make me feel almost clean again. Your hand's like something clean
+and pure. If I come back...."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her in desperation. He seemed suddenly to have forgotten
+his intention to die in France. He recalled Pauline. Was he sorry? No.
+It was over. Not his fault. All this to Rachel was a ruse. Clever way to
+get her sympathy. Not quite. But he felt better.</p>
+
+<p>He became incomprehensible to Rachel. The things he had said&mdash;his
+weeping, gulping&mdash;all part of an incomprehensible business. She nodded
+her head and looked serious. It was something that had to do with a
+far-away world.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye. Remember, I love you. And I'll come through clean because of
+you...."</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand and said, "Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>But he didn't go. Now he was completely a fool. Now there was something
+so completely foolish about him that she must laugh. The light in his
+face detained her laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"You forgive me ... for ..."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head again. It seemed to produce a magical effect&mdash;this
+nodding of her head up and down. His eyes brightened and he appeared to
+grow taller.</p>
+
+<p>"Then if I die, I'll go to heaven."</p>
+
+<p>She winced at this. An unbearable stupidity. But Hazlitt stood looking
+at her for an instant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> quite serious, as if he had said something noble.
+He saluted her, his hand to his cap, his heels together, and went away.</p>
+
+<p>The memory lingered. Hazlitt had always been incomprehensible. His
+stupidity was easy enough to understand. But something under it was a
+mess. Now he was a fool. Stiff and idiotic and making her feel ashamed
+as if she were sorry for him.... Tesla came back and stood on a step
+dropping blood from his fingers. Brander came back and whispered with
+his ugly face. Hazlitt, Tesla, Brander&mdash;three men that jumped out at her
+from the superfluous streets. Like the three men in the park walking
+horribly across the white park in the night.... An idiot, a bleeding
+man, and an ugly face. But they had passed her and gone. They were
+things seen outside a window.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes looking at a clock said to her, "Two hours more. Oh, in two
+hours, in two hours!"</p>
+
+<p>She sat motionless until the clock said, "One hour more, one more hour!"</p>
+
+<p>Then she stood up and walked slowly out of the hotel. Things had changed
+since she had left the streets. The strange world full of Marys,
+Hazlitts, and Teslas had added further superfluities. A band of music.
+Soldiers marching. Buildings waving flags and crying, "Boom, boom! we
+have gone to war!..."</p>
+
+<p>She came to her home. A red-brick house like other red-brick houses. But
+her home. What a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> fool she had been to leave it. It would have been
+easier waiting here. She walked into the two familiar rooms filled with
+the memory of Erik&mdash;two rooms that embraced her. Her hat fell on the
+bed. She would have to eat. Downstairs in the dining-room. Other
+boarders to look at. But Erik would have eaten when he came. He
+preferred eating alone.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel took her place at one of the smaller tables and dabbled through a
+series of uninteresting dishes. An admiring waitress rebuked her ...
+"Dearie, you ain't eating hardly anything."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled at the waitress and watched her later bringing dishes to a
+purple-faced fat man at an adjoining table. The fat man was futilely
+endeavoring to tell secrets to the waitress by contorting his features
+and screwing up his eyes. He reminded Rachel of Brander, only Brander
+told secrets without trying. She finished and hurried out. She would be
+hungry later, but it didn't matter. Erik would be there then.</p>
+
+<p>In the hallway Mrs. McGuire called, "Oh, Mrs. Dorn!"</p>
+
+<p>Being called Mrs. Dorn always frightened her and made her dizzy. She
+paused. Some day Mrs. McGuire would look at her shrewdly and say,
+"You're not Mrs. Dorn. I called you Mrs. Dorn but I know better. Don't
+think you're fooling anybody. Mrs. Dorn, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. McGuire held out her hand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A letter for your husband. Do you want to sit in the parlor, Mrs. Dorn?
+You know I want all my boarders to make themselves entirely at home."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Rachel. "You're so nice. But I have some work to do
+upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>Escaping Mrs. McGuire was one of the difficult things of the day. A
+buxom, round-faced woman in black with friendly eyes, Mrs. McGuire had a
+son in the army and a sainted husband dead and buried, and a childish
+faith in the friendliness and interest of people. Rachel hurried up the
+stairs. In her room she looked at the letter. For Erik. Readdressed
+twice. From Chicago. She stood holding it. It said to her, "I am from
+Anna. I am from Anna. Words of Anna. I am the wife of Erik Dorn."</p>
+
+<p>Anna was a reality. Long ago Anna had been a reality. A background
+against which the dream of Erik Dorn raised itself. She remembered
+sitting close to Anna and smiling at her the first time she had visited
+Erik's home. Why had she gone? If only she had never seen Anna! Her
+tired, sad eyes that smiled at Erik. Rachel's fingers tightened over the
+envelope. She laughed nervously and tore the letter. He was hers. Anna
+couldn't write to him.</p>
+
+<p>A pain came into her heart as the paper separated itself into bits in
+her fingers. She felt herself tearing something that was alive. It was
+cruel to tear the letter. But it would save Erik pain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> ... To read
+Anna's words, to hear her cries, see her sad tired eyes staring in
+anguish out of the writing&mdash;that would hurt Erik.</p>
+
+<p>She dropped the bits into the waste-paper basket and stood wide-eyed
+over them. She had dared. As if he had belonged to her. What would he
+say? But he wouldn't know. Unless Mrs. McGuire said, "There was a letter
+for you, Mr. Dorn." Why hadn't she read the letter before tearing it up?
+Perhaps it was important, saying Anna had died. When Anna died Erik
+would marry her. She would have children and live in a house of her own.
+Mrs. Rachel Dorn, people would call her. This was a dream.... Mrs.
+Rachel Dorn. He would laugh if he knew; or worse, be angry. But ... "Oh,
+God, I want him. Like that. Complete." Anna had had him like that. The
+other thing. Not respectability. But the possession of little things.</p>
+
+<p>She would have to tell him about the letter. She couldn't lie to him,
+even silently. The clock on the dresser, ticking as it had always
+ticked, said, "In a half-hour ... a half-hour more."</p>
+
+<p>She sprang from the bed and stood listening.</p>
+
+<p>Someone was coming down the hall. Strange hours fell from her. Now Erik
+was coming. Now life commenced. The empty circle of the day was over.</p>
+
+<p>Her body grew wild as if she must leap out of herself. Her eyes hung
+devouringly upon the blank door&mdash;a door opening and Erik standing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+smiling at her. It was still a dream. It would never become real. She
+would always feel frightened. Though he came home a hundred thousand
+times she would always wait like now for the door to open with a fear
+and a dream in her heart. But why did he knock?</p>
+
+<p>She opened the door with a feverish jerk. Not Erik. A messenger-boy
+blinking surprised eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Dorn?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Sign here, second line."</p>
+
+<p>A blank door again. The message read:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be home late. Don't worry. <span class="smcap">Erik</span>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III3" id="CHAPTER_III3"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>Warren Lockwood was a man who wrote novels. He had lived in the Middle
+West until he was thirty-five and begun his writing at his desk in a
+real-estate office of which he had been until then a somewhat bored half
+owner.</p>
+
+<p>During the months Erik Dorn had been working on the staff of "the <i>New
+Opinion</i>&mdash;an Organ of Liberal Thought," he had encountered Lockwood
+frequently&mdash;a dark-haired, rugged-faced man with a drawling,
+high-pitched masculine voice. Dorn liked him. He talked in the manner of
+a man carefully focusing objects into range. Lockwood was aware he had
+gotten under the skin of things. He talked that way.</p>
+
+<p>The change from the newspaper to the magazine continued, after several
+months, to irritate Dorn. The leisureliness of his new work aggravated.
+There was an intruding sterility about it. The <i>New Opinion</i> was a
+weekly. From week to week it offered a growing client&egrave;le finalities.
+There were finalities on the war, finalities on the social unrest;
+finalities on art, life, religion, the past, present, and future. A
+cock-sure magazine, gently, tolerantly elbowing aside the mysteries of
+existence and holding up between carefully manicured thumb and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+forefinger the Gist of the Thing. The Irrefutable Truth. The Perfect
+Deduction.</p>
+
+<p>There were a number of intelligent men engaged in the work of writing
+and editing the periodical. They seemed all to have graduated from an
+identical strata. Dorn, becoming acquainted with them, found them
+intolerable. They appealed to him as a group of carefully tailored
+Abstractions bombinating mellifluously in a void. The precision of logic
+was in them. The precision of even tempers. The precision of aloof eyes
+fastened upon finalities. Theoretical radicals. Theoretical
+conservatives. Theoretical philosophers. Any appellation preceded by the
+adjective theoretical fitted them snugly. Of contact with the
+hurdy-gurdy of existence which he as a journalist felt under the ideas
+of the day, there was none. Life in the minds of the intellectual staff
+of the <i>New Opinion</i> smoothed itself out into intellectual paragraphs.
+And from week to week these paragraphs made their bow to the public.
+Mannerly admonitions, courteous disapprovals. A style borrowed from the
+memory of the professor informing a backward class in economics what the
+exact date of the signing of the Magna Charta really was.</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood was the exception. He wrote occasional fictional sketches for
+the magazine. Dorn had been attracted to him at first because of the
+curious intonations of his voice. He had not read the man's
+novels&mdash;there were four of them dealing with the Middle West&mdash;but in the
+repressed sing-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>song of his voice Dorn had sensed an unusual character.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a good writer, an artist," he thought, hearing him talking to
+Edwards, one of the editors. "He talks like a lover arguing patiently
+and gently with his own thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>After that they had walked and eaten together. The idea of Warren
+Lockwood being a lover grew upon Dorn. Of little things, of things
+seemingly unimportant and impersonal, the novelist talked as he would
+have liked to talk to Rachel&mdash;with a slow simplicity that caressed his
+subjects and said, "These are little things but we must be careful in
+handling them, for they're a part of life." And life was important.
+People were tremendously existent. Dorn, listening to the novelist,
+would watch his eyes that seemed to be always adventuring among secrets.</p>
+
+<p>Once he thought, "A sort of mother love is in him. He keeps trying to
+say something that's never in his words. His thoughts are like a lover's
+fingers stroking a girl's hair. That's because he's found himself. He
+feels strong and lets his strength come out in gentleness. He's found
+himself and is trying to shape secrets into words."</p>
+
+<p>In comparing Lockwood with the others on the staff of the magazine he
+explained, "There's the difference between a man and an intellect.
+Warren's a man. The others are a group of schoolboys reducing life to
+lessons."</p>
+
+<p>There grew up in Dorn a curious envy of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> novelist. He would think of
+him frequently when alone, "The fellow's content to write. I'm not. He's
+found his way of saying what's in him, getting rid of his energies and
+love. I haven't. He feels toward the world as I do toward Rachel. An
+overpowering reality and mystery are always before him; but it gives him
+a mental perspective. What does Rachel give me? Desires, ambitions&mdash;a
+sort of laughing madness that I can't translate into anything but
+kisses. I'm cleverer than I was before. I talk and write better. There's
+a certain wildness about things as if I were living in a storm. Yes, I
+have wings, but there's no place to fly with them. Except into her arms.
+There must be something else."</p>
+
+<p>And he would rush through the day, outwardly a man of inexhaustible
+energies, stamping himself upon the consciousness of people as a
+brilliant, dominating personality. Edwards, with whom he discussed
+matter for editorials and articles, had grown to regard him with awe.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never felt genius so keenly before," Edwards explained him to
+Lockwood. "The man seems burning up. Did you read his thing on Russia
+and Kerensky? Lord, it was absolutely prophetic."</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Dorn's too damn clever," he drawled. "Things come too easily to him.
+He's got an eye but&mdash;I can't put my finger on it. You see a fella's got
+to have something inside him. The things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> Erik says cleverly and
+prophetically don't mean anything much, because they don't mean anything
+to him. He makes 'em up as he goes along."</p>
+
+<p>Edwards disagreed. He was a younger man than Lockwood, with an
+impressionable erudition. Like his co-workers he had been somewhat
+stampeded by Dorn's imitative faculties, faculties which enabled the
+former journalist to bombinate twice as loud in a void three times as
+great as any of his colleagues.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've met a lot of writing men since I came East," he said. "And
+Dorn's the best of them. He's more than a man of promise. He's opened
+up. Look what he's done in the new number. Absolutely revolutionized the
+liberal thought of the country. You've got to admit that. He's a man
+incapable of fanaticism."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just it," smiled Lockwood. "You've hit it. You've put your
+finger on it. He's the kind of man who knows too damn much and don't
+believe anything."</p>
+
+<p>The friendship between Lockwood and Dorn matured quickly. The two men,
+profoundly dissimilar in their natures, found themselves launched upon a
+growing intimacy. To Lockwood, heavy spoken, delicate sensed, na&iuml;ve
+despite the shrewdness of his forty-five years, Erik Dorn appealed as
+some exotic mechanical contrivance might for a day fascinate and
+bewilder the intelligence of a rustic. And the other, in the midst of
+magnificent bombinations that amazed his friend, thought,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> "If I only
+had this man's simplicity. If on top of my ability to unravel mysteries
+into words I could feel these mysteries as he does, I might do
+something."</p>
+
+<p>At other times, carried away by the strength of his own nature, he would
+find himself looking down upon Lockwood. "I'm alive. He's static. I live
+above him. There's nothing beyond me. I can't feel the things out of
+which he makes his novels, because I'm beyond them."</p>
+
+<p>He would think then of Lockwood as an eagle of a rustic painstakingly
+hoeing a field. On such days the disquiet would vanish from Dorn's
+thought. He would feel himself propelled through the hours as if by some
+irresistible wind of which he had become a part. To live was enough. To
+live was to give expression to the clamoring forces in him. To sweep
+over Edwards, hurl himself through crowds, pulverize Warren, bang out
+astounding fictions on the typewriter, watch the faces of acquaintances
+light up with admiration as he spoke&mdash;this sufficed. The world
+galvanized itself about him. He could do anything. He could give vision
+to people, create new life around him. This consciousness sufficed. Then
+to rush home from a triumphant day, a glorious contempt for his fellows
+lingering like wine in his head&mdash;and find Rachel&mdash;an eagle waiting in a
+nest.</p>
+
+<p>Joy, then, become a mania. Desires feeding upon themselves, devouring
+his body and his senses and hurling him into an exhausted sleep as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> if
+death alone could climax the madness of his spirit&mdash;these Dorn knew in
+the days of his strength.</p>
+
+<p>But the days of disquiet came, confronting him like skeletons in the
+midst of his feastings upon life. The ecstasy he felt seemed suddenly to
+turn itself inward and demand of him new destinations. On such days he
+had fallen into the habit of going upon swift walks through the less
+crowded streets of the city. During his walking he would mutter, "What
+can I do? What? Nothing. Not a thing." As if secret voices were debating
+his destiny.</p>
+
+<p>Restless, vicious spoken, venting his strainings in a skyrocket burst of
+phrases upon the inanity and stupidity of his fellow creatures for which
+he seemed to possess an almost uncanny vision, he fled through these
+days like the victim of some spiritual satyriasis. No longer a wind at
+his heels riding him into easy heights, he found himself weighted down
+with his love, and strangely inanimate.</p>
+
+<p>The direction in which he was moving loomed sterilely before him. His
+love itself seemed a feverishly sterile thing. His work upon the
+magazine, his incessant exchange of intolerant adjectives with admiring
+strangers&mdash;these became absurdly petty gestures, absurdly insufficient.
+There was something else to do. As he had longed for Rachel in the black
+days before their coming together, he longed now for this something
+else. Without name or outline, it haunted him. Another face of stars,
+but this time beyond his power to understand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> Yet it demanded him, as
+Rachel had demanded him, and towards it he turned in his days of
+disquiet, inanimate and bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>"I must find something to do," he explained to himself, "that will give
+me direction. People must have a monomania as a track for their living,
+or else there is no living."</p>
+
+<p>Then, as was his custom, he would begin an unraveling of the notion.</p>
+
+<p>"Men with energies in them wed themselves quickly to some consuming
+project, even if it's nothing more than the developing of a fish market.
+Rachel isn't a destination. She's a force that fills me with violence
+and I have no direction in which to live to use this violence. I don't
+know what to do with myself. So I'm compelled to live in the violence
+itself. In a storm. A kind of Walkyrie on a broomstick. But, good God,
+what else is there? Sit and scribble words about fictitious characters.
+Bleat out rhapsodies. Art is something I can spit out in conversation.
+If I do anything it's got to be something too difficult for me to do. My
+damned cleverness puts me beyond artists who find a destination for
+their energies in the struggle to achieve the thing with which I begin.
+If not art, then what? War, politics, finance. All surfaces meaning
+nothing. If I did them all there'd still be something I hadn't done. I
+want something that's not in life. Life's too damned insufficient. I
+want something out of it."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel had thought at first that his fits of brood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>ing restlessness came
+from a memory of Anna. But phrases he had blurted cut half-consciously
+had given her a sense of their causes. The thought of Anna had died in
+him. Neither consciousness of her suffering nor memory of the years they
+had lived together had yet awakened in him. He had been moving since the
+night he had walked out of his home and there had been no looking back.</p>
+
+<p>Undergoing a seeming expansion of his powers, Erik Dorn had become a
+startling, fascinating figure in the new world he had entered. The
+flattery of men almost as clever as himself, the respect, appreciation
+of political, literary, and vaguely social circles, of stolid men and
+eccentric acquaintances, were continually visited upon him. He was a
+personality, a figure to enliven dinner parties, throw a glamour and a
+fever into the enervated routine of sets, cliques, and circles.</p>
+
+<p>He had made occasional journeyings alone and sometimes with Rachel into
+the homes of chance acquaintances, and had put in fitful appearances at
+the various excitements pursued by the city's more radical
+intelligentsia&mdash;little-theater premiers, private assemblings of shrewd,
+bored men and women, precious concerts, electric discussions of
+political unrest. From all such adventurings he came away with a sense
+of distaste. Friendships, always foreign to his nature, had become now
+almost an impossibility. He felt himself a procession of adjectives
+exploding in the ears of strangers.</p>
+
+<p>With Warren Lockwood alone he had been able<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> to achieve a contact. In
+the presence of the novelist there was a complement of himself both in
+the days of his disquiet and strength. Together they took to frequenting
+odd parts of the city, visiting lonely caf&eacute;s and calling upon strangers
+known to the novelist. The man's virile gentleness soothed him. He was
+never tired of watching the turns of his na&iuml;vet&eacute;, delighting as much in
+his friend's unsophisticated appreciation of the arts as in the vivid
+simplicity of his understanding of people and events.</p>
+
+<p>He had finished a stormy conference with the directors of the magazine
+on the subject of a new editorial policy toward Russia&mdash;new editorial
+policies toward Russia had become almost the sole preoccupation of the
+<i>New Opinion</i>&mdash;when Lockwood arrived at the office, resplendent in the
+atrocities of a new green hat and lavender necktie.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a fella over on the east side you ought to meet," Lockwood
+explained. "I was going over there and thought you'd like to come
+along."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned over, seriously confidential.</p>
+
+<p>"If you can lay off a while in this business of revolutionizing the
+liberal thought of the whole country, Erik, I'll tell you something.
+Between you and me, this man we're going to see is the greatest artist
+in America. I know."</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood waved his hand casually as if dismissing once and for all an
+avalanche of contradictions. Dorn hesitated. It was one of his days of
+disquiet;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> and he had left a note with Rachel saying he would be home at
+eight. It was now six.</p>
+
+<p>"If you've got a date," went on Lockwood, "call it off. Lord, man, you
+can't afford missing the greatest artist in the world."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn frowned. He might telephone. But that would mean explanations and
+the pleading sound of a voice saying, "Of course, Erik." He would send a
+message, and scribbled it on a telegraph blank:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be home late. Don't worry.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Erik.</span>"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll make a night of it," he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood looked at him, shrewdly affectionate.</p>
+
+<p>"What you need," he spoke, "is a good drink and some fat street woman to
+shake you out of it. You look kind of tied up."</p>
+
+<p>"I am," grinned Dorn. "Wound up and ready to bust."</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood nodded his head slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh," he said, as if turning the matter over carefully in his
+thought. "Why don't you buy a new hat like I do when I get feeling sort
+of upside down? Buying a new hat or tie straightens a man out. Come on!"
+He laughed suddenly. "This artist's name is Tony. He's an old
+man&mdash;seventy years old."</p>
+
+<p>They entered the street, Lockwood watching his companion with dark,
+fixed eyes as if he were slowly arriving at some impersonal diagnosis.</p>
+
+<p>"A lot of fools," he announced abruptly, waving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> his hand at the crowds.
+"They don't know that something important's happening in Russia." He
+pronounced it Rooshia. Dorn saw his eyes kindle with a kindliness as he
+denounced the rabble about them.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you figure is happening in Rooshia?" he inquired of the
+novelist.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't figure," smiled Lockwood. "I feel it. Something important that
+these newspaper Neds around this town haven't got any conception of.
+It's what old Carl calls the rising of the proletaire." He chuckled.
+"Old Carl's sure gone daft on this proletaire thing." His face abruptly
+hardened, the rugged features becoming set, the swart eyes paying a
+far-away homage. "But old Carl's a great poet&mdash;the greatest in America.
+God, but that old boy can write!"</p>
+
+<p>Dorn nodded. In the presence of the novelist the unrest that had held
+him by the throat through the day seemed to ebb. There was companionship
+in the figure beside him. They walked in silence for several blocks. The
+day was growing dark quickly and despite the crowds in the streets,
+there seemed an inactivity in the air&mdash;the wait of a storm.</p>
+
+<p>Into a ramshackle building on the corner of a vivaciously ugly street
+Lockwood led his friend in quest of the greatest artist. An old man in a
+skull cap, woolen shirt, baggy trousers and carpet slippers appeared in
+a darkened doorway. With his long white beard he stood bent and
+rheumatic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> before them, making a question mark in the gloom of the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Tony," Lockwood greeted him. "I've brought a friend of mine
+along to look at your works."</p>
+
+<p>The old man extended thin fingers and nodded his head. Dorn entered a
+large room that reminded him of a tombstone factory. Figures in clay,
+some broken and cracked, cluttered up its floor and walls. In a corner
+partly hidden behind topsy-turvy busts and more figures was a cot with a
+blanket over it. Dorn after several minutes of silence, looked
+inquiringly at his friend. The works of art, despite an obvious vigor of
+execution, were openly banal.</p>
+
+<p>"He's got some more in the basement," announced Lockwood with an air of
+triumph. "And there's some stuck away with the family upstairs. The
+whole street here's full of his works."</p>
+
+<p>The old man nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't talk much English," went on Lockwood. "But I'll tell you
+about him. I got the story from him. He's the greatest artist in the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>As Dorn moved politely from figure to figure, the old man like a museum
+monitor at his heels, Lockwood went on explaining in a caressing
+sing-song:</p>
+
+<p>"This old boy came to New York when he was in his twenties. And he's
+been living here ever since and making statues. He's working right now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+on a statue of some general. Been working for fifty years without
+stopping, and there's nobody in this town ever heard of him or come near
+him. Get this picture of this old boy, Erik, buried in this hole for
+fifty years making statues. Working away day after day without anybody
+coming near him. I brought a sculptor friend of mine who kept squinting
+at some of the things the old boy did when he first came over and
+saying, 'By God, this fella was an artist at one time.' Get the picture
+of this smart-aleck sculptor friend of mine saying this old boy was an
+artist."</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of Warren Lockwood grew hard and seemed to challenge. He
+extended his arm and waved his hand gently in a further challenge.</p>
+
+<p>"The fools in this town let this old boy stay buried," he whispered,
+"but he fooled them. He kept right on making statues and giving them
+away to the folks that live around here and hiding them in the basement
+when there wasn't anybody to take them."</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood grasped the arm of his friend excitedly and his voice became
+high-pitched.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you get this old man?" he argued. "Don't you get the figure of
+him as an artist? Lord, man, he's the greatest artist in the world, I
+tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>Dorn nodded his head, amused and disturbed by the novelist's excitement.
+The old sculptor was standing in the shadow of the figures piled on top
+of each other against the wall. He wore the air of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> a man just awakened
+and struggling politely to grasp his surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>"A sort of altruistic carpenter," thought Dorn. "That's what Warren
+calls an artist. Works diligently for nothing."</p>
+
+<p>The respect and awe in the eyes of his friend halted him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I get him," he added aloud. "Living with a dream for fifty years."</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood snorted and then with a quiet laugh answered: "No, that isn't
+it. You're not an artist yourself so you can't quite get the sense of
+it." He seemed petulent and defeated.</p>
+
+<p>They left the old man's studio without further talk. It had started to
+rain. Large spaced drops plumbed a gleaming hypotenuse between the
+rooftops and the streets. They paused before a basement restaurant.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks dirty," said Lockwood, "but let's go in."</p>
+
+<p>Here they ordered dinner. During their eating the noise of thunder
+sounded and the splash of the storm drifted in through the dusty
+basement windows. A thick-wristed, red-fingered waitress slopped back
+and forth between their table and an odorous kitchen door. Lockwood kept
+his eyes fastened steadily upon the nervous features of his friend. He
+thought as the silence increased between them: "This man's got something
+the matter with him."</p>
+
+<p>Gradually an uneasiness came over the novelist,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> his sensitive nerves
+responding to the disquiet in the smiling eyes opposite.</p>
+
+<p>"You're kind of crazy," he leaned forward and whispered as if confiding
+an ominous, impersonal secret. "You've got the eyes of a man kind of
+crazy, Erik."</p>
+
+<p>He sat back in his chair, his hands holding the edge of the table, his
+chin tucked down, as if he were ruminating, narrow-eyed, upon some
+involved business proposition.</p>
+
+<p>"I get you now," he added slowly. "I'll put you in a book&mdash;a crazy man
+who kept fooling himself by imitating sane people."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Insanity would be a relief," he answered. "Come on."</p>
+
+<p>He stood up quickly and looked down at his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's keep going. I've got something in me I want to get rid of."</p>
+
+<p>In the doorway the friends halted. The grave, melodious shout of the
+rain filled the night. The streets had become dark, attenuated pools.
+The rain falling illuminated the hidden faces of the buildings and
+silvered the air with whirling lines.</p>
+
+<p>As they stood facing the downpour Dorn thought, "Rachel's waiting for
+me. Why don't I go to her? But I'd only make her sad. Better let it get
+out of me in the rain."</p>
+
+<p>Holding his friend's arm he stood staring at the storm over the city.
+Through the sparkle and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> fume of the rain-colored night the lights of
+caf&eacute; signs burned like golden-lettered banners flung stiffly into the
+downpour. About the lights floated patches of yellow mist through which
+the rain swarmed in flurries of gleaming moths. There were lights of
+doors and windows beneath the burning signs. The remainder of the street
+was lost in a wilderness of rain that bubbled and raced over the
+pavements in an endless detonation.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with a sudden softness: "I didn't get your artist, Warren, but
+you don't get this storm. It's noise and water to you."</p>
+
+<p>The novelist answered with a sagacious nod.</p>
+
+<p>"There's something alive in a night like this," Dorn went on, "something
+that isn't a part of life."</p>
+
+<p>He pulled his friend out of the doorway. They walked swiftly, their
+shoes spurting water and the rain dripping from their clothes. Dorn felt
+an untightening. His eyes hailed the scene as if in greeting of a
+friend. He became aware of its detail. He smiled, remembering the way in
+which he had been used to hide his longing for Rachel in the desperate
+consciousness of scenes about him. Now it was something else he was
+hiding. Beneath his feet he watched the silver-tipped pool of the
+pavement. Gleaming in its depths swam reflections of burning lamps, like
+the yellow script of another and wraith-like world staring up at him out
+of a nowhere. The rest was darkness and billowy stripes of water. People
+had vanished. Later a sound of thunder crawled out of the sky.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> A vein
+of lightning opened the night. Against its blue pallor the street and
+its buildings etched themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"Stiff, unreal, like a stage scene," murmured Dorn. "Another world."</p>
+
+<p>The rain flung itself for an instant in great ghostly sheets out of the
+lighted spaces. He caught a glimpse in the distance of a hunched, moving
+figure like some tiny wanderer through tortuous fields. Then darkness
+resumed, seizing the street. A wind entered the night outlining itself
+in the wild undulations of the rain reaching for the pavements.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn forgot his companion, as they pressed on. Disheveled rain ghosts
+crowded around him. The fever that had burned in him during the day
+seemed to have become a part of the storm. The leap and hollow blaze of
+the lightnings gave him a companionship. His eyes stared into the
+inanimate bursts of pale violet outlines in the dark. His breath drank
+in the spice of water-laden winds. The stumble of thunder, the lash and
+churn of rain were companions. The something else that haunted him was
+in the storm. He turned to Lockwood, who seemed to be lagging, and
+shouted in his ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Great, eh? Altar fires and the racket of unknown gods."</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood, his face filmed with water, grunted indignantly:</p>
+
+<p>"Let's get out of this."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The night was growing wilder. Dorn's eyes bored into the vapors and
+steam of the rain.</p>
+
+<p>"We're in a good street," he cried again. "A nigger street."</p>
+
+<p>A blinding gust of light brought them to a halt. Thunder burst a horror
+of sound through its dead glare. Dorn stiffened and stared as in a dream
+at a face floating behind the glass of a door. A woman's face contorted
+into a stark grimace of rapture. Its teeth stood out white and
+skull-like against the red of an open mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Silence and darkness seized the street. Rain poured. The sound of a
+laugh like some miniature echo of the tumult that had torn the night
+drifted to them. Lockwood had started for the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," he called, "this is crazy."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn followed him. The streaming door opened as they approached and two
+figures darted out. They were gone in an instant and in pursuit of them
+rushed a rollicking lurch of sound. Dorn caught again the shrill
+staccato of the laugh, and the door closed behind them.</p>
+
+<p>Dancing bodies were spinning among the tables. Shouting, swinging noises
+and a bray of music spurted unintelligibly against the ears of the
+newcomers. A chlorinated mist, acrid to the eye, and burning to the
+nose, crawled about the room. Dorn, followed by Lockwood, groped his way
+through the confusion toward a small vacant table against a wall. From
+here they watched in silence.</p>
+
+<p>A can-can was in progress. The dancers, black<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> and white faces glued
+together, arms twined about each other's bodies, tumbled through the
+smoke. Waiters balancing black trays laden with colored glasses sifted
+through the scene. At the tables men and women with faces out of focus
+sat drinking and shouting. Niggers, prostitutes, louts. The slant of red
+mouths opened laughters. Hands and throats drifted in violent fragments
+through the mist. The reek of wine and steaming clothes, the sting of
+perspiring perfumes and the odors of women's bodies fumed over the
+tumble of heads. Against the scene a jazz band flung a whine and a
+stumble of tinny sounds. Nigger musicians with silver instruments glued
+to their lips sat on a platform at the far end of the room. They danced
+in their chairs as they played, swinging their instruments in crazy
+circles. A broken, lurching music came from them, a nasal melody that
+moaned among the laughters.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn's fingers lay gripped about the arm of his friend. His senses
+caught the rhythm of the scene. His eyes stared at the dancing figures,
+blond heads riveted against black satin cheeks; bodies gesturing their
+lusts to the quick whine and stumble of the music; eyes opening like
+mouths.</p>
+
+<p>"God, what an orgie!" he whispered. "Look at the thing. It's insane. A
+nigger hammering a scarlet phallus against a cymbal moon."</p>
+
+<p>His words vanished in the din and Lockwood remained with eyes drawn in
+and hard. When he turned to his friend he found him excitedly pound<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>ing
+his fist on the table and bawling for a waiter. A man, seemingly asleep
+amid confusions, appeared and took his order.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a woman in here I've got to find," Dorn shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"You're crazy, man."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw her," he persisted, talking close to his friend's ear. "I saw her
+face in the door. You wait here."</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood seized his arm and tried to hold him, but he jerked away and
+was lost in a pattern of dancing bodies. Lockwood watching him
+disappear, frowned. He felt a sudden uncertainty toward his friend, a
+fear as if he had launched himself into a dark night with a murderer for
+a companion.</p>
+
+<p>"He's crazy," he thought. "I ought to get him out of here before
+anything happens."</p>
+
+<p>He sat fumbling nervously with the stem of a wine-glass. Outside, the
+rain chattered in the darkness and the alto of the wind came in long
+organ notes into the din of the caf&eacute;. He caught sight of Dorn pulling an
+unholy-looking woman through the pack of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Here she is&mdash;our lady of pain!"</p>
+
+<p>Dorn thrust the creature viciously into a seat beside Lockwood. She
+dropped with a scream of laughter. The music of the nigger orchestra had
+stopped and an emptiness flooded the place. Dorn bellowed for another
+glass. Lockwood looked slowly at the creature beside him. She was
+watch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>ing Dorn. In the swarthy depths of her eyes moved threads of
+scarlet. Beneath their lashes her skin was darkened as if by bruises. An
+odd sultry light glowed over the discolorations. Her mouth had shut and
+her cheeks were without curves, following the triangular corpse-like
+lines of her skull. Her lips, like bits of vermilion paper, stared as
+from an idol's face. She was regarding Dorn with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>He had grown erratic in his gestures. His eyes seemed incapable of
+focusing themselves. They darted about the room, running away from him.
+The woman's smile persisted and he turned his glance abruptly at her.
+The red flesh of her opened mouth and throat confronted him as another
+of her screaming laughs burst. The laugh ended and her gleaming eyes
+swimming in a gelatinous mist held him.</p>
+
+<p>"A reptilian sorcery," he whispered to Lockwood, and smiled. "The face
+of a malignant Pierrette. A diabolic clown. Look at it. I saw it in the
+lightning outside. She wears a mask. Do you get her?" He paused
+mockingly. Lockwood shifted away from the woman. Erik was drunk. Or
+crazy. But the woman, thank God, had eyes only for him. She remained, as
+he talked, with her sulphurous eyes unwaveringly upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>"She's not a woman," he went on in a purring voice. "She's a lust. No
+brain. No heart. A stark unhuman piece of flesh with a shark's hunger
+inside it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He leaned forward and took one of her hands as Lockwood whispered,</p>
+
+<p>"Christ, man, let's get out of here."</p>
+
+<p>The woman's fingers, dry and quivering, scratched against Dorn's palm.
+He felt them as a hot breath in his blood.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, Warren?" he laughed, emptying a wine-glass. "I like
+this gal. She suits me. A devourer of men. Look at her!"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and glared at his friend. Lockwood closed his eyes nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a headache in this damned place," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute." Dorn seized his arm. "I want to talk. I feel gabby. My
+lady friend doesn't understand words." The sulphurous eyes glowed
+caresses over him. "You remember the thing in Rabelais about
+women&mdash;insatiable, devouring, hungering in their satieties. The prowling
+animal. Well, here it is. Alive. Not in print. She's alive with
+something deeper than life. Wheels of flesh grinding her blood into a
+hunger for ecstasies. She's a mate for me. Come on, little one."</p>
+
+<p>He sprang from the table, pulling the woman after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait here, Warren," he called, moving toward the door. It opened,
+letting in a shout and sweep of rain, and they were gone.</p>
+
+<p>"A crazy man," muttered the novelist, and remained fumbling with the
+stem of his glass.</p>
+
+<p>Outside Dorn held the body of the woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> against him as they hurried
+through the storm. Her flesh, like the touch of a third person, struck
+through his wet clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"Where we going?" he yelled at her.</p>
+
+<p>She thrust out an arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Up here."</p>
+
+<p>They came breathless up a flight of stairs into a reeking room lighted
+by a gas jet.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In the caf&eacute;, Lockwood waited till the music started again. Then he rose
+and, slapping his soggy hat on his head, walked out of the place. The
+rain, sweeping steadily against the earth, held him prisoner in the
+doorway. He stood muttering to himself of his friend and his craziness.
+Gone wild! Crazy wild with a mad woman in the rain. Long ago he might
+have done it himself. Yes, he knew the why of it. The rain fuming before
+him made him sleepy. He leaned against the place and waited. The storm
+faded slowly into a quiet patter. Starting for the pavement, Lockwood
+paused. A hatless figure had jumped out of a doorway across the street
+and was running toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Erik," he muttered, and hurried to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn, laughing, his clothes torn and his face smeared with blood under
+his eye, drew near. He took his friend's arm and walked him swiftly
+away. At the corner Dorn stopped and regarded the novelist.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I've had a look at hell," he whispered, and with a laugh hurried off
+alone. Lockwood watched him moving swiftly down the street, and yawned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV3" id="CHAPTER_IV3"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was near midnight. Rachel's eyes, brightened with tears, watched her
+lover bathing his face.</p>
+
+<p>"It seemed so long," she murmured, "till you came."</p>
+
+<p>"That damned Warren Lockwood led me astray," he smiled. He dried his
+face and came toward her. She dropped to the floor beside him as he sat
+down and pressed her cheeks against his knees. His hands moved tenderly
+through her loosened hair.</p>
+
+<p>"You told me to be careful about getting run over," she smiled sadly,
+"and you go out and get all cut up in a brawl. Oh, Erik,
+please&mdash;something might have happened."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing happened, dearest."</p>
+
+<p>She asked no further questions but remained with her face against his
+knees. This was Rachel whose hair he was stroking. Dorn smiled at the
+thought. After a silence she resumed, her voice softened with emotion:</p>
+
+<p>"Erik, I've been lying to you&mdash;about my love. It's different than I said
+it was. I've said always what you've wanted me to say. You've always
+wanted me to be something else than a woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>&mdash;something like a dream.
+But I can't. I love you as&mdash;as Anna loved you. Oh, I want to be with you
+forever and have children. I'm nothing else. You are. I can't be like
+you. For me there's only love for you and nothing beyond."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear one," he answered, "there's nothing else for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you're telling me lies," she wept. "There is something I can't give
+you; and that you must go looking for somewhere else."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Rachel. I love you."</p>
+
+<p>"As you loved Anna&mdash;once."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't! I never loved Anna&mdash;or anyone. Or anything."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't help it, Erik. Forgive me, please. I love you so. Don't you see
+how I love you. I keep trying to be something besides myself and to give
+other names to the things I feel. But they're only sentimental things.
+My dreams are only sentimental dreams&mdash;of your kissing me, holding me,
+being my husband. Oh, go way from me, Erik, before I make you hate me!
+You thought I was different. And I did too. I <i>was</i> different. But
+you've changed me. Women are all the same when they love. Differences go
+away."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him with tear-running eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Different than other people! But now I'm the same. I love you as any
+other woman would. Only perhaps a little more. With my whole soul and
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"Foolish to talk," he whispered back to her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> "Words only scratch at
+things. I love you as if I had never seen you or kissed you."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not a dream, Erik. Oh, it sounds silly. But I want you."</p>
+
+<p>He raised her and held her lithe body close to him. The feeling that he
+was unreal, that Rachel was unreal, rested in his thought. There was a
+mist about things that clung to them, that clung about the joyousness in
+his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing else," he whispered. "Love is enough. It burns up
+everything else and leaves a mist."</p>
+
+<p>His arms tightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Erik dear, I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>His kiss brought a peace over her face. She had waited for it. She
+looked up and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You love me? Yes, Erik loves me. Loves me. I know."</p>
+
+<p>She watched his eyes as he spoke. The eyes of God. They remained open to
+her. She began to tremble and her naked arms moved blindly toward his
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"This is my world," she whispered. "I know, Erik. I know everything. You
+are too big for love to hold. The sun doesn't fill the whole world.
+There are always dark places. I know. Don't hide from me, lover."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and closed her eyes as her lips reached toward him.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of Erik Dorn remained open and staring out of the window. There
+was still rain in the night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V3" id="CHAPTER_V3"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Erik Dorn to Rachel, September, 1918:</span></p>
+
+<p>" ... and to-night I remember you are beautiful, and I desire you. My
+arms are empty and there is nothing for my eyes to look at. Are you
+still afraid. Look, more than a year has gone and nothing has changed.
+You are the far-away one, the dream figure, and my heart comes on wings
+to you.... I write with difficulty. What language is there to talk to
+you? How does one converse with a dream? Idiot phrases rant across the
+paper like little fat actors flourishing tin swords. I've come to
+distrust words. There are too many of them. Yet I keep fermenting with
+words. Interlopers. Busybody strangers. I can't think ... because of
+them.... Alas! if I could keep my vocabulary out of our love we would
+both be better off. Foolish chatter. I thought when I sat down to write
+to you that the sadness of your absence would overcome me. Instead, I am
+amused. Vaguely joyous. And at the thought of you I have an impulse to
+laugh. You are like that. A day like a thousand years has passed.
+Dead-born hours that did not end. Chill, empty streets and the memory of
+you like a solitude in which I sat mumbling to phantoms. And now in the
+darkness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> my heart sickens with desire for you and the night sharpens
+its claws upon my heart. Yet there is laughter. Words laugh in my head.
+The torment I feel is somehow a part of joyousness. The claws of the
+night bring somehow a caress. Even to weep for you is like some dark
+happiness whose lips are too fragile to smile. Dear one, the dream of
+you still lives&mdash;an old friend now, a familiar star that I watch
+endlessly. You see there are even no new words. For once before I told
+you that. It was night&mdash;snowing. We walked together. I remember you
+always as vanishing and leaving the light of your face burning before my
+eyes. I shall always love you. Why are you afraid? Why do you write
+vague doubts into your letters? I will be with you soon. You are a
+world, and the rest of life is a mist that surrounds you.... I have
+nothing to write. I discover this as I sit staring at the paper. I
+remember that a year has passed, that many years remain to pass. Dear
+one, I know only that I love you, and words are strangers between us."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rachel to Erik, September end, 1918:</span></p>
+
+<p>" ... when I went away you were unhappy and restless. Now that I have
+gone you are again happy and calm. Oh, you're so cruel! Your love is so
+cruel to me. I sit here all day, a foolishly humble exile, waiting for
+you. I keep watching the sea and sometimes I try to feel pain. When your
+letter comes I spend the day reading it....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> I am beautiful and you
+desire me. Oh, to think me beautiful and to desire me, suffices. You do
+not come where I am. Nothing has changed, you write with a joyous
+cruelty. In your lonely nights your dream of me still brings you
+torments and I am a star that you watch endlessly. I laugh too, but out
+of bitterness. Because what you write is no longer true and we both have
+known it for long. I am no longer a dream or a star, but a woman who
+loves you. Yes, nothing has changed, except me. And you remedy that by
+sending me away. When you send me away I too become unchanged in your
+thought. I am again like I was on the night we parted in the white park
+and you can love me&mdash;a memory of me&mdash;that remains like a star....</p>
+
+<p>"But here I am in this lonely little sea village. There is no dream for
+me. I am empty without you and I lie at night and weep till my heart
+breaks, wondering when you will come. It were better if I were dead. I
+whisper to myself, 'you must not write him to come to you, because he is
+too busy loving you. He weeps before the ghost of you. He sits beside an
+old dream. You must not interrupt him. Oh, my lover, do you find me so
+much less than the dream of me, that you must send me away in order to
+love me? My doubts? Are they doubts? We have grown apart in the year. On
+the night it snowed and I went away from you you said, 'people bury
+their love behind lighted windows....' Dearest, dearest, of what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> do I
+complain? Of your ecstasies and torments of which I am not a part, but a
+cause? Forgive me. I adore you. I am so lonely and such a nobody without
+you. And I want you to write to me that you long for me, to be with me,
+to caress me and talk to me. And instead you send phrases analyzing your
+joyousness. Oh, things have changed. I am no longer Rachel, but a woman.
+I feel so little and helpless when I think of you. Strangers can talk to
+you and look at you but I must sit here in exile while you entertain
+yourself with memories of me. You are cruel, dear one, and I have become
+too cowardly not to mind. This is because I have found happiness&mdash;all
+the happiness I desire&mdash;and hold it tremblingly. And you have not found
+happiness but are still in flight toward your far-away one, your dream
+figure. I cannot write more. I worship you and my heart is full of
+tears. I will sit humbly and look at the sea until you come."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rachel to Frank Brander, September:</span></p>
+
+<p>" ... I answer your letter only because I am afraid you would
+misunderstand my silence. I send your letter back because I cannot throw
+it away. It would make the sea unclean. As you point out, I am the
+mistress of Erik Dorn and he may some day grow tired of me, at which
+time you are prepared to be my friend and protect me from the world. I
+will put your application on file, Mr. Brander, if there is a part of my
+mind filthy enough to remember it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rachel to Emil Tesla:</span></p>
+
+<p>" ... I was glad to hear from you. But please do not write any more. I
+am too happy to read your letters. I never want to draw pictures for
+<i>The Cry</i> again. I hope you will be freed soon. I can think of nothing
+to write to you."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Erik Dorn to Rachel, November, 1918:</span></p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dearest one!</span></p>
+
+<p>"Beneath my window the gentle Jabberwock has twined colored tissue-paper
+about his ears and gone mad. He shrieks, he whistles, he blows a horn.
+The war, beloved, appears to have ended this noon and the Jabberwock is
+endeavoring to disgorge four and a half years in a single shriek. 'The
+war,' says the Jabberwock, in his own way, 'is over. It was a rotten
+war, nasty and hateful, as all wars are rotten and hateful, and
+everything I've said and done hinting at the contrary has been a lie and
+I'm so full of lies I must shriek.'</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody but a Jabberwock, dear one, would have died of apoplexy hours
+ago. But the Jabberwock is immortal. Alas! there is something of pathos
+in the spectacle. Our gentle friend with tissue-paper around his ears
+prostrates himself before another illusion&mdash;peace. Says the shriek of
+the Jabberwock beneath my window, 'The Hun is destroyed. The menace to
+humanity is laid low. The powers of darkness are dispelled by the breath
+of God and the machine-guns of our brave soldats. The war that is to end
+war is over. Hail, blessed peace!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why do I write such arid absurdities to you? But I feel an impulse to
+scribble wordly words, to stand in a silk hat beside the statue of
+Liberty and gaze out upon the Atlantic with a Carlylian pensiveness.
+Idle political tears flow from my brain. For it is obvious that the war
+the Jabberwock has so nobly waged has been a waste of steel and powder.
+Standing now on his eight million graves with the tissue-paper of
+Victory twined about his ears, the Jabberwock is a somewhat ghastly,
+humorous figure. He has, alas! shot the wrong man. To-morrow there will
+be an inquest in Paris and the Jabberwock will rub his eyes and discover
+that the corpse, God forgive him, is that of a brother and friend and
+that the Powers of Darkness threatening humanity are advancing upon him
+... out of Moscow. I muse ... yes, it was a good war. War is never
+pathetic, never wholly a waste. Maturity no less than childhood must
+have its circuses. But the Jabberwock ... Ah! the Jabberwock ... the
+soul of man celebrating the immortal triumph of righteousness ... the
+good Don Quixote has valiantly slain another windmill and your Sancho
+Panza shakes his head in wistful amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not send you this letter yesterday and many things have happened
+since I wrote it. I will see you in a few days. It has been decided that
+I go to Germany for the magazine. Edwards insists. So do the directors,
+trusting gentlemen. I will stop at Washington and try to get two
+passports and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> then come on to you, and we will wait together until the
+passports are issued. Another week of imbecile political maneuverings in
+behalf of the passports and I will again be your lover,</p>
+
+<p class="author">"<span class="smcap">Erik.</span>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI3" id="CHAPTER_VI3"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>"We've been separated almost three months," he thought, looking out of
+the train window. "I'll see her soon."</p>
+
+<p>There were four men in the smoking-compartment. They were discussing the
+end of the war. Dorn listened inattentively. He was remembering another
+ride to Rachel. Looking out of a train window as now. Whirling through
+space. A locomotive whistle wailing in the prairies at night like the
+sound of winds against his heart.</p>
+
+<p>The memories of the ride drifted through his mind. He saw himself again
+with the tumult of another day sweeping toward Rachel. What had he felt
+then? Whatever it was, it was gone. For he felt nothing now but a
+sadness. He had telegraphed. She would be waiting, her face alight, her
+hands trembling. He had started from Washington elatedly enough. But now
+in the smoking-compartment where the men were discussing the end of the
+war he felt no elation. He was thinking, "It'll be difficult when we see
+each other." He became aware that he was actually shrinking from the
+meeting. The voices of the men about him began to annoy and he returned
+to his seat in the train.</p>
+
+<p>Early evening. Another two hours and the train<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> would stop to let him
+off. Dear, dear Rachel! He had wept tormented by a loneliness for her.
+Now he was coming to her with sadness. There had been another ride when
+he had come to her in a halloo of storms. Things change.</p>
+
+<p>The porter brushed him and removed his grips to the platform. The far
+lights of a village sprinkled themselves feebly in the darkness. This
+was where Rachel was waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn stepped from the train. It became another world, lighted and human.
+He looked about the dingy little station. Rachel was walking toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"She looks strange and out of place," he thought.</p>
+
+<p>They embraced. Her kisses covering his lips delighted him unexpectedly.
+He found himself walking close to her in the night and feeling happy.
+They entered a darkened wooden house and Rachel led the way upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't talk, Erik."</p>
+
+<p>She held his hand against her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"No, don't kiss me. Let me look at you. Sit over here. I must look at
+you."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed softly, but her eyes, unsmiling, stared at him. He remained
+silent. The sadness that had fallen upon him in the train returned now
+like a hurt in his heart. He had expected it to vanish at the sight of
+her. But her kisses had only hidden it. She came to his side after a
+pause and whispered gently,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it would have been better if you hadn't come, dearest. I've
+become almost used to being alone."</p>
+
+<p>He embraced her and for the moment the sadness was hidden again.
+Rachel's hands crept avidly to his face, holding his cheeks with hot
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Erik, oh, Erik, do you love me? I'm not afraid to hear. Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear one. You are everything."</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you cry?"</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he whispered. "Only it's been so long."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are so sad."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice had grown thin. Her eyes, dry, burning, haunted the dark room.
+She removed herself from his arms and stood with her hand in her hair.
+She looked at the dark sea that mirrored the night outside the window.
+Turning to him after a pause she murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"I had forgotten Erik Dorn was here."</p>
+
+<p>A sudden stride, the gesture of another Rachel, and she had thrown
+herself on the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God!" she sobbed. "I knew, I knew!"</p>
+
+<p>Dorn, kneeling on the floor, pulled her head toward him. He whispered
+her name. Why was he sad, frightened? A thought was murmuring in him,
+"You must love her."</p>
+
+<p>"Rachel, I love you. Please. Your tears. Dearest, what has happened?
+Tell me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask that." Her tears came anew. "But you come to me sad, as if I
+were no longer Rachel to you."</p>
+
+<p>The thought kept murmuring, "You must love her...."</p>
+
+<p>"Beautiful one," he said softly, "you're weeping because something has
+happened to you."</p>
+
+<p>The thought murmured, "because something has happened to you, not her."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Erik!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then why? If you loved me you would be happy."</p>
+
+<p>Absurd sentences. They would deceive no one.</p>
+
+<p>A belated emotion overcame him. Now he was happy. His arms grew strong
+about her. He would say nothing, but lie beside her kissing her until
+the tears ended. This was happiness. He watched her lips begin to smile
+faintly. Her face touched him as if she had sighed. She whispered after
+a long silence, "Oh, I thought you had changed."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and pulled her to her feet. His head thrown back, his eyes
+amused and warm, he asked, "Do I seem changed now?"</p>
+
+<p>He waited while she regarded him. Why was he nervous? Must he answer the
+question too?</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said, "you are the same."</p>
+
+<p>Her face shining before him. Her head quickly lifted.</p>
+
+<p>"I was a fool. Look, Erik, I am happy&mdash;happier than anybody on earth."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She dropped to her knees, kissing his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so happy, I kneel...."</p>
+
+<p>They stood together in the window and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a wonderful old woman here. We've talked a great deal, about
+everything, and you. You don't mind? To-morrow we'll lie all day on the
+shore. Oh, Erik. Erik!"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll never be alone again, Rachel."</p>
+
+<p>"Never!" she echoed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII3" id="CHAPTER_VII3"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>A calm had fallen upon Erik Dorn, an unconsciousness of self. He
+sprawled through the sunny days, staring at the sea with Rachel or
+walking alone to the fishing-boats at the other end of the village, or
+sitting with Mama Turpin, the old woman in whose cottage they lived.
+With Mama Turpin he held interminable talks that rambled on through the
+night at times. Religion was Mama Turpin's favored topic. Her round body
+in a rocking-chair, her seamed, vigorous face raised toward the sky, the
+old woman would fall into a dream and talk quietly of her God. She would
+begin, her voice coming out of the dark reminding Dorn of a girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have always known this here one thing. Everybody must have a
+religion. Because there's something in everybody that's way beyond their
+selves to understand. And there's nobody to give it to excepting God.
+Some God, anyways...."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel, sitting in the shadows, would listen with her eyes upon Erik.
+The fear that he had brought her was growing in her heart, making her
+thought heavy and her gestures slow. She would listen, almost asleep, to
+his words.</p>
+
+<p>" ... Yes, Mama Turpin, religion comes to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> all people. But not for long.
+We all get a flame in us at some time and it burns until it burns itself
+out, and then we sit and forget to wonder about things...."</p>
+
+<p>Talk perhaps for her to understand. But why should he hint when words
+outright were easier? Rachel carried questions in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>Among the fishermen Dorn listened sometimes to stories of great catches
+and storms. He was usually silent watching them empty their nets on the
+shore and remove the catch into basins and pails. The men accepted his
+interest in their work with a pleased indifference.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel sometimes walked with him or stretched beside him on the sand.
+But he felt an uneasiness in her presence. Her eyes questioned him
+silently and seemed to answer their own questions.</p>
+
+<p>Since the evening of his coming there had been no scenes. He was
+grateful for this. But the eyes of Rachel sometimes haunted him at night
+as she lay asleep beside him. What spoke in her eyes? He felt calm when
+alone, at peace with himself. But at night while she slept he would
+become sleepless and a sadness would enter him. Thoughts he did not seem
+to be thinking would move through his head. "Things pass. Years pass.
+The sea and the stars remain the same. But men and women change. Life
+eats into men and women&mdash;eats things away from them...."</p>
+
+<p>In his sadness there would come to him a memory of Anna. Thoughts of
+Anna and Rachel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> would mingle themselves.... Anna had once lain beside
+him like this. He remembered now. Her body was different from
+Rachel's&mdash;softer, warmer ... a woman named Anna had lived with him. Now
+a woman named Rachel. And to-morrow, what? There were yesterdays. These
+were not sad. Things already dead were not so sad. But things that are
+to die....</p>
+
+<p>His heart would grow weak, seeming to dissolve. Something unspoken in
+the night. Tears in his heart. Calm in his thought. He would figure it
+out sometime. His words were alert little busy-bodies. They could follow
+things into difficult crevices. But was there anything to figure out? He
+was growing old and a to-morrow was haunting him. Some day he would
+close his eyes slowly and in the slow closing of his eyes the world
+would end. Erik Dorn would have ended. Was there such a thing as ending?
+Yes, things were always ending. Now he was different than the night he
+had lain beside Rachel and whispered, "You have given me wings." But
+how? He felt the same. Change came like that. Leaving one the same. He
+would write things from Europe that would startle. He could write....
+But, something unspoken in the night. He must say it to himself.... "You
+must love her...." Then that was it. He no longer loved her.</p>
+
+<p>He lay listening to her breathing. An end to his love. Preposterous
+notion! How, since the thought of parting from her wrenched at his
+heart?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> "If I went away from Rachel I would die." Unquestionably
+sincere.... "I'd die." Not, of course, die. But feel death. Yet, there
+was something changed. But a man doesn't remain an ecstatic lover. There
+comes a time. Well, he loved her like this&mdash;quietly, happily, and if he
+went away from her he would feel an end had come to his life. The other
+love had been words flying in his head. Nice to have felt as he had. But
+life&mdash;practical, material rush of hours. Words had flown in his head
+once. He smiled. "Wings, what are they?" He remembered having spoken and
+thought a great deal about wings. Now the idea seemed somewhat absurd.
+They were not a part of life. Inventions. An invention. A phrase to
+explain an unusual state of physical and mental excitement.... Sleep
+intruded and the sadness melted out of him. As he closed his eyes his
+hand reached dreamily for Rachel and lay upon her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>A week of silence followed. Dorn talked. Politics, economics, the coming
+peace treaty. Rachel listened and made replies. Yet their words seemed
+only the part of a silence between them. A letter from Washington
+interrupted them. A passport was being issued for Erik Dorn, but the
+bureau was not issuing passports for women and would have to deny Mrs.
+Rachel Dorn ... "enclosed please find $1 deposit made for Mrs. Dorn at
+this office."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that ends it," he laughed. "Perhaps I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> shouldn't have lied about
+your being Mrs. Dorn. God is a jealous God and punishes liars."</p>
+
+<p>"You must go on," Rachel said. "Perhaps I'll get one later."</p>
+
+<p>"No, we'll both wait. I couldn't go without you."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel regarded him tenderly. They were sitting on Mama Turpin's porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you will," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head, pleased at the opportunity for sacrifice. He hoped as
+he smiled that Rachel would plead with him to go alone. In her pleading
+she would point out all the things he was giving up by not going. She
+might even say, "You must go, Erik. You can't sacrifice your career."</p>
+
+<p>Then he could shrug his shoulders, remain silent for a moment as if
+weighing his career beside his love for her, and smile suddenly and say,
+gently, "No. It's ended. Please, it's ended and forgotten." A laugh, a
+bit too casual, would leave the thing on the proper plane. Later there
+would be times when he could grow thoughtful and abstract and Rachel,
+looking at him, would know that he had sacrificed&mdash;his career.</p>
+
+<p>On Mama Turpin's porch Dorn's thoughts rambled in silence. Rachel had
+said nothing. He looked at her and grew confused before the straightness
+of her eyes, as if she knew the tawdry little plot moving through his
+mind. Then an irritation ... why didn't she plead? Did she think it was
+nothing to give up his plans? Was it anything?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> No. He endeavored to
+evade his own questioning, but his thoughts mocked him with answers....
+"I'm playing a game with her. I want her to feel sorry and grateful for
+my not going and to feel that I've made a sacrifice for her. Because I
+could cherish it against her ... later. Have something I could pretend
+to be sad about. It would give me an excuse to scold her.... Merely by
+looking at her I could remind her that she is indebted to me for a
+sacrifice. Make-believe sacrifice gives one the unconsciousness of
+virtue without any of its discomforts. I'm irritated because she refuses
+to play her part in the farce and so makes me seem cheap. She knows I'm
+lying but she can't figure out how or what about. So she looks at me and
+says to herself, 'Erik has changed. He's different.' She means that I've
+become an actor and able to offer her cheap things. But she doesn't know
+that in words."</p>
+
+<p>As he sat thinking, an understanding of himself played beneath his
+thoughts. He was irritated with her. The passport business was something
+he could hang his irritation on. It offered an opportunity to make the
+petulant, indefinable aversion he sometimes felt toward her into a
+noble, self-laudatory emotion.</p>
+
+<p>He stood up abruptly. Make amends by being truthful and putting an end
+to the theatrics.... "Listen, Rachel, it's foolish for us to take this
+seriously. I don't give a damn about going, and I never did. It would
+bore me. It means nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> to me, and it's no sacrifice or even
+inconvenience. Please, I mean it. Put it out of your head."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned over and took her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you...."</p>
+
+<p>Despite himself there was a note of sacrifice. He frowned. His "I love
+you" had startled him. He had said it as one pats a woman reassuringly
+on the shoulder. More, as one turns the other cheek in a forgiving
+Christian spirit. He was not an actor. He had become naturally cheap.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel smiled wanly at him and kissed his hands. He noticed that she
+looked thin about the face and that her eyes seemed ill with too much
+weeping. He wondered when it was she wept. When she was alone, of
+course. For a moment the thought of her flung across the bed and weeping
+stirred him sensually. Then ... what made her cry so much? Good God,
+what did she want of him? He was giving up.... Again he frowned. "I've
+become a cad," he thought. "I can't think honestly any more. Thoughts
+act themselves in my head. I've gotten to thinking lies and thinking
+them naturally without trying to lie...."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going for a walk," he announced, and went off toward the shore
+where the fishing-boats were drifting in becalmed.</p>
+
+<p>Mama Turpin came out on the porch. Rachel smiled at the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"It's peaceful here, Mama Turpin."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, honey. My work's all done for the day now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nothing ever changes here," Rachel murmured. "The sea is just the same
+as when I came. I think I'll be leaving soon, Mama Turpin. Mr. Dorn will
+stay on for a little while. I have some work I must get back to."</p>
+
+<p>She paused and shaded her eyes from the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p>"It's been wonderful down here. I'll never forget it. Perhaps some day
+I'll come back to visit again."</p>
+
+<p>She arose and sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, honey?" the old woman asked, watching her.</p>
+
+<p>Rachel waited till her lips could smile again. Then she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I hate to leave it here. But I have so much work to do."</p>
+
+<p>She entered the house swiftly. In her room she lay on the bed, her face
+in the pillow as if she were waiting for tears. But none came. She lay
+in silence until it grew dark and she heard Erik outside asking Mama
+Turpin where she was.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII3" id="CHAPTER_VIII3"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was dawn when they awoke. Rachel opened her eyes first. A lassitude
+filled her. She remained quiet for moments and then sat up and stared at
+Erik. His face was flushed and he was sleeping lightly, his eyes almost
+open.</p>
+
+<p>"Erik," she whispered. When he looked at her she leaned over and kissed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Last night was wonderful," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled sleepily.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to lie in your arms for just a minute. And then we'll get up,
+Erik."</p>
+
+<p>Her head sank against his shoulder and she remained with her eyes
+closed. He murmured her name. Over Rachel's face a curious light spread
+itself. She sat up and turned her eyes to him.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear one, my lover!"</p>
+
+<p>Dorn regarded her with a sudden confusion. Her eyes and voice were
+confusing. Women were strange. Her eyes were large, burning, devouring
+... "I will be a shrine to you always. Let me look at you. I have never
+looked at you...." Why was he remembering that? He felt himself grow
+frightened. Her eyes were saying something that must not be said. His
+arms reached out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> Crush her to him. Hold her tightly. Sing his love to
+her....</p>
+
+<p>She had slipped from the bed and was standing on the floor, shaking her
+head at him. Her face seemed blank. Dorn sat up and blinked ludicrously.
+She had jumped out of his arms. He laughed. Coquetting. But her eyes had
+been strange....</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Erik, do you mind if I spend the morning alone? I have some
+letters to write and things. Then I'll meet you on the beach and we'll
+go swimming and lie on the sand together. Will you?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded cheerfully and swung himself out of bed. His calm had
+returned. The memories of the curiously abandoned, shameless Rachel of
+the night lingered for a moment questioningly and then left him.</p>
+
+<p>They ate breakfast together and Dorn strode off alone. He felt surprised
+at himself. He had forgotten all about his trip to Europe.</p>
+
+<p>"The sun and the rest here are doing me good," he thought. "I'm getting
+normal. But a little stupidity won't hurt."</p>
+
+<p>The morning slipped away and he returned to the beach from a walk
+through the village. It was early afternoon and the sands were deserted.
+The sea lay like a great Easter egg under the hot sun, a vast and
+inanimate daub of glittering blue, green, and gold. He seated himself on
+the burning sand and stared at it. Years could pass this way and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> he
+could sit dreaming lifeless words, the sea like a painted beetle's back,
+the sea like a shell of water resting on a stenciled horizon. A wind was
+dying among the clouds. It had blown them into large shapeless virgins.
+Puffy white solitudes over his head. He looked down and saw Rachel
+coming toward him. She was carrying a woolen blanket over her arms.</p>
+
+<p>She approached and appeared excited. Her face flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go in?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. Her voice disturbed him. He would have preferred her calm,
+gentle. Particularly after last night. She unloosened her clothes
+quickly and hurried nude toward the water. Dorn, after an uneasy survey
+of the empty beach, watched her. In the glare of the sun and sand her
+body seemed insistently unfamiliar. He would have preferred her
+familiar. He joined her and they pushed into the water together. Her
+excited manner depressed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's swim," he called.</p>
+
+<p>A blue, singing moment under the water and they were up, swimming slowly
+into the unbroken sheet of the sea. Rachel came nearer to him, the water
+sparkling from her moving arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like it, Erik?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed in answer. Her head was turned toward him and he could see
+her dark eyes smiling against the water.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't it be nice," she said softly, "to swim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> out together like
+lovers in a poem? Out and out! And never come back!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice, slipping across the water, became unfamiliar. They continued
+moving.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered at length, smiling back at her. "It would be easy.
+And I'm willing."</p>
+
+<p>They swam in silence. He began to wonder. Were they going out and out
+and never coming back? Perhaps they were doing that. One might become
+involved in a suicide like that. He closed his eyes and his head moved
+through the coldness of the water. What matter? What was there to come
+back to? All hours were the same. He might wait until a thousand more
+had dragged themselves to an ending. Or swim out and out. When he grew
+tired he would kiss her and say, "It is easier to make our own endings
+than to wait for them." The sun would be shining and her eyes would sing
+to him for an instant over the water.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better turn now, Erik."</p>
+
+<p>"No," he smiled. "We're lovers in a poem."</p>
+
+<p>She came nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, we must go back, Erik."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>He answered firmly. It pleased him to say "no." He felt a superiority.
+He could say "no" and then she would plead with him and perhaps finally
+persuade him.</p>
+
+<p>"Not now, Erik. Some other time, maybe...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But it would be a proper ending," he argued. "What else is there? You
+are unhappy. And perhaps I am too. Come, it will be easy."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment a fright came into him. She was not pleading. She was
+silent and looking at him as they drifted. What if she should remain
+silent? "I don't want to die," he thought, "but does it matter?" He
+wondered at himself. He had spoken of dying. Sincerely? No. But if she
+remained silent they would keep swimming until there was nothing left to
+do but die. Then he was sincere? No. He would drown as a sort of casual
+argument. Good God! Her silence was asking his life. What matter? He
+cared neither to live nor to die. He looked at her with an amused smile
+in his eyes. His heart had begun to beat violently.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden relief. She had turned and was swimming toward the shore. He
+hesitated. Absurd to turn back too hurriedly. He waited till she looked
+behind her to see if he were coming. Her looking back was a vindication.
+She had believed then that he might go on, out and out.... He could
+follow her to the shore now....</p>
+
+<p>The swim had exhausted them. Rachel threw herself on the sand, Dorn
+covering her with the blanket. They lay together, the whiteness and the
+blaze of the sky tearing at their eyes. Her hair had spread itself like
+a black fan under her head.</p>
+
+<p>The oven heat of the day dried the burn of the sun into a chalked and
+hammering glare&mdash;an unremitting roar of light that seemed to beat the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+world into a metallic sleep. The sea had stiffened itself into a dead
+flame. Molten, staring sweeps of color burst upon their eyes with a
+massive intimacy. The etched horizon, the stagnant gleaming arch of the
+water, and the acetylene burn of the sand gave the scene the appearance
+of a monstrous lithograph.</p>
+
+<p>The figures of the lovers lay without life. Rachel had turned her head
+from the glare. Through veiling fingers Dorn remained staring at the
+veneer of isolation about them. Waves of heat crept like ghost fires
+across the nakedness of the scene. He thought of the sun as a pilgrim
+walking over the barren floor of an empty cathedral. Over him the
+motionless smoke-bellied clouds hung gleaming in the dead fanfare of the
+sky. He thought of them as swollen white blooms stamped upon a board. As
+the moments slipped, he became conscious that Rachel was talking. Her
+voice made a tiny noise in the grave torpitude of the day.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like listening to singing, Erik. What are you thinking of?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. I like the way the heat tightens my skin and pinches."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember," she asked softly, "once you said beauty is an
+external emotion?"</p>
+
+<p>He answered drowsily, "Did I? I'm tired, dearest. Let's nap awhile."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I want to hear you talk just a little."</p>
+
+<p>He pressed his face into his arm, drawing his clothes carelessly over
+him for protection.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I can't think of anything to say, Rachel, except that I'm content. The
+sun brings a luxurious pain into one's blood...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a luxurious pain," she repeated quietly. "Please let's talk."</p>
+
+<p>"Too damn hot."</p>
+
+<p>"I always expect you to say things. As if you knew things I didn't,
+Erik. I've always thought of you as knowing everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Ordinarily I do," he mumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful Erik...."</p>
+
+<p>Flattery was annoying. There were times for being wonderful and times
+for grunting at the sand.</p>
+
+<p>"My vocabulary," he mumbled again, "has curled up its toes and gone to
+sleep."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes grew heavy.</p>
+
+<p>Drowsily, "I'm an old man and need my sleep."</p>
+
+<p>He felt Rachel's hand reaching gently for his head.</p>
+
+<p>A cool gloom squatted on the sand about him when he opened his eyes. The
+scene was a stranger. The sea and sand, dark strangers. His body felt
+stiffened and his skin hurt. He sat up and stared about with parched
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had gone down. A hollow light lingered in the sky, an echo of
+light. He turned toward the blanket beside him. Rachel was gone. She had
+left the blanket in a little heap, unfolded. Why hadn't she wakened him?
+She must be on the beach somewhere, waiting.</p>
+
+<p>In the distance he saw the shapeless figures of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> the fishermen moving
+from their grounded boats. Staring about at the deserted scene he felt
+unaccountably sad. It would have been pleasant to have wakened and found
+Rachel sitting beside him.</p>
+
+<p>A sheet of paper was pinned on the blanket. He noticed it as he slipped
+painfully into his shirt. He continued to dress himself, his eyes
+regarding the bit of paper. His heart had grown heavy at the sight of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>When he was dressed he folded the blanket carefully and removed the
+note. A pallor in his thought. Something had happened. He had fallen
+asleep under a glaring sun. Rachel stretched beside him. Now the glare
+of the sun was gone and the sea and the sand were vaguely unreal, dark,
+and unfriendly. The little blanket was empty.</p>
+
+<p>He sat wondering why he didn't read the note. But he was reading it. He
+knew what it said. It said Rachel had gone and would never come back. A
+very tragic business.... "You do not love me any more as you did. You
+have changed. And if I stayed it would mean that in a little while
+longer you would forget all about me. Now perhaps you will remember."</p>
+
+<p>Quite true. He had taught her such paradoxes. He would remember. That
+was logical ... "to remember how you loved me makes it impossible to
+remain with you. Oh, I die when I look at you and see nothing in your
+eyes. It is too much pain. I am going away.... Dearest, I have known for
+a long time."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His eyes skipped part of the words. Unimportant words. Why read any
+further? The thing was over, ended. Rachel gone. More words on the other
+side of the paper. His eyes skimmed ... "you have been God to me. I am
+not afraid. Oh, I am strong. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>Still more words. A postscript. Women always wrote postscripts&mdash;the
+gesture of femininity immortalized by Lot's wife. Never mind the
+postscript. Tear the paper into bits. It offended his fingers. Walk over
+to the water's edge and scatter it on the sea.</p>
+
+<p>He had lain too long in the sun. Probably burn like hell to-night. "Here
+goes Rachel into the sea." Soft music and a falling curtain.</p>
+
+<p>He read from one of the scraps.... "Erik, you will be grateful
+later...." Let the sea take that. And the "good-bye, my dear one...." A
+patch of white on the darkened water, too tiny to follow. Would she be
+waiting when he came back to the room? No, the room would be empty. A
+comb and brush and tray of hairpins would be missing from the
+dressing-table.</p>
+
+<p>A smile played over Dorn's face. His movements had grown abstract as if
+he were intensely preoccupied with his thoughts. Yet there were no
+thoughts. He walked for moments lazily along the water's edge kicking at
+the sand, his eyes following the last of the paper bits still afloat.
+They vanished and he sighed with relief.... "It's all a make-believe.
+The sea, Rachel, the war.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> Things don't mean anything. Last night there
+was someone to kiss. To-night, no one. But where's the difference.
+Nothing ... nothing.... Will I cave in or keep on smiling? Probably cave
+in. One must be polite to one's emotions. The sea says she's gone," his
+thought rambled, "dark empty waters say she's gone. Rachel's gone. Well,
+what of it? Like losing a hat. Does anything matter much? An ending.
+Leave the theater. Draw a new breath. Remember vaguely what the actors
+said or what they should have said. All the same. What was in the
+postscript? Not fair to throw it away without reading it. Should have
+read carefully. Took her hours to pick the right words. Night ... night.
+It'll be night soon."</p>
+
+<p>His words left him and he walked faster. He began to run. She would be
+waiting in their room. On the bed ... crying ... "I couldn't leave you,
+Erik. Oh, I couldn't." And later they would laugh about it.</p>
+
+<p>Mama Turpin was on the porch. He slowed his run. To rush breathless past
+the old woman would make a bad impression, if nothing had happened.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Mr. Dorn."</p>
+
+<p>Of course she was upstairs. Or would Mama Turpin say good-evening?</p>
+
+<p>"Hello," he called back casually, and walked on, his legs jumping ahead
+of him.</p>
+
+<p>The room was empty. More than empty, for the comb and brush and tray of
+hairpins were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> missing. His eyes had swept the dressing-table as he came
+in. They were gone.</p>
+
+<p>There would be another note. Why didn't she leave it some place where he
+could find it at a glance, instead of making him hunt around? Hunt
+around. Under the bed. On the chairs. No note. Good God, she was insane!
+Going away&mdash;why should she go away?... "we'll have a long talk about it
+and straighten it out, of course, but ..." The insanity of the thing
+remained. Gone!</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and felt his head aching. The sun ... "you won't find me if
+you look for me. Please don't try. One good-bye is easier and better
+than two. Erik, Erik, something has died for always...."</p>
+
+<p>Then he had read it. That had been in the postscript. He had given it a
+glance, not intending to follow the words. Unimportant words.</p>
+
+<p>"Died for always," he mumbled suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>... His head pressed against the pillow in the dark room, he began to
+weep. The odor of her hair was still in the pillow. Yes, the dream had
+died. And she had run from its corpse, leaving behind the faint odor of
+her hair on a pillow. How, died? Better to have her gone.... Tears
+burned in his eyes. He repeated aloud, "better...."</p>
+
+<p>An agony was twisting itself about his heart. His face moved as if he
+were in pain. With his fists he began to beat the bed. It had gone away.
+It had come and smiled at him for a moment, lifted him for a moment, and
+then gone away as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> it had never been. But it would come back. He
+would weep and pound on the bed with his fists and bring it back. The
+face of stars, eyes burning, devouring, eyes kindling his soul into
+ecstasies.</p>
+
+<p>"Rachel!" he cried aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Silence. His tears had ended. He lay motionless on the bed, his body
+suddenly weak, his thought tired. Someone had shouted a name in his
+ears. A dead man had shouted the name of Rachel. It was the cry of an
+Erik Dorn who was dead. He'd heard it in the dark room. An old, already
+forgotten Erik Dorn who had laughed in a halloo of storms, heels up,
+head down. Madness and a dream. Wings and a face of stars. They had
+vanished with an old and almost forgotten Erik Dorn who had called their
+name out of a grave. So things whirled away.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+<p>He arose and stood looking out of the window. Night had come ... "dark
+rendezvous of sorrows. Silent Madonna of the spaces...." He whispered to
+see if there were still phrases in him. His lips smiled against the
+window. Phrases ... words ... and the rest was a make-believe once more.
+A pattern precise and meaningless. His little flight over. Now it was
+time to walk again.</p>
+
+<p>Anna had stood one night staring at him. He remembered. Oh, yes, he'd
+run away quickly for fear he might hear her shriek. And then, Rachel.
+But these things were passed. It was time to walk. Did he still love
+her? Yes. It would have been easier to walk with her&mdash;calmly, placidly,
+their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> hands sometimes touching. Forgetting other days and other kisses
+together. But he would not lie to himself. An end to that now. Love made
+a liar of a man. At the beginning and at the end&mdash;lies. The ache now was
+one of memory, not of loss. The pain was one of death. Dead things hurt
+inside him. Afterward his heart would carry them about unknowingly. The
+dead things would end their hurt. But now, leaden heavy, they kept
+slipping deeper into him as if seeking graves that did not yet exist.</p>
+
+<p>Standing before the window, Dorn's smile grew cold.</p>
+
+<p>"A make-believe," he whispered, "but not quite the same as it was
+before. A loneliness and an emptiness. Ruins in which once there was
+feasting. And now, nothing ... nothing...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_IV" id="PART_IV"></a>PART IV</h2>
+
+<h2>ADVENTURE</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I4">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II4">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III4">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV4">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V4">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI4">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII4">CHAPTER VII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII4">CHAPTER VIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX4">CHAPTER IX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_X4">CHAPTER X</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I4">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II4">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III4">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV4">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V4">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI4">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I4" id="CHAPTER_I4"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>Long days. Short days. Outside the window was an ant-hill street. And an
+ant-hill of days. In the stores they were already selling calendars for
+the next year. Outside the window was a flat roof. By looking at the
+flat roof you remembered that Mary James was married. Unexpectedly. You
+came out of the ant-hill street, climbed the stairs, and sat down and
+looked at the flat roof. Long days, short days turned themselves over on
+the flat roof, and turned themselves over in your heart.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally an event. Events were things that differed from putting on
+your shoes or buying butter in the grocery store. There was an event
+now. It challenged the importance of the flat roof. Hazlitt was sitting
+in the room and talking. Rachel listened.</p>
+
+<p>An eloquent event. But words jumbled into sound. Loud sounds. Soft
+sounds. They made her sleepy, as rain pattering on a window made her
+sleepy, or snow sinking out of the sky. There were sleepy words in her
+mind that had nothing to do with the event. Then the event came and
+mingled itself, mixed itself into the words ... "no sorrow. No remorse.
+The dead are dead.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> Oh, most extremely dead! So I'll sit by my sad
+little window and listen to this unbearable creature make love. The
+idiot'll go 'way in an hour and I'll be able to draw. Funny, my thoughts
+keep moving on, despite everything. Like John Brown's soul, or
+something. Words get to be separate, like the snickers of dead people.
+You think as one adds figures. Thoughts add, and draw pictures the same
+way. A line here. A line there. And you have a face. Curve a line up and
+the face laughs. Curve it down and the face weeps. You lie dead. Always
+dead. You lie dead in the street. The day tears your heart out. The
+night tears your eyes out. And when somebody passes, even a banana
+peddler, your eyes jump back, your heart jumps back, and you look up and
+snicker and say, 'It's all right. I'm just lying here for fun. I'm dead
+for fun.... He still loves me. I must answer him.'"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"No, George, I hear you. But I don't love you. I can't say it more
+plainly, can I?"</p>
+
+<p>Her thoughts resumed. "Dear me. He talks almost as well as Erik. Lord,
+he thinks I'm a virgin. His pure and unfaltering star. Well, well! Why
+am I amused? Is life amusing, after all? Am I really happy? Alas! my
+heart is broken. I must not forget my heart is broken. You forget
+sometimes and begin snickering and somebody rings the bell and hands you
+a telegram reading, 'Your heart is broken.' Rachel of the broken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> heart!
+It was all very beautiful. This talk of his somehow brings it back ...
+Oh, God. That was a line curved down. What eloquence! There, now, I must
+speak. I'll have to tell him again."</p>
+
+<p>Aloud she went on, "You're mistaken in me, George."</p>
+
+<p>A flurry of silent words halted her.... "Ye gods, what a speech; she is
+not all his fancy painted him. Indeed! Not mistaken. His heart tells
+him. Poor boy! Poor little clowns who pay attention to what their hearts
+say! I mustn't be rude."</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted him, "If you'll listen to me, George ..."</p>
+
+<p>Then, "What'll I say? If only he inspired something by his eloquence&mdash;a
+phrase, at least. But my heart snickers at him. Ah! the dead are
+wonderfully dead. I'll tell him I'm not a virgin. That'll be surprising
+news. But how? Like a medical report? The woman was found not to be a
+virgin. The thing seems to hinge on that. Why in God's name does he keep
+virgining?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, George," she answered aloud, "I'm sorry. I don't believe in
+love...." Listen to her! "You see, I've been in love myself. Indeed I
+have. That's why you find me changed."</p>
+
+<p>He protested and her words followed silently. "My laughing makes him
+angry. But I must laugh. Love is something to laugh over, isn't it? Oh,
+God, why doesn't he go 'way?" The flat roof vanished. There was a rising
+event in the room and the flat roof bowed good-bye and walked away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I was in love for quite a while with a man," she answered him.
+"And I'm in love with him yet&mdash;in a way. But we've parted. He had to go
+to Europe." Nevertheless he still thought she was a virgin. He'd started
+another virgining speech. There would have to be a medical report. "We
+lived together for over a year. We weren't married, of course, because
+he had a wife. You see, you're terribly mistaken." He must be impressed
+by her calm. "Because what I really am is a vampire. I lured a man from
+his wife, lived with him, and cast him aside."</p>
+
+<p>The event jumped to its feet. No room to talk for a moment, so her
+thought resumed, "I'm lying. He thinks I'm lying. I should have
+confessed in tears. With a few 'Oh, Gods.' Amusing! Amusing! That was
+Erik's favorite word. I'm beginning to understand it now. But there's
+nothing to be amused about ... in itself an amusing circumstance ... but
+you look at the banana peddler and snicker. Will he hit me? Oh, very
+red-faced. Speechless. I'd better talk. If he hit me.... He'll start in
+a minute...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you know him, George," she cried suddenly. "And if you doubt me
+you can ask a lot of people. Ask Tesla or Mary James or Brander or New
+York." She'd make him believe. God, what an idiot! She'd claw his eyes
+out with words. Throw roofs on him. But it was a good thing Erik was in
+Europe, or he'd be killed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've told you in order to get rid of you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> I'd rather be rid of
+you than keep my good name in your estimation. So now, run along and do
+your yelling outside. I'm sick of you."</p>
+
+<p>She paused on a high gesture.... "He's going to hit me. Strike a woman.
+War has brutalized him. Dear me!" But he asked a question ominously and
+she answered,</p>
+
+<p>"Erik Dorn. Yes. Erik Dorn."</p>
+
+<p>This made it worse. It was bad enough without a name. But a name made it
+realler. And very ominous. She moved toward a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll sit still and then he won't hit me. If I'm calm, serene like a nun
+facing the wrath of God. This is melodrama. He can squeeze my shoulders
+all he wants. What good will it do him? If I giggled now he'd kill me.
+Sorry? Oh, so I must be sorry. Because I've offended him. Dear God, what
+a mess!"</p>
+
+<p>She twisted out of his grasp and cried.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not sorry. You fool! I'm glad I was his woman. I'll always be
+glad, as long as I live. Leave me alone. You're a fool. I've always
+thought of you as a fool. You make me want to laugh now. You're a clown.
+I'll give myself to men. But not to you. I gave myself to Erik Dorn
+because I love him. If he wants me again I'll come to him not as a
+lover, because he doesn't love me any more&mdash;but as a prostitute. Now do
+you know me? Well, I want you to. So you'll go way and never bother me
+again...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That was a good speech. She stood dramatically silent as hands seized
+her shoulder again. "He hurts me. Why this? Oh, my shoulder! Does he
+want to? Oh, God, this is me! He'll let me go in a minute if I don't
+move. Very still. Silent ... I don't want him to cry. Can't he see it's
+amusing? If he'd only look at me and wink, I'd kiss him. No, he's a
+fool. I'll not say anything more. Let him cry! His life is ruined. Dear
+me, I have ruined his life. His love. I was his dream. Through the war
+... rose of no-man's land. Amusing, amusing! He looks different.
+Contempt. He has contempt for me. And horror. Oh, get out, get out, you
+fool! You sniveling nincompoop, get out! I want to draw pictures, and
+forget. Console him ... for what? I don't know, I don't know. He's
+going. Thank God! Oh, I don't know anything. Poor man, he should know
+better than to have dreams. Dreams are for devils, not for men or women.
+Dreams ... dreams ... I don't know ... I'll draw a picture. But I don't
+want to. He'll never come back. I'm sad again. The flat roof says
+something. Is it Erik? Dear Erik! Poor Erik! I love you. But I'll begin
+crying. Pretty tears, amusing tears. Erik mine, dead for always. But
+it's not as bad as it was. Another month, year, ten years. Oh, it chokes
+me. I can't help it. Your eyes are the beckoning hands of dream. Whose
+eyes? Mine ... mine.... Mine ... I know. I know. I must keep on dying,
+keep on dying. But I'm not afraid. Look,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> I can laugh! Amusing that I
+can laugh ... Oh, God ... God...."</p>
+
+<p>Beside her window looking out on the ant-hill street Rachel covered her
+face with her hands. When she removed them she caught a glimpse of the
+figure of Hazlitt walking as if it were a blind man in zig-zags down the
+pavement.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II4" id="CHAPTER_II4"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>The thing that had been buried in Emil Tesla and that used to rumble
+under his fawning words, had come to life one day with two men twisting
+his wrists and hammering at his uncovered face. He had laughed.</p>
+
+<p>The two men came into his office to seize him. When he started to
+protest they walked up to him slowly as if to shake hands. Instead, they
+began beating him. For a moment he wondered why the two men hated him so
+violently. He stood looking into their faces and thinking, "They're like
+me."</p>
+
+<p>The visitors, however, saw no resemblance. They twisted his arm till it
+broke. Then they kept on battering at him with their fists till he fell
+to the floor. While he lay on the floor they kicked him, and his muscles
+grew paralyzed.</p>
+
+<p>He never remembered the walk downstairs. But in the open he saw a crowd
+of faces drifting excitedly beneath him. This was a scene he remembered
+later.</p>
+
+<p>It was while looking at the faces that he had grown strong. He laughed
+because it occurred to him at the moment he was unconquerable. Later, in
+prison, he often thought, "I have only my life to lose. I'm not afraid
+of that. When they hit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> me they were hitting at an idea. But they could
+only hit me. They couldn't touch the idea. I'll remember when I come
+out&mdash;they can only hit me. If they end by shooting me they'll not touch
+the idea even then. That's something beyond their fists and guns. I'll
+remember I'm only a shadow."</p>
+
+<p>A year passed and Tesla came out. He returned to the office of <i>The
+Cry</i>. His friends noticed a change. He had grown quiet. He no longer
+bubbled with words. His eyes looked straight at people who spoke to him.
+His manner whispered, "I'm nothing&mdash;a shadow thrown by an idea. I don't
+argue, and I'm not afraid. I'm part of masses of people all over the
+world and cannot be destroyed."</p>
+
+<p>The new Tesla became a leader. Among the radicals whose intellects were
+groping noisily with the idea of a new justice he often inspired a fear.
+His smile disquieted them and their arguments. His smile said, "Here,
+what's the use of arguing? There is no argument. It isn't words we must
+give the revolution, but lives. I'm ready. Here's mine."</p>
+
+<p>When he looked at men and women who vociferated in the councils of
+radical pamphleteers, workers, organizers, theorists, new party
+politicians, Tesla thought, "That one's afraid. He's only a logician.
+His mind has led him into revolution. If he changed his mind he would
+become a conservative.... There's one that isn't afraid. He's like me.
+His mind helps him. But no matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> what his mind told him he would
+always be in the revolution. Something in him drives him...."</p>
+
+<p>For the rabble of artists and near-artists drifting by the scores into
+radical centers, Tesla held a respectful dislike.</p>
+
+<p>"He's in revolt because he must find something different than other
+people," he thought of most of them. "The revolution to him means only
+himself. It's something he can use to make himself felt more by people.
+And also he's a revolutionist because of the contrariness in him that
+artists usually have. Especially artists who, when they can't create new
+things, make themselves think they're creating new things by destroying
+old things."</p>
+
+<p>Of himself Tesla thought, "I'll fight and not mind if I'm killed.
+Because people will still be left alive, and so the idea of which I'm a
+part will continue to live."</p>
+
+<p>In the days before his going to prison Tesla had felt the need of
+writing and talking his revolution. This was because of an impatience
+and intolerance toward the enemy. Now that was gone. The enemy had
+become a blatant, trivial thing. The things it said and did were
+unimportant. He read with amusement the rabid denunciations of the
+radicals in the press of the day. The grotesque hate hymns against the
+new Russia, the garbled shriekings and pompous anathemas that fell
+hourly upon the heads of all suspects, inspired no argument in him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tesla's days were busy with organization. He had almost ceased his
+activities as pamphleteer, although still editor of <i>The Cry</i>. With a
+group of men, silent as himself, he worked at the radicalization of the
+factories and labor unions. Each day men left Tesla to seek employment
+in shops throughout the country, in mines and mills. Their duties were
+simple. Tesla measured them carefully before sending them on.... This
+one could be relied upon to work intelligently, to talk to workingmen at
+their benches and during noon hours without antagonizing, or, worse,
+frightening them. Another was dubious. His eyes were too bright. He
+would be discovered and arrested by the company. But he might do some
+good. The arrest of a radical always did some good to the cause. Where
+would Christianity have been without the incompetent agitators who
+blundered into the clutches of the Roman law and the amphitheater?</p>
+
+<p>Aloud he would say, "Work carefully. Remember that the revolution is for
+all; that the workers, no matter what they say to you, are comrades.
+Remember that strikes are better than fights. The time hasn't come yet
+for fighting. What we must do is put into the hearts of the workers the
+knowledge that there is nothing in common between them and their bosses.
+The workers are the producers. They work and make no money. The bosses
+are the exploiters. They don't work and make all the money. If you get
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> workers to thinking this they'll want more money themselves and
+declare strikes. By strikes we can paralyze industry and give the
+workers consciousness of their power. This is only a step; but the first
+and most important step. Make strikes. Make dissatisfaction. But don't
+argue about fighting and revolution."</p>
+
+<p>Over and over Tesla repeated his instructions through the days. He spoke
+simply. Men listened to him and nodded without questioning. They saw
+that his eyes were unafraid and that if he was sending them upon
+dangerous missions, he would some day reserve a greater mission for
+himself. Tesla had become a leader since he had laughed on the step
+overlooking the pack of faces.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III4" id="CHAPTER_III4"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>At his desk in <i>The Cry</i> office Tesla was preparing the April issue of
+the magazine for the printer. It was night. A garrulous political poet
+named Myers was revising proofs at a smaller desk. Brander and a tall,
+thin woman stood talking quietly to each other in a gloomy corner of the
+office. Rachel, who had returned to the place after a hurried supper
+with Tesla, waited listlessly. He had promised to finish up in a
+half-hour, but there was more work than he had figured.</p>
+
+<p>"We're reprinting a part of the article on the White Terror in Germany
+that Erik Dorn has in the <i>New Opinion</i>," Tesla said. Rachel nodded her
+head. Later Tesla asked her, "This Dorn, what is he? His writing is
+amusing, sometimes violent, but always empty. He doesn't like life much,
+eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said Rachel.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Tesla smiled. "He hates us all&mdash;reds and whites, radicals and
+bourgeoisie. Yet he can write in a big way. But he isn't a big man. He
+has no faith. I remember him once in Chicago. He hasn't changed."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel's eyes remained steadily upon the socialist as he cleared his
+desk. He stood up finally and came to where she was sitting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's necessary to have something besides self," he said softly. "I was
+born in a room that smelled bad. Perhaps that's why the world smells bad
+to me now. I still live there. It's good to live where there are smells.
+Our radicals sit too much in hotel lobbies that other people keep clean
+for them."</p>
+
+<p>Brander thrust his large figure between them, the tall, thin woman
+moving vaguely about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I think you're a fake, Emil," he said. "You're too good to be
+true."</p>
+
+<p>He grinned at Rachel.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," he went on, looking at her, "I brought something to show
+you." His hands dug a paper out of his coat pocket. "You see, I've
+preserved our correspondence."</p>
+
+<p>He held out a letter. Rachel's eyes darkened.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's no hurry," Brander laughed. "So long as you keep the
+application on file, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Tesla, listening blankly, interrupted:</p>
+
+<p>"It's late. We should go home. I'll go home with you, Rachel, and talk."</p>
+
+<p>The thin woman, watching Brander anxiously, approached and seized his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," the artist whispered. "We'll go now."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel felt a relief as Brander passed out of the door with the woman.</p>
+
+<p>"He disturbs you," Tesla commented. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> nodded her head. Words seemed
+to have abandoned her. There was almost a necessity for silence. They
+walked out, leaving Myers still at his desk.</p>
+
+<p>In the deserted streets Rachel walked beside Tesla. She felt tired.
+"He's never tired," she thought, her eyes glancing at the stocky figure.
+He wasn't talking as he said he would.</p>
+
+<p>The night felt sad and cold. A dead March night. If not for Emil, what?
+"Perhaps I'll kill myself. There's nothing now. I'm always alone. No
+to-morrows."</p>
+
+<p>In the evenings she came to the office to meet Emil for supper because
+there was nothing else to do. Emil seemed like an old man, always
+preoccupied, his eyes always burning with preoccupations. After supper
+he usually walked home with her, talking to her of poor people. There
+seemed no hatred in him, no argument. Poor people in broken houses.
+Christ came and gave them a God. Now the revolution would come with
+flaming embittered eyes but wearing a gentle smile for the poor people
+in broken houses, and give them rest and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>But to-night he was silent. When they had walked several blocks he began
+to talk without looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me," he asked. "I live alone in a little house. We can be
+happy there. You have nobody."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel repeated "Nobody."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She looked at him but his eyes avoided her.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother died long ago," he went on. "She was an old woman. She used
+to live in this house where I live. We were always poor. I had brothers
+and sisters. They've all gone somewhere. Things happened to them. I have
+only my work now. Nobody else. But I'm alone too much. Since we have
+seen each other I have been thinking of you. Brander has told me
+something but that doesn't matter. I would like to marry you."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and seemed to grow bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me," he mumbled. Rachel took his hand and held it as they
+walked. Tears in her whispered "Nobody ... nobody." The homely face of
+Tesla was looking at her and saying something with its silence: "I am
+not for you as Erik was. But that is gone. Dead for always...."</p>
+
+<p>He was kind. It would be easy to live with him. But not married. A chill
+drifted through her. It didn't matter what she did. Life had ended one
+afternoon months ago. She remembered the sun shining on the sand, the
+burning sea, and Erik asleep. The memory said "I am the last picture of
+life."</p>
+
+<p>It would be easy with Tesla. He loved elsewhere ... a wild gentle
+thing&mdash;people. Poor people in broken houses. He would give her only
+kindness and companionship. And if he would let her cry to-night and
+make believe she was a child crying....</p>
+
+<p>They had taken a different direction. This was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> the neighborhood where
+Tesla lived. Rachel looked about her in fear. She remembered the
+district. Now she was coming to live here in these streets where people
+begin to give forth an odor.</p>
+
+<p>As she walked beside Tesla his silence became dark like the scene
+itself. She had always thought of him as somewhat strange. Now she
+understood why he had seemed strange to her. Because he carried an
+underworld in his heart. In his nose there was always the odor of the
+streets from which he had sprung, and in his mind there was always the
+picture of them. Other things did not fool him.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it far?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said. "Do you want to go?"</p>
+
+<p>She pressed his hand. It would be better. But her heart hurt. That was
+foolish. Emil was somebody different. Not like a man, but an old man&mdash;or
+an old background. There would be things to think about&mdash;Revolution.
+Before, revolution was people arguing and being dragged to jail.
+Sometimes people fighting. But it was something else&mdash;a thing hidden and
+spreading&mdash;and here in the dark street about them where Emil lived.</p>
+
+<p>Emil seemed to vanish into a background. She walked and thought of the
+streets in which Emil lived. Here in the daytime the rows of sagging
+little houses were like teeth in an old man's mouth. From them arose
+exhalations of stagnant wood, decaying stairways; of bodies from which
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> sweats of lust and work were never washed. Soft bubbling alleys
+under a stiff sun. The stench like a grime leadened the air. Something
+to think about in places like this. Revolution crawling up and down soft
+alleys ... something in the mud waiting to be hatched.</p>
+
+<p>In this street lived men and women whose hungers were not complicated by
+trifles. In this way they were, as they moved thick-faced and unsmiling,
+different from the people who lived in other streets and who had
+civilized their odors and made ethics of their hungers. The people who
+lived here walked as if they were being pushed in and out of the sagging
+houses. Shrieking children appeared during the daytime and sprawled
+about. They rolled over one another, their faces contorted with a
+miniature senility. They urinated in gutters, threw stones at one
+another in the soft alleys, ran after each other, cursing and gesturing
+with idiot violence. They brought an awkward fever into the street.
+Oblivious of them and the d&eacute;bris about them, barrel-shaped women
+strutted behind their protuberant bellies, great flapping shoes over the
+pavements. They moved as if unaccustomed to walking in streets.</p>
+
+<p>When it grew dark the men coming home from the factories began to crowd
+the street. They walked in silence, a broken string of shuffling figures
+like letters against the red of the sky. Their knees bent, their jaws
+shoved forward, their heads wagged from side to side. They vanished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+into the sagging houses, and the night came ... an unwavering gloom
+picked with little yellow glows from windows. The houses lay like
+bundles of carefully piled rags in the darkness. The shrieking of the
+children died, and with it the pale fever of the day passed out of the
+air. There were left only the odors.</p>
+
+<p>There were odors now, coming to them as they walked. Invisible banners
+of decay floating upon the night. Stench of fat kitchens, of soft
+bubbling alleys, of gleaming refuse. Indefinable evaporations from the
+dark bundles of houses wherein people had packed themselves away. They
+came like a rust into her nose.</p>
+
+<p>She was moving into a new world. Drunken men appeared and lurched into
+the darkness with cursings and mutterings. Sometimes they sang. The
+smoke of the factory chimneys was now invisible, but the chimneys, like
+rows of minarets, made darker streaks in the gloom. And in the distance
+blast furnaces gutted the night with pink and orange flares. Figures of
+girls not yet shaped like barrels came into the street and stood for
+long moments in the shadows. Rachel watched them as she passed. They
+moved away into the depths of the soft alleys and vanished. It was late
+night. The exhalations of alleys and houses increased as if some great
+disintegration was stewing in the night. A new world....</p>
+
+<p>Rachel's fingers reached for Tesla's hand. She felt surprised. There was
+no thought of Erik.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> This about her was a world untouched by the shadow
+Erik had left behind. So she could live here easily. And Emil was not a
+man like Erik. Erik, who stood alone, stark, untouched by life. Emil was
+a background. It would be easy. Her fingers, tightly laced in his, grew
+cold. Erik would come back. "Come back," murmured her thought. "Oh, if
+he should come back! No, I mustn't fool myself. It's over. And I can
+either live or die. I'll live a little while. Why? Because I still love
+him. Erik mine!"</p>
+
+<p>But it didn't sadden her to walk up the dark steps of Tesla's house.
+"Erik, good-bye!" Not even that mattered. Erik was gone. That was all
+something else. Not gone. Oh, God, no! Only Erik had died. She still
+lived with a dead name in her heart. But here were odors&mdash;strange
+people.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was barely furnished but clean inside. Later Rachel sat, her head in
+Tesla's arms, and wept. She was not sad. Her thought faltered, reaching
+for words, but drifting away. This is what had become of her&mdash;nothing
+else but this.</p>
+
+<p>Tesla looked quietly at her and kept murmuring, "Little girl, the world
+is big. There are other things than self. Must you cry? Cry, then. I
+know what sadness is."</p>
+
+<p>His hands moved gently through her loosened hair and he smiled
+sorrowfully.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Dear child," he whispered, "you can always cry in my arms and I will
+understand. It is the way the world sometimes cries in my heart. I
+understand.... Yes ... yes...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV4" id="CHAPTER_IV4"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>A kaleidoscope of cities. A new garrulity. Words like busy little brooms
+sweeping up after a war. A world of foreigners. Europe was running about
+with empty pockets and a cracked head. England had had a nose-bleed,
+France a temporary castration, and the president of the United States
+was walking around in Paris in an immaculate frock-coat and a high silk
+hat. The President was closeted in a peace conference mumbling
+valorously amid lifted eyebrows, amused shoulder shruggings, ironic
+sighings. A long-faced virgin trapped in a bawdy house and calling in
+valiant tones for a glass of lemonade.</p>
+
+<p>Erik Dorn drifted through a haze of weeks. This was London. This, Paris.
+This, Rotterdam. And this, after a long, cold ride standing up in a
+windowless coach, Berlin. But all curiously alike. People in all of them
+who said, "We are strangers to you."</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to see. No impressions to receive. More cities, more
+people, more words and a detachment. The detachment was Europe. In his
+own country there was no detachment. He was a part of crowds,
+newspapers, buildings. Here he was outside. Familiar things looked
+strange. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> eyes busied themselves trying to forget things before
+them, scurrying after details and worried by an unrelation in
+architecture, faces, gestures.</p>
+
+<p>It was mid-December when he sat in a hotel room in Berlin one night and
+ate blue-colored fish, boiled potatoes, and black, soggy bread. He had
+been wandering for days through snow-covered streets. Now there was
+shooting in the streets.</p>
+
+<p>"Germany is starving," said an acquaintance. "Our children are dying off
+by the thousands, thanks to the inhuman blockade."</p>
+
+<p>But despite even the shooting in the streets Dorn noticed the Germans
+had lost interest in the war. The idea of the war had collapsed. In
+England and France the idea was still vaguely alive. People kept it
+alive by discussing it. But even there it had become something
+unnatural.</p>
+
+<p>One thing there was in common. Only a few people seemed to have been
+killed. London was jammed. Even though the newspapers summed it up now
+and then with "a generation has been killed." Paris, too, was jammed.
+And Berlin now, jammed also. The war had been fought by people who were
+dead. And the people who were alive were living away its memory.</p>
+
+<p>In Berlin a week, and he thought, "A circus has pulled down its tent,
+carted off its gaudy wagons, its naphtha lights, and its boxes of
+sawdust. And a new show is staking out the lot."</p>
+
+<p>The new show was coming to Berlin. Fences and building walls were
+plastered with its litho<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>graphs ... "The Spirit of Bolshevism Marches
+... Beware the Wrecker of Mankind...." Posters of gorillas chewing on
+bloody knives, of fiends with stringy hair setting the torch to
+orphanages and other nobly drawn edifices labeled "Kultur, Civilization,
+Humanitat...." The spielers were already on the job. Machine-guns barked
+in the snow-covered streets. A man named Noske was a <i>Bluthund</i>. A man
+named Liebknecht was a <i>Schweinhund</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In his hotel room Dorn, eating blue-colored fish, spoke to an
+acquaintance&mdash;an erudite young German who wore a monocle, whose eyes
+twinkled with an odd humor, and who under the influence of a bottle of
+Sekt was vociferating passionately in behalf of a thing he called <i>Welt</i>
+Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand it yet, von Stinnes," Dorn smiled. "I will later. So
+far I've managed to do nothing more than enjoy myself. Profundity is
+diverting in New York, but a bore in Berlin. There's too much of it.
+Good God, man, there are times when I feel that even the buildings of
+the city are wrapped in thought."</p>
+
+<p>Von Stinnes gestured with an almost English awkwardness. His English
+contained a slight French accent. His words, amused, careless, carried
+decision. He spoke knowingly, notwithstanding the Sekt and the smile
+with which he seemed to be belying his remarks. Thus, the Majority
+Socialists were traitors. Scheidemann had sold the revolution for a kiss
+from Graf Rant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>zau. The masses.... "Ah, m'sieur, they are arming. There
+will be an overthrow." And then, Ludendorff had framed the
+revolution&mdash;actually manufactured it. All the old officers were back.
+Noske was allowing them to reorganize the military. The thing was a
+farce. Social Democracy had failed. The country was already in flames.
+There would be things happening. "You wait and see. Yes, the
+Spartikusten will do something ..."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn nodded appreciatively. He felt instinctively that he had stumbled
+upon a man of value and service. But he listened carelessly. As yet the
+scene was more absorbing than its details. The local politik boiling
+beneath the collapse of the empire had not yet struck his imagination.
+There were large lines to look at first, and absorb.</p>
+
+<p>Snow in unfamiliar streets, night soldier patrols firing at shadows,
+eager-eyed women in the hotel lobbies, marines carousing in the Kaiser's
+Schloss&mdash;a nation in collapse. Teutonia on her rump, helmet tilted over
+an eye, hair down, comely and unmilitary legs thrust out, showing her
+drawers and laughing. Yes, the Germans were laughing. Where was there
+gayety like the Palais de Danse, the Fox Trot Klubs, Pauligs; gayety
+like the drunken soldiers patrolling Wilhelmstrasse where a paunchy
+harness-maker sat in Bismarck's chair?</p>
+
+<p>Gayety with a rumble and a darkness underneath. But such things were
+only wilder accents to laughter. If the detachment would leave him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> if
+he could familiarize himself, he could lay hands on something; dance
+away in a macabr&eacute; mardi-gras.</p>
+
+<p>Two bottles of Sekt had been emptied. A polite Ober responded with a
+third. Von Stinnes grew eloquent.</p>
+
+<p>"Not before March, Mr. Dorn. It will come only then. This that you hear
+now, pouf! Hungry men looking for crumbs with hand-grenades. The
+revolution is only picking its teeth. But wait. It will overturn, when
+it comes. And even if it does not overturn, if it fails, it will not
+end, but pause. You hear it whispering now in the streets. Hungry men
+with hand-grenades. Ah, m'sieur, if you wish we will work together. I am
+a man of many acquaintances. I am von Stinnes, Baron von Stinnes of a
+very old, a very dissolute, a very worthless family. I am the last von
+Stinnes. The dear God Himself glows at the thought. I will work for you
+as secretary. How much do you offer for a scion of the nobility?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three hundred marks."</p>
+
+<p>"A month?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, weekly," laughed Dorn, "and you buy half the liquor."</p>
+
+<p>Von Stinnes bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"An insult, Mr. Dorn. But I overlook it. One becomes adept in the matter
+of overlooking insults. You will need me. I am known everywhere. I was
+with Liebknecht in the Schloss when he slept in the Kaiser's bed. Ho! it
+was a symbol for you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> to see him crawl between the sheets. Alas! he
+slept but poorly, with the marines standing guard and frowning at the
+bed as if it were capable of something. For me, I would have preferred
+beds with more pleasant associations. And when Bode tried to be dictator
+in his father's chamber in the Reichstag&mdash;yes," von Stinnes closed his
+eyes and laughed softly, "he seized the Reichstag with a company of
+marines. And he sat for two days and two nights signing warrants,
+confiscation orders. Until a soldier brought him a document issued by
+Eichorn the mysterious policeman who was dictating from the Stadt House.
+And poor Bode signed it. He was sleepy. He could not read with sleep. It
+was his own death warrant. It was I who saved him by taking him to the
+house of Milly. He slept four days with Milly, in itself a feat."</p>
+
+<p>Von Stinnes swallowed another glass of wine. His eyes seemed to belie
+his unsteady, careless voice. His eyes remained intent and mocking upon
+Dorn.</p>
+
+<p>"You have come a few weeks too late. There were scenes, dear God, to
+make one laugh. In the Schloss. Yes, we bombarded the Schloss&mdash;but after
+we had captured it. The Liebknecht ordered. Everything was done in
+symbols. Therefore the symbol of the bombardment of the Schloss. So we
+rushed out one night and opened fire, and when we had knocked off the
+balcony and peeled the plaster from the walls, we rushed in again and
+sang the <i>Marseillaise</i>. What wine, m'sieur! Ho, you have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> come a few
+weeks too late. But there will be other comedies. And I will be of
+service. I belong to three officers' clubs. One of them is respectable.
+Women are admitted. The other two ... women are barred. And look...." He
+slapped a wallet on the table and extracted a red card, "'member of the
+Communist Partei&mdash;Karl Stinnes,'" he read. "Listen, there are 75,000
+rifles in Alexander Platz, waiting for the day."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you learn your English, von Stinnes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oxford. Italian in Padua. French, m'sieur, in Paris. During the war."
+The baron laughed. "Ah, <i>pendant la guerre, m'sieur, en Paris</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"And now," Dorn mused, "you are a Spartikust."</p>
+
+<p>The baron was on his feet, a wine glass raised in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Es lebe die Welt Revolution</i>," he cried, "<i>es lebe das Rate
+Republik!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do in Paris, von Stinnes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pigeons, my friend. I played with pigeons and with vital statistics and
+made love to little French girls whose sweethearts were dying in the
+trenches. And in London. But I talk too much. Yes, my tongue slips, you
+say. But I am lonely and talk is easy.... I drink your health ...
+<i>hein!</i> it was a day when we met...."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn raised his glass.</p>
+
+<p>"To the confusion of the seven deadly virtues!" he laughed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I drink," the baron cried. "We will make a tour. We will amuse
+ourselves. I see that you understand Germany. Because you understand
+there is something bigger than Germany; that the world is the head of a
+pin spinning round in a glass of wine. I have been with the other
+correspondents. Pigs and donkeys. The souls of shopkeepers under the
+vests."</p>
+
+<p>The baron seated himself carefully and pretended an abrupt seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>"I have made up my mind to die behind the red barricades. Perhaps in
+March. Perhaps later. Another glass, m'sieur. Thanks. I shall die
+fighting for the overthrow of the tyranny of the bourgeoisie ... Noske
+and his <i>parvenu</i> Huns. Ho! Dorn, we will amuse ourselves in a crazy
+world, eh, what? The tyranny of the bourgeoisie!"</p>
+
+<p>The baron laughed as he rolled over the phrase.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be great deal to enjoy," Dorn smiled. The wine was making
+him silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to enjoy. To laugh," the baron interrupted. "I cannot explain now.
+But you seem to understand. Or am I drunk? <i>Ein galgen gelachter, nicht
+wahr?</i> I will take quarters at the hotel. I know the management well. I
+saved the place from being looted in the November excitement. Have you
+seen the Kaiser Salle? His Majesty dined there once. A witless popinjay.
+Liebknecht is a man. Flames in his heart. But a poor orator. He will be
+killed. They must kill him. A little Jew, Haase, has brains. You will
+meet him. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> the Dadaists&mdash;they know how to laugh. The cult of the
+absurd. Perhaps the next emperor of Germany will be a Dada. An Ober
+Dada&mdash;who knows? Once the world learns to laugh we may expect radical
+changes. And in M&uuml;nchen I know a dancer, Mizzi. Dear God, what legs! You
+must come there to see legs. Faces in the Rhineland. Ankles in Vienna.
+But legs, dear God, in M&uuml;nchen! It is the Spanish influence. Let us
+drink to Mizzi...."</p>
+
+<p>The wine was vanishing. The baron paused out of breath and sighed. His
+face that seemed to grow firmer and more ascetic as he drank, took on a
+far-away shrewdness as if new ideas had surprised it.</p>
+
+<p>"I've felt many things," Dorn spoke, "but thought nothing yet. So far
+Europe has remained strange. I am in a theater watching a pantomime. I
+have entered in the middle of the second act and the plot is a bit
+hidden. But we will have to find some serious work to do. I must meet
+politicians, leaders; listen to laments and prophecies...."</p>
+
+<p>"All in time, all in time," the baron interrupted. "Am I not your
+secretary? Well, then, trust me. You will talk to-morrow with Ebert. We
+begin thus at the bottom. Of all men in Germany who know nothing, he
+knows least. Thursday, Scheidemann. Treachery requires some shrewdness.
+The man is not quite an imbecile. If your Roosevelt were a Socialist he
+would be a Scheidemann.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> Daumig, Pasadowsky, Erzburger&mdash;rely upon me,
+m'sieur. And Ludendorff. Ah, there we have real work. If Ludendorff will
+talk now. He is supposed to be in Berlin. I will find him and arrange
+for you. And so on. You will meet all the great minds, all the big
+stomachs. I will take you to Radek who is hiding with a price on his
+head. And Dr. Talheimer on the Rote Fahne, if they do not arrest him too
+soon. Bernstorff is in the hotel. A man with too much brains. Yes, an
+intelligent bungler. He will die some day with a sad smile, forgiving
+his enemies. And if we need women, mention your choice. Mine runs to the
+married woman of title. A small title is to be preferred. It is a slight
+insurance against disease. Others prefer the gamins. There is not enough
+difference to quarrel about. Or do you want a little red in your amours?
+A <i>sans culotte</i> from Ehrfurst or Spandau? In Essen you will find
+Belgian women. They will love for nothing. For that matter, a bottle of
+wine and a bar of chocolate and you can have anyone. There is no virtue
+left, thank God. And yet, for variety, I sometimes think there should be
+a little. Ah, yes, yes! I miss the virgins of my youth. Another bottle,
+eh? Where's the button? What do you think of German plumbing? It is our
+Kultur. We are proud of our plumbing. It was the ideal for which we
+fought. To introduce our plumbing throughout Europe&mdash;make a German
+bathroom of the world."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A sound of heavier firing in the streets interrupted. The two sat
+listening, the baron's face alive with an odd humor.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Es lebe die Welt Revolution</i>," he whispered. "Do you hear it? Only a
+murmur. But it starts all over Germany again. Workingmen with guns. You
+will see them later. I among them. Stay in Europe, my friend, and see
+the ghost of Marat rising from a German bathtub."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are shooting?" Dorn asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Shadows," the baron laughed. "The government wishes to impress the good
+burgher that there is danger. So the government orders the soldiers to
+shoot at midnight. The good burgher wakes and trembles. <i>Mein Gott, das
+Bolshevismus treibt! Gott sei dank f&uuml;r den Regierung.</i> ... So the good
+burgher gives enthusiastic assent to the increase in the military
+budget. Dear God, did he not hear shooting at midnight? But they play
+with more than ghosts. Noske's politik will end in another color.
+To-night there are only shadows to shoot at. To-morrow ... remember what
+I tell you...."</p>
+
+<p>The telephone rang and Dorn answered. A voice in English:</p>
+
+<p>"The gentlemen will have to put out the lights. The Spartikusten are
+coming."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you...."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"We must put out the lights."</p>
+
+<p>The baron laughed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is nonsense. Come, your hat. We will go have a look."</p>
+
+<p>They hurried down to the lobby. An iron door had been drawn across the
+entrance of the hotel. In the lobby the shooting seemed a bombardment of
+the building. A group of American and English correspondents were
+lounging in the heavy divans, drinking gin and talking to a trio of
+elaborately gowned women. The talk was in French.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Dorn," one of the Englishmen called. Dorn approached the table,
+von Stinnes following, and whispering, "I will request the porter to
+open the gate."</p>
+
+<p>"Baron von Stinnes, Mr. Reading."</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman shook hands and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I know the baron, Dorn. Rather old friends, what? Have a drink, damn
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Later, if you please," von Stinnes bowed stiffly. Reading beckoned Dorn
+aside with an air of secrecy. Walking him to another part of the lobby
+he began whispering:</p>
+
+<p>"I'd let that blighter alone if I were you, Dorn. I'm just telling you
+because you're rather new to these bloody swine."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," he said, and walked back to von Stinnes. Reading resumed his
+place with the party.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it was a timely warning," the baron murmured as Dorn drew near
+him. The gate had been opened and the two emerged. "I make a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> guess at
+what Reading told you," the baron pursued.</p>
+
+<p>"It is immaterial," Dorn answered. "I engage you not for your honesty
+and many virtues, but because you're amusing...."</p>
+
+<p>"Thus you relieve my conscience," von Stinnes sighed.</p>
+
+<p>The wide avenue was deserted. Moonlight lay on the new-fallen snow. A
+line of soldiers wheeled suddenly out of the Brandenburger Tor and came
+marching quickly toward the walkers.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Weiter gehen, weiter gehen</i>," a voice from the troop called. Two
+detached themselves from the ranks and approached rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ausweise....</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Von Stinnes glared through his monocle and answered in German, "What is
+the matter with you? Are you crazy? I am Baron von Stinnes. My friend is
+a member of the American Commission."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn extracted a bit of stamped paper&mdash;his special credentials from the
+German Foreign Office. The soldier glanced at it without troubling to
+read....</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sehr gut, mein Herrschaften</i>," he mumbled. Dorn caught a glimpse of
+his face. Its importance had vanished. The line of soldiers marched on.
+When they had turned a corner the sound of firing suddenly resumed.</p>
+
+<p>"Shadows again," chuckled von Stinnes.</p>
+
+<p>Snow-covered streets, moonlight, waiting build<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>ings, cold and
+shadows&mdash;here was reality. The thing under the gay tumult of the caf&eacute;s.
+Under the baron's laughter. They were passing a stretch of empty shop
+windows.</p>
+
+<p>"It's cold," Dorn muttered. The baron looked at him with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"It is cold everywhere in Germany," he said quietly. "Men's hearts are
+cold with hunger and fear. Brains are confused. Stomachs empty. The top
+has been knocked off. The soldiers in the streets are the sad little
+remains of a dead Germany. The new Germany lies cold and hungry in a
+workingman's bed. Life will come out of the masses. And I am always on
+the side of life. Not so? The old is dead. We drink wine to the new."</p>
+
+<p>The sound of dance music drifted out of a caf&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we stop?" the baron hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Enough caf&eacute;s. The streets are better. Dark windows."</p>
+
+<p>They walked in silence through the snow, the baron humming a Vienna
+waltz as the blurred echoes of machine-gun fire rose in the night around
+them.</p>
+
+<p>... Hours later Dorn lay sleepless in his bed. The smoke of wine was
+slipping out of his thought.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm alone," he murmured to himself. An emotionless regret came to him.</p>
+
+<p>"There are still years to live." He wrapped himself closer in the
+silk-covered quilts. "But how? Does it matter? I have loved, and that
+is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> over. Rachel is ended. Haven't thought of her for weeks. And now, I
+am like I was, only older and alone; yet not sad. So people adjust
+themselves to decay. Senses that could have understood and wept at
+sorrow die, along with the things whose death causes sorrow. Ergo, there
+is no sorrow. Wings gone, tears gone, everything gone. Empty again, yet
+content. I want nothing.... No desires...."</p>
+
+<p>His brain was mumbling sleepily as the cold wind from the opened window
+swept pleasantly through the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Women to divert me. Wine to make me glad. And a companion&mdash;the baron.
+Droll tragedian! And scenes for my eyes. Yes, yes.... They keep shooting
+outside. Still shooting after five years. Shooting each other. The world
+speaks a strange language. What imbecility! Yet life is in the masses.
+It'll come out, perhaps. From Russia. Russians&mdash;a pack of idealists ...
+a pack of illiterate Wilsons with whiskers. I'm like the baron. I admire
+revolution. Why? Because it diverts."</p>
+
+<p>He closed his eyes for moments. Still no sleep, and his thought resumed,
+"Rachel, I once loved you. I can say it now without hurt. Empty memories
+now&mdash;like drawings in outline. And some day even the outlines will leave
+me."</p>
+
+<p>A curious ache came into his heart. "Ah, she still touches me&mdash;still a
+little. Poor dear one! What a farce! A glorious farce! The nights when
+she whispered. Her face, I remember, yes, a little.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> Ghosts! Your eyes
+are the beckoning hands of dream. That was the best sentence.... The
+rest were good too&mdash;sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled sleepily on his pillow ... "still shooting. It will be amusing
+here. Some day when we're old, Rachel and I will see each other again.
+Old eyes questioning old eyes. Old eyes saying, 'So much has died. Only
+a little more remains to die.' Sleep ... I must sleep now. To-morrow,
+work, work! And forget. But nothing to forget. It forgets itself. It
+says good-bye. A sun gone down. What is it old Carl wrote?... 'The past
+is a bucket of ashes, a sun gone down ... to-morrow is another
+day....'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V4" id="CHAPTER_V4"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p>The detachment vanished. Streets familiarized themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ich steh auf den Standpunkt</i>," said the politicians; and the racket of
+machine-guns offered an obligato.</p>
+
+<p>The new garrulity that had seemed strange to Dorn lost its strangeness.
+It became the victrola phrases of a bewildered diplomacy. But the
+diplomacy was not confined to frock-coats. It buzzed, snarled up and
+down the factory districts, in and out of the boulevard caf&eacute;s and the
+squat resident sectors.</p>
+
+<p>The German waiting for the knife of Versailles to fall was vomiting a
+vocabulary of fear, hope, threat, despair. Under cover of a confused
+Social Democracy the German army was slowly reorganizing itself.</p>
+
+<p>It was three months after his arrival in Berlin that Dorn wrote his
+curious sketch of the German situation. The three months had witnessed a
+change in him. He had become a workman&mdash;industrious, inquisitive,
+determined. Under the guidance of von Stinnes he had managed to
+penetrate the heart of German <i>politik</i>. Tours through the provinces,
+daily interviews with celebrities,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> statesmen, leaders of the scores of
+political factions; adventures under the surface of the victrola phrases
+pouring from the government buildings and the anti-government buildings,
+had occupied even his introspections. Seemingly the empire had turned
+itself into a debating society. Life had become a class in economics.</p>
+
+<p>Three months of work. Unfocused talents drawn into simultaneous
+activity. And Dorn arose one morning to find himself an outstanding
+figure in the turmoil of comment and commentators about him. Von Stinnes
+had wheedled his history out of him for publication in Berlin. Its
+appearance was greeted with a journalistic shout in the capitol.
+Radicals and conservatives alike pounced upon it. Haase, leader of the
+Independent Socialists, declaimed it almost in full before the National
+Assembly in Weimar.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn had put into it a passionate sense of the irony and futility of his
+day. Its clarity arrested the obfuscated intellect of a nation groping,
+whining, and blustering under the shadow of the knife of Versailles.</p>
+
+<p>The writing of it had rid him for the time of Rachel, of Anna, of the
+years of befuddling emptiness that had marked his attitudes toward the
+surfaces of thought about him. The emotionless disillusion of his nature
+had finally produced an adventure for him&mdash;the adventure of mental
+fecundity.</p>
+
+<p>He had gone to Weimar to write. Here the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> new government of Germany had
+assembled. Delegates, celebrities, frock-coats, strange hair formations;
+messiah and magician had come to extricate the nation from its unhappy
+place on the European guillotine. The narrow streets stuttered with
+argument.... Von Stinnes and a girl named Mathilde Dohmann accompanied
+him to the town. The Baron, bored for the moment with his labors, had
+immersed his volatile self in a diligent pursuit of Mathilde. He had
+discovered her among communist councils in Berlin and na&iuml;vely attached
+her as a part of Dorn's secretarial retinue.</p>
+
+<p>"She will be of service," he announced.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn, preoccupied with the scheme of his history, paid little attention
+to her. Arrived in Weimar he became entirely active, viewing with
+amusement the Baron's sophisticated assault upon the ardent-voiced,
+red-haired political spitfire whom he called Matty. Alone in an old
+tavern room, he gave himself to the arrangements of words clamoring for
+utterance in his thought. Old words. Old ideas. Notions dormant since
+years ago. Phrases, ironies remembered out of conversations themselves
+forgotten. The book was finished towards the middle of March&mdash;a history
+of the post-war Germany; with a biography between the lines of Erik
+Dorn. Von Stinnes had forthwith produced two German scholars who, under
+his direction, accomplished the translation with astonishing speed.
+Excerpts from the thin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> red-and black-covered volume found their way
+overnight into the press of the nation. Periodicals seized upon the
+extended brochure as a <i>Dokument</i>. In pamphlet form the gist of it
+started upon the rounds of Europe. The garrulity of the day had been
+given for the moment a new direction.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"We will go to Munich. There will be a revolution in Munich. I have news
+from secret sources."</p>
+
+<p>Baron von Stinnes, lounging wearily in front of a chess-board, spoke and
+raised a cup of mocha to his lips. Dorn, picking his way through a
+German novel, looked up gloomily and nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Anywhere," he agreed. "Munich, Moscow, Peking."</p>
+
+<p>In a corner of the room Mathilde was curled on the luxurious hotel divan
+watching through half-closed eyes the figures of the men. The Baron
+turned toward her and frowned. In return her face, almost asleep, became
+vivid with a sneer. The Baron's love-making had gone astray.</p>
+
+<p>"Matty is going to try to carry a million marks into Munich for the
+Communists," he announced.</p>
+
+<p>The girl stared von Stinnes into silence.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that?" she asked slowly.</p>
+
+<p>He lowered his cup and with a show of polite deliberation removed his
+monocle and wiped it with a silk handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"I know many things," he smiled. "The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> money comes from Dr. Kasnilov and
+will be brought to Dr. Max Levine in Munich, and the good Max will buy a
+garrison of Landwehr with it and establish the soviet republic of
+Bavaria."</p>
+
+<p>"You know Levine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," smiled the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>Mathilde sat up. Her voice acquired a vicious dullness.</p>
+
+<p>"You will not interfere with me, von Stinnes."</p>
+
+<p>"I, Matty?" The Baron laughed and resumed his mocha. "I am heart and
+soul with Levine. If Dorn cannot go I will have to go alone. It is
+necessary I be in Munich when the Soviets are called out."</p>
+
+<p>"You will not interfere with me, von Stinnes," the girl repeated, "or I
+will kill you."</p>
+
+<p>"You have my permission, Fr&auml;ulein. The logical time for my death is long
+past."</p>
+
+<p>Mathilde's sharp young face had grown alive with excitement. She sat
+with her eyes unwaveringly upon the Baron as if her thought were groping
+desperately beneath the smiling weariness of the man.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dorn," she spoke, "von Stinnes is a traitor."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"If one million marks will cause a revolution, I'll take them to Munich
+myself," he answered. "I'm sick of Berlin. I need a revolution to divert
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear I am in the way," von Stinnes inter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>rupted. He arose with
+formality. "Mathilde would like to unburden herself to you, Dorn. I am,
+she will inform you, a secret agent of Colonel Nickolai, and Colonel
+Nickolai is the head of the anti-bolshevist pro-royalist propaganda in
+Prussia." He paused and smiled. "I will meet you in the lobby when you
+come down."</p>
+
+<p>He walked toward the door, halting before the excited face of the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Matty, Matty," he murmured, "you will not in your zeal forget that
+I love you?"</p>
+
+<p>He bowed whimsically and passed out. Dorn laid aside his book and
+approached the divan. In the week since their return from Weimar he had
+become interested in the moody, dynamic young creature. The fact that
+she had resisted the expert persuasions of the Baron&mdash;a subject on which
+the nobleman had discoursed piquantly on their ride to Berlin&mdash;had
+appealed to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Karl is a good fellow," he said, seating himself next to her. "And if
+it happens he is employed by Noske and Nickolai it doesn't alter my
+opinion of him."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a scoundrel," she answered quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"That is impossible," Dorn smiled. "He is merely a man without
+convictions and therefore free to follow his impulses and his employers.
+I thank God for von Stinnes. He has made Europe possible. A revolution
+alone could rival him in my affections."</p>
+
+<p>The girl remained silent, and Dorn watched<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> her face. He might embrace
+her and make love. It would perhaps flatter, please her. She fancied him
+a man of astounding genius. She had practically memorized his book.
+Thus, one had only to smile humorlessly, permit one's eyes to grow
+enigmatic, and think of a proper epigram. He recalled for an instant the
+two women who had succumbed to his technique since he had left America.
+They blurred in his memory and became offensive. Yet Matty had been of
+service and perhaps her moodiness was caused by a suppressed affection.
+As an amorous prospect she was not without interest. As a reality,
+however, she would obviously become a bore. In any case there was
+nothing to hinder polite investigation, mark time with kisses until von
+Stinnes brought on his promised revolution. He thought carefully.
+Pessimism was the proper note. Dramatize with an epigram the emptiness
+of life. His forte&mdash;emptiness. Not love but a hunger to live.</p>
+
+<p>"Matty, I regret sadly that you are not a prostitute."</p>
+
+<p>Startling!</p>
+
+<p>"It would save me the trouble of having to fall in love with you, dear
+child."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, a sudden amusement in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You too, Mr. Dorn. I had thought different of you."</p>
+
+<p>"As a creature beyond the petty agitations, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"As a man."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is possible for a Man, despite a capital M, to love."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, love. It is possible for him only to love. And you do not."</p>
+
+<p>"Much worse. I am sad."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps because it is the only emotion that comes without effort."</p>
+
+<p>"So you would fall in love with me to forget that I bore you."</p>
+
+<p>"A broader ambition than that. To forget that living bores me,
+Mathilde."</p>
+
+<p>"There is someone else you love, Mr. Dorn."</p>
+
+<p>"There was." He smiled humorlessly. "Do you mind if I talk of love? I
+need a conversational antidote."</p>
+
+<p>"And if you talk of love you may be spared the trouble of having to make
+love," she laughed quietly. "But I would rather talk of von Stinnes. I
+am worried."</p>
+
+<p>"You are young," Dorn interrupted, "and full of political error. I am
+beginning to believe von Stinnes. The most terrible result of the war
+has been the political mania it has given to women."</p>
+
+<p>Mathilde settled back on the divan and stared with mocking pensiveness
+at her shoes. Dorn, speaking as if he desired to smile, continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know that when one has loved a woman one grows sad after it is
+ended, remembering not the woman, but one's self? The memory of her
+becomes a mirror that gives you back the image of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> something that has
+died&mdash;a shadow of youth and joy that still bears your name. It is the
+same with old songs, old perfumes. All mirrors. So I walk through life
+now smiling into mirrors that give back not myself, but someone
+else&mdash;another Dorn."</p>
+
+<p>He arose and looked down at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Does that interest you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I understand you."</p>
+
+<p>"There are many ways of making love. Sorrowful phrases are the most
+entertaining, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"You make me think you have loved too much."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it would be difficult to kiss you. I would become sad with memory
+of other kisses. Because you are young&mdash;as I was then."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it long ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"Things that end are always long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it was only yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yesterday," he laughed, pleased with the ironic sound of his
+voice. "And what is longer ago than yesterday?"</p>
+
+<p>She had risen and stood before him, an almost boyish figure with her
+fists clenched.</p>
+
+<p>"I have something else I am in love with," she whispered. "I am in love
+with&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The wonderful revolution, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And some day in the future you, too, will look into a mirror and see
+not yourself but a glowing-faced girl that was in love with what was
+once called the revolution."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But if things end it is only because we are too weak to hold them
+forever. So while we are strong we must hold them twice as eagerly."</p>
+
+<p>"Sad. All most deplorably sad, Mathilde. Hands shuffle us into new
+combinations, when we would prefer the old. Thus you, too, will some day
+listen to the cry that rises from all endings."</p>
+
+<p>"You are designing. You wish to make me sad, Mr. Dorn. And succeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Only that I may contemplate the futility of your love and smile. As I
+cannot quite smile at my own. We do not smile easily at corpses."</p>
+
+<p>His hands covered her fingers gently.</p>
+
+<p>"I will give myself to you, if you wish," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"And I prefer you like this," he smiled. "If you will come close to me
+and lay your head against me." He looked down at her as she obeyed.
+"There is an odor to your hair. And your cheek is soft. These things are
+similar things. You are almost like a phantom."</p>
+
+<p>"Of her."</p>
+
+<p>"No. She is forgotten. It's something else. A phantom of something that
+once lived in me, and died. It comes back and stares at me sometimes out
+of the eyes of strange women, out of the sounds of music. Now, out of
+your hair."</p>
+
+<p>"And you do not want me, Erik?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want you. But I prefer to amuse myself by fancying that you are
+unattainable."</p>
+
+<p>"I've liked you, Erik. The rest does not matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> to me. I grew old
+during the war, and careless. My father and two brothers died. And
+another man."</p>
+
+<p>"So we both need diversion."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Diversion," he murmured, "the little drug. But what is there to drugs?
+No, come; we are lovers now."</p>
+
+<p>"We will go to Munich together."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And will you carry the money for Levine? They would never search you
+and they might recognize and search me. And besides, von Stinnes would
+not dare interfere if it was you, even if he is a spy, because he likes
+you too well."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice had become eager and vibrant. Dorn smiled ruefully, the faint
+mist of a sigh in his thought. The girl had worked adroitly. Of course,
+he was someone to carry the money to the Munich radicals.</p>
+
+<p>"It is just an ordinary-looking package. The station will be under a
+guard and all the roads coming in, too. They are expecting the
+revolution and ..." She paused and grew red. Dorn's eyes were looking at
+her banteringly. "You are thinking I have tricked you," she cried, "and
+that it was only to use you as a ... as a carrier that I ... Well,
+perhaps it is true. I do not know myself. I told you you could have me.
+Yes, I give myself to you now ... now.... Do you hear?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She laughed with bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"I have never given myself before. I would rather you smiled and were
+kind. But if you wish to laugh ... and call it a bargain ... it does not
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>She had stepped away from him and stood with kindled eyes, waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"One can be chivalrous in the absence of all other impulses, Mathilde.
+And all other impulses have expired in me. So I will take the package.
+We will start to-morrow early. And as for the rest ... I will spare you
+the tedium of martyrdom."</p>
+
+<p>He moved toward the door. "Come, we'll go downstairs. Von Stinnes will
+be getting impatient."</p>
+
+<p>Mathilde came to him swiftly. He caught a glimpse of her face lighted,
+and her arms circled his neck. She was looking at him without words. A
+coldness dropped into his heart. There had been three of them
+before&mdash;he, Mathilde, and a phantom. Now there were only Mathilde and
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"She was not tricking," he thought, and felt pleased. "At least not
+consciously."</p>
+
+<p>Her arms fell from him and she stared frightenedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, Erik. I thought you loved me. And I would have liked to
+make you happy...."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded and opened the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI4" id="CHAPTER_VI4"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>They sat in the compartment of the train crawling into Munich. The Baron
+drooped with sleep. Dorn stared wearily out of the window. Springtime. A
+beginning of green in the fields and over the roll of hills. Formal
+sunlight upon factories with an empty holiday frown in their windows.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear shooting," he smiled at Mathilde. "We're probably in time."</p>
+
+<p>The girl nodded. Despite the sleepless night sitting upright in the
+compartment, her eyes were fresh and alive. The desultory crack of a
+rifle drifting out of the town as if to greet them brought an impatience
+into her manner. The train was moving slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we're in time," she murmured. "See, the white guards are still in
+possession."</p>
+
+<p>A group of soldiers with white sleeve-bands over the gray-green of their
+uniforms passed in an empty street.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be white guards at the station, too," she went on. "The
+attack will come to-night. It must."</p>
+
+<p>She looked intently at von Stinnes who, open<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>ing his eyes suddenly,
+whispered, "Ah, Mathilde ... there was once another M&uuml;nchen...."</p>
+
+<p>An uproar in the station. A scurry of guards and soldiers. White
+sleeve-bands. Machine-guns behind heaped bags of sand. A halloo of
+orders across the arc of the spacious shed. Passengers pouring out of
+the newly arrived train, smiling, weeping, staring indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>The officer desired the passengers to line themselves up against the
+train. A suggestive order, and confusion. Whispers in the crowd....
+"Personally, I prefer the guillotine.... No, no, madame. There is no
+danger. These are good boys. Soldiers of the government. You can tell by
+the sleeve-bands. White. Merely baggage inspection."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn waited his turn. A group of soldiers approached slowly, delving
+into pockets for weapons, peering into opened pieces of baggage. Babble,
+expostulation, eager politeness of innocent travelers, and outside the
+long crack of rifles, an occasional rip of a machine-gun. The group of
+soldiers paused before him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am an American," he spoke in English, "with the American commission."</p>
+
+<p>The announcement produced its usual effect. Bows, salutes, smiles. He
+pulled out his passport and foreign-office credentials. An officer
+stepped forward and glanced at them.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good," in courteous English, "you will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> pardon for the delay. We
+are having a little trouble here."</p>
+
+<p>He indicated the city with a nod of his head and smiled wryly. In German
+he continued sharply, "Gottlieb, Neuman, you will escort this gentleman
+and his friends to whatever place they wish to go. Take my car at post
+10."</p>
+
+<p>Two soldiers saluted. The officer bowed with a smile. The travelers
+moved off with their escort toward the street. Mathilde kept her eyes on
+von Stinnes as they entered a gray automobile.</p>
+
+<p>"Von Stinnes and I will sit in the back," she whispered to Dorn.</p>
+
+<p>The Baron nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Careful of your Leugger," he whispered, "the soldiers will see it. You
+can shoot me just as easily if you keep it hidden. I have frequently
+fired through my pocket."</p>
+
+<p>In a hotel room a half-hour later, Mathilde, grown jubilant as a child,
+was clapping her hands and laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"It was too simple!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn drew a small suitcase from under the bed and opened it.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," he laughed. He removed an oblong package. His eyes sought
+von Stinnes, standing near the window leisurely smoking a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"You will find Levine in the Gambrinus Keller," von Stinnes spoke
+without turning around. "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> advise you to go at once, Matty, before the
+streets crowd up."</p>
+
+<p>He wheeled and held an envelope toward the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Take this. It will make it easier for you to get in. They are very
+careful right now. It's a letter of credentials from Dr. Kasnilov."</p>
+
+<p>Mathilde opened the envelope mechanically, her eyes seeking the thought
+under the Baron's smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," she spoke in German. "I will go now. I will see you after. At
+dinner to-night. Here."</p>
+
+<p>She walked quickly from the room, the oblong package under her arm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII4" id="CHAPTER_VII4"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The thing hiding in the alleys and shops of the world&mdash;the dark, furtive
+hungers that Russia was thawing into life, emerged on a bright April day
+in the streets of Munich. Working men with guns. A sweep of
+spike-haired, deep-eyed troglodytes from the underworld of labor.
+Factories, shops, and alleys vomited them forth. Farm hovels and
+stinking bundles of houses sent them singing and roaring down the
+forbidden avenues, past the forbidden sanctuaries of satrap and burgher.</p>
+
+<p>From behind curtained windows the upper world looked on with amazement
+and disgust. A topsy-turvy April morning. A Spring day gone mad. Here
+were the masses celebrated in pamphlet and soap-box oration. An ungodly
+spectacle, an overturning. Grinning earth faces, roaring earth voices
+come swaggering into the hallowed precincts of civilization. Workingmen
+with guns marching to take possession of the world. An old tableau
+decked with new phrases&mdash;the underfed barbarian at the gate of the
+grainary.</p>
+
+<p>The singing and the roaring continued through the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Es lebe die Welt Revolution!</i> <i>Es lebe das Rate</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> <i>Republik!</i> <i>Hoch!</i>
+<i>die soviet von Bayern</i> ... <i>Hoch!</i> <i>Hoch!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>From the twisting, blackened streets, "<i>Hoch!</i>" Men and women squeezing
+aimlessly around corners. Closely packed drifts of bobbing heads. A
+crack of rifles dropping punctuations into the scene. "<i>Hoch!</i> <i>Hoch!</i>"
+from faces clustered darkly about the grimacing, inaudible orators in
+the squares.</p>
+
+<p>Red flags, red placards like a swarm of confetti on the walls and in the
+air. A holiday war.... The morning hours marched away.</p>
+
+<p>With noon, a silence gradually darkened the scene. A silence of
+shuffling feet and murmuring tongues. The revolution had sung its songs.
+An end of songs and cheerings. Drifting, silent masses. An ominous,
+enigmatic sweep of faces. Red placards under foot in cubist designs down
+the streets.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon waned, the hundred thousands closed in. Darkness was
+coming and the pack was welding itself together. Rifles were beginning.
+Machine-guns were beginning. Holiday was over. Quieter streets. The
+orators become audible. Still faces, raised and listening. The orators
+had news to give.... One of the garrisons had gone over to the soviets.
+Two garrisons had vanished. Treachery. A long murmur ... treachery. The
+armies of General Hoffmann were marching upon Munich ... twenty
+kilometers from Munich. They would arrive in the night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> ... "We will
+show them, comrades, whether the revolution has teeth to bite as well as
+a song to sing."</p>
+
+<p>A growl was running through the twilight.... <i>Es lebe das Rate
+Republik!</i> A fierce whisper of voices. Workingmen looking to their guns,
+massing about the government buildings. A new war minister in the
+uniform of a marine, speaking from a balcony. Workingmen with guns,
+listening. Women drifting back to the hovels and stinking bundles of
+houses. In the caf&eacute;s, satraps and burghers eating amid a suppressed
+clamor of whispers, plans. The foolishness was almost over. The armies
+of General Hoffmann were coming ... Twenty kilometers out.... Arrive at
+night. The corps students themselves would saber the swine out of the
+city....</p>
+
+<p>Night. Darkened streets. Tattered patrols hurrying through mysteriously
+emptied highways, shouting, "Indoors! Inside, everybody!" Suddenly from
+a distance the bay of artillery. Workingmen with guns were storming the
+cannon of the artillery regiment outside the city. A haphazard
+cross-fire of rifles began to spit from darkened windows ... an upper
+world showing its teeth behind parlor barricades.</p>
+
+<p>In the shadows of the massive government buildings an army was forming.
+No ranks, no officers. Easy to drift through the sunny streets singing
+the <i>Marseillaise</i> and the International ... to mooch along through the
+forbidden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> avenues dreaming in the daylight of a new world ... with red
+flags proclaiming the new masters of earth. Hundred thousands, then. But
+now, how many? Too dark to see, to count. An army, perhaps. Perhaps a
+handful....</p>
+
+<p>Feverish salutes in the shadows.... "<i>Gruss Gott, genosse!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Was it alive? Did the revolution live? What was happening in the empty
+streets? Who was shooting? And the armies of Hoffmann? <i>Gruss Gott,
+genosse.</i> Under Rupprecht the armies had lain four years in the
+trenches. Great armies, swinging along like a single man, that had once
+battered their way almost into Paris against the English, against the
+French.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Gruss Gott, genosse.</i> <i>Hoffmann kommt</i> ... <i>Ja wohl, Gruss Gott!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Now twenty kilometers away and coming down the highroad against
+Munich&mdash;against the drifting little clusters of lonely men whispering in
+the shadows&mdash;the great armies of the Kaiser, an iron monster clicking
+down the road toward Munich. Would there be artillery to meet them?
+<i>Gruss Gott, genosse, wer shusst dort?</i> No, they had only guns, old guns
+that might not shoot. Old knives at their belts.... Darkness and
+rifle-spattered silences. Where was the revolution? The shadows
+whispered, "<i>Gruss Gott....</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The shadows began to stir. A voice was talking in the night. High up
+from a window. Egelhofer, the communist. No, Levine. Who? A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> light in
+the window.... Egelhofer, thin-faced, tall, black-haired. Egelhofer, the
+new war minister. 'Shh! what was he saying?... "<i>Vorwaerts, der
+Banhoff....</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Yes, the armies of Hoffmann had come. The shadows stirred wildly.
+Forward ... <i>es lebe die Welt Revolution!</i> This time a battle-cry,
+hoarse, shaking. Men were running. Workingmen with guns, guns that would
+shoot ... <i>"Der Banhoff ... der Banhoff...."</i></p>
+
+<p>The shadows were emptying themselves. A pack was running. Two abreast,
+three abreast, in broken strings of men. Groups, solitary figures,
+hatless, bellowing. The revolution was moving. The empty streets filled.
+An army? A handful? Let God show in the morning. Workingmen with guns
+were running through the night. Munich was shaking.... "<i>Der Banhoff,
+genosse, vorwaerts!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The revolution was emptying itself into the great square fronting the
+station. Little lights twinkling outside the ancient weinstubes began to
+explode. There must be darkness. Pop!... pop!... a rattle of glass. A
+blaze of shooting. The railroad station was firing now.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Es lebe das Rate Republik!</i>" from the darkness in the streets. A sweep
+of figures across the open square. Arms twisting, leaping in sudden
+glares of flame. The revolution hurled itself with a long cry upon the
+barricades of thundering lead.</p>
+
+<p>In the single lighted window of the government<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> buildings a face still
+spoke ... <i>"Ich bin Egelhofer, ihr Krieg's minister ... Ich komm...."</i></p>
+
+<p>Waving a rifle over his head, the war minister rushed from the building.
+A marine from Kiel. A new pack loosened itself from the shadows. A war
+minister was leading.</p>
+
+<p>Moving swiftly through the streets, Dorn hurried to the seat of the new
+government&mdash;the Wittelbacher Palais. Von Stinnes was waiting there. He
+had been delayed in joining the Baron by the sudden upheaval about the
+hotel.</p>
+
+<p>The wave had passed. Almost safe now to skirt the scene of battle and
+make a try for the Palais. As he darted out of the darkened hotel
+entrance, the thing seemed for a moment under his nose. An oppressive
+intimacy of tumult.</p>
+
+<p>"They're at the station," he thought. "I'll have to hurry in case they
+fall back."</p>
+
+<p>He ran quickly in an opposite direction followed by the leap of firing.
+Several blocks, and he paused. Here was safety. The revolution a good
+half-mile off. He walked slowly, recovering breath. The street was
+lighted. Shop windows blinked out upon the pavements. A few stragglers
+walked like himself, intent upon destinations made serious by the near
+sound of firing. An interesting evening, thus far. A stout, red-faced
+man with a heavily ornamented vest followed the figure of a woman. Dorn
+smiled. Biology versus politics.... "Excuse me, pretty one, you look
+lonely...." A charwoman. Black, sagging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> clothes. Dorn passed and heard
+her exclaim, "Who, me? You ask me to go with you? Dear God, he asks me!
+I am an honest workingwoman. Run along with you!" The woman, walking
+swiftly, drew alongside. She was chuckling and muttering to herself, a
+curious pride in her voice, "He asked me, dear God&mdash;me!"</p>
+
+<p>The abrupt sound of rifle-fire around the corner startled her. Dorn
+halted. The woman turned toward him, puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"They are shooting a whole lot to-night," she spoke in German.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite a lot," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>She looked back at the red-faced man who had remained where she had left
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of that dunce?" she whispered, and hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn followed leisurely in the direction of the Palais.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII4" id="CHAPTER_VIII4"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>A rabble of dictators, ministerial fledglings, freshly sprouted
+governors, organizers, departmental heads, scurried through the dimly
+lighted corridors of the old Palais. Dorn, with the aid of a handful of
+communist credentials that seemed to flow endlessly from the pockets of
+the Baron, passed the Palais guard&mdash;a hundred silent men squatting
+behind a hastily erected barricade of sandbags.</p>
+
+<p>Within he stumbled upon von Stinnes. The Baron drew him into a large
+empty chamber.</p>
+
+<p>"We must be careful," he whispered. His voice buzzed with an elation.
+"Already two ministries have fallen. There is talk now of Levine. He's
+of the extreme left. I thought you would like to see it. It has its
+amusing side." He laughed softly. "I was with the men in the streets for
+a while. There was something there, Dorn. Life, yes ... yes ... It was
+amazing. But here it is different. What is it the correspondents say?
+'All is confusion, there is nothing to report.' ... Yes, confusion.
+There are at present three poets, one lunatic, an epileptic, four
+workingmen and a scientist from Vienna, and two school teachers. They
+are the Council<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> of Ten. Look, there is <i>Muhsam,</i> the one with the red
+vandyke. A poet. He used to recite rhymes in the Cafe Stephanie."</p>
+
+<p>The red vandyke peered into the room. "Stinnes, you are wanted," he
+called. "I have my portfolio. I am the new minister to Russia. I leave
+for Moscow to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Congratulations!" the Baron answered.</p>
+
+<p>A tall, contemplative man with a scraggly gray beard&mdash;an angular
+Christ-like figure&mdash;appeared. He spoke. "What are you doing here,
+Muhsam? There is work inside."</p>
+
+<p>"And you!" angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"I must think. We must grow calm." He passed on, thinking.</p>
+
+<p>"Landerdauer," smiled the Baron, "the Whitman translator."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," the vandyke answered, "we have appointed him minister of
+education. What news from the station, Stinnes?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is taken."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn followed the Baron about the corridors, his ears bewildered by the
+screechings from unexpected chambers of debate. He listened, amused, to
+the volatile von Stinnes.</p>
+
+<p>"They are trying for a coalition. Nikish is at the top. A former
+schoolmaster. The communists under Levine won't come in. The workingmen
+are out overthrowing the world, and the great thinkers sit in conference
+hitting one another over the head with slapsticks. Life, Dorn, is a
+droll busi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>ness, and revolution a charming comedy, <i>nicht wahr?</i> But it
+will grow serious soon. Munich will be cut off. Food will vanish. Aha!
+wait a minute...."</p>
+
+<p>He darted after a swaggering figure. Dorn watched. The baron appeared to
+be commanding and entreating. The figure finally, with a surly shake of
+his head, hurried off. The Baron returned.</p>
+
+<p>"That was Levine," he said. "He won't come in unless Egelhofer is
+ratified as war minister. Egelhofer is a communist. Wait a minute. I
+will tell them to make Egelhofer minister. I will make a speech. We must
+have the Egelhofer."</p>
+
+<p>He vanished again. Dorn, standing against a window, watched frantic men
+scurry down the corridor bellowing commands at one another....</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday they were garrulous little fools buzzing around caf&eacute; tables,"
+he thought. "To-night they boom. Rodinesque. And yet comic. Yes,
+comedians. But no more than the troupe of white-collared comedians in
+Wilhelmstrasse or Washington. The workers were different. There was
+something in the streets. Men in flame. But here are little matches."</p>
+
+<p>He caught sight of Mathilde and called her name. She came and stood
+beside him. Her body was trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you spend the money?" he asked softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but they will buy the garrisons back again. They have more funds
+than we. Oh, we need more."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who will buy them back?"</p>
+
+<p>"The bourgeoise. They have more money than we. And without the garrisons
+we are lost."</p>
+
+<p>She wrung her hands. Dorn struggled to become properly serious.</p>
+
+<p>"There, it may come out very fine," he murmured. "Anyway, von Stinnes is
+making a speech. It should help."</p>
+
+<p>"Stinnes...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, trying to bring Egelhofer in as war minister. He talked with
+Levine...."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," she answered. "He is doing something I don't
+understand, because he is a traitor."</p>
+
+<p>She became silent and moved closer to Dorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Erik," she sighed, "I must cry. I am tired."</p>
+
+<p>He embraced her as she began to weep. Von Stinnes emerged, red-faced and
+elated.</p>
+
+<p>"It is settled," he announced. "Hello! what's wrong with Matty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tired," Dorn answered.</p>
+
+<p>"We will go to the hotel."</p>
+
+<p>They started down the corridor. A group of soldiers emerged from a
+chamber, blocking their way.</p>
+
+<p>"Baron von Stinnes," one of them called. The Baron saluted.</p>
+
+<p>"You are under arrest by order of the Council of Ten."</p>
+
+<p>Von Stinnes bowed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Go to the hotel with Matty, Dorn. I will be on soon."</p>
+
+<p>To the soldiers he added, "Very well, comrades. Take me to comrade
+Levine."</p>
+
+<p>"We have orders...."</p>
+
+<p>"To Levine, I tell you," he interrupted angrily. "Are you fools?"</p>
+
+<p>He removed a document quickly from his coat pocket and thrust it under
+the soldiers' eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"From Levine," he whispered fiercely. "Now where is Levine?"</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers led the way toward the interior of the Palais.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Outside, Dorn supported the drooping figure of the girl. Runners passed
+them crying out, "It is over! We have taken the station!"</p>
+
+<p>They arrived at the hotel. The lobby was thronged with people. A
+chocolate salesman from Switzerland was orating: "They have erected a
+guillotine in Marien Platz. They are shooting down and beheading
+everybody who wears a white collar."</p>
+
+<p>The hotel proprietor quieted the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" he cried. "Ridiculous nonsense! We are safe. They are all
+good Bavarians and will hurt nobody."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn led Mathilde to his room. She threw herself on the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"So tired!" she whispered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But happy," he added. "Your beloved masses have triumphed."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't. I'm sick of talking...."</p>
+
+<p>"Too much excitement," he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>They became silent. Dorn, watching her carelessly in the dimly lighted
+room, began to think.... "Disillusionment already. The dream has died in
+her. A child's brain overstuffed with slogans, it begins now to ache and
+grow confused. Tyranny, injustice, seem far away and vague. The
+revolution in the streets has blown the revolution out of her heart.
+There will be many like that to-morrow. The over-idealized idealists
+will empty first. The revolution was a dream. The reality of it will eat
+up the dream. Justice to the dreamer is a vision of new stars. To the
+workingman&mdash;another loaf of bread."</p>
+
+<p>"Of what are you thinking, Erik?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of nothing ... and its many variants," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"We've won," she sighed. "Oh, what a day!"</p>
+
+<p>He noted the listlessness in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, "another sham has had heroic birth. Out of workingmen
+with guns there will rise some day a new society which will be different
+than the old, only as to-morrow is different than to-day. The rivers,
+Mathilde, flow to the sea and life flows to death. And there is nothing
+else of consequence for intelligence to record."</p>
+
+<p>"You talk like a German of the last century," she smiled. "Oh, you're a
+strange man!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This pleased him. He thought of words, a ramble of words&mdash;but a knock at
+the door. Von Stinnes entered. He was carrying a basket.</p>
+
+<p>"Food," he announced cheerfully. "With food in our stomachs the world
+will seem more coherent for a while."</p>
+
+<p>He busied himself arranging plates of sandwiches on a small table.</p>
+
+<p>"Mathilde asleep?"</p>
+
+<p>He walked to the bed and leaned over her. The girl's eyes were closed.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child, poor child!" the Baron whispered. He caressed her head
+gently. "We will not wake her up. But eat and leave her food. Do you
+mind if we go out for a while? It is still early and it will be hard to
+sleep to-night. I know a caf&eacute; where we can sit quietly and drink wine,
+perhaps with cookies."</p>
+
+<p>Their eating finished, Dorn accompanied his friend into the street.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems as if nothing had happened," he said, as they walked through
+the spring night. "People are asleep as usual, and there is an odor of
+summer in the dark."</p>
+
+<p>Von Stinnes silently directed their way. After a half-hour's walk he
+paused in front of an ancient-looking building.</p>
+
+<p>"We are in Schwabbing now," he said, "the rendezvous of the Welt
+Anschauers. I think this place is still open."</p>
+
+<p>He led the way through a narrow court and en<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>tered a large,
+dimly-lighted room. Blank white walls stared at them. Von Stinnes picked
+out a table in a corner and ordered two flasks of wine from a stout
+woman with a large wooden ring of keys at her black waist.</p>
+
+<p>They drank in silence. Dorn observed an unusual air about his friend. He
+thought of Mathilde's suspicions, and smiled. Yet there was something
+inexplicable about von Stinnes. There had been from the first.</p>
+
+<p>"Inexplicable because he is ... nothing," Dorn thought. "A chevalier of
+excitements, a Don Quixote of disillusion...."</p>
+
+<p>"You are thinking of me," the baron smiled over his wine-glass, "as I am
+thinking of you. Here's to our unimportant healths, Erik."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn swallowed more wine. To be called Erik by his friend pleased him.
+He looked inquiringly at the humorous eyes of the man, and spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"You are cut after my pattern."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Only I have had more opportunities to exercise the pattern," he
+replied. "For the pattern, dear friend, is scoundrelism. And I, God
+bless me ..." He paused and gestured as if in a hopelessness of words.</p>
+
+<p>"There is quality as well as quantity in scoundrelism," Dorn suggested.
+He was thinking without emotion of Anna.</p>
+
+<p>"I have decided to remain in Munich," von<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> Stinnes spoke, "and that
+means that I will die here."</p>
+
+<p>"The day's melodrama has gone to your head," Dorn laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"No. There are people in Munich who know me quite well&mdash;too well. And
+among their virtues they number a desire for my death. In Berlin it is
+otherwise. Then too, this business of to-day can't last. It is already
+topheavy with thinkers, and will eventually evaporate in a dozen
+executions. It may come back, though. I cannot forget the workingmen who
+stormed the Banhoff."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and drank.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have decided to stay and play awhile. There will be a few weeks
+more. One will find extravagant diversions in Munich during the next few
+weeks. I am already Egelhofer's right-hand man. I will organize the
+Soviet army, assist in the conduct of the government, try to buy coal
+from Rathenau in Berlin, make speeches, compose earth-shaking
+proclamations, and end up smoking a cigarette in front of a Noske
+firing-squad.... Do not interrupt. I feel it is a program I owe to
+humanity. And in addition, I am growing weary of myself."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Romantics, friend. I do not argue against them."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," von Stinnes continued, "if you realize I am a scoundrel. I
+have thought at times<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> that you did, because of the way you smile when I
+talk."</p>
+
+<p>"Scoundrels are creatures I do not like. And I like you. Ergo, you are
+not a scoundrel, von Stinnes."</p>
+
+<p>The Baron laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"A convenient philosophy, Erik. Well, I was in the German intelligence
+and worked in Paris during the second year of the war. Prepare yourself
+for a confession. My secrets bore me. And a little cocotte of a countess
+betrayed me. It is a virtue French women have. They are not to be
+trusted, and love to them is something which may be improved by the
+execution of a lover. But there was no execution. To save my skin I
+entered the French intelligence&mdash;without, of course, resigning from the
+German. Thus I was of excellent service to the largest number. To the
+French I was invaluable. German positions, plans, maneuvers, at my
+finger tips.... And to the Germans, unaware of my new and lucrative
+connection, I was also invaluable. Again positions, plans, maneuvers. I
+was transferred to Italy by the French and ... But it's a complicated
+narrative. I haven't it straight in my own mind yet. Do you know, I wake
+up at night sometimes with the rather na&iuml;ve idea that I, von Stinnes,
+who prefer Turkish cigarettes to women, even brunettes ... But I
+stammer. It is difficult to be amusing, always. I think sometimes at
+night that I was personally re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>sponsible for at least half the
+casualties of the war."</p>
+
+<p>"Megalomania," said Dorn without changing his smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, obviously. You hit it. A distorted conscience image. Ah, the
+bombardments I have perfected. The hills of men I have blown up.
+Frenchmen, Germans, Italians. Yes, a word from me ... I pointed the
+cannon straighter.... But disregarding the boast ... you will admit my
+superiority as a scoundrel."</p>
+
+<p>"It is immaterial," Dorn answered. "If you betrayed the French, you made
+amends by betraying the Germans, and vice versa. As for the Italians ...
+I have never been in Italy."</p>
+
+<p>Von Stinnes laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not believe me, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are lying only in what you do not say," Dorn laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, exactly. I will go on, if it amuses you."</p>
+
+<p>"It is better conversation than usual."</p>
+
+<p>"I am now with the English," von Stinnes continued. "They play a curious
+game outside Versailles, the English. They have entrusted me with a most
+delicate mission." He paused and drained his glass. "It is quite
+dramatic. I tell it to you because I am drunk and weary of secrets. Five
+years of secrets ... until I am almost timorous of thinking even to
+myself ... for fear I will betray something to myself. But&mdash;it is droll.
+The million marks you so gallantly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> carried in for Matty, they were
+mine, Erik." He laughed. "I gave them to Dr. Kasnilov, and a very
+mysterious Englishman gave them to me...."</p>
+
+<p>"Gifts of a million are somewhat phenomenal," Dorn murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"I stole only a hundred thousand," von Stinnes went on, "which, of
+course, everyone expected."</p>
+
+<p>"But why the English, Karl?"</p>
+
+<p>"A little plan to separate Bavaria from Prussia, and help break up
+Middle Europe. You know feeling between the two provinces is intense.
+There was almost a mutiny in the second war year. And anything to help
+it along. To-morrow, Franz Lipp the new foreign minister of the Soviets
+will telegraph to Berlin recalling the Bavarian ambassador; there <i>is</i>
+one, you know&mdash;a figurehead. And the good Franz will announce to the
+world that Bavaria has declared its independence of Prussia. This will
+be a politic move for the Soviets as well as England. For the
+bourgeoisie in Bavaria dislike Prussia as much as the communists dislike
+her. But I bore you with intrigue. We have had our little revolution for
+which you must allow me to accept an honest share of credit.... Let us
+have another flask."</p>
+
+<p>"An interesting story," Dorn agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"You still smile, Erik?"</p>
+
+<p>"More than ever."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, then truly, we are of the same pattern."</p>
+
+<p>Von Stinnes stared at him sadly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You are my first companion in five years," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"As you are mine," Dorn answered. "Here ... to the success of all your
+villainies and our friendship."</p>
+
+<p>"Which is not one of them," the Baron murmured. "You believe me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! it is almost a sensation to be believed ... for speaking the truth.
+I feel as if I have committed some exotic sin. Yes, confession is good
+for the soul."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go back to the hotel?"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron leaned forward and grasped Dorn's hand feverishly.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish to joke any more," he whispered. "I have told you the
+truth. And you still smile at me. You are a curious man. I have for long
+sat like an exile surrounded by my villainies and smiling alone at the
+world. But it is impossible to live alone, to become someone whom nobody
+knows, whom trusting people mistake for someone else. I have wanted to
+be known as I am ... but have been afraid. Ah! I am very drunk ... for
+you seem still amused."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn squeezed his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you are my first friend," he said. The Baron followed him to his
+feet. They were silent on the way to the hotel. Von Stinnes walked with
+his arm linked in Dorn's. Before the latter's room he halted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good night, sweet prince," he mumbled drowsily, "and may angels guard
+thy sleep."</p>
+
+<p>Alone, he moved unsteadily down the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Mathilde was gone. Moving about the room, Dorn found a note left for
+him. He read:</p>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>"A man was here asking for you. An American officer. I met him in the
+lobby and mentioned there was an American here and he asked your name.
+When I told him he seemed to be excited. He said his name is Captain
+Hazlitt and he is in the courier service on his way from Paris to
+Vienna. I do not like him. Please be careful.</p>
+
+<p class="author">"<span class="smcap">Mathilde Dohmann.</span>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX4" id="CHAPTER_IX4"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the days that followed Dorn sought to interest himself in the details
+of the situation. The thing buzzed and gyrated about him, tiring his
+thought with its innumerable surfaces. Revolution. A new state. New
+flags and new slogans.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't admire it," he explained to Mathilde at the end of the first
+week, "because its grotesqueries makes me laugh. And I cannot laugh at
+it because its intensity saddens me. To observe the business sanely is
+to come to as many conclusions as there are words."</p>
+
+<p>Mathilde had recovered some of her enthusiasm. But the mania that had
+illuminated her thought was gone. She spoke and worked eagerly through
+the days, moving from department to department, helping to establish
+some of the innumerable stenographic archives the endless stream of
+soviet pronouncements and orders were beginning to require. But at night
+her listlessness returned.</p>
+
+<p>"There is doubt in you too," Dorn smiled at her. "I am sorry for that.
+It has been the same with so many others. They have, alas! become
+reasonable. And to become reasonable ... Well, revolution does not
+thrive on reason. It needs something more active. You, Mathilde, were a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>
+revolutionist in Berlin. Now you are a stenographer. Alas! one collapses
+under a load of dream and finds one's self in an uninteresting Utopia,
+if that means anything. Epigrams lie around the street corners of Munich
+waiting new text-books."</p>
+
+<p>They were walking idly toward the caf&eacute; von Stinnes had appointed as a
+rendezvous. It was late and the dark streets were deserted. The shops
+had been closed all week. The Revolution was struggling in poorly
+ventilated council-rooms with problems of economics. Beyond the
+persistent rumors that the city, cut off from the fields, would starve
+in another two days and that the legendary armies of Hoffmann were
+within a stone's throw of the Hofbrau House, there was little
+excitement. "My employers," von Stinnes had explained on the fourth day,
+"are waiting to see if the Soviet can stand against the Noske armies
+from Prussia. The armies will arrive in a few weeks. If the Soviet can
+defeat them and thus establish its authentic independence, my employers
+in Versailles will then finance the Bavarian bourgeoisie and assist in
+the overthrow of the Communists. On the one condition, of course, that
+the bourgeoisie maintain Bavaria as an independent nation. And this the
+bourgeoisie are not at all averse to doing. It sounds preposterous,
+doesn't it? You smile. But all intrigue is preposterous, even when most
+successful."</p>
+
+<p>"I quite believe," Dorn had answered. "I've long been convinced that
+intrigue is nothing more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> than the fantastic imbecilities unimaginative
+men palm off on one another for cleverness."</p>
+
+<p>Now, walking with Mathilde, Dorn felt an inclination to rid himself of
+the week's political preoccupation. Mathilde was beginning to have a
+sentimental influence upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps if she loved me something would come back," he thought. "Anyway
+it would be nice to feel a woman in love with me again."</p>
+
+<p>An innocuous sadness sat comfortably in his heart. Later he would
+embrace her. Kiss ... watch her undress. Things that would mean
+nothing.... But they might help waste time, and perhaps give him another
+glimpse of ... He paused in his thought and felt a dizziness enter his
+silence. Words spun. "The face of stars," he murmured under his breath,
+and laughed as Mathilde looked inquiringly up at him.</p>
+
+<p>The caf&eacute; was deserted. Von Stinnes, alone in a booth, called "Hello" to
+them as they entered.</p>
+
+<p>"We have the place almost to ourselves," he said. "There are some people
+in the other room."</p>
+
+<p>He looked affectionately at the two as they sat down, and added, "How
+goes the courtship?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gravely and with cautious cynicism," Dorn answered. "We find it
+difficult to overcome our sanities."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at the girl and covered her hand with his. Her eyes regarded
+him luminously. They sat eating their late meal, von Stinnes chatting of
+the latest developments.... A mob of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> communist workingmen had attacked
+the poet Muhsam while he was unburdening himself of proletarian oratory
+in the Schiller Square.</p>
+
+<p>"They chased him for two blocks into the Palais," the Baron smiled, "and
+he lost his hat. And perhaps his portfolio. They are beginning to
+distrust the poets. They want something besides revolutionary iambics
+now. Muhsam, however, is content. He received a postal card this
+afternoon with a skull and cross-bones drawn on it informing him he
+would be assassinated Friday at 3 P.M. It was signed by 'The Society for
+the Abolition of Monstrosities.' He is having it done into an
+expressionist placard and it will undoubtedly restore his standing with
+the Council of Ten. Franz Lipp, the foreign minister, you know, has
+ordered all the telephones taken out of the foreign office building.
+It's an old failing of his&mdash;a phobia against telephones. They send him
+into fits when they ring. He has incidentally offered to sign a separate
+peace with the Entente. A crafty move, but premature. And the burghers
+have been ordered under pain of death to surrender all firearms within
+twenty-four hours."</p>
+
+<p>The talk ran on. Mathilde, feigning sleep, placed her head on Dorn's
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"You play with the little one," whispered von Stinnes. "She is in love."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn placed his arm around her and smiled at her half-opened eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A man, walking unsteadily across the empty caf&eacute;, stopped in front of the
+booth.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been looking for you," he said. "You don't remember me, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorn looked up. An American uniform. An excited face.</p>
+
+<p>"My name's Hazlitt. Come out here."</p>
+
+<p>Von Stinnes leveled his monocle witheringly upon the interloper and
+murmured an aside, "He's drunk...."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn stood up.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I remember you now," he said. The man's tone had oppressed him.
+"What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>He detached himself from Mathilde and stepped into the room. Hazlitt
+stared at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I owe you something," he spoke slowly. "Come out here."</p>
+
+<p>Watching the man as he approached, Dorn became aware of a rage in
+himself. His muscles had tightened and a nervousness was shaking in his
+words. The man was a stranger, yet there was an uncomfortable intimacy
+in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt stood breathing heavily. This was Erik Dorn&mdash;the man who had had
+Rachel. Wine swept a flame through his thought. God! this was the man.
+She was gone, but this was the man. Shoot him down like a dog! Shoot him
+down! Kill the grin of him. He'd pay. He'd killed something. Shoot him
+down! There was a gun under his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> coat&mdash;army revolver. Better than
+shooting Germans. This was the man.</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to pay for it," he spoke. "Go on, say something."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn's rage hesitated. A mistake. What the devil was up?</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you've forgotten her," Hazlitt whispered. Shoot him! Voices inside
+demanded wildly that he shoot. Not talk, but kill.</p>
+
+<p>"Rachel," he cried suddenly. His eyes stopped seeing.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn jumped for the gun that had appeared and caught his arm in time.
+Rachel&mdash;then this was something about Rachel? Hazlitt ... Rachel. What?
+A fight over Rachel? Rachel gone, dead for always. Get the gun away,
+though....</p>
+
+<p>They were stumbling across the room, twisting and locked together. He
+saw von Stinnes rise, stand undecided. Mathilde's face, like something
+shooting by outside a car window. And a strong man trying to kill him
+... for Rachel. A Galahad for Rachel.</p>
+
+<p>His thought faded into a rage. A curse as the man grabbed at his throat.
+The gun was still in the air. His wrist was beginning to ache from
+struggling with the thing. This was part of the idiocy of things. But he
+must look out. Perhaps only a moment more to live. The man was weeping.
+Mumbling ... "you made a fool out of her ... You dirty...."</p>
+
+<p>As they continued their stumbling and clutch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>ing, a fury entered Dorn.
+He became aware of eyes blazing against him&mdash;drunken, furious eyes that
+were weeping. With a violent lunge he twisted the gun out of the man's
+hand. There was an instant of silence and the man came hurling against
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn fired. Down ... "my head ..." He lay still. The body of Hazlitt
+sprawled over him. For a moment the two men remained embraced on the
+floor. Then the body of Hazlitt rolled slowly from on top. It fell on
+its back&mdash;a dead face covered with blood staring emptily at the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn, with the edge of an iron table foot embedded in his head, lay
+breathing unevenly, his eyes closed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X4" id="CHAPTER_X4"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+
+<p>The blinds were drawn. Cheering drifted in through the open window.
+Mathilde sat in a chair. She was watching him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" he murmured. "What's up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Erik ..."</p>
+
+<p>She fell to her knees beside the bed and began to weep. He lay quietly
+listening to her. Bandages around his head. A lunatic with a gun. Yes.
+Rachel. The man had been in love with Rachel. Pains like noises in his
+ears.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't talk...."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm all right. Where's von Stinnes?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Shh...."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled feebly. She was holding his hand, still weeping. A memory
+returned vividly. A man with blazing eyes. He had lost his temper. But
+there had been something more than that. Two imbeciles fighting over a
+thing that had died for both of them. Clowns at each other's throat. A
+background unfolded itself. Against it he lay watching the two men. Here
+was something like a quaint old print with a title, "Fate...."</p>
+
+<p>"Bumped my head," he murmured. But another thought persisted. It moved
+through the pain in his skull, unable to straighten itself into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> lines
+of words. It was something about fighting for Rachel. He would ask
+questions.</p>
+
+<p>"What happened, Mathilde? Where'd he go?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean the man? 'Shh.... Don't talk now."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, don't be silly."</p>
+
+<p>The thinness of his voice surprised him.</p>
+
+<p>"What became of the fool?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you shot him. Now be quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, so I did. I remember. When he jumped at me."</p>
+
+<p>A sinking feeling almost drifted him away. He felt as if he had become
+hungry. The man was dead.... "I killed him. Well ... what of it?"</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes and looked at the room. It was day&mdash;afternoon,
+perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor says you'll be all right in a few days. But you must be
+quiet...."</p>
+
+<p>"Von Stinnes," he murmured. "There'll be trouble. Call him, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>Mathilde turned away. Now the pain was less. He could hear cheering
+outside. A demonstration. Workingmen marching under new flags.</p>
+
+<p>"Von Stinnes is under arrest, Erik."</p>
+
+<p>"What for? A new government?" What a crazy business.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Don't talk, please. Later...."</p>
+
+<p>He was too weak to sit up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Things will have to be straightened out," he muttered. "The fool was an
+American officer. There'll be trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"No, don't worry. Von Stinnes has fixed things."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes grew heavy and closed. Sleep ... and let things, fixed or
+unfixed, go to the devil.</p>
+
+<p>When he awoke again the room was lighted. Mathilde, standing by the
+window, turned as he stirred.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you awake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and hungry."</p>
+
+<p>She brought a tray to his bed. He raised himself carefully, his head
+unbearably heavy. Mathilde watched him with wide eyes as he sipped some
+broth.</p>
+
+<p>"What did they arrest the Baron for?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She waited till he had finished, and cleared the bed, sitting down on
+the edge. Her face lowered toward him till her lips touched and kissed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"For murder," she whispered. Another kiss. "Now you must be quiet and
+I'll tell you. He gave himself up when the police came. We carried you
+out first. And then I left him."</p>
+
+<p>"But," Dorn looked bewilderedly into the eyes of the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"It was easier for him than for you. They would take you away for trial
+to America. But he will be tried here. And he will come out all right.
+Don't worry. We thought your skull was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> fractured, but the doctor says
+it was only a hard blow."</p>
+
+<p>She lowered her head beside him on the pillow and whispered, "I love
+you! Poor Erik! He is defenseless&mdash;with a broken head."</p>
+
+<p>"You are kind," he answered; "von Stinnes, too. But we must set matters
+right...."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, be still!"</p>
+
+<p>He grew silent. It was night again. In the morning he would be strong
+enough to get up. A misty calm, the pain almost gone, veins throbbing
+and a little split in his thought ... but no more.</p>
+
+<p>"I will sleep by you," Mathilde spoke. She stood up and removed her
+waist and shoes. He watched her with interest. Another woman curiously
+like Anna, like Rachel&mdash;like the two creatures in Paris. Shoulders
+suddenly bare. Possessive, unashamed gestures.... She lay down beside
+him with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Erik! I take advantage of a broken head."</p>
+
+<p>"No," he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>They lay motionless, her head touching his shoulder timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"I could live with you forever and be happy," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"We will see about forever&mdash;when it comes."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like me&mdash;perhaps&mdash;now?"</p>
+
+<p>He would have preferred her silent. Silence at least was an effortless
+lie. To make love was pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>posterous. How many times had he said, "I love
+you?" Too many. But she was young and it would sound pretty in her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Mathilde, dear one."</p>
+
+<p>Her arm trembled across his body.</p>
+
+<p>It was difficult, but he would say it.... "Yes, in an odd sort of way,
+Mathilde, I love you...."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! you are only being polite&mdash;because I have fed you broth."</p>
+
+<p>"No. As much as I can love anything...."</p>
+
+<p>"Later, Erik. 'Shh! Sleep if you can. Oh, I am shameless."</p>
+
+<p>She had moved against him. He thought with a smile, "What an original
+way of nursing a broken head!"</p>
+
+<p>Later, tired with a renewed effort to straighten out words about the
+fool and Rachel and himself, he closed his eyes. Mathilde was still
+awake.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see von Stinnes in the morning," he murmured drowsily. "Von
+Stinnes ... a gallant friend...."</p>
+
+<p>... Someone knocking on the door aroused him. Dawn was in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Matty," he called. She slept. He found himself able to rise and his
+legs carried him unsteadily to the door. A tall marine, outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Herr Erik Dorn?"</p>
+
+<p>Dorn nodded dizzily.</p>
+
+<p>The man went on in German. "I come from Stinnes. I have a letter for
+you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He took the letter from his hand and moved hurriedly to a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," vaguely. The marine saluted and walked off. Mathilde had
+awakened.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing?"</p>
+
+<p>She slipped out of bed and hurried to him.</p>
+
+<p>"A letter," he answered. He allowed her to help him back to his pillow.
+Reclining again, his dizziness grew less.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll read it for you," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Von Stinnes...."</p>
+
+<p>"It may be important."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be able to read in a moment."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head and slipped the envelope from his weakening fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"I know about von Stinnes. Don't be afraid. May I?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded and she began to read:</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Erik Dorn</span>:</p>
+
+<p>"I write this at night, and to-morrow I will be ended. You must not
+misunderstand what I do. It is a business long delayed. But I have made
+a full confession in writing for the Entente commission&mdash;ten closely
+written pages. A masterpiece, if I have to boast myself. And in order to
+avoid the anti-climax which your sense of honor would undoubtedly
+precipitate, I will put a period to it in an hour. A trigger pulled, and
+the nobility of my sad country loses another of its shining lights. I am
+overawed by the quaint justice of life. I end<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> a career of villainy with
+a final lie. It would really be impossible for me to die telling a
+truth. The devil himself would appear and protest. But with a lie on my
+lips, it is easy. Indeed, somehow, natural. But I pose&mdash;a male Magdalene
+in tears. Do not misunderstand&mdash;too much. You are my friend, and I would
+like to live a while longer that we might amuse ourselves together. You
+have been an education. I find myself even now on this auspicious
+midnight writing with your words. But I mistrust you, friend. You would
+deny me this delicate martyrdom if I lived. For you are at bottom
+lamentably honorable. So now, as you read this, I am dead (a sentence
+out of Marie Corelli) and the situation is beyond adjustment. Please
+accept my service as gracefully as it is rendered. The confession, as I
+said, is a masterpiece. It would please my vanity if sometime you could
+read it. For in this, my last lie, I have extended myself. Dear friend,
+there is a certain awe which I cannot overcome&mdash;for the drama, or
+comedy, finishes too perfectly. You once called me a Don Quixote of
+disillusion. And now, perhaps, I will inspire a few new phrases. Let
+them be poignant, but above all graceful. I would have for my epitaph
+your smile and the whimsical irony of your comment. Better this than the
+hand-rubbing grunt of the firing-squad returning to barracks after its
+labors. Alas! that I will not be near you to hear it. But perhaps there
+will come to me as I submit myself to the opening tortures of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> hell, an
+echo of your words. And this will bring me a smile with which to cheat
+the devil. I bequeathe to you my silver cigarette-case. You are my
+brother and I say good-bye to you.</p>
+
+<p>
+"<span class="smcap">Karl Von Stinnes</span>."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"No postscript?" Dorn asked softly.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span></p>
+<p>Mathilde shook her head. There was silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you find out about him, please?" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>The girl dressed herself quickly and left the room without speaking.
+Alone, Dorn lay with the letter in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke aloud after minutes, as if addressing someone invisible.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no phrases, dear friend. Let my tears be an epigram."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_V" id="PART_V"></a>PART V</h2>
+
+<h2>SILENCE</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I5">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II5">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III5">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV5">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V5">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI5">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I5" id="CHAPTER_I5"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>The sea swarmed under the night. A moon road floated on the long dark
+swells. From the deck of the throbbing ship Dorn looked steadily toward
+the circle of moving water. In the salon, the ship's orchestra was
+playing. A rollicking sound of music drifted away into the dark monotone
+of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>A romantic mood. A chair on an upper deck. Stars and a moon road over
+the sea. Better to sit mumbling to himself than join in the chatter of
+the cabin. The gayly lighted salon alive with laughter, music, and
+voices touched his ears&mdash;a tiny music-box tinkling valiantly through the
+dark sweep of endless yesterdays, endless to-morrows that sighed out of
+the hidden water. The night was an old yesterday, the sea an old
+to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>A sadness in his heart that kept him from smiling, a strange comedy of
+words in his thought, a harlequin with the night sitting on his lap.
+There were things to remember. There were memories. Unnecessary to
+think. Words formed themselves into phrases. Phrases made dim pictures
+as if the past was struggling fitfully to remain somehow alive.... His
+good-bye to Mathilde. And long, stupid weeks in Berlin. The girl had
+been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> absurd. Absurd, an impulsive little shrew. With demands. Four
+months of Mathilde. Unsuspected variants of boredom. Clothed in her
+unrelenting love like an Indian in full war dress. Yet to part with her
+had made him sad.</p>
+
+<p>The sea rolled mystically away from his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"An old pattern," his thought murmured, "holding eternities. And the
+little music keeps tinkling downstairs. A butterfly of sound in the
+night. Like a miniature of all living. Ah, I'm growing sentimental.
+Sitting holding hands with the sea. She was sad when I left her. What of
+it? Von Stinnes. Dear friend! No sadness there. He was right. New
+phrases, graceful emotions. What an artist! But Warren couldn't write
+the story. It has to be played by a hurdy-gurdy on a guillotine."</p>
+
+<p>He let his words wander gropingly over the water until a silence entered
+him. Thus life wandered away. The sea beat time to the passing of ships,
+changing ships. But always the same beat. It was the constancy of the
+stars that saddened him. September stars. The stars were yesterdays.
+Yes, unchanging spaces, unchanging yesterdays, and a ship's orchestra
+dropping little valses into the dark sea. He opened a silver
+cigarette-case&mdash;an heirloom with a crest on it. Von Stinnes again.
+Curious how he remembered him&mdash;a memory neither sad nor merry&mdash;but final
+like the sea. A phantom of word and incident that bowed with an
+enchanting irony out of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> April day. The other, the fool with the
+gun.... Good God, he was a murderer! He smiled. Von Stinnes, a
+melancholy Pierrot doffing his hat with a gallant snicker to the moon.
+Hazlitt, a pantaloon. Yet tragic. Yes, there was something in the caf&eacute;
+that night&mdash;two men hurling themselves drunkenly against the taunting
+emptiness of life. The rage had come because he had remembered Rachel. A
+sudden mysterious remembering. A remembering that she was gone. It had
+torn for a moment at his heart, shouted in his ears and driven him mad.</p>
+
+<p>Something had taken Rachel out of him. Time had eaten her image out of
+him. He had remembered this in the caf&eacute;. But why had he fired at the
+stranger? Because the man's eyes blazed. Because he had become for an
+instant an intolerable comrade.</p>
+
+<p>"We fought each other for what someone else had done to us," Dorn
+murmured. "Not Rachel but someone that couldn't be touched. Absurd!"
+Hazlitt slipped like a shadow out of his mind&mdash;an unanswered question.</p>
+
+<p>The throbbing ship with its tinkling orchestra, its laughing, chattering
+faces, was carrying him home over a dark sea. At night he sat alone
+watching the circle of water. Four vanished nights. Four more nights. He
+sighed. The sadness that lay in his heart desired to talk to him. He
+struggled to change his thinking. Ideas that were new to him arose at
+night on the ship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not now," he whispered. He was postponing something. But the night and
+the rolling sea were swallowing his resistance. Words that would tell
+him the pain in his heart waited for him.... "Anna. Dear God, Anna! It's
+that. But why Anna now? It was easy before."</p>
+
+<p>Words of Anna waited for him. He stared into the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"I want her. I must go back to her. Anna, forgive me!"</p>
+
+<p>A murmur that the darkness might understand. The long rolling sea
+listened automatically. Weak fool! Yet he felt better. He could think
+now without hiding from words that waited.</p>
+
+<p>His heart wept in silence. The unbidden ones came.... Anna&mdash;standing
+looking at him. A despair, a death in her face. Something tearing itself
+out of her. What pain! But no sound. An agony deeper than sound in her
+eyes. He trembled at the memory. The crucified happy one....</p>
+
+<p>Dear God, would he always have to remember now? Other pictures were
+gone. They had drifted away leaving little phrases dragging in his
+thought. Now Anna had found him. Not a phantom, but the thing as he had
+left it, without a detail gone. The gesture of her agony intact. His
+thought shifted vainly away. He knew she was standing as he had left
+her&mdash;horribly inanimate&mdash;and he must go back. He would hold her in his
+arms, kiss her lips, kneel before her weeping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> for forgiveness. Ah! he
+would be kind. At night he would sit holding her head in his arms,
+stroking her hair; whispering, "Forget ... forget! A year or two of
+madness&mdash;gone forever. But years now waiting for us. New years.
+Everything is gone but us. That brought me back. Mists blew away. Dear
+Anna, I love you."</p>
+
+<p>He was making love to Anna, his wife. A droll finale. Tears came in his
+eyes. There lay happiness. She would move again. The rigid figure that
+he had left behind and that was waiting rigidly, would smile again. He
+plunged desperately into the dream of words to be. The music from the
+salon had ended. Better, silence. Nothing to remind one of the fugitive
+tinkle of life. A dark, interminable sea, a moon road, a sigh of rolling
+water and a ship throbbing in the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Anna, I love you." And she would smile, her white face and eyes
+that were constant as the stars. Constant, eternal. Love that was no
+mystery but a caress of sea nights. Forgive him. And her sorrow would
+heal under his fingers. It would end all right. The two years&mdash;the
+halloo of strange sterile things&mdash;buried under the smile of her eyes ...
+deep, sorrowful, beautiful. Words to be. "Anna we will grow old
+together, holding to each other and smiling; lovers whom the years make
+always younger." Words that were to heal the strange sadness that had
+come to him and start a dead figure into life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He stood up and walked to the rail, staring into the churn of water
+underneath.</p>
+
+<p>"It's slow," he murmured. "Four more days."</p>
+
+<p>Anna's love would hide the world from him. But a fear loosened his
+heart. The smell of sea whirled in his veins.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," he thought dreamily, "perhaps there will be nothing. She will
+say no."</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, straightened with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"A wife deserter, a seducer, a murderer. I mustn't expect too much, eh,
+von Stinnes?"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at the night. The sound of the Baron's name seemed to bring a
+strength into him. He walked toward his berth, his head unnecessarily
+high, smoking at his cigarette and humming a tune remembered from the
+Munich caf&eacute;s.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II5" id="CHAPTER_II5"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>There were people in New York who came to Erik Dorn and said: "Tell us
+about Europe. And Germany. Is it really true that...." As if there were
+some inner revelation&mdash;a few precious phrases of undistilled truth that
+the correspondent of the <i>New Opinion</i> had seen fit to withhold from his
+communications.</p>
+
+<p>The skyscrapers were intact. Windows shot into the air. Streets bubbled
+with people. A useless sky clung tenaciously to its position above the
+roof-gardens. The scene was amiable. Dorn spent a day congratulating
+himself upon the genius of his homeland. He felt a pride in the
+unbearable confusion of architecture and traffic.</p>
+
+<p>But in the nine months of his absence there had been a change; or at
+least a change seemed to have occurred. Perhaps he had brought the
+change with him. It was evident that the Niagara of news pouring out of
+Europe into the press and periodicals of the day had inundated the
+provincialism of his countrymen. People were floundering about in a daze
+of facts&mdash;groping ludicrously through labyrinths of information.</p>
+
+<p>It had been easy during the war. Democracy-Autocracy; a tableau to look
+at. Thought had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> been unnecessary. In fact, the popular intelligence had
+legislated against it. The tableau was enough&mdash;a sublimated symbol of
+the little papier-mach&eacute; rigmarole of their daily lives, the immemorial
+spectacle of Good and Evil at death grips, limelighted for a moment by
+the cannon in France. The unreason and imbecility of the mob crowned
+themselves. Thought became <i>l&egrave;se majest&eacute;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn returned to find the tableau had suffered an explosion. It had for
+some mysterious reason glibly identified as reaction burst into
+fragments and vanished in a skyrocket chaos. Shantung, Poland, little
+nations, pogroms, plebiscites, Ireland, steel strikes, red armies,
+Fourteen Points, The Truth About This, The Real Story of That, the
+League of Nations, the riots in Berlin, in Dublin, Milan, Paris, London,
+Chicago; secret treaties, pacts, betrayals, Kolchak&mdash;an incomprehensible
+muddle of newspaper headlines shrieked from morning to morning and said
+nothing. The distracted mob become privy for the moment to the vast
+biological disorder eternally existent under its nose, snorted, yelped,
+and shook indignant sawdust out of its ears.</p>
+
+<p>In vain the editorial Jabberwocks came galloping daily down the slopes
+of Sinai bearing new tablets written in fire. The original and only
+genuine tableau was gone. The starry heavens which concealed the Deity
+Himself had become a junkpile full of its fragments.</p>
+
+<p>"In the temporary collapse of the banalities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> that conceal the world
+from their eyes," thought Dorn, "they're trying to figure out what's
+really what around them&mdash;and making a rather humorous mess of it."</p>
+
+<p>He went about for several days dining with friends, conferring with
+Edwards and the directors of the <i>New Opinion</i>, and slowly shaping his
+"experiences abroad" into phonograph records that played themselves
+automatically under the needles of questions.</p>
+
+<p>At night, he amused himself with reading the radical and conservative
+periodicals, his own magazine among them.</p>
+
+<p>"The thing isn't confined to the bloated capitalists alone," he laughed
+one afternoon while sitting with Warren Lockwood in the latter's rooms.
+"The radicals are up a tree and the conservatives down a cellar. What do
+you make of it, Warren?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't paid much attention to it," the novelist smiled. "I've been
+busy on a book. What's all this stuff about Germany, anyway? I read some
+things of yours but I can't figure it out."</p>
+
+<p>Dorn exploded with another laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You're all a pack of simpletons and bounders, still moist behind the
+ears, Warren. The whole lot of you. I've been in New York three days and
+I've begun to feel that there isn't a remotely intelligent human animal
+in the place. I'm going to retreat inland. In Chicago, at least, people
+know enough to keep their mouths shut. I'll tell you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> what the trouble
+is in a nutshell. People want things straight again. They want black and
+white so's they can all mass on the white side and make faces at the
+evil-doers who prefer the black. They don't want facts, diagnosis,
+theories, interpretations, reports. They want somebody to stand up and
+announce in a loud, clear voice, 'Tweedledum is wrong. Tweedledee is
+right, everything else to the contrary is Poppycock.' Thus they'd be
+able to put an end to their own thinking and bury themselves in their
+own little alleys and be happy again. You know as well as I, it makes
+them miserable to think. Restless, irritable, indignant. It's like
+having bites&mdash;the more they're scratched the worse they itch. It's the
+war, of course. The war has been a failure. The race has caught itself
+red-handed in a lie. Now everybody is running around trying to confess
+to everybody else that what he said in the past was a lie and that the
+real truth is as follows. And there's where the trouble begins. There
+ain't no such animal."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Lockwood, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you do," Dorn grinned. "You don't see anything. The trouble is ...
+oh, well, the trouble is as I said that the human race is out in the
+open where it can get a good look at itself. The war raised a
+curtain...."</p>
+
+<p>"What about the radicals, though? They seem to be saying something
+definite?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, shooting one another down by the thousands in Berlin&mdash;as they will
+some day in New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> York. Yes, the radicals are definite enough.... The
+revolution rumbling away in Germany isn't a standup fight between
+Capital and Labor. It's Radical <i>versus</i> Radical. Just as the war was
+Imperialist <i>versus</i> Imperialist. One of the outstanding lessons of the
+last decade is the fact that the world's natural enemies haven't yet had
+a chance at each other, being too busy murdering among themselves. It's
+coming, though. Another tableau. All this hysteria and uncertainty will
+gradually simmer down into another right-and-wrong issue&mdash;with life
+boiling away as always under a black and white surface."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think we're going to go red here?" Lockwood asked pensively.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll take a little time," Dorn went on. He had become used to reciting
+his answers in the manner of a schoolmaster. "But it's bound to happen.
+Bolshevism is a logical evolution of democracy&mdash;another step downward in
+the descent of the individual. Until the arrival of Lenine and Trotzky
+on the field, there's no question but what American Democracy was the
+most atrocious insult leveled at the intelligence of the race by its
+inferiors. Bolshevism goes us one better, however. And just as soon as
+our lowest types, meaning the majority of our politicians, thinkers, and
+writers, get to realizing that bolshevism isn't a Red Terror with a bomb
+in one hand and a dagger in the other, but a state of society surpassing
+even their own in points of weakness and abnormal silliness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> they'll
+start arresting everybody who isn't a bolshevist. Capital will put up a
+fight, but capital is already doomed in this country. It isn't respected
+for its strength, vision, and creative powers. It is tolerated to-day
+for no other reason than that it has cornered the platitude market. I'm
+telling you, Warren, that when we get it drummed into our heads that
+bolshevism isn't strong and powerful, but weaker, more prohibitive, more
+sentimental, more politically inefficient, and generally worse than our
+own government, we'll have a dictator of the proletaire in Washington
+within a week."</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood sighed unhappily and lighted a pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"If you were talking about men and women maybe I could join you," he
+answered. "But I got a hunch you're just another one of those newspaper
+Neds. The woods are full of smart alecks like you and they make me kind
+of tired, because I never can figure out what they're talking about. And
+I'll be damned if they know themselves. They think in big hunks and keep
+a lot of words floating in the air.... What old Carl calls 'Blaa ...
+blaa....'"</p>
+
+<p>The two friends sat regarding each other critically. Dorn nodded after a
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right," he smiled. "I'm part of the blaa-blaa. I heard them
+blaa-blaa with guns in Munich one night. And up in the Baltic. You're
+right. Anything one says about absurdity becomes absurd itself. And
+talking about the human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> race in chunks is necessarily talking absurdly.
+Tell me about that fellow Tesla."</p>
+
+<p>"They deported him to Rooshia," Lockwood answered. "There was quite a
+romance about the girl. That was your girl, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Rachel. She wouldn't tag along, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I suppose they wouldn't let her. I don't know. There was a lot of
+stuff in the newspapers."</p>
+
+<p>The novelist seemed to hesitate on the brink of further information. His
+friend smiled understandingly.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter, Warren. Go ahead. Shoot."</p>
+
+<p>"Cured, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;dead."</p>
+
+<p>Lockwood nodded sagely, his mouth half open as if his words were staring
+at Dorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there isn't much I know. I met a little girl the other day&mdash;Mary
+James; know her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"She was quite excited. She told me something about an artist that used
+to hang around Tesla. It seems that he kidnapped her and carted her to
+Chicago. This James girl was all upset."</p>
+
+<p>An interruption in the person of Edwards the editor occurred. The talk
+lapsed once more into world problems with Lockwood listening,
+skeptically open-mouthed.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the evening Edwards suddenly declared, "You're making a big
+mistake leaving New York,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> Erik. You've got a market now. Your stuff
+went big."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm through," Dorn answered. He arose and took his hat. "I'm leaving
+for Chicago to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, smiling at Lockwood.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going home."</p>
+
+<p>The novelist nodded sagely and murmured, "Uh-huh. Well, good-night."</p>
+
+<p>Making his way slowly through the night crowds and electrophobia of
+lower Manhattan, Dorn felt peacefully out of place. His thought had
+become: "I want to get back to where I was." In the midst of the
+mechanical carnival of Broadway he caught a memory of himself walking to
+work with a stream of faces&mdash;of a sardonic Erik Dorn to whom the street
+was a pattern; to whom the mysteries tugging at heels that scratched the
+pavements were the amusing variants of nothing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III5" id="CHAPTER_III5"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Eddy."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I have some news for you."</p>
+
+<p>The round, smiling face of Eddy Meredith that refused to change with
+age, beamed at Anna.</p>
+
+<p>"Erik's back."</p>
+
+<p>The beam hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"He wrote. He's coming to see me."</p>
+
+<p>"Anna...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear, I know. It sort of frightens me, too. But," she laughed
+quietly, "there is nothing to be frightened about. He didn't give any
+address or I would have written him telling him."</p>
+
+<p>"He must know you're divorced," Meredith spoke nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know if he does, Eddy."</p>
+
+<p>She reached her hand out and placed it over his, her eyes glancing at
+the figure of Isaac Dorn. He was asleep in a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, dearest, don't worry," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be hard for you."</p>
+
+<p>Meredith's face acquired an abnormal expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you'll feel different." He sighed, and Anna shook her head.
+"When's he coming?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow night."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say anything in the letter?"</p>
+
+<p>She stood up and went to a desk.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is." A smile touched her lips. "He always wrote curious
+letters. Words and words when there was nothing to say. And a single
+phrase when there was something." She read from a sheet of paper&mdash;"'Dear
+Anna, I am coming home. Erik.'"</p>
+
+<p>In the corner Isaac Dorn opened his watery eyes and stared at the
+ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you awake, father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Anna."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I tell you I'd heard from Erik?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man mumbled in his beard.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll be out to-morrow night," she said, smiling at him. He nodded his
+head, stared at her, and seemed to doze off again.</p>
+
+<p>"Father is failing," Anna whispered. Meredith had arisen. His face had
+grown blank. He walked toward the hall, saying, "I'll go now."</p>
+
+<p>Anna came quickly to him. Her hands reached his shoulders and she stood
+regarding him intently.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing any more, dear. It all ended long ago. Perhaps I'll be
+sad when I see him. But sad only for him."</p>
+
+<p>Meredith smiled and spoke with an effort at lightness.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember, I don't hold you to anything. I want you only to be happy. In
+your own way. Not in my way. And if it will mean happiness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> for you to
+... for you to go back, why ..." He shrugged his shoulders and continued
+to smile with hurt eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Eddy...." Her face came close to his. He hesitated until her arms
+closed tightly around him. He felt her warm lips cling and open.</p>
+
+<p>"You've never kissed like that before, Anna." There was almost a fear in
+his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I never knew I wanted you," she whispered, "till now&mdash;till this
+minute; till you said about my going back."</p>
+
+<p>Her face was alive with emotion. A laugh, and she was in his arms again.
+They stood embraced, murmuring tenderly to each other.</p>
+
+<p>Later in her bedroom Anna undressed slowly. Her thoughts seemed to be
+quarreling with her emotions, her emotions with her thoughts. This was
+Erik's room&mdash;ancient torture chamber. Something still clinging to its
+walls and furniture. Ah, nights of agony still in the air she breathed.
+Her words formed themselves quietly. They came to peer into her
+heart&mdash;polite visitors standing on tiptoe before a closed cell that hid
+something.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything?" she murmured. "No. I'm different."</p>
+
+<p>She thought of the day she had come out of a grave and resumed living.
+It had seemed as if she must learn to walk again, to breathe, to
+discover anew the meanings of words. At first&mdash;listless, uncertain. Then
+new steps, new meanings. Her mind moved back through the year. She had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>
+wept only once&mdash;on the night of the divorce. But that was as one weeps
+at an old grave, even a stranger's grave. The rest had been Eddy.</p>
+
+<p>"I've changed. And I've been happier in many ways."</p>
+
+<p>She was talking to herself. Why? "I'm a different Anna." But why think
+of it? It was settled.</p>
+
+<p>She lay in the bed and her eyes opened at the darkness. Here was where
+she had lain when she had died. Each night, new deaths. Here the lonely
+darkness that had once choked her, torn at her eyes and made her scream
+aloud with pain. Things on the other side of a grave. Memories become
+alien. Things of long ago, when the whisper of the dark came like an
+insanity into her brain. "Erik gone! Erik gone! Gone!" A word that beat
+at her until she died&mdash;to awake in the morning and stumble once more
+through a day.</p>
+
+<p>Now she regarded the dark quietly. Black. It had no shape. It lay
+everywhere about her. But it did not burn nor choke. A peaceful,
+harmless dark that could only whisper as if it were asking something.
+What was it asking? Long arms of night reaching out for something. But
+there was nothing to give, even if she wanted to. Not even tears.
+Nothing to give, even though it whispered for alms. Whispered, "Erik ...
+Erik!" But there was no little memory. No big memory. Dead. Torn out of
+her. So the dark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> whispered to a dead thing in her that did not stir. A
+smile like a tired little gesture passed over her. "Poor Erik, poor
+Erik!" she murmured. "He must be thinking things that are no more."</p>
+
+<p>She grew chill for an instant.... The memory of agonies, of the screams
+her love had uttered as it died.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Erik!"</p>
+
+<p>She buried her cool cheek restlessly in the pillow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV5" id="CHAPTER_IV5"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Everything the same as it had been. As if he had stepped out of the
+office for a walk around the block and come back. But a sameness that
+had lost its familiarity. Old furniture, old faces, intensely a part of
+his consciousness, yet grown strange. It was like forgetting suddenly
+the name of a life-long friend.</p>
+
+<p>His entrance created a stir of excitement. He had spent the preceding
+two days arranging with the chief for his return. Barring the
+Nietzschean who had functioned in his absence, none had expected him.</p>
+
+<p>He pushed open the swinging door with an old gesture, and walked to his
+desk. Here he sat fumbling casually with proofs and the contents of
+pigeonholes. An old routine saying, "Pick me up." Familiar trifles
+rebuked him. The staff sauntered up one by one to greet him. Crowley,
+Mortinson, Sweeney.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, glad to see you back. We've sure missed you around here."</p>
+
+<p>Handshakes, smiles, embarrassed questions. A few strange faces to be
+resented and ignored. A strange locker arrangement in a corner to be
+frowned at. But the rest of it familiar, poignant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>&mdash;a world where he
+belonged, but that somehow did not seem to fit as snugly as once.
+Handshakes in the hall. A faint cheer in the composing-room as he
+sauntered for the first time to the stone. Slaps on the back. Busy men
+pausing to look at him with suddenly lighted faces. "Well, Mr. Dorn,
+greetings! How are ye? You're looking fine...."</p>
+
+<p>His world. It was the same, only now he was conscious of it. Before he
+had sat in its midst unaware of more than a detail here, a gesture
+there. Now he seemed to be looking down from an airplane&mdash;a strange
+bird's-eye view of things un-strange.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to his desk. The scene again reached out to embrace him.
+Familiar colored walls, familiar chatter and flurry of the afternoon
+edition going to press. He felt its embrace and yet remained outside it.
+There were things in him now that could never be a part of the
+unchanging old shop.</p>
+
+<p>During a lull in the forenoon he leaned back in his chair and stared
+into the pigeonholes. Memories like the unfocused images of a dream one
+remembers in the morning jumbled in his thought. The scene around him
+made things he recalled seem unreal. And the things he recalled made the
+scene around him seem unreal. He tried to divert himself by remembering
+definitely.... "We lay in a moon-lighted room and I whispered to her:
+'You have given me wings.' I held a gun and pulled the trigger as he
+jumped at me.... Then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> von Stinnes took the blame.... There's a
+restaurant in Kurfursten Damm where Mathilde and I.... What a night in
+Munich!... at the Banhoff. What do I remember most? Let me see.... Yes
+... there was a note pinned on the blanket saying she was gone and I ...
+But there's something else. What? Let me see...."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to evoke clearer pictures. But the sentences that passed
+through his mind seemed sterile, impotent. The past, set in motion by
+his effort, evaded him. Its details blurred like the spokes of a swiftly
+turning wheel. He smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"A sinner's darkest punishment is forgetting his sins," he murmured to
+himself. He thought of the evening before him. "Better not think of
+that. Read proofs." He had deferred his meeting with Anna until he
+should be able to come to her from his desk in the office.</p>
+
+<p>As the day passed an impatience seized him. The unfinished event brought
+a fear with it.... "I must put it out of my mind until to-night." But it
+remained and grew.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon he sat for an hour talking to Crowley and Mortinson. He
+listened to them chuckle at his anecdotes. Their faces beaming with
+affectionate interest seemed nevertheless to say, "All this is
+interesting, but not very important. Not as important as sitting in the
+office here and sending the paper to press day after day."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The words he was uttering bored him. He had heard them too often. Yet he
+kept on talking, trying to bury his impatience and fear in the sound of
+his voice. His anecdotes were no longer memories. They seemed to have
+become complete in themselves, related to nothing that had ever
+happened. He wondered as he talked if he were lying. These things he was
+saying were somehow improvisations&mdash;committed to memory. He kept on
+talking, eagerly, amusingly.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon passed. A walk through familiar streets and it was time
+for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not hungry. I'll eat, though."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, the evening ahead was important&mdash;very important. That accounted for
+the tedium of the day. But it would be dark soon. There would be a
+to-morrow. There had been other important evenings. It was not necessary
+to get too nervous. He had writhed before in the embrace of interminable
+hours, hours that seemed never to arrive. Then suddenly they came,
+looming, swelling into existence like oncoming locomotives that opened
+with a sudden rush from little discs into great roaring shapes. And once
+arrived they had seemed to be present forever. But suddenly the roaring
+shapes were little discs again. Hours died as people died&mdash;with an
+abrupt obliteration. Yet each new moment, like each new face, became
+again interminable. Time was an endlessness whose vanishing left its
+illusion unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>But now it was night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"At the end of this block is a house. Two doors more. I have no key.
+Ring the bell. God, but I'm an idiot. She'll answer the door herself.
+What'll I say? That's her step. Hello? No. Walk in. Naturally."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped breathing. The door opened. His legs were made of whalebone.
+But there was a new odor in the hallway.... And something new here in
+her face. He stood looking at the woman with whom he had lived for seven
+years and when he said her name it sounded like that of a stranger. His
+features had a habit of smiling. An old habit of narrowing one of his
+eyes and turning up the right corner of his lips. He stood unconscious
+of his expression, his smile a mask that had slapped itself
+automatically over his face.</p>
+
+<p>But they must talk. No, she had him at a disadvantage. Her silence could
+say everything for her. His silence could say nothing. He reached
+forward and took her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Anna...."</p>
+
+<p>She was different. A rigidness gone. When he had left her she was
+standing, stiffened. Now her hands were limp. Her face too, limp. Her
+eyes that looked at him seemed blind.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come back, as you see."</p>
+
+<p>That was banal. One did not talk like that to a crucified one. Her hands
+slipped away and she preceded him into the room. He looked to see his
+father, but forgot to ask a question about him. Anna was standing
+straight, looking straight at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> him. Not as if he were there, but as if
+she were alone with something.</p>
+
+<p>"You must let me talk first, Erik."</p>
+
+<p>Willingly. It was difficult to breathe and talk at the same time. He sat
+down as she moved into a chair opposite.</p>
+
+<p>Something was happening but he couldn't tell yet. She was changed. Older
+or younger, hard to tell. But changed. It was confusing to look at
+someone and look at a different image of her. The different image was in
+his mind. When she talked he could tell.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know that I had gotten a divorce, Erik?"</p>
+
+<p>That was it, then. She wasn't his wife any more. A sort of hocus-pocus
+... now you are my wife, now you aren't my wife.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Anna."</p>
+
+<p>"Four months ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I was in Germany...." Mathilde, von Stinnes, <i>es lebe die Welt
+Revolution</i>, made a circle in his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know. I'm sorry you didn't find out."</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible. Something impossible was happening. Of course, he had
+known it would happen. But he had fooled himself. A clever thing to do.
+He was talking like a little boy reciting a piece from a platform.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come back to you because everything but you has died. I begin with
+the end of what I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> to say. I came back from Europe ... because I
+wanted you...."</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted. "I wrote you a letter when I found out about her. I
+sent it to New York."</p>
+
+<p>"I never got it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry."</p>
+
+<p>Quite a formal procedure thus far. A letter had miscarried. One could
+blame the mails for that. And a divorce. Yes, that was formal too ...
+"whereas the complainant further alleges ..." He felt that his legs were
+trembling. If he spoke again his voice would be unsteady. He did not
+want that. But someone had to speak. Not she. She could be silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Anna"&mdash;let his voice shake. Perhaps it would help matters. "You've
+changed...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Erik...."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't much right to ask for anything else...."</p>
+
+<p>Why in God's name could he think clearly and yet only talk like a
+blithering fool? He would pause and gather his wits. But then he would
+start making a speech ... four-score and seven years ago our
+forefathers....</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry you came, Erik...."</p>
+
+<p>This couldn't be Anna. He closed his mouth and stared. A dream full of
+noises, voices, Anna saying:</p>
+
+<p>"We mustn't waste time regretting or worrying each other about
+things.... It's much too late now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He wanted to say. "It is impossible that you do not love me because you
+once loved me, because we once lay in each other's arms ... seven
+years." But there was no Anna to say that to. Instead, a stranger-woman.
+An impulse carried him away. He was kneeling beside her, burying his
+face in her lap. It didn't matter. There was no one to see. Perhaps her
+hand would move gently over his hair. No, she was sitting straight.
+Still alone with something. She was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry. Please, Erik, don't."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you."</p>
+
+<p>"No. No! Please, let's talk...."</p>
+
+<p>He raised his face. It was easier now that he was crying. He wouldn't
+have to be grammatical ... or finish sentences.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand, Erik. I was afraid of this. For you. But you mustn't.
+'Shh! it's all over."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Anna. It can't be. You are still Anna."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But different."</p>
+
+<p>He stood up.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Erik," she was shaking her head and smiling without expression,
+"everything is over. I would rather have written it to you. I could have
+made it plain. But I didn't know where to reach you."</p>
+
+<p>He let her talk on and stood staring. Her face was limp. There was
+nothing there. He was looking at a corpse. Not of her, but somehow of
+himself. There in her eyes he lay dead&mdash;an obliteration. He had come
+back to a part of him that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> had died. It was buried where one couldn't
+see, somewhere behind her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing more to say, Erik. But you must understand what I have
+said. Because it means everything."</p>
+
+<p>He listened, staring now at the room, remembering. They had lived
+together once in this room. There was something beautiful about the
+room. A face that held itself like a lighted lamp to his eyes. "Erik,
+Erik, I love you. Oh, I love you so. I would die without you. Erik, my
+own!" The walls and books and chairs murmured with echoes. The familiar
+slanting books on their shelves. The large leather chairs under the
+light. He must weep. The little things that were familiar&mdash;mirrors in
+which he saw images and words ... a white body with copper hair fallen
+across its ivory; white arms clinging passionately to him; a voice,
+rapturous, pleading. He must weep because he had come back to a world
+that had died, that looked at him whispering with dead lips, "Erik, my
+beloved. Oh, I'm so happy ... so happy when you kiss me ... my
+dearest...."</p>
+
+<p>He closed his eyes as tears burned out of them. Anna in a blur. Still
+talking quietly. Embarrassed by his weeping. He was offering her his
+silence and his tears. He had never stood like this before a woman. But
+it was something other than a woman&mdash;an ending. As if one came upon a
+figure dead in a room and looked at it and said without surprise, "It is
+I."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So you see, Erik, it's all over. I can't tell you how. It took a long
+time, but it seemed sudden. I don't know what to say to you, but it will
+be better to leave nothing unsaid. I'm trying to think of everything.
+I'm going to be married next month. Remember, I'm not the Anna you knew.
+She isn't getting married again. I'm somebody totally different. I feel
+different. Even when I walk. You never knew me. I can remember our years
+together clearly. But it seems like a story that was once told me. Do
+you understand, Erik? I am not bitter or sad, and I have no blame for
+you. You are more than forgiven...."</p>
+
+<p>No words occurred to him. Somewhere behind the smooth face of her he
+fancied lived a woman whose arms were about his neck and whose lips were
+hungering for him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all very clear to me, Erik. I've thought of it often. You made me
+a part of yourself and when you deserted me, you took that with you, and
+left me as I am; as I was born...."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you play something on the piano for me, Anna?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Erik."</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself slowly and remained with his head down. There was
+nothing to think.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go in a few minutes," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>Anna, standing straight, watched him as if she were curious. He felt her
+eyes trying to acquaint themselves with him, and failing. He was growing
+angry. Better leave before he spoke again. Anger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> was in him. It was she
+who had been the unfaithful one. He could smile at that. He stood up
+then, and smiled. This was a part of life, to be felt and appreciated. A
+handshake, a smile that von Stinnes would have applauded, and he would
+have lived another hour.</p>
+
+<p>"On the boat I made love to you," he said softly, "and I am not unhappy.
+It is only&mdash;my turn to weep a bit."</p>
+
+<p>He regarded her calmly. Yes, if he wanted to ... there was something
+waiting.... Even though she thought it dead. If he wanted to, there was
+a grave to open, slowly, with tears and old phrases.</p>
+
+<p>She let him approach her. He felt her body grow rigid as he placed his
+arms around her. His lips touched her cold cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"It was to make sure that you were dead," he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>... Another hour ended. He had returned. Now he was going away again and
+the hour was a disc whirling away, already lost among other discs.</p>
+
+<p>The street was chilly. He walked swiftly. His thoughts were assembling
+themselves. Words that had lain under the tears in the room thawed out.</p>
+
+<p>"She will marry Meredith and the old man will come to live with me. I
+should have gone upstairs and said hello. But he was probably asleep.
+I'll take my books and furniture. She won't need<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> them with Meredith.
+Get an apartment somewhere. How old am I? About forty. Not quite.
+Changed completely. Curious, I didn't want her after she'd talked about
+it. I suppose because I didn't really come for her&mdash;for somebody else.
+Conrad in quest of his youth. Lost youth. How'd that damn book end?
+Well, what of it, what of it? Things die without saddening one. Yet one
+becomes sad. A make-believe. That's right. No matter what happens you
+keep right on thinking and breathing as if it were all outside. Yes,
+that's it&mdash;outside; a poignant comedy outside that talks to one. Death
+is the only thing that has reality. We must not take the rest too
+seriously. If I get too bored I can remember that I killed a man and
+develop a stricken conscience. Poppycock!... The old man'll be a
+nuisance. But he's quiet, thank God! Well, well ... I'm too civilized. I
+suppose I made an ass of myself. No.... A few tears more or less...."</p>
+
+<p>His thought paused. He walked, looking at things&mdash;curbings, houses,
+street trees, lights in windows. He resumed, after blocks:</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, what a thing happened to her! To change like that. An
+awfulness about it. Death in life. Have I changed? No. I'm the same. But
+that's a lie. I was in love once ... a face like a mirror of stars. The
+phrase grows humorous with repetition. It doesn't mean anything. What
+did it mean? Like trying to remember a toothache ... which tooth ached.
+But it only lasted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> ... let's see. Rachel, Rachel.... Nothing. It was
+gone a week after I came to her. The rest was&mdash;a restlessness ...
+wanting something. Not having it. Well, it doesn't matter now."</p>
+
+<p>In his hotel room he undressed without turning on the lights. He felt
+nervous, vaguely afraid of himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I might commit suicide. Rather stupid, though. I'll die soon enough.
+Maybe a few more things left to see and feel and forget. Who knows? I'll
+have to look up some of the ladies."</p>
+
+<p>He crawled into bed and grew promptly sleepless.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'm honest I'll be able to amuse myself. If not ... oh, Lord, what a
+mess! No. Why is it? Life runs away like that&mdash;hits you in the eye and
+runs away."</p>
+
+<p>He closed his eyes and sighed. Like himself, the world was full of
+people who lived on. Things ended for them and nobody could tell the
+difference, not even themselves. Being happy&mdash;what the devil was that?
+Happiness&mdash;unhappiness&mdash;you slept as soundly and ate as heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a little tired to-night." An excuse for something. He was afraid.
+He reached over to the small table near the bed and secured a cigarette.
+Lighting it, he lay on his back, blowing smoke carefully into the dark
+and watching the tobacco glow under his nose.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn good thing I'm not an author. End up as a cross between
+Maeterlinck and Laura Jean.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> One could write a volume on a cigarette
+glowing in the dark."</p>
+
+<p>He puffed until the tobacco was almost ended. He placed the
+still-kindled stub on the table and sighed:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's me. Life has had its lips to me blowing smoke and fire out
+of me. And now a table top on which to glow reminiscently for a moment.
+And cool into ashes. Apologies to Laura Jean, Marie Corelli&mdash;and God."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V5" id="CHAPTER_V5"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p>Rachel, removing her heavy coat, walked briskly to the grate fire
+burning in the rear of the studio. She stood looking into the flames and
+rubbing the cold out of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I kept the appointment, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>Brander, the artist, sprawled on a cushion-littered couch, sat up
+slowly. His heavy eyes regarded her.</p>
+
+<p>"We had quite a talk. You know his wife has remarried."</p>
+
+<p>"That so?" Rachel laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dorn sends you his regards."</p>
+
+<p>"That'll be enough."</p>
+
+<p>"I must say he's much cleverer than you, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you talk about? Soul stuff, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not entirely."</p>
+
+<p>She came over to the couch and patted his cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"My hands&mdash;feel how cold they are."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind your hands. What did our good friend have to say for
+himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, talk." Her dark eyes glanced enigmatically from his stare.</p>
+
+<p>Brander swore. "I want to know, d'you hear?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! Soulmate bares all." She laughed and walked with a sensual
+swing down the long room.</p>
+
+<p>Brander, without stirring, repeated, "Yes, everything."</p>
+
+<p>Rachel's face sobered.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, there's nothing Frank&mdash;of interest."</p>
+
+<p>"Hell, I've caught you crying over him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what of that? A woman's tears, you know, a woman's tears, don't
+mean anything."</p>
+
+<p>"They don't, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No." The sight of him hunched amid the cushions seemed to appeal to her
+humor. A large, strong monkey face against blue, green, and yellow
+pillow faces. She laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll tell you something. There's going to be no soul stuff in
+this. You're mine. And if you start any flapdoodle hand-holding with our
+good friend, I'll knock your heads together into a pulp."</p>
+
+<p>He raised his large shoulders and glowered majestically. Rachel, paused
+beside a canvas, regarded him with half-closed eyes and smiling lips.</p>
+
+<p>"He sent his kindest wishes to you."</p>
+
+<p>Brander left his seat and strode toward her.</p>
+
+<p>"That's enough."</p>
+
+<p>"And asked us to call. And if we couldn't come together, I might call
+alone," she spoke quickly. Her eyes were mocking. An oath from Brander
+seemed to amuse her.</p>
+
+<p>"You're in love with him," he muttered, his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> fingers tightening about
+her wrist. "Come, out with it! I want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." Rachel's eyes grew taunting. "He is the knight in shining armor,
+fairy prince, and the man in the moon."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind laughing. I want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, listen then." Her voice grew vibrant as if a laugh were talking.
+"His eyes are the beckoning hands of dream. Poor Frank doesn't know what
+that means."</p>
+
+<p>Brander swung her toward the couch. She fell amid the cushions with a
+laugh. He stood looking at her and then walked slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't touch me. Don't you dare!"</p>
+
+<p>A grin crossed the artist's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you and your kind," he answered, "mooney girls. Mooney-headed
+girls. I've had 'em before."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep away...."</p>
+
+<p>Her face as he bent over her glowed with a sudden terror.</p>
+
+<p>"Mooney girls," repeated Brander.</p>
+
+<p>His hands reached her shoulders and held her carelessly as she squirmed.</p>
+
+<p>"You're hurting me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll hurt you more. Talk out now. Are you in love with that loon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"More than me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Brander's face reddened. His hand struck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> her chin. Rachel shut her eyes
+to hold back tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you still?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Always." Her teeth clenched. "Go on, hit me, if you want to. I
+love him. Love him always. Every minute. As I did. Do you hear? I love
+him."</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes and shivered. He was going to kill her. He tore at
+her clothes, beating her with his fists until her head rattled on her
+neck.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll fix your love for him," Brander whispered. The pain of his blows
+and shakings were making her dizzy.</p>
+
+<p>"Frank ... dear, please...."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you love him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to bury her head in her arms, but he untwisted her gesture.
+His hands, striking and clawing at her, made her scream. A mist&mdash;he had
+seized her.</p>
+
+<p>"Frank! Frank!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you love him now?"</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes and stared wildly into Brander's face. It grinned at
+her. Her arms clutched his body.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" she cried, her mouth gasping. "Don't talk. Don't ask
+questions. Love ..." she laughed aloud eagerly, brazenly. Her thin arms
+tightened fiercely about him. "I love this."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI5" id="CHAPTER_VI5"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Isaac Dorn was sitting in a chair beside the gas-log fire in his son's
+apartment. His thin fingers lay motionless on his knees. His head had
+fallen forward.</p>
+
+<p>It was early evening when his son entered the room. Dorn paused and
+looked at the silent figure in the chair. The old man raised his head as
+if he had been spoken to and muttered. "Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>He saw his son and smiled. He would like to talk to him. It was lonely
+all day in the house. And things were beginning to fade from his eyes.
+It was hard even to see if Erik was smiling. Yes, his face was happy.
+That was good. People should look as Erik did&mdash;amused. Wait ... wait
+long enough and it all blurred and faded gently away.</p>
+
+<p>"What made you so late, Erik?" he asked. Now his son was laughing. That
+was a good sign.</p>
+
+<p>"A lot of work at the office. The Russians are at it again. And I met an
+old friend this afternoon. A dear old friend. Old friends make one
+sentimental and garrulous. So we talked."</p>
+
+<p>He noticed the old man's eyes close but continued addressing him.</p>
+
+<p>"We discussed problems in mathematics. How<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> many yesterdays make a
+to-morrow. That gas-log smells to high heaven."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned over and turned out the odorous flames. He noticed now that
+the old man had dozed off again. But his talk went on. It had become a
+habit to keep on talking to his father who dozed under his words. "She's
+going to drop around and visit us. And we will perform a gentle autopsy.
+Stir a little cloud of dust out of the bucket of ashes, eh? And perhaps
+we will come to life for a moment. Who knows? At least, we shall weep.
+And that is something. To be able to weep. To know enough to weep. Her
+name is Rachel."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and walked toward the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Rachel," he repeated, his eyes no longer on the old man. "Her name is
+unchanged...."</p>
+
+<p>He opened von Stinnes's silver case and removed a cigarette. He stood
+gazing at the snow on roofs, on window ledges, on pavements. Crystalline
+geometries. Houses that made little puzzle pictures against the stagnant
+curve of the darkening sky. A zigzag of leaden-eyed windows, and windows
+ringed with yellow light peering like cat eyes into the winter dusk. The
+darkness slowly ended the scene. Night covered the snow. The city opened
+its tiny yellow eyes.</p>
+
+<p>A street of houses before him. A cigarette under his nose. An old man
+asleep. Outside the window the snow-covered buildings stood in the dark
+like a skeleton world, like patterns in black and white.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERIK DORN***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Erik Dorn, by Ben Hecht
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Erik Dorn
+
+
+Author: Ben Hecht
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 19, 2007  [eBook #22358]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERIK DORN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Eric Eldred and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+ERIK DORN
+
+by
+
+BEN HECHT
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+G. P. Putnam's Sons
+New York and London
+The Knickerbocker Press
+1921
+
+Copyright, 1921
+by
+Ben Hecht
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+MARIE
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  PAGE
+
+  PART I
+
+  SLEEP                                                         1
+
+
+  PART II
+
+  DREAM                                                        75
+
+
+  PART III
+
+  WINGS                                                       173
+
+
+  PART IV
+
+  ADVENTURE                                                   277
+
+
+  PART V
+
+  SILENCE                                                     369
+
+
+
+
+ERIK DORN
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+SLEEP
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+An old man sat in the shadows of the summer night. From a veranda chair
+he looked at the stars. He wore a white beard, and his eyes, grown small
+with age, watered continually as if he were weeping. Half-hidden under
+his beard his emaciated lips kept the monotonous grimace of a smile on
+his face.
+
+He sat in the dark, a patient, trembling figure waiting for bedtime. His
+feet, though he rested them all day, grew heavy at night. Of late this
+weariness had increased. It reached like a caress into his mind.
+Thoughts no longer formed themselves in the silences of his hours.
+Instead, a gentle sleep, dreamless and dark, came upon him and left him
+sitting with his little eyes, open and moist, fastened without sight
+upon familiar objects.
+
+As he sat, the withered body of this old man seemed to grow always more
+motionless, except for his hands. Resting on his thighs, his twig-like
+hands remained forever awake, their thin contorted fingers crawling
+vaguely about like the legs of 8 long-impaled spiders.
+
+The sound of a piano from the room behind him dropped into the old man's
+sleep, and he found himself once more looking out of his eyes and
+occupying his clothes. His attitude remained unchanged except for a
+quickened movement of his fingers. Life returned to him as gently as it
+had left. The stars were still high over his head and the night, cool
+and murmuring, waited for him.
+
+He lowered his eyes toward the street beyond the lawn. People were
+straying by, seeming to drift under the dark trees. He could not see
+them distinctly, but he stared at their flowing outlines and at moments
+was rewarded by a glimpse of a face--a featureless little glint of white
+in the shadows: dark shadows moving within a motionless darkness with
+little dying candle-flame faces. "Men and women," he thought, "men and
+women, mixed up in the night ... mixed up."
+
+As he stared, thoughts as dim and fluid as the people in the street
+moved in his head. But he remembered things best not in words. His
+memories were little warmths that dropped into his heart. His cold thin
+fingers continued their fluttering. "Mixed up, mixed up," said the
+night. "Dark," said the shadows. And the years spoke their memories. "We
+have been; we are no more." Memories that had lost the bloom of words.
+The emaciated lips of the old man held a smile beneath the white beard.
+
+This was Isaac Dorn, still alive after eighty years.
+
+The music from the house ended and a woman's voice called through an
+open window.
+
+"I'm afraid it's chilly outside, father."
+
+He offered no answer. Then he heard Erik, his son, speak in an amused
+voice.
+
+"Leave the old man be. He's making love to the stars."
+
+"I'll get him a blanket," said Erik's wife. "I can't bear to think of
+him catching cold."
+
+Isaac Dorn arose from his chair, shaking his head. He did not fancy
+being covered with a blanket and feeling Anna's kindly hands tucking its
+edges around his feet. They were too kindly, too solicitous. Their
+little pats and caressings presumed too much. One grew sad under their
+ministrations and murmured to oneself, "Poor child, poor child." Better
+a half-hour under the cold, amused eyes of his son, Erik. There was
+something between Erik and him, something like an unspoken argument. To
+Anna he was a pathetic little old man to be nursed, coddled, defended
+against chills and indigestions, "poor child, poor child." But Erik
+looked at him with cold, amused eyes that offered no quarter to age and
+asked for nothing. Good Erik, who asked for nothing, whose eyes smiled
+because they were too polite to sneer. Erik knew about the stars and the
+mixed-up things, the dim things old senses could feel in the night
+though he chose to laugh at them.
+
+But one thing Erik didn't know, and the old man, turning from his chair,
+grew sad. What was that? What? His thought mumbled a question. Sitting
+motionless in a corner of the room he could smile at Erik and his smile
+under the white beard seemed to give an answer to the mumble--an answer
+that irritated his son. The answer said, "Wait, wait! it is too early
+for you to say you have lived." What a son, what a son! whose eyes made
+fun of his father's white hair.
+
+The old man moved slowly as if his infirmities were no more than
+meditations, and entered the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The crowds moving through the streets gave Erik Dorn a picture. It was
+morning. Above the heads of the people the great spatula-topped
+buildings spread a zigzag of windows, a scribble of rooftops against the
+sky. A din as monotonous as a silence tumbled through the streets--an
+unvarying noise of which the towering rectangles of buildings tilted
+like great reeds out of a narrow bowl, seemed an audible part.
+
+The city alive with signs, smoke, posters, windows; falling, rising,
+flinging its chimneys and its streets against the sun, wound itself up
+into crowds and burst with an endless bang under the far-away sky.
+
+Moving toward his office Erik Dorn watched the swarming of men and women
+of which he was a part. Faces like a flight of paper scraps scattered
+about him. Bodies poured suddenly across his eyes as if emptied out of
+funnels. The ornamental entrances of buildings pumped figures in and
+out. Vague and blurred like the play of gusty rain, the crowds darkened
+the pavements.
+
+Dorn saluted the spectacle with smiling eyes. As always, in the aimless
+din and multiplicity of streets he felt himself most securely at home.
+The smear of gestures, the elastic distortion of crowds winding and
+unwinding under the tumult of windows, gave him the feeling of a
+geometrical emptiness of life.
+
+Here before him the meanings of faces vanished. The greedy little
+purposes of men and women tangled themselves into a generality. It was
+thus Dorn was most pleased to look upon the world, to observe it as one
+observes a pattern--involved but precise. Life as a whole lay in the
+streets--a little human procession that came toiling out of a yesterday
+into an interminable to-morrow. It presented itself to him as a
+picture--legs moving against the walls of buildings, diagonals of
+bodies, syncopating face lines.
+
+Things that made pictures for his eyes alone diverted Dorn. Beyond this
+capacity for diversion he remained untouched. He walked smiling into
+crowds, oblivious of the lesser destinations of faces, pleased to dream
+of his life and the life of others as a movement of legs, a bobbing of
+heads.
+
+His appreciation of crowds was typical. In the same manner he held an
+appreciation of all things in life and art which filled him with the
+emotion of symmetry. He had given himself freely to his tastes. A creed
+had resulted. Rhythm that was intricate pleased him more than the
+metronomic. In art, the latter was predominant. In life, the former. Out
+of these decisions he achieved almost a complete indifference to
+literature and especially toward painting. No drawn picture stirred him
+to the extent that did the tapestry of a city street. No music aroused
+the elation in him that did the curious beat upon his eyes of window
+rows, of vari-shaped building walls whose oblongs and squares translated
+themselves in his thought into a species of unmelodious but perfect
+sound.
+
+The preoccupation with form had developed in him as complement of his
+nature. The nature of Erik Dorn was a shallows. Life did not live in
+him. He saw it as something eternally outside. To himself he seemed at
+times a perfect translation of his country and his day.
+
+"I'm like men will all be years later," he said to his wife, "when their
+emotions are finally absorbed by the ingenious surfaces they've
+surrounded themselves with, and life lies forever buried behind the
+inventions of engineers, scientists, and business men."
+
+Normal outwardly, a shrewd editor and journalist, functioning daily in
+his home and work as a cleverly conventional figure, Dorn had lived
+since boyhood in an unchanging vacuum. He had in his early youth become
+aware of himself. As a young man he had waited half consciously for
+something to happen to him. He thought of this something as a species of
+contact that would suddenly overtake him. He would step into the street
+and find himself a citizen absorbed by responsibilities, ideas,
+sympathies, prejudices. But the thing had never happened. At thirty he
+had explained to himself, "I am complete. This business of being empty
+is all there is to life. Intelligence is a faculty which enables man to
+peer through the muddle of ideas and arrive at a nowhere."
+
+Private introspection had become a bore to him. What was the use of
+thinking if there was nothing to think about? And there was nothing. His
+violences of temper, his emotions, definite and at times compelling, had
+always seemed to him as words--pretences to which he loaned himself for
+diversion. He was aware that neither ideas nor prejudices--the residues
+of emotion--existed in his mind. His thinking, he knew, had been a
+shuffle of words which he followed to fantastic and inconsistent
+conclusions that left him always without convictions for the morrow.
+
+There was a picture in the street for him on this summer morning. He was
+a part of it. Yet between himself and the rest of the picture he felt no
+contact.
+
+Into this emptiness of spirit, life had poured its excitements as into a
+thing bottomless as a mirror. He gave it back an image of words. He was
+proud of his words. They were his experiences and sophistications. Out
+of them he achieved his keenest diversion. They were the excuse for his
+walking, his wearing a hat and embarking daily for his work, returning
+daily to his home. They enabled him to amuse himself with complexities
+of thought as one improvising difficult finger exercises on the piano.
+
+At times it seemed to Dorn that he was even incapable of thinking, that
+he possessed a plastic vocabulary endowed with a life of its own. He
+often contemplated with astonishment his own verbal brilliancies, which
+his friends appeared to accept as irrefutable truths of the moment.
+Carried away in the heat of some intricate debate he would pause
+internally, as his voice continued without interruption, and exclaim to
+himself, "What in hell am I talking about?" And a momentary awe would
+overcome him--the awe of listening to himself give utterance to
+fantastic ideas that he knew had no existence in him--a cynical magician
+watching a white rabbit he had never seen before crawl naively out of
+his own sleeve. Thus his phrases assembled themselves on his tongue and
+pirouetted of their own energy about his listeners.
+
+Smiling, garrulous, and impenetrable--garrulous even in his silences, he
+daily entered his office and proceeded skillfully about his work. He
+was, as always, delighted with himself. He felt himself a man ideally
+fitted to enjoy the little spectacle of life his day offered. Emotion in
+others invariably roused in him a sense of the ludicrous. His eyes
+seemed to travel through the griefs and torments of his fellows and to
+fasten helplessly upon their causes. And here lay the ludicrous--the
+clownish little mainspring of tragedy and drama. He moved through his
+day with a vivid understanding of its excitements. There was no mystery.
+One had only to look and see and words fitted themselves. A pattern
+twisted itself into precisions--precisions of men loving, hating,
+questing. The understanding swayed him between pity and contempt and
+left the balance of an amused smile in his eyes.
+
+Intimacy with Erik Dorn had meant different things to different people,
+but all had derived from his friendship a fascinated feeling of loss.
+His wife, closest to him, had after seven years found herself drained,
+hollowed out as by some tenaciously devouring insect. Her mind had
+emptied itself of its normal furniture. Erik had eaten the ideas out of
+it. Under the continual impact of his irony her faiths and
+understandings had slowly deserted her. Her thought had become a shadow
+cast by his emptiness. Things were no longer good, no longer bad. People
+had become somehow non-existent for her since she could no longer think
+of them as symbols incarnate of ideas that she liked or ideas that she
+disliked. Thus emptied of its natural furniture, her mind had borrowed
+from her heart and become filled, wholly occupied with the emotion of
+her love for Erik Dorn. More than lover and husband, he was an
+obsession. He had replaced a world for her.
+
+It was of his wife that Dorn was thinking when he arrived this summer
+morning at his desk in the editorial room. He had remembered suddenly
+that the day was the anniversary of their marriage. Time had passed
+rapidly. Seven years! Like seven yesterdays. He seemed able to remember
+them in their entirety with a single thought, as one can remember a
+column of figures without recalling either their meaning or their sum.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The employees of the editorial room--a loft-like chamber crazily crowded
+with desks, tables, cabinets, benches, files, typewriters; lighted by a
+smoke-darkened sun and the dim glow of electric bulbs--were already
+launched upon the nervous routine of their day. An excited jargon filled
+the place which, with the air of physical disorder as if the workers
+were haphazardly improvising their activities,--gave the room a vivid
+though seemingly impermanent life.
+
+On the benches against a peeling wall sleepy-faced boys with precocious
+eyes kept up a lazy hair-pulling, surreptitious wrestling bout. They
+rose indifferently in response to furiously repeated bellows for their
+assistance--a business of carrying typewritten bits of paper between
+desks a few feet apart; or of sauntering with eleventh-hour orders to
+the perspiring men in the composing room.
+
+In the forward part of the shop a cluster of men stood about the desk of
+an editor who in a disinterested voice sat issuing assignments for the
+day, forecasting to his innumerable assistants the amount of space
+needed for succeeding editions, the possible development in the local
+scandals. His eye unconsciously watched the clock over his head, his
+ear divided itself between a half-dozen conversations and a tireless
+telephone. With his hands he kept fumbling an assortment of clippings,
+memoranda, and copy.
+
+Oldish young men and youngish old men gravitated about him, their faces
+curiously identical. These were the irresponsible-eyed, casual-mannered
+individuals, seemingly neither at work nor at play, who were to visit
+the courts, the police, the wrecks, the criminals, conventions,
+politicians, reformers, lovers, and haters, and bring back the news of
+the city's day. A common almost racial sophistication stamped their
+expression. They pawed over telephone books, argued with indifferent,
+emotionless profanity among themselves on items of amazing import;
+pounded nonchalantly upon typewriters, lolled with their feet upon
+desks, their noses buried in the humorous columns of the morning
+newspapers.
+
+"Make-up" men and their assistants, everlastingly irritable as if the
+victims of pernicious conspiracies, badgered for information that seemed
+inevitably non-existent. They desired to know in what mysterious manner
+one could get ten columns of type into a page that held only seven and
+whether anyone thought the paper could go to press at half-past ten when
+the bulk of the copy for the edition arrived in the composing room at
+twenty minutes of eleven.
+
+Proof-readers emerged from the bowels of somewhere waving smeared bits
+of printed paper and triumphantly demanded explanation of ambiguous
+passages.
+
+Re-write men "helloed" indignantly into telephones, repeating with
+sudden listlessness the pregnant details of the news pouring in; and
+scribbling it down on sheets of paper ... "dead Grant park bullet
+unknown 26 yrs silk stockings refinement mystery."
+
+Idlers lounged and discussed loudly against the dusty windows hung with
+torn grimy shades.
+
+Copy-readers, concentrated under green eye-shades, sat isolated in a
+tiny world of sharpened pencils, paste pots, shears, and emitted sudden
+embittered oaths.
+
+Editors from other departments, naively excited over items of vast
+indifference to their nervous listeners, came and went.
+
+An occasional printer, face and forearms smeared with ink, sauntered in
+as if on a vacation, uttering some technical announcement and
+precipitating a brief panic.
+
+Toward the center of the room, seated at desks jammed against one
+another in defiance of all convenience, telegraph editors, their hands
+fumbling cables and despatches from twenty ends of the earth, bellowed
+items of interest into the air--assassinations in China, probes,
+quizzes, scandals, accusations in far-away places. They varied their
+bellows with occasional shrieks of mysterious significance--usually a
+misplaced paste pot, a borrowed shears, a vanished copy-boy.
+
+These folk and a sprinkling of apparently unemployed and undisturbed
+strangers spread themselves through the shop. Outside the opened windows
+in the rear of the room, the elevated trains stuffed with men and women
+roared into a station and squealed out again. In the streets below, the
+traffic raised an ear-splitting medley of sound which nobody heard.
+
+Against this eternal and internal disorder, a strange pottering,
+apparently formless and without beginning or end, was guiding the latest
+confusions and intrigues of the human tangle into perfunctory groups of
+words called stories. A curious ritual--the scene, spreading through the
+four floors of the grimy building with a thousand men and women
+shrieking, hammering, cursing, writing, squeezing and juggling the
+monotonous convulsions of life into a scribble of words. Out of the
+cacophonies of the place issued, sausage fashion, a half-million papers
+daily, holding up from hour to hour to the city the blurred mirrors of
+the newspaper columns alive with the almost humorous images of an
+unending calamity.
+
+"The press," Erik Dorn once remarked, "is a blind old cat yowling on a
+treadmill."
+
+It was a quarter to nine when Dorn arrived at his desk. He seated
+himself with a complete unconsciousness of the scene. A litter of
+correspondence, propaganda, telegrams, and contributions from Constant
+Reader lay stuffed into the corners and pigeonholes of his desk. He sat
+for a moment thinking of his wife. Call her up ... spend the evening
+downtown ... some unusual evidence of affection ... the vaudeville
+wouldn't be bad.
+
+The thought left him and his eyes fastened themselves upon a sheaf of
+proofs.... Watch out for libel ... look for hunches ... scribble
+suggestion for changes ... peer for items of information that might be
+expanded humorously or pathetically into Human Interest yarns.... These
+were functions he discharged mechanically. A perfect affinity toward his
+work characterized his attitude. Yet behind the automatic efficiency of
+his thought lay an ironical appreciation of his tasks. The sterile
+little chronicles of life still moist from the ink-roller were like
+smeared windows upon the grimacings of the world. Through these windows
+Dorn saw with a clarity that flattered him.
+
+A tawdry pantomime was life, a pouring of blood, a grappling with
+shadows, a digging of graves. "Empty, empty," his intelligence whispered
+in its depths, "a make-believe of lusts. What else? Nothing, nothing.
+Laws, ambitions, conventions--froth in an empty glass. Tragedies,
+comedies--all a swarm of nothings. Dreams in the hearts of men--thin
+fever outlines to which they clung in hope. Nothing ... nothing...." His
+intelligence continued a murmur as he read--a murmur unconscious of
+itself yet coming from the depths of him. Equally unconscious was the
+amusement he felt, and that flew a fugitive smile in his eyes.
+
+The perfunctory hysterics of the stories of crime, graft, scandal, with
+their garbled sentences and wooden phrases; the delicious sagacities of
+the editorial pages like the mumbling of some adenoidal moron in a gulf
+of high winds; headlines saying a pompous "amen" to asininity and a
+hopeful "My God!" to confusion--these caressed him, and brought the
+thought to him, "if there is anything worthy the absurdity of life it's
+a newspaper--gibbering, whining, strutting, sprawled in attitudes of
+worship before the nine-and-ninety lies of the moment--a caricature of
+absurdity itself."
+
+His efficiency aloof from such moralizing moved like a separate
+consciousness through the day, as it had for the sixteen years of his
+service. His rise in his profession had been comparatively rapid. Thirty
+had found him enshrined as an editor. At thirty-four he had acquired the
+successful air which distinguishes men who have come to the end of their
+rope. He had become an editor and a fixture. The office observed an
+intent, gray-eyed man, straight nosed, firm lipped, correctly shaved
+down to the triangular trim of his mustache, his dark hair evenly
+parted--a normal-seeming, kindly individual who wore his linen and his
+features with a certain politely exotic air--the air of an identity.
+
+The day's vacuous items in his life passed quickly, its frantic routine
+ebbing into a lull toward mid-afternoon. Returning from a final uproar
+in the composing room, Dorn looked good-humoredly about him. He was
+ready to go home. Arguments, reprimands, entreaties were over for a
+space. He walked leisurely down the length of the shop, pleased as
+always by its atmosphere. It was something like the streets, this
+newspaper shop, broken up, a bit intricate, haphazard.
+
+A young man named Cross was painstakingly writing poetry on a
+typewriter. Another named Gardner was busy on a letter. "My dearest...."
+Dorn read over his shoulder as he passed. Promising young men, both,
+whose collars would grow slightly soiled as they advanced in their
+profession. He remembered one of his early observations: "There are two
+kinds of newspapermen--those who try to write poetry and those who try
+to drink themselves to death. Fortunately for the world, only one of
+them succeeds."
+
+In a corner a young woman, dressed with a certain ease, sat partially
+absorbed in a book and partially in a half-devoured apple. "The Brothers
+Karamasov," Dorn read as he sauntered by. He thought "an emancipated
+creature who prides herself on being able to drink cocktails without
+losing caste. She'll marry the first drunken newspaperman who forgets
+himself in her presence and spend the rest of her life trying to induce
+him to go into the advertising business."
+
+Turning down the room he passed the desk of Crowley, the telegraph
+editor. A face flabby and red with ancient drinking raised itself from a
+book and a voice spoke,
+
+"Old Egan gets more of a fool every day." Old Egan was the make-up man.
+Dorn smiled. "The damned idiot crowded the Nancy story off page one in
+the Home. Best story of the day." Crowley ended with a vaguely conceived
+oath.
+
+Dorn glimpsed the title of the book on his desk, _L'Oblat_. Crowley had
+been educated for the priesthood but emerged from the seminary with a
+heightened joy of life in his veins. A riotous twenty years in night
+saloons and bawdy houses had left him a kindly, choleric, and respected
+newspaper figure. Dorn caught his eye and wondered over his sensitive
+infatuation of exotic writing. In the pages of Huysmans, De Gourmont,
+Flaubert, Gautier, Symons, and Pater he seemed to have found a subtle
+incense for his deadened nerves. Inside the flabby, coarsened body with
+its red face munching out monosyllables, lived a recluse. "Too much
+living has driven him from life," Dorn thought, "and killed his lusts.
+So he sits and reads books--the last debauchery: strange, twisted
+phrases like idols, like totem poles, like Polynesian masks. He sits
+contemplating them as he once sat drunkenly watching the obscenities of
+black, white, and yellow bodied women. Thus, the mania for the rouge of
+life, for the grimace that lies beyond satiety, passes in him from
+bestiality to asceticism and esthetics. Yesterday a bacchanal of flesh,
+to-day a bacchanal of words ... the posturings of courtezans and the
+posturings of ornate phrases become the same." He heard Crowley
+repeating, "Damned idiot, Egan! No sense of human values. Crowded the
+best story of the day off page one." ... Some day he'd have a long talk
+with Crowley. But the man was so carefully hidden behind perfunctories
+it was hard to get at him. He resented intrusion.
+
+Dorn passed on and looked around for Warren--a humorous and didactic
+creature who had with considerable effort destroyed his Boston accent
+and escaped the fact that he had once earned his living as professor of
+sociology in an eastern university. Dorn caught a memory of him sitting
+in a congenial saloon before a stein and pouring forth hoarsely oracular
+comments upon the activities of men known and unknown. The man had a
+gift for caricature--Rabelaisean exaggerations. Dorn was suddenly glad
+he had gone for the day. The office oppressed him and the people in it
+were too familiar. He walked to his desk thinking of the South Seas and
+new faces.
+
+"I tell you what," a voice drawled behind him, "Nietzsche has it on the
+whole lot of them." Cochran, the head of the copy desk, was talking--a
+shriveled little man with a bald face and shoe-button eyes. "You've got
+to admit people are more dishonest in their virtues than in their vices.
+Of course, there's a lot of stuff he pulls that's impractical."
+
+Dorn shrugged his shoulders, smiled and lifted his hat out of a locker.
+He remembered again to telephone his wife, but instead moved out of the
+office. A refreshing warmth in the street pleased his senses and he
+turned toward the lake. Walk down Michigan avenue, take a taxi
+home--what else was there to do? Nothing, unless talk. But to whom? He
+thought of his father. A tenacious old man. Probably hang on forever.
+God, the man had been married three times. If it wasn't for his damned
+infirmities he'd probably marry again. Looking for something. What was
+it the old man had kept looking for? As if there was in existence a
+concrete gift to be drawn from life. A blithering, water-eyed optimist
+to the end, he'd die with a prayer of thankfulness and gratitude.
+
+Thus innocuously abstract, moving in the doldrum which sometimes
+surrounded him after his day's work, he turned into the boulevard along
+the lake. The day grew abruptly fresher here. An arc of blue sky rising
+from the east flung a great curve over the building tops. Dorn paused
+before the window of a Japanese art shop and stared at a bulbous wooden
+god stoically contemplating his navel.
+
+During his walks through the streets he sometimes met people he knew.
+This time a young woman appeared at the window beside him. He recognized
+her with elation. His thought gave him an index of her ... Rachel
+Laskin, curious girl ... makes me talk well ... appreciative ... unusual
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+They walked together down the avenue. Dorn felt a return of interest in
+himself. Introspection bored him. His insincerity made self thought
+meaningless. Listeners, however, revived him. As they walked he caught
+occasional glimpses of his companion--vivid eyes, dark lips, a cool,
+shadow-tinted face that belonged under exotic trees; a morose little
+girl insanely sensitive and with a dream inside her. She admired him; or
+at least she admired his words, which amounted to the same thing. Once
+before she had said, "You are different." As usual he held his cynicism
+in abeyance before flattery. People who thought him different pleased
+him. It gave them a certain intellectual status in his eyes.
+
+His thought, as he talked, busied itself with images of her. She gave
+him a sense of dark waters hidden from the moon--a tenuous fugitive
+figure in the pretty clamor of the bright street.
+
+"You remind me," he was saying, "of a nymph among dowagers and
+frightened to death. There's really nothing to be frightened of, unless
+you prefer fear to other more tangible emotions."
+
+She nodded her head. He recalled that the gesture had puzzled him at
+first. It gave an eager assent to his words that surprised him. It
+pretended that she had understood something he had not said, something
+that lay beneath his words. Dorn pointed at the women moving by them.
+
+"Poems in shoe craft, tragedies in ankles and melodramas in legs," he
+announced. "Look at their clothes! Priestly caricatures of their sex.
+You're still drawing?"
+
+"Yes. But you don't like my drawing."
+
+"I saw one of your pictures--an abominable thing--in some needlework
+magazine. A woman with a spindly nose, picking flowers."
+
+He glanced at her and caught an eager smile in her eyes. She was someone
+to whom he could talk at random. This pleased him; or perhaps it was the
+sense of flattery that pleased him. He wondered if she was intelligent.
+They had met several times, usually by accident. He had found himself
+able to talk at length to her and had come away feeling an intimacy
+between them.
+
+"Look at the windows," he continued. "Corsets, stockings, lingerie. Shop
+windows remind me of neighbors' bathrooms before breakfast. There's
+something odiously impersonal about them. See, all the way down the
+street--silks, garments, ruffles, laces. A saturnalia of masks. It's the
+only art we've developed in America--over-dressing. Clothes are
+peculiarly American--a sort of underhanded female revenge against the
+degenerate puritanism of the nation. I've seen them even at revival
+meetings clothed in the seven tailored sins and denouncing the devil
+with their bustles. Only they don't wear bustles any more. But what's an
+anachronism between friends? Why don't you paint pictures of real
+Americans?--men hunting for bargains in chastity and triumphantly
+marrying a waistline. If that means anything."
+
+He paused, and wondered vaguely what he was talking about. Vivid eyes
+and dark lips, a face that belonged elsewhere. He was feeding its
+poignancy words. And she admired him. Why? He was saying nothing. There
+was a sexlessness about her that inspired vulgarity.
+
+"You remind me of poetry," she answered without looking at him. "I
+always can listen to you without thinking, but just understanding. I've
+remembered nearly everything you've said to me. I don't know why. But
+they always come back when I'm alone, and they always seem unfinished."
+
+Her words jarred. She was too naive to coquette. Yet it was difficult to
+believe this. But she was an unusual creature, modestly asleep. A
+fugitive aloofness. Yes, what she said must be true. There was nothing
+unreasonable about its being true. She made an impression upon him. He
+undoubtedly did upon her. He would have preferred her applause, however,
+somewhat less blatant. But she was a child--an uncanny child who cooed
+frankly when interested.
+
+"I can imagine the millennium of virtue in America," he went on. "A
+crowd of painted women; faces green and lavender, moving like a
+procession of bizarre automatons and chanting in Chinese, 'We are pure.
+We are chaste and pure.' A parade of psychopathic barbarians dressed in
+bells, metals, animal skins, astrologer hats and Scandinavian ornaments.
+A combination of Burmese dancer and Babylonian priest. I ask for nothing
+more."
+
+He laughed. He had half consciously tried to give words to an image the
+girl had stirred in him. She interrupted,
+
+"That's me."
+
+He looked at her face in a momentary surprise.
+
+"I hate people, too," she said. "I would like to be like one of those
+women."
+
+"Or else a huntress riding on a black river in the moon. I was trying to
+draw a picture of you. And perhaps of myself. You have a faculty of ...
+of ... Funny, things I say are usually only reflections of the people I
+talk to. You don't mind being a psychopathic barbarian?"
+
+"No," she laughed quietly, "because I understand what you mean."
+
+"I don't mean anything."
+
+"I know. You talk because you have nothing to say. And I like to listen
+to you because I understand."
+
+This was somewhat less jarring, though still a bit crude. Her admiration
+would be more pleasant were it more difficult to discover. He became
+silent and aware of the street. There had been no street for several
+minutes--merely vivid eyes and dark lips. Now there were
+people--familiar unknowns to be found always in streets, their faces
+withholding something, like unfinished sentences. He had lost interest
+and felt piqued. His loss of interest in his talk was perhaps merely a
+reflection of her own.
+
+"I remember hearing you were a socialist. That's hard to believe."
+
+There was no relation between them now. He would have to work it up
+again.
+
+"No, my parents are. I'm not."
+
+"Russians?"
+
+"Yes. Jews."
+
+"I'm curious about your ideals."
+
+"I haven't any."
+
+"Not even art?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A wingless little eagle on a barren tree," he smiled. "I advise you to
+complicate life with ideals. The more the better. They are more
+serviceable than a conscience, in which I presume you're likewise
+lacking, because you don't have to use them. A conscience is an
+immediate annoyance, whereas ideals are charming procrastinations. They
+excuse the inanity of the present. Good Lord, what do you think about
+all day without ideals to guide you?"
+
+Dorn looked at her and felt again delight with himself. It was because
+her interest had returned. Her eyes were flatteries. He desired to be
+amusing, to cover the eager child face beside him with a caress of
+words.
+
+"I don't think," she answered. "Do people ever think? I always imagine
+that people have ideas that they look at and that the ideas never move
+around."
+
+"Yes," he agreed, "moving ideas around is what you might call thinking.
+And people don't do that. They think only of destinations and for
+purposes of forgetting something--drugging themselves to uncomfortable
+facts. I fancy, however, I'm wrong. It's only after telling a number of
+lies that one gets an idea of what might be true. Thus it occurs to me
+now that I can't conceive of an intelligent person thinking in silence.
+Intelligence is a faculty which enables people to boast. And it's
+difficult boasting in silence. And inasmuch as it's necessary to be
+intelligent to think, why, that sort of settles it. Ergo, people never
+think. Do you mind my chatter?"
+
+"Please ..."
+
+A perfect applause this time. Her sincerity appealed to him as an
+exquisite mannerism. She said "Please" as if she were breathless.
+
+"You're an entertaining listener," he smiled. "And very clever. Because
+it's ordinarily rather difficult to flatter me. I'm immensely delighted
+with your silence, whereas ..." Dorn stumbled. He felt his speech was
+degenerating into a compliment.
+
+"Because you tell me things I've known," the girl spoke.
+
+"Yet I tell you nothing."
+
+He stared for an instant at the people in the street. "Nothing" was a
+word his thought tripped on. He was used to mumbling it to himself as he
+walked alone in streets. And at his desk it often came to him and
+repeated itself. Now his thought murmured, "Nothing, nothing," and a
+sadness drew itself into his heart. He laughed with a sense of treating
+himself to a theatricalism.
+
+"We haven't talked about God," he announced.
+
+"God is one of my beliefs."
+
+She was an idiot for frowning.
+
+"I dislike to think of man as the product of evolution. It throws an
+onus on the whole of nature. Whereas with a God to blame the thing is
+simple."
+
+She nodded, which was doubly idiotic, inasmuch as there was nothing to
+nod to. He went on:
+
+"Life is too short for brevities--for details. I save time by thinking,
+if you can call it thinking, _en masse_--in generalities. For instance,
+I think of people frequently but always as a species. I wonder about
+them. My wonder is concerned chiefly with the manner in which they
+adjust themselves to the vision of their futility. Do they shriek aloud
+with horror in lonely bedrooms? There's a question there. How do people
+who are important to themselves reconcile themselves to their
+unimportance to others? And how are they able to forget their
+imbecility?"
+
+They were walking idly as if dreamily intent upon the spectacle of the
+avenue. The nervous unrest that came to Dorn in streets and fermented
+words in his thought seemed to have deserted him. Assured of the
+admiration of his companion, he felt a quiet as if his energies had been
+turned off and he were coasting. He recognized several faces and saluted
+them as if overcome with a desire to relate a jest.
+
+"Notice the men and women together," he resumed easily, almost
+unconscious of talking. "Observing married couples is a post-graduate
+course in pessimism. There's a pair arm in arm. Corpses grown together.
+There's no intimacy like that of cadavers. Yet at this and all other
+moments they're unaware of death. They move by us without thought,
+emotion, or words in them."
+
+"They look very proud," she interrupted.
+
+"It's the set expression of vacuity. Just as skeletons always seem
+mysteriously elate. Their pride is an absence of everything else--a sort
+of rigid finery they put on in lieu of a shroud. Never mind staring
+after them, please. They are Mr. and Mrs. Jalonick who live across the
+street from my home. I dislike staring even after truths. Listen, I have
+something more to say about them if you'll not look so serious. Your
+emotions are obviously infantile. I can give you a picture of marriage:
+two little husks bowing metronomically in a vacuum and anointing each
+other with pompous adjectives. Draw them a little flattened in the rear
+from sitting down too much and you'll have a masterpiece. It's amusing
+to remember that Mr. and Mrs. Jalonick were once in love with each
+other!" Dorn laughed good-naturedly. "Fancy them on a June night ten
+years ago before their eyes had become cotton, holding hands and trying
+to give a meaning to the moon. Are you tired?"
+
+"No, please. Let's walk, if you haven't anything else to do."
+
+"Nothing." It was the seventh anniversary of his marriage. An annoying
+thought. "You're an antidote for inertia. I marvel, as always, at my
+garrulity. Women usually inspire me with a desire to talk. I suppose
+it's a defensive instinct. Talk confuses women and renders them
+helpless. But that isn't it. I talk to women because they make the best
+sounding-boards. Do you object to being reduced to an acoustic? Yes, sex
+is a sort of irritant to the vocabulary. It's amusing to converse
+profoundly with a pretty woman whose sole contributions to any dialogue
+are a bit of silk hose and an oscillation of the breasts."
+
+"You make me forget I'm a woman and agree with you."
+
+"Because you're another kind of woman. The reflector. Or acoustic. I
+prefer them. I sometimes feel that I live only in mirrors and that my
+thoughts exist only as they enter the heads of others. As now, I speak
+out of a most complete emptiness of emotion or idea; and my words seem
+to take body in your silence--and actually give me a character."
+
+"I always think of you as someone hiding from himself," she answered.
+Dorn smiled. They were old friends--a union between them.
+
+"There's no place of concealment in me," he said after a pause. He had
+been thinking of something else. "But perhaps I hide in others. After
+talking like this I come away with a sort of echo of what I've said. As
+if someone had told me things that almost impressed me. I talk so damned
+much I'm unaware of ever having heard anybody else but myself express an
+opinion. And I swear I've never had an opinion in my life." He became
+silent and resumed, in a lighter voice, "Look at that man with whiskers.
+He's a notorious Don Juan. Whiskers undoubtedly lend mystery to a man.
+It's a marvel women haven't cultivated them--instead of corsets. But
+tell me why you've disdained art as an ideal. You're curious. It's a
+confessional I should think would appeal to you. I'm almost interested
+in you, you see. Another hour with you and you would flatter me into a
+state of silence."
+
+Dorn paused, somewhat startled. Her dark lips parted, her eyes glowing
+toward the end of the street, the girl was walking in a radiant
+abstraction. She appeared to be listening to him without hearing what he
+said. Dorn contemplated her confusedly. He frowned at the thought of
+having bored her, and an impulse to step abruptly from her side and
+leave became a part of his anger. He hesitated in his walking and her
+fingers, timorous and unconscious of themselves, reached for his arm. He
+wondered with a deeper confusion what she was dreaming about. Her hand
+as it lay on his forearm gave him a sense of companionship which his
+words sought clumsily to understand.
+
+"I was saying something about art when you fell asleep," he smiled.
+
+Rachel threw back her head as if she were shaking a dream out of her
+eyes.
+
+"I wasn't asleep," she denied. They moved on in the increasing crowd.
+
+"Men and women," Dorn muttered. "The street's full of men and women
+going somewhere."
+
+"Except us," the girl cried. Her eyes, alight, were thrusting against
+the cold, amused smile of his face. He would be late. Anna would be
+waiting. An anniversary. Anniversaries were somehow important. They
+revived interest in events which had died. But it was nice to drift in a
+crowd beside a girl who admired him. What did he think of her? Nothing
+... nothing. She seemed to warm him into a deeper sleep. It was a relief
+to be admired for one's silence. Admired, not loved. Love was a bore.
+Anna loved him, bored him. Her love was an applause that did not wait
+for him to perform--an unreasonable ovation.
+
+He looked at the girl again. She was walking beside him, vivid eyes,
+dark lips--almost unaware of him, as if he had become a part of the
+dream that lived within her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+When she was a child she used to see a face in the dark as she was
+falling asleep. It was crude and misshapen, and leered at her, filling
+her heart with fear. Later, people had become like that to her.
+
+When she was eighteen Rachel came to Chicago and studied art at an art
+school. She learned nothing and forgot nothing. She read books in
+English and in Russian--James, Conrad, Brusov, Tolstoi. Her reading
+failed to remove her repugnance to the touch of life. Instead, it lured
+her further from realities. She did not like to meet people or to hear
+them talk. At twenty she was able to earn her living by drawing posters
+for a commercial art firm and making occasional illustrations for
+magazines designed for female consumption.
+
+As she matured, the repugnance to life that lay like a disease in her
+nerves, developed dangerously. She would sit in her room in the evening
+staring out of the window at the darkened city and thinking of people.
+There was an endless swathing of people, buildings, faces, words, that
+wound itself tightly about her. She would cover her face suddenly and
+whisper, "Oh, I must go away. I must."
+
+She hurried through dragging days as if she were running away. But there
+were things she could not escape. Men smiled at her and established
+themselves as friends. Women were easy to get rid of. One had only to be
+frank and women vanished. But this same frankness, she found, had an
+opposite effect upon men. Insults likewise served only to interest men.
+They would become gradually more and more acquainted with her until it
+became impossible to talk to them. Then she would have to ignore them,
+turning quickly away when they addressed her and saying, "Good-bye, I
+must go."
+
+At times she grew ashamed of her sensitiveness. She would sit alone in
+her room surrounded by a whimpering little silence. A melancholy would
+darken her heart. It wasn't because she was afraid of people. It was
+something else. She would try to think of it and would find herself
+whispering suddenly, "Oh, I must go away. I must."
+
+To men, Rachel's beauty seemed always a doubtful quality. Her appeal
+itself was doubtful. The Indian symmetry of her face lay as behind a
+luminous shadow--an ill-mannered, nervous face that was likely to lure
+strangers and irritate familiars. In the streets and restaurants people
+looked at her with interest. But people who spoke to her often lost
+their interest. There was a silence about her like a night mist. She
+seemed in this silence preoccupied with something that did not concern
+them. Men found the recollection of her more pleasing than her presence.
+Something they remembered of her seemed always to be missing when they
+encountered her again. Lonely evening fields and weary peasants moving
+toward the distant lights of their homes spoke from her eyes. An exotic
+memory of simple things--of earth, sky, and sea--lay in her sudden
+gestures. A sense of these things men carried away with them. But when
+they came to talk to her they grew conscious only of the fact that she
+irritated them. These who persisted in their friendship grew to regard
+her solicitously and misunderstand their emotions toward her.
+
+It was evening when Rachel came to her room after her walk with Erik
+Dorn. The long stroll had given her an aversion toward work. She glanced
+at several unfinished posters and moved to a chair near a window.
+
+A glow of excitement brightened the dusk of her face. Her eyes, usually
+asleep in distances, had become alive. They gave themselves to the
+night.
+
+Beyond the scratch of houses and the slant of home lights she watched
+the darkness lift against the sky. The city had dwindled into a huddle
+of streets. Noise had become silence. The great crowds were packed away
+in little rooms. Sitting before the window, unconscious of herself, she
+laughed softly. Her black hair felt tight and heavy. She shook her head
+till its loose coils dropped across her cheeks. She had felt confused
+when she entered the room, as if she had grown strange to herself.
+
+"Who am I?" she whispered suddenly. She raised her hand and stared at
+it. Something intimate had left her. She remembered herself as in a
+dream. There had been another Rachel who used to sit in this chair
+looking out of the window. A memory came of people and days. But it was
+not her memory, because her mind felt free of the nausea it used to
+bring.
+
+She stood up quickly and turned on a light. Her dexterous hands twisted
+her hair back into loose coils on her head. Strange, she did not know
+herself. That was because things seemed different. Here was her room,
+littered with books and canvasses and clothes, and the bed in which she
+slept, half hidden by the alcove curtains. But they were different. She
+began to hum a song. A tune had come back to her that men sang in Little
+Russia trudging home from the wheat fields. That was long ago when the
+world was a bad dream that frightened her at night. Now there was no
+world outside, but a darkness without faces or streets--a darkness with
+a deep meaning. It was something to be breathed in and felt.
+
+She opened the window and stood wondering. She was lonely. Loneliness
+caressed her heart and drew dim fingers across her thought. She could
+never remember having been lonely before. But now there was a
+difference. She smiled. Of course, it was Erik Dorn. He had pleased
+her. The things he had said returned to her mind. They seemed very
+important, as if she had said them herself. She would go out and walk
+again--fast. It was pleasant to be lonely. Her throat shivered as she
+breathed. Bewildered in the lighted room she laughed and her lips said
+aloud, "I don't know. I don't know!"
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Among the men who had established themselves as friends of Rachel was a
+young attorney named George Hazlitt. He had gone to school with her in a
+small Wisconsin town. A year ago he had discovered her again in Chicago.
+The discovery had excited him. He was a young man with proprietary
+instincts. He had at once devoted them to Rachel. After several months
+he had begun to dream about her. They were correct and estimable dreams
+reflecting credit upon the correct and estimable stock from which he
+came.
+
+He fell to courting Rachel tenaciously, torn between a certainty that
+she was insane and a conviction that a home, a husband's love, and the
+paraphernalia of what he termed clean, healthy living would restore her
+to sanity. Their meetings had been affairs of violence. In her presence
+he always felt a rage against what he called her neurasthenia--a word he
+frequently used in drawing up bills for divorce. He regarded
+neurasthenia not as a disease to be condoned like the mumps, but as a
+deliberate failing--particularly in Rachel. The neurasthenia of the
+defendants he pursued in courts annoyed him only slightly. In Rachel it
+outraged him. It was his habit to inform her that her sufferings were
+nothing more than affectations and that her moods were shams and that
+the whole was a part and parcel of neurasthenia.
+
+This unhappy desire of his to browbeat her into a state which he defined
+as normal, Rachel had accepted in numb helplessness. She had given up
+commanding him to leave her alone. His presence frequently became a
+nausea. Her enfevered senses had come to perceive in the conventionally
+clothed and spoken figure of the young attorney, a concentration of the
+repugnant things before which she cowered. During his courtship he had
+grown familiar to her as a penalty and his visits had become climaxes of
+loathsomeness.
+
+But a stability of purpose peculiar to unsensitive and egoistic young
+men kept Hazlitt to his quest. His steady rise in his profession, the
+growing respect of his fellows for his name, fired him with a sense of
+success. Rachel had become the victim of this sense. Of all the men she
+knew Hazlitt grew to be the most unnecessary. But his persistence seemed
+to increase with her aversion for him. In a sort of mental self-defense
+against the nervous disgust he brought her, she forced herself to think
+of him and even to argue with him. By thinking of him she was able to
+keep the memory of him an impersonal one, and to convert him from an
+emotionally unbearable influence into an intellectually insufferable
+type. A conversion by which Hazlitt profited, for she tolerated him more
+easily as a result of her ruse. She thought of him. His youth was fast
+entrenching itself in platitudes and acquiring the vigor and directness
+that come as a reward of conformity. Life was nothing to wonder at or
+feel. Life shaped itself into definite images and inelastic values
+before him. To these images and values he conformed, not submissively,
+but with a militant enthusiasm. On summer mornings he saw himself as a
+knight of virtue advancing clear-eyed upon a bedeviled world. When he
+was among his own kind he summed up the bedevilments in the word "bunk."
+The politer word, to be used chivalrously, was "neurasthenia." The
+victims of these bedevilments were "nuts." A dreadful species like
+herself, given to wrong hair cuts, insanities, outrages upon decency and
+above all, common sense.
+
+Hazlitt's attraction to Rachel in the face of her neurasthenia did not
+confuse him. Confusion was a quality foreign to Hazlitt. He courted her
+as a lover and proselyter. His proselyting consisted of vigorous
+denunciations of the things which contributed to the neurasthenia of his
+beloved. He declaimed his notions in round, rosy-cheeked sentences.
+There was about Hazlitt's wooing of Rachel the pathos which might
+distinguish the love affair of a Baptist angel and the hamadryad
+daughter of a Babayaga.
+
+Yet, though in her presence he denounced her art, taste, sufferings,
+books, friends, affectations, away from her she came to him--beautiful
+eyed and fragile--bringing a fear and a longing into his heart. Dreaming
+of her over a pipe in his home at night, he saw her as something
+bewilderingly clean, different--vividly different from other women, with
+a difference that choked and saddened him. There was a virginity about
+her that extended beyond her body. This and her fragility haunted him.
+His youth had caught the vision of the night mist of her, the lonely
+fields of her eyes, the shadow dreams toward whose solitudes she seemed
+to be flying. Beside Rachel all other women were to him somehow coarse
+and ungainly fibered, and somehow unvirginal.
+
+Out of his dream of her arose his desire to have her as his own,
+to come home and find her waiting, to have her known as Mrs.
+George Hazlitt. The thought of the Rachel he knew--mysterious, fugitive,
+neurasthenic--established normally across a breakfast table, smiling a
+normal good-bye at him with her arms normally about his neck, was a
+contrast that sharpened his desire. It offered a transformation that
+would be a victory not only for his love but for the shining, militant
+platitudes behind which Rachel had correctly pointed out to herself, he
+lived.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Bewildered in the lighted room, Rachel turned suddenly to the door.
+Someone was knocking--loud. She hurried eagerly forward, wondering at
+an unfinished thought ... "perhaps it is...." Hazlitt, smiling with
+steady, solicitous eyes confronted her.
+
+"I've been knocking for five minutes," he announced. "I heard you or I'd
+have gone away."
+
+Rachel nodded. Of course, it would be Hazlitt. He was always appearing
+when least expected. But it would be nice to talk to someone. She
+smiled. This was surprising and she shook her head as if she were
+carrying on a conversation with herself. George Hazlitt was always
+unbearable. But that was a memory. It no longer applied.
+
+"I'm glad you came," she greeted him. "I was lonely."
+
+Hazlitt looked at her in surprise. Visiting Rachel was a matter that
+required an extreme of determination. He had come prepared as usual for
+the sullen, uncomfortable hour she offered.
+
+"I was going out," she continued, "but I won't now. If you'll sit down
+I'll do some work. You won't mind."
+
+She looked at him eagerly as if to tell him he must forget she had
+always hated him and that she was different now. At least for the
+moment. He understood nothing and remained staring at her. His manner
+proclaimed frankly that he was bewildered.
+
+"Yes, certainly," he answered at length, and sat down. She hurried
+about, securing her paints and setting up one of the unfinished
+posters. Drawing a deep breath Hazlitt lighted a pipe and watched her.
+She was beautiful. He admitted it with less belligerency than usual. He
+sat thinking, "what the deuce has happened to her. She said she was glad
+to see me." He was afraid to start an inquiry. She had never before
+smiled at him, let alone voiced pleasure over his presence. It was a
+mistake of some sort but he would enjoy it for awhile. But perhaps it
+was the beginning of something.
+
+Hazlitt sighed. He smoked, waited, and struggled to avoid the thoughts
+that crowded upon him.
+
+"That's rather nice," he said. He would follow her mood, whatever it
+was. Rachel's eyes laughed toward him.
+
+"I hope it doesn't bore you. If you hadn't come I would never have
+thought of working."
+
+The thing was unbelievable. Yet he contemplated it serenely. He would
+talk to her soon and find out what was the matter. There was undoubtedly
+something the matter. His eyes stared at her furtively as she returned
+to her work. "There's something the matter," his thought cautioned him.
+Rachel resumed her talking. A naivete and freshness were in her voice.
+She was letting her tongue speak for her and laughing at the sound of
+the curious remarks it made.
+
+"Do you think that women are becoming barbarians? The way they mess up
+their hair and go in for savage colors! Sometimes I get to feeling that
+they will end up as--as psychopathic barbarians. With astrologer hats."
+
+She regarded Hazlitt carelessly. Hazlitt, with fidgets in his thought,
+smiled. His eyes lost their solicitous air. They began to search
+shrewdly for some reason. The spectacle of a coquettish Rachel was
+beyond him, even as the sound of her laugh was an amazing music to his
+senses. But his shrewdness evaporated. It occurred to him that women
+were peculiar. Particularly Rachel. A direct and vigorous Hazlitt
+concluded that Rachel had succumbed to his superior guidance. There was
+nothing else to explain her tolerance. He called it tolerance, for he
+was still wary and her eyes shining eagerly, hungrily at him might be no
+more than a new kind of neurasthenia. He let her talk on without
+interruption. She would like to paint streets, houses, lights in the
+dark, city things. Blowing puffs of smoke carelessly toward the ceiling
+he answered finally, "If you didn't have to support yourself, perhaps
+you could." A fear whirled in his heart with the sentence. He had never
+asked her outright to marry him. The thought that he had almost asked
+her, now made him feel dizzy.
+
+"There! I guess that can rest now."
+
+Rachel put aside her painting. She sat down near him. Her eyes narrowed
+and she listened with a sleepy smile as he began carefully to recite to
+her incidents that had happened during his day. But he became silent.
+She didn't mind that. She desired to sit as she was, her emotion a
+dream that escaped her thought. Hazlitt fumbled with his pipe. It was
+out. He dropped it into a pocket. His shrewdness and his weariness had
+left him. He felt almost that he was alone.
+
+"You're wonderful," he whispered; and he grew frightened of his voice.
+Rachel saw his face light with an unusual expression. He would be kind
+now and let her smile.
+
+"I'm glad you came," she sighed. "I don't know why. I feel different
+to-night."
+
+She had a habit of short, begrudging sentences delivered in a quick
+monotone--a habit of speech against which Hazlitt had often raged. But
+now her words--flurried, breathless, begrudging as always--stirred him.
+They could be believed. She was a child that way. She spoke quickly
+thoughts that were uppermost in her mind.
+
+"I never thought I could be glad to see you. But I am."
+
+Hazlitt felt suddenly weak. Her face before him was something in a
+dream. It was turned away and he could watch her breathing. Bewilderedly
+he remembered a thousand Rachels, different from this one, who was glad
+he had come. But the beauty of her burned away uncomfortable memories.
+She was the Rachel of his loneliness. Out of George Hazlitt vanished the
+vigor and directness of a young man who knows his own soul. There came a
+vision--a thing uncertain and awesome, and he sat humbled before it.
+
+He reached her hand and closed his fingers over it. An awe squeezed at
+his throat. Her hand lay without protest within his. He had never
+touched her before. She had been a symbol and a dream. Now he felt the
+marvel of the fact that she was a woman. Her hand, warm and alive,
+astonished him with the news.
+
+Rachel, during his speechlessness, looked at him unbelievingly. The grip
+of his fingers was bringing an ache into her heart. It was sad. The
+night and the room were sad. She could feel sadness opening little
+wounds in her breasts. And before she had been happy. She heard him
+whispering, "I can't talk to you. I can't. Oh, you are beautiful!"
+
+His eyes made her think he was suffering. Then he was sad, too. She
+stood up because his hand drew her. Why did he want her to stand up? His
+body touched her and she heard him gasp. Her heart seemed adrift. She
+was unreal. There was another Rachel somewhere else. He was saying, but
+he was not talking to her, "Oh, Rachel, I love you. I love you, Rachel!"
+
+Still she waited unbelievingly, the ache in her dragging at her senses.
+She had fallen asleep and was dreaming something that was sad. But his
+face was suddenly too close. His eyes were too near and bright. They
+awakened her.
+
+"Let me go, quick."
+
+His hands clung. For an instant she failed to understand his resistance.
+He was saying jerkily, "No ... no!"
+
+She twisted out of his arms and stood breathless, as if she were
+choking. Hazlitt looked at her, a bit pensively. His heart lost in a
+dream and a rapture could only grimace a child's protest out of his
+stare. He hadn't kissed her. But that would come soon. Not everything at
+once. He must not be a brute. He smiled. His good-natured face glowed as
+if in a light. Then he heard her talking,
+
+"Go away. At once. I never want to see you again. I'll die if I see you
+again."
+
+Her hands were in her hair.
+
+"Go away. Please.... Oh, God, I can't stand you. You--horrify me!"
+
+The panic in Rachel's voice seemed to dull his ears to her words. He saw
+her for a vivid moment against the opened window and then he found
+himself alone, looking into a night that was haunted with an image of
+her. He remembered her going, but it seemed to him he still saw her
+against the window, his eyes bringing to him a vision of her face as she
+had looked.
+
+He had grown white. In the memory of her face, as in an impossible
+mirror, he saw a loathsome image of himself. Her eyes had blazed with
+it. He sickened and his thought grew faint. Then the night came before
+him and the echo of the words Rachel had spoken beat in his head. He
+walked with his hat politely in his hand out of the door.
+
+On the stairs his eyes grew weak and warm. Tears rushed from them. He
+stumbled and clutched at the banister. She had led him on. She had
+looked at him with love. Love ... but he had dreamed that. What was it,
+then? Her eyes burning toward him had told him he was loathsome. There
+was something wrong with him. He wept. He put his hat on mechanically.
+He dried his eyes. There was something wrong.
+
+On her bed Rachel lay mumbling to herself, mumbling as if the words were
+a pain to her ears. "Erik Dorn ... Erik Dorn."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The world in which Erik Dorn lived was compounded of many surfaces. Of
+them Anna, his wife, was the most familiar. It was a familiarity of
+absorption. Weeks of intimacy passed between them, of lover-like
+attentiveness during which Dorn remained unconscious of her existence.
+Her unending talk of her love for him--words and murmurs that seemed an
+inexhaustible overflow of her heart--passed through his mind as a part
+of his own thought. Hers was a more definite contribution to the
+emptiness of the life through which he moved.
+
+Yet in his unconsciousness of her there lived a shadowy affection. On
+occasions in which they had been separated there had always awakened in
+him an uneasiness. In his nights alone he lay sleepless, oppressed, a
+nostalgia for her presence growing in him. With his eyes opened at the
+darkness of a strange room he experienced then an incompleteness as if
+he himself were not enough. The emptiness in which he was living became
+suddenly real. He would feel a despair. Words unlike the sophisticated
+patter of his usual thought would come to him.... "What is there ... I
+would like something ... what?..." A sense of life as an unpeopled
+vastness would frighten him vaguely. Night sounds ... strange,
+shadow-hidden walls. They made him uneasy. Memories then; puzzling,
+mixed-up pictures that had lost their outlines. Things that had left no
+impression on his thought--sterile little incidents through which he had
+moved with automatic gestures--returned like sad little outcasts
+pleading with him. Faces he could not remember and that were yet
+familiar peered at him in his sleeplessness with poignant eyes that
+frightened.
+
+There would come to him the memory of the time he had been a boy and had
+lain like this in his mother's home, startled with fears that sat like
+insanities in his throat. The memory of his being a boy seemed to
+restore him to the fears long forgotten. Words would come ... "I was a
+boy ..." and he would lie thinking of how people grew old; of how he had
+grown old without seeming to change, and yet changing--as if he had been
+gently vanishing from himself and even now was moving slowly away. He
+was like a house from which issued a dim procession of guests never
+pausing for farewells. He had been a boy, a youth, a man ... each
+containing days and thoughts. And they moved slowly away from
+him--completed figures fully dressed. Slowly, without farewells, with
+faces intensely familiar yet no longer known. Thus he would continue to
+vanish from himself, remaining unchanged but diminishing, until there
+were no more guests to forsake and he stood alone waiting a last
+farewell--a curious, unimaginable good-bye to himself. Nothing ...
+nothing. A long wait for a good-bye. And then nothing again. Already he
+was half shadow--half a procession of Erik Dorns walking away from him
+and growing dimmer.
+
+In the dark of the strange room, his eyes staring and fearful, he would
+reach suddenly for Anna, embracing her almost as if she were beside him.
+Her smile that forever shone upon him like the light of lilies and
+candles from a sad, quiet altar; her words that forever flowed like a
+dream from her heart, the warmth of her body that she offered him as if
+it no longer existed for herself--to these his loneliness sought vainly
+to carry him. And he would find himself tormented by a desire for her,
+lying with her name on his lips and her image alone alive in the empty
+dread of his thought.
+
+United again in their home, he lapsed into the unconsciousness of her,
+sometimes vaguely startled by the tears he felt on her cheeks as they
+lay together at night. Out of this unconsciousness he made continual
+love to her, giving her back her endearments and caresses. Of this he
+never tired. His kisses unaware of her, his tendernesses without meaning
+to him, he yet felt in her presence the shadow of a desire. The love
+that filled his wife seemed to animate his phrases with an amorous
+diction that echoed her own. He would hold her in his arms, bestowing
+kisses upon her, and watch as in wonder of some mysterious make-believe,
+the radiance that his meaningless gestures brought to her.
+
+There were times, however, when Dorn became aware of his wife, when she
+thrust herself before him as a far-away-eyed and beautiful-faced
+stranger. He had frequently followed her in the street, watching her
+body sway as she walked, observing with quickening surprise her trim,
+lyre-like shoes, her silken ankles, the agile sensualism of her
+litheness under a stranger's dress. He had noticed that she had coils of
+red hair with bronze and gold lights slipping over it, that her face
+tilted itself with a hint of determination and her eyes walked proudly
+over the heads of the crowd. He watched other men glimpse her and turn
+for an instant to follow with their stares the promise of her body and
+lighted face. Dorn, walking out of her sight, got a confused sense of
+her as if she were speaking to the street, "I am a beautiful woman. In
+my head are thoughts. I am a stranger to you. You do not know what my
+body looks like or what dreams live in me. I have destinations and
+emotions that are mysterious to you. I am somebody different from
+yourselves."
+
+On top of this sense of her had come each time a sudden vivid
+picture--Anna in their bedroom attaching her garters to the tops of her
+stockings; Anna tautening her body as she slipped out of her nightgown
+... or a picture of her pressing his head against her breasts and
+whispering passionately, "Erik, I adore you." The strangeness then would
+leave her and again she was something he had absorbed. When he looked
+for her she had vanished in the scribble of the crowd and he walked with
+the same curious unconsciousness of her existence as of his own.
+
+There were times too in their home when Anna became a reality before his
+eyes--an external that startled him. This was such a time now. Rachel
+had come to visit them. She sat silent, fugitive-bodied amid overfed,
+perspiring-eyed guests. And he stood looking at Anna and listening to
+her.
+
+He wondered why he looked at Anna and not at Rachel. But his wife in
+black velvet and silken pumps, like a well-limned character out of some
+work of stately fiction, held his attention. He desired to talk to her
+as if she were a stranger. She sat without surprise at his unusual
+verbal animation in her behalf, listening to his banter with an intent,
+almost preoccupied smile in her eyes. While he talked, asking her
+questions and pressing for answers, he thought. "She's not paying any
+attention to my words, but to me. Her love is like a robe about her,
+covering her completely." Yet she seemed strange. Behind this love lived
+a person capable of thinking and reasoning. Dorn, as sometimes happened,
+grew curious about her thoughts. He increased his efforts to rivet her
+attention, as if he were trying to coax a secret out of her. The
+easiest way to arouse her was to say things that frightened her, to make
+remarks that might give her the feeling he had some underlying idea in
+his head hostile to their happiness.
+
+The company of faces in the room emitted laughter, uttered words of
+shocked contradiction, pressed themselves eagerly forward upon his
+phrases. A red-faced man whose vacuity startled from behind a pair of
+owlish glasses exclaimed, "That's all wrong, Dorn. Women don't want war.
+Your wife would rather cut off her arm than see you go to war. And mine,
+too."
+
+The wife of the red-faced man giggled. A younger, unmarried woman posed
+carelessly on the black piano bench in an effort to exaggerate the
+charms of her body, spoke with a deliberate sigh.
+
+"No, I don't agree with you, Mr. Harlan. Women are capable of
+sacrifice."
+
+She thrust forward a lavender-stockinged leg and contemplated it with a
+far-away sacrificial light in her eyes. The red-faced one observed her
+with sudden owlish seriousness. His argument seemed routed.
+
+"Of course that's true," he agreed. Mr. Harlan came of a race whose
+revolutionary notions expired apologetically before the first platitude
+to cross their path. "We must always bear in mind that women are capable
+of sacrifice; that women ..." The lavender stocking was withdrawing
+itself and Mr. Harlan stammered like an orator witnessing a sudden
+exodus of his audience, "that women are really capable of remarkable
+things," he concluded.
+
+Dorn was an uncommonly clever fellow, but a bit radical. He'd like to
+think of something to say to him just to show him there was another side
+to it. Not that he gave a damn. Some other time would do. The red face
+turned with a great attentiveness toward the hoarsely oracular Mr.
+Warren, his eyes dropping a furtive curtsy in the direction of the
+vanished stocking.
+
+"I never agree with Dorn," Warren was remarking, "for fear of
+displeasing him."
+
+He gazed belligerently at Anna whose eyes were attracting attention. She
+was watching her husband in a manner unbecoming a hostess. A middle-aged
+youth toying politely with the blue sash of a girl in a white dress--he
+had recently concluded a tense examination of the two antique rings on
+her fingers--saw an occasion for laughter and embraced it. The girl
+glanced somewhat timidly toward Anna and addressed her softly, as if
+desiring to engage in some conversation beyond the superficial
+excitement of the moment.
+
+"I'm just mad about blue sashes," she whispered. "I think the sash is
+coming back, don't you?"
+
+Anna nodded her head. Erik had resumed his talk, his eyes still on her.
+
+"Women are two things--theory and fact," he was saying. "The theory of
+them demands war. If we get into this squabble you'll find them
+cheering the loudest and waving the most flags. War is something that
+kills men; therefore, it is piquantly desirable to their subconscious
+hate of our sex." He smiled openly at Anna. "It's also something that
+plays up the valor and superiority of man and therefore offers a
+vindication for her submission to him."
+
+"Oh," the lavender stocking was indignantly in evidence, "how awful!"
+
+Dorn waited until the young woman had shifted her hips into a more
+protesting outline.
+
+"I agree," the red face chimed in. "It's nonsense. Dorn's full of clever
+nonsense. I quite agree with you, Miss Dillingham." Miss Dillingham was
+the lavender stocking. The wife of the red face fidgeted, politely
+ominous. She announced pertly:
+
+"I agree with what Mr. Dorn says." Which announcement her husband
+properly translated into a warning and a threat of future conversation
+on the theme, "You never pay any attention to me when there's anybody
+else around."
+
+Dorn continued, "And it gives them a sense of generalities. Women live
+crowded between the narrow horizons of sex. They don't share in life.
+It's very sad, isn't it, Miss Williams?" Miss Williams removed her sash
+gently from the hands of the elderly youth and pouted. She was always
+indignant when men addressed her seriously. It gave her an
+uncomfortable feeling that they were making fun of her.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she answered. The elderly youth nodded his head
+enthusiastically and whispered close to her ear, "Exactly."
+
+"The things that are an entirety to women," pursued Dorn, "milk bottles,
+butcher bills, babies, cleaning days, hello and good-bye kisses, are
+merely gestures to their husbands. So in a war they find themselves able
+to share what is known as the larger horizon of the male. One way is
+through sacrifice. They sacrifice their sons, lovers, husbands, uncles,
+and fathers with a high, firm spirit, announcing to the press that they
+are only sorry their supply of relatives is limited. The sacrificing
+brings them in contact with the world in which their males live. That's
+the theory of it."
+
+Anna's smile continued to deny itself to his words. It said to him,
+"What does it matter what you say? I love you." And yet there was a
+thought behind it holding itself aloof.
+
+"But the fact of woman is always denying her theory," he added. "That's
+what makes her confusing. The fact of her weeps at departures, shell
+shocks, amputations; grows timid and organizes pacifist societies. It's
+a case of sex instinct versus the personal complex."
+
+The elderly young man straightened in his chair, removing his eyes from
+Miss Williams with the air of one returning to masculine worldliness.
+
+"I don't know about that," he said. "It's all very well to talk about
+such things flippantly. But when the time comes, we must admit ..."
+
+"That talk is foolish," interrupted Warren. He looked at Rachel and
+laughed. "As a matter of fact, if anybody else but Dorn said it, I'd
+believe it. But I never believe Dorn. Do you, Miss Laskin?"
+
+Rachel answered, "Yes."
+
+Dorn, piqued by the continual silence of his wife, felt a sudden
+discomfiture at the sound of Rachel's voice. Was Anna aware he was
+talking to her so as to avoid talking to Rachel? Perhaps. But Rachel's
+presence was diluted by the company. He caught a glimpse of her dark
+eyes opened towards him, and for a moment felt his words disintegrate.
+He continued hurriedly:
+
+"War, in a way, is a noble business, in that it reduces us to a
+biological sanity--much the same as does Miss Dillingham's lavender
+stocking!"
+
+The company swallowed this with an abrupt stiffening of necks. Isaac
+Dorn, who had been airing himself on the veranda, relieved a tension by
+appearing in the doorway and moving quietly toward an unoccupied chair.
+Anna reached her hand to the old man's and held it kindly. Miss
+Dillingham, surveying the stretch of hose which had been honored in her
+host's conversation, raised her eyes and replied quietly:
+
+"Mr. Dorn is too clever to be really insulting."
+
+The red-faced one clung to a sense of outrage. His cheeks had grown
+slightly distended, and with the grimace of indignant virtue bristling
+on his face, he turned the expression toward his wife for approval. She
+nodded her head and tightened the thin line of her lips.
+
+"I only meant," laughed Dorn, "that it reduces us to the sort of sanity
+that wipes out the absurd, artificial notions of morality that keep
+cluttering up the thought of the race. War reminds us that civilization
+and murder are compatible. Lavender stockings, speaking in generalities,
+are reminders that good and evil walk on equally comely legs."
+
+Mr. Harlan, having registered indignation, now struggled vainly against
+the preenings of his wit, and finally succumbed.
+
+"In these days you can't tell Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's lady apart
+by their stockings, eh?" He hammered his point home with a laugh. Warren
+winked at Rachel as if to inform her of the mixed company they were in,
+and Mrs. Harlan endeavored to put an end to the isolated merriment of
+her husband with a "John, you're impossible!" The elderly youth,
+conscious of himself as the escort of a young virgin, lowered his eyes
+modestly to her ankles. Dorn, watching his wife's smile deepen, nodded
+his head at her. He knew her momentary thought. She labored under the
+pleasing conviction that his risque remarks were invariably inspired by
+memories of her.
+
+"Barring, of course, the unembattled stay-at-homes," he continued. "The
+sanity of battlefields is in direct ratio to the insanity of the
+non-combatants. You can see it already in the press. We who stay at
+home endeavor to excuse the crime of war by attaching ludicrous ideals
+and purposes to its result. Thus every war is to its non-combatants a
+holy war. And we get a swivel-chair collection of nincompoops raving
+weirdly, as the casualty lists pour in, of humanity and democracy. It
+hasn't come yet, but it will."
+
+"Then you don't believe in war?" said the red face, emerging
+triumphantly upon respectable ground.
+
+"As a phenomenon inspired by ideals or resulting in anything more
+satisfactory than a wholesale loss of life, war is always a joke," Dorn
+answered. He wondered whether Rachel was considering him a pompous ass.
+"I have a whole-hearted respect for it, however, as a biological
+excitement."
+
+The blue sash winced primly at the word biological, and appealed to her
+escort to protect her somehow from the indecencies of life. The elderly
+youth answered her appeal with a tightening of his features.
+
+"War isn't biological," he retorted in her behalf.
+
+Dorn, wearying of his talk, waited for some one of the company to
+relieve him of the burden. But the elderly youth had subsided, and
+fulfilling his functions as host--a business of diverting visitors from
+the fact that there was no reason for their presence in his home--Dorn
+was forced to continue:
+
+"I can conceive of no better or saner way to die than crawling around
+in the mud, shrieking like a savage, and assisting blindly in the
+depopulation of an enemy. But unless a man is forced to fight, I can
+conceive of nothing more horrible than war. Don't you think that, Anna?"
+
+"You know what I think, Erik," she answered. "I hate it."
+
+He was startled by a sudden similarity between Rachel and Anna. She too
+was looking at him with the indignant aloofness of his wife--with a rapt
+attention seemingly beyond the sound of his words. He caught the two
+women turn and smile to each other with an understanding that left him a
+stranger to both. He thought quickly, "Anna is the only one in the room
+intelligent enough for Rachel to understand." He felt a momentary pride
+in his wife, and wondered.
+
+As the conversation, playing with the theme of war, spread itself in
+spasmodic blurs about the room, bursting in little crescendoes of
+conviction, pronouncements, suddenly serious and inviolable truths, Dorn
+found himself listening excitedly. An unusual energy pumped notions into
+his thought. But it was impossible to give vent to ideas before this
+collection of comedians. He desired to look at Rachel, but kept his eyes
+away. If they were alone, he could talk. He permitted himself the luxury
+of an explosive silence.
+
+He sat for a time thinking. "Curious! She knows I have things to say to
+her. They are unimportant but I can say them to no one else. She knows
+I avoid looking at her. There must be something--an attraction. She's a
+fool. I don't know. I should have put an end to our walks long ago."
+
+His vocabulary, marshaling itself under a surprising force, charged with
+a rush through his thought. Sentences unrelated, bizarre combinations of
+words--a kaleidoscopic procession of astounding ideas--art, life, war,
+streets, people--he knew what they were all about. An illumination like
+a verbal ecstacy spread itself through him. Under it he continued to
+think as if with a separate set of words, "I don't know. She isn't
+beautiful. A stupid, nervous little girl. But it hasn't anything to do
+with her. It's something in me."
+
+He stood up, his eyes unsmiling, and surveyed the animated faces as from
+a distance. Paper faces and paper eyes--fluttering masks suspended
+politely above fabrics that lounged in chairs. They were unreal--too
+unreal even to talk to. Beyond these figures in the room and the noises
+they made, lay something that was not unreal. It pulled at the sleep in
+him. He stood as if arrested by his own silence. The night outside the
+window came into his eyes, covering the words in his brain and leaving
+him alone.
+
+He heard Anna speaking.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Erik?"
+
+Her eyes seemed to him laden with forebodings. Yet she was smiling.
+There was something that made her afraid. He turned toward Rachel and
+found her standing as if in imitation of himself, her face lifted toward
+the window, the taut line of her neck an attitude that brought him the
+image of a white bird's wing soaring. He felt himself unable to speak,
+as if a hand had been laid threateningly on his throat. Rachel was
+indiscreet to stand that way, to look that way. There was no mistaking.
+His thought, shaking itself free of words ... "In love with me. In love
+with me!" He paused. A bewildering sense of infidelity. But he had done
+nothing--only walk with her a few afternoons. And talk. "A stupid,
+nervous little girl." It was some sort of game, not serious necessarily.
+He stepped abstractedly toward his wife, aware that the conversation had
+flattened.
+
+"I wasn't thinking," he answered, searching guiltily for an epigram.
+"Won't you play?"
+
+Anna stood up and brought her eyes to a level with his own. Again the
+light of foreboding, of unrevealed shadows flashed at him out of her
+smile. She understood something not clear in his own head; nor in hers.
+He grasped her hand as she passed and with a dolorous grimace of his
+heart felt it unresponsive in his fingers.
+
+Anna was playing from a piano score of _Parsifal_. The music dropped a
+curtain. Dorn became conscious of himself in an overheated room
+surrounded by a group of awed and saccharine faces. Rachel was smiling
+at him with a meaning that he seemed to have forgotten. He stared back,
+pleasantly aware that a familiar sneer had returned to his eyes. In a
+corner his father sat watching Anna and he noticed that the old man's
+watery eyes turned in, as if gazing at images in his own thought. His
+father's smile, as always, touched Dorn with an irritation, and he
+hurried from it.
+
+The others were more amusing. The spectacle of the faces wilting into
+maudlin abstractions under the caress of the music brought a grin to
+him. The sounds had drugged the polite little masks and left them poised
+morosely in a sleepy dream. The lavender stocking crept tenderly into
+evidence. The owlish glasses focused with noncommittal stoicism in its
+direction. The blue sash looked worried and the raised eyebrows of the
+elderly youth asked unhappy questions. Music made people sad and caused
+sighs to trickle from their ludicrously inanimate features. Melting
+hearts under lacquered skins, dissolving little whimpers under
+perfunctory attitudes.
+
+He remembered his own mood of a few moments ago, and explained to
+himself. Something had given him a dream. The night shining through the
+window, the curve of Rachel's neck. Rachel ... Rachel ... He grew
+suddenly sick with the refrain of her name. It said itself longingly in
+his thought as if there was a meaning beyond it.
+
+The playing had stopped. The listeners appeared to be lingering
+dejectedly among its echoes. Rachel slipped quickly to her feet, her
+arms thrust back as if she were poised for running. She passed abruptly
+across the room. Her behavior startled him. The faces looked at her
+curiously. She was running away.
+
+Anna followed her quietly into the vestibule and the company burst into
+an incongruous babble. Dorn listened to their voices, again firm and
+self-sufficient, chattering formalities. He watched Rachel adjusting her
+hat with over-eager gestures. Her eyes were avoiding him. She seemed
+breathless, her head squirming under the necessity of having to remain
+for another moment before the eyes of the people in the room.
+
+"I must go," she said suddenly. Her hand extended itself to Anna. A
+frightened smile widened her mouth. Dorn felt her eyes center excitedly
+on him. A confused desire to speak kept him silent. He stood up and
+entered the hall to play his little part as host. But Rachel was gone.
+The door had closed behind her and he stared at the panels, feeling that
+the house had emptied itself. Things were normal again. Anna was
+speaking to her guests, smoothly garrulous. They were putting on hats
+and saying good-bye. They would have to hurry to escape the rain. He
+assisted with wraps, his eyes furtively watching the door as if he
+expected to see it open again, with Rachel returning.
+
+"I've really had a wonderful time," the lavender stocking was shrilling.
+He became solicitous and followed her to the door, walking with her
+down the housesteps. A moist summer night, promising rain.
+
+But the street was empty of Rachel, and he returned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+They were in their bedroom undressing. Outside, the night rustled with
+an approaching storm. On the closed windows the rain began a rattle of
+water. A wind filled the darkness.
+
+"What makes you act so strangely to-night, Erik?"
+
+She looked at him as she stood uncovering herself. She desired to speak
+with a disarming casualness. Instead, her words came with a sound of
+tears in them. He was always strange--always going away from her until
+she had to close her eyes and love in the dark without trying to see
+him. Now he might go to war and be killed. Something would happen.
+"Something ... something ..." kept murmuring itself in her thought.
+
+"I love to hear you play to a crowd," he answered good-humoredly.
+
+"Why?" She could not get the languor out of her voice.
+
+"When people listen to music it always reminds me we are descended from
+fish. God, what dolts! Minds like soft-bodied sea growths. I can
+actually see them sometimes."
+
+"You always dislike my friends."
+
+She would argue with him, and in his anger his strangeness would go
+away.
+
+"Your friends?" He seemed pleased at the chance of growing angry. "Allow
+me to point out to you that the assemblage to-night had the distinction
+of being my friends. I discovered the collection. I brought them to the
+house first."
+
+"They think you're wonderful." She would get him angry that way.
+
+"A virtue, I admit. But it doesn't excuse their other stupidities."
+
+They seemed to have nothing to argue about. Anna loosened her hair. The
+sight of it rolling in glistening bronzes and reds from her head
+invariably gave her a desire to cover Erik's face in it. With his face
+buried in the disordered masses of her hair she would feel an exquisite
+fullness of love.
+
+"You don't think Rachel stupid, do you?"
+
+Dorn felt a relief at the sound of her name. His thought was full of
+her, but he had been afraid to talk.
+
+"Miss Laskin," he replied, concealing his eagerness for the topic with a
+drawl, "is partially insane."
+
+"Yes, you like insane people, though. I can always tell when you like
+people. You never pay any attention to them then, but sort of come
+hanging around me--as if you were apologizing to yourself for liking
+them, and doing penance. Or you call them names."
+
+"Miss Laskin," Dorn answered, delighted to protract the conversation,
+"is a vivid sort of imbecile suffering from vacuous complexities. An
+hour alone in a room with her would drive even a philosopher to madness.
+She's one of the kind of people given to inappropriate silences. She
+reminds me of an emotion undergoing a major operation. Good Lord, Anna,
+don't tell me you're jealous of her?"
+
+It was immaterial whether he denounced or upheld Rachel. To talk of her
+even with indignation was a delight.
+
+Thunder rolled, and he became silent. Anna turned her nakedness to him.
+Her eyes, grown dark, beheld a yearning and a sorrow.
+
+"Don't talk about people," she whispered. "I'm glad you hate them--all
+of them."
+
+Her nudity always surprised Dorn. Her body seemed always to have grown
+more beautiful and impersonal. A shout of rain sounded in the night and
+a chill wind burst with a clatter in the darkness. He thought of Rachel
+as he darkened the room. There came to him a picture of her walking in
+the rain with her head raised and laughing.
+
+Anna lay for a moment, awed by the suddenness of the storm. She turned
+quickly, her arms reaching hungrily about her husband.
+
+"I love you," she whispered. "Oh, I love you so much. My own, my
+dearest!"
+
+She felt his lips touch hers, and closed her eyes.
+
+"Tell me...."
+
+Dorn murmured back to her, "I adore you."
+
+A little laugh came, and tears reached her cheeks.
+
+"You're so wonderful," she whispered. "Think of it! It's been the same
+since the first night. You love me--just as you did."
+
+She paused questioningly--an old question to which he gave an old
+answer.
+
+"I love you more."
+
+"I know it. I can feel it. You won't ever get tired of loving me?"
+
+"Never--never as long as I live."
+
+"Oh, you make me so happy!"
+
+A sigh almost like a moan came from her heart.
+
+"Oh, I'm a fool. I get frightened sometimes--when I hear you talk.
+Something takes you away. You mustn't ever go away. Promise me. Listen,
+Erik." She dropped into a panic. "Promise me you won't go to war."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"That was only talk," he whispered. "You should know my talk by this
+time."
+
+"I'll never know you."
+
+"Please, Anna, don't. You hurt me when you say that."
+
+"And when you were silent," she went on softly, "I felt--I felt
+something had happened. Erik, darling Erik. Oh, you're my whole life!"
+
+"I adore you, sweetest," he murmured.
+
+"I don't live except in you, Erik. And, oh, I'm a fool. Such a fool!"
+
+"You're wonderful," he interrupted. He was making responses in an old
+ritual.
+
+"No, I'm not. I'll make you tired of me. Tell me, please. Tell me you
+love me. I feel you've never told me it."
+
+"I love you more than everything else in life. More than everything."
+
+"Oh, do you, Erik?"
+
+She pressed herself closer to him, and he felt her body like the heat of
+a flame avidly caress him.
+
+"I don't want you any different, though," she whispered. "When I see
+other men I get horrified to think that you might become like them--if
+you didn't love me. Dead, creepy things. Oh, men are horrible. Talk to
+me, Erik."
+
+"I can't. I love you. What else is there to say?" His voice trembled and
+her mouth pressed upon his.
+
+"I don't deserve such happiness," she said. Tears from her eyes fell
+like warm wax on his shoulder. Her hands were fumbling distractedly over
+him.
+
+"Erik," she gasped, "my Erik! I worship you."
+
+The storm pounded through the night, leaping and bellowing in a halloo
+of sounds. Dorn tightened his arms mechanically about her warm flesh.
+His lips were murmuring tensely, dramatically, "I love you. I love you."
+And a sadness made a little warmth in his heart. He was alone in the
+night. His arms and words were engaged in an old make-believe. But this
+time he felt himself further away. There was no meaning....
+
+He tried vainly to think of Anna, but an emptiness crowded even her name
+out of his mind. His hands were returning her caresses, mimicking the
+eager distraction of her own. His mind, removed as if belonging
+elsewhere, was thinking aimless little words.
+
+There was a storm outside. Lightning.... The war was taking up too much
+space in the paper. Crowding out important local news. The Germans would
+probably get to Paris soon and put an end to it.... Why did Rachel run
+away? Should he ask her? Sometime. When he saw her. Ask her. Ask her....
+His thought drifted into a blank. Then it said ... "The thing is
+meaningless. Meaningless. Houses, faces, streets. Nothing, nothing.
+There's nothing...."
+
+His wife lay silent, quivering with an ecstasy. Her arms were hungrily
+choking him. Dorn closed his eyes as if to hide himself. His lips still
+murmured in a monotone, vague as the voice of a stranger in his
+ears--responses in an old ritual--"I love you, I love you! Oh, I love
+you so much!..."
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+DREAM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+In the evening when women stand washing dishes in the kitchens of the
+city, men light their tobacco and open newspapers. Later, the women
+gather up the crumpled sheets and read.
+
+The streets of the city spell easy words--poor, rich--neither.
+
+Here in one part live the grimy-faced workers, their sagging, shapeless
+women and their litters of children. Their windows open upon broken
+little streets and bubbling alleys. Idiot-faced wooden houses sprawl
+over one another with their rumps in the mud. The years hammer
+away--digesting the paint from houses. The years grind away, yet life
+persists. Beneath the grinding of the years, life gropes, shrieks,
+sweats. And in the evening men light their tobacco and open newspapers.
+
+Around a corner the boxes commence. One, two, three, four, and on into
+thousands stand houses made of stone, and their regimental masonry is
+like the ticking of a clock. Unvarying windows, doors identical--a
+stereotype of roofs and chimneys--these hold the homes of the crowds.
+Here the vague faces of the streets, the hurrying, enigmatic figures
+pumping in and out of offices and stores gather to sleep and breed. In
+the evening the crowds drift into boxes. The multiple destinations
+dwindle suddenly into a monotone. The confusions of the city's traffic;
+the winding and unwinding herds that made a picture for the eyes of Erik
+Dorn, individualize into little human solitudes. The stone houses stand
+ticking away the years, and within them men and women tick. Doors open
+and shut, lights go on and off, day and night drop a tick-tock across
+miles of roofs. And in the hour of the washing of dishes men kindle
+their tobacco and read the newspapers.
+
+Slowly, timidly, the city moves away from the little stone boxes.
+Automobiles and trees appear. Here begin the ornaments. Marble, bronze,
+carved and painted brick--a filigree and a scrollwork--put forth claims.
+The lords of the city stand girthed in ornaments. Knight and satrap have
+changed somewhat. Moat and battlement grimace but faintly from behind
+their ornaments. The tick-tock sounds through the carouse. Sleek, suave
+men and languorous, desirable women sit amid elaborations, sleep and
+breed in ornamental beds. Power wears new masks. Leadership has improved
+its table manners, its plumbing, and its God.
+
+Beautiful clocks, massive with griffiens and gargoyles, nymphs and
+scrollwork--they shelter heroes. But heroes have changed. Destiny no
+longer passes in the night--a masked horseman riding a lonely road.
+Instead, an old watchmaker winds up clocks, sleek men and desirable
+women. In the inner offices of the city the new heroes sit through the
+day, watchmakers themselves, winding and unwinding the immemorial crowds
+with new devices. But in the evening they too return to their ornamental
+boxes, and under Pompeian lamps, amid Renaissance tapestries, open
+newspapers.
+
+Alley box and manor, the tick-tock of the city has them all. Paved
+streets and window-pitted walls beat out a monotone. Lust and dream turn
+sterile eyes to the night. The great multiple tick-tock of the city
+waits another hour to pass.
+
+Wait, it reads a newspaper. On the west side of the city a man named
+Joseph Pryzalski has murdered a woman he loved, beating her head in with
+an ax, and subsequently cut his own throat with a razor. At the inquest
+there will be exhibited a note scribbled on a piece of wrapping-paper
+still redolent with herring ... "God in heaven, forgive me! She is dead.
+It is better. Oh, God, now my turn!" Deplorable incident.
+
+In the next column the exploits of three young men armed with guns.
+Entering a bank, the three young men shot and killed Henry J. Sloane,
+cashier; held half a dozen other names at bay, loaded their pockets with
+money, and escaped in a black automobile. The police are, fortunately,
+combing the city for the three young men and the black automobile. Thank
+God for the police moving cautiously through the streets with a large,
+a magnificent comb that will soon pick the three young men, their three
+guns, and their symbolical black automobile out of the city.
+
+Next, the daily report of excitements in Europe. The Austrian army has
+been annihilated. A part of the German army, seemingly the most
+important part, has also been annihilated. Day by day the armies of the
+Allies continue to devour, obliterate, grind into dust the armies of the
+Kaiser. Bulletin--black type demanding quick eye--twenty thousand
+unsuspecting Prussians walking across a bridge on the Meuse were blown
+up and completely annihilated. This occurred on a Monday. In the teeth
+of these persistent and vigorous annihilations, the Huns still continue
+their atrocities. Shame! In Liege, on a Tuesday, the blood-dripping Huns
+added another horror to their list of revolting crimes. Three citizens
+of Liege were executed. They died like heroes. There are other items on
+this general subject, including a message from the Pope.
+
+Alongside the war, as if in a next room, a woman has shot her lover on
+learning he was a married man. "Beauty Slays Soul-Mate; Shoots Self."
+... Annihilation on a smaller but more interesting scale, this.
+
+A street-car has crashed into a brewery wagon and at the bottom of the
+column a taxi has run over a golden-haired little girl at play.
+
+But why has Raymond S. Cotton, wealthy clubman and financier and
+prominent in north-shore society circles, disappeared? Society circles
+are agog. Sometimes society circles are merely disturbed. But they are
+always active. Society circles are always running around waving
+lorgnettes and exclaiming, "Dear me, and what do you think of this? I am
+all agog." The police are combing the city for a woman in black last
+seen with the prominent Mr. Cotton in a notorious cafe. But a man is to
+be hanged in the County Jail. "The doomed man ate a hearty breakfast of
+ham and eggs and seemed in good spirits." Fancy that!
+
+"Flames Destroy Warehouse, Two Firemen Hurt." This, in small apologetic
+type like a footnote on a timetable. Inconsiderate firemen who take up
+important space on a crowded day!
+
+Apology ceases. Here is something that requires no apology. It is
+extremely important. Wilbur Jennings, prominent architect, has defied
+the world and departed for a Love Bungalow in Minnesota with another
+man's wife. A picture of Wilbur in flowing bow tie and set jaws defying
+the world. Also of his inamorata in a ball gown, eyes lowered to a rose
+drooping from her hand. Various wives and chubby-faced children, and the
+inamorata's Siberian hound, "Jasper." What he said. What she said. What
+they said. Opinions of three ministers, roused on the telephone by
+inquiring reporters. The three divines are unanimous. But Wilbur's tie
+remains defiant.
+
+Arm in arm with Wilbur, his tie and his troubles, his epigrams and his
+Love Bungalow, sits an epidemic of clairvoyants. There is an epidemic
+of clairvoyants in the city. Five widows have been swindled. The police
+are combing the city for ... a prominent professor of sociology on the
+faculty of the local university interrupts. The prominent professor has
+been captured in a leading Loop hotel whither he had gone to divert
+himself with a suitcase, a handbook on sex hygiene, and an admiring
+co-ed.
+
+This, waiting for an hour to pass, the city reads. Crimes, scandals,
+horrors, holocausts, burglaries, arsons, murders, deceptions. The city
+reads with a vague, dull skepticism. Who are these people of the
+newspaper columns? Lusting scoundrels, bandits, heroes, wild lovers,
+madmen? Not in the streets or the houses that tick-tock through the
+night.... Somewhere else. A troupe of mummers wandering unseen behind
+the great clock face of the city--an always unknown troupe of rascally
+mummers for whom the police are continually combing and setting large
+dragnets.
+
+In the evening men light their tobacco and read the little wooden
+phrases of the press that squeal and mumble the sagas of the
+lawbreakers. Women come from the washing of dishes and eating of food
+and pick up the crumpled pages.... A scavenger digging for the disgusts
+and abnormalities of life, is the press. A yellow journal of lies,
+idiocies, filth. Ignoring the wholesome, splendid things of life--the
+fine, edifying beat of the tick-tock. Yet they read, glancing dully at
+headlines, devouring monotonously the luridness beneath headlines. They
+read with an irritation and a vague wonder. Tick, say the streets, and
+tock, say the houses; and within them men and women tick. To work and
+home again. Home again and to work. New shoes grow old. New seasons
+vanish. Years grind. Life sinks slowly away with a tick-tock on its
+lips.
+
+Yet each evening comes the ragged twopenny minstrel--a blear-eyed,
+croaking minstrel, and the good folk give him ear. No pretty words in
+rhythms from his tongue. No mystic cadences quaver in his voice. Yet he
+comes squealing out his song of an endless "Extra! All about the
+mysteries and the torments of life. All about the raptures, lusts, and
+adventures that the day has spilled. Read 'em and weep! Read 'em and
+laugh! Here's the latest, hot off the presses, from dreamers and
+lawbreakers. Extra!"
+
+Thus the city sits, baffled by itself, looking out upon a tick-tock of
+windows and reading with a wonder in its thought, "Who are these
+people?..."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+At ten o'clock the courts of the city crowd up. The important gentlemen
+who devote themselves to sending people to jail and to preventing them
+from being sent to jail, appear with fat books under their arms and
+brief-cases in their hands. They have slept well and eaten well and have
+arrived at their tasks with clear heads containing arguments. These are
+arguments vastly more important than poems that writers make or
+histories that dreamers invent. For they are arrangements of words which
+function in the absence of God. God is not exactly absent, to be sure,
+since the memory of Him lingers in the hearts of men. But it is a vague
+memory and at times unreliable. It would appear that He was on earth
+only for a short interval and failed to make any decided impression.
+
+Therefore, at ten o'clock, the courts crowd up and the important
+gentlemen bristling with substitute arrangements of words, address
+themselves to the daily business of demonstrating whether people have
+done right or wrong, and proving, or disproving also, how extensive are
+the sins which have been committed. Arrangements of words palaver with
+arrangements of words. There ensues a vast shuffling of words, a drone
+and a gurgle of syllables. The Case of the State of Illinois Versus Man.
+Order in the Court Room. "No talking, please...." "If it Please Your
+Honor, the Issue involved in this case is identical with the Issue as
+explicitly set forth in the Case of Matthews Versus Matthews, Illinois
+Sixth, Chapter Eight, Page ninety two, in which in the Third Paragraph
+the Supreme Court decided." The Court Instructs the Jury, "You are to be
+Guided by the Law as given You in these instructions and by the Facts as
+admitted in Evidence of the Case; the court Instructs the jury they are
+the judges of the law as well as of the fact but the Court further
+instructs the Jury before You decide for Yourselves that the Law is
+Otherwise than as given you by the Court, you are to exercise great Care
+and Caution in arriving at your decision...." "Gentlemen, have you
+arrived at your verdict?" "We have." "Let the clerk be handed the
+verdict." "We the Jury find the Defendant...."
+
+Thus the tick-tock of the great city grown stern and audible, grown
+verbose and insistent, speaks aloud in the courts. And here huddled on
+benches are the little troupes of mummers who have committed crimes. The
+mysterious sprinkling of marionettes not wound up by the watchmaker.
+Names that solidify for a moment into the ink headlines. Lusts, dreams,
+greeds, and manias sitting sad-faced and dolorous-eyed listening to a
+drone and a gurgle of words. Alas! The evil-doers and the doers of good
+bear a fatuous resemblance to each other. God Himself might well be
+confused by this curious fact. But fortunately there are arrangements of
+words capable of adjusting themselves to confusion, capable of
+tick-tocking in the midst of disorder. Tick, say the words and tock say
+the juries. Tick-tock, the cell door and the scaffold drop. Streets and
+windows, paintings of the Virgin Mary, beds of the fifty-cent
+prostitutes, cannon at Verdun and police whistles on crossings; the Pope
+in Rome, the President in Washington, the man hunting the alleys for a
+handout, the languorous women breeding in ornamental beds--all say a
+tick-tock. Behind the arrangements of words, confusion strikes a posture
+of guilt, strikes a posture of innocence. God Himself were a dolt to
+interfere. For if the song of the angels is somehow other than the
+tick-tock of men, the song of the angels is a music for heaven and the
+tick-tock of men is a restful drone in which the city hides the
+mysteries non-essential to the progress and pattern of its streets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+In and out of the crowded courtrooms of the city George Hazlitt pursued
+his career. Buried in the babble of words, his voice sounded from day to
+day with a firm, self-conscious vigor. To the thousand and one droners
+about him, the law was a remunerative game in which one matched
+platitude with bromide, legal precedent of the State of Illinois with
+legal precedent of the State of Indiana; in which right and wrong were a
+shuffle of words and the wages of sin dependent upon the depth of a
+counselor's wits.
+
+There was in Hazlitt, however, a puritanical fervor which withstood the
+lure of expediency. He entered the courts not to juggle with words,
+fence for loopholes out of which to drag dubious acquittals for his
+clients. His profession was a part of his nature. He saw it as a battle
+ground on which, under the babbling and droning, good and evil stood at
+unending grips. Good always triumphing. Evil always going to jail
+despite habeas corpuses, writs, and duces tecums.
+
+To question the nobility of the Hazlitt soul would be a sidestepping.
+There were among his friends, men of dubious integrity with elastic
+scruples and pliable consciences. But skepticism thrust in vain at the
+Hazlitt armor. In him had been authentically born the mania for
+conformity. He was a prosecutor by birth. Against that which did not
+conform, against all that squirmed for some expression beyond the
+tick-tock of life, he was a force--an apostle with a sword. Men
+pretending virtues as relentless as his own were often inclined to eye
+him askance. Virtue breeds skepticism among the virtuous. But there was
+a difference about Hazlitt.
+
+The basis of his philosophy was twofold. It embraced a rage against
+dreamers and a rage against lawbreakers. Lawbreakers were men and women
+who sacrificed the welfare and safety of the many for the sating of
+their individual greeds and lusts. He viewed the activities of
+lawbreakers with a sense of personal outrage. He, Hazlitt, was a part of
+society--a conscious unit of a state of mind, which state of mind was
+carefully written out in text-book editorials, and on tablets handed
+down by God from a mountaintop. Men who robbed, cheated, beat their
+wives, deserted their families, seduced women, shirked responsibilities,
+were enemies on his own threshold. They must be punished, mentally, by
+him; physically by the society to which he belonged.
+
+The punishing of evil-doers did more than eliminate them from his
+threshold. It vindicated his own virtue. Virtue increases in direct
+proportion with its ability to distinguish evil. The denunciation of
+evil-doers was the boasting of George Hazlitt, "I am not one of them."
+The more vigorous the denunciation, the more vigorous the boast. The
+hanging of a man for the crime of murder was a reward paid to George
+Hazlitt for his abstinence from bloodshed. The jailing of a seducer
+offered a tangible recompense for the self-denial which he, as a
+non-seducer, practiced.
+
+Apart from the satisfactions his virtue derived in establishing its
+superiority by assisting spiritually in the punishment of the
+unvirtuous, his rage against lawbreakers found itself equally on his
+devotion to law. He perceived in the orderly streets, in the miles of
+houses, in the smoothly functioning commerce and government of his day,
+a triumph of man over his baser selves. The baser selves of man were
+instincts that yearned for disorder. Of this triumph Hazlitt felt
+himself a part.
+
+Disorder he thought not only illegal, but debasing. The same virtue
+which prevented him from promenading in his pajamas in the boulevard
+stirred with a feeling of outrage against the confusion attending a
+street-car strike. His intelligence, clinging like some militant
+parasite to the stability of life, resented all agitations, material or
+spiritual, all violators who violated the equilibrium to which he was
+fastened.
+
+Against dreamers his rage was even deeper and more a part of his fiber.
+In the tick-tock of life Hazlitt saw a perfection--an evolution out of
+centuries of mania and disorder. The tick-tock was a perfection whose
+basic principle was a respect for others. This respect evolved out of
+man's fear of man and insuring a mutual protection against his predatory
+habits, was to Hazlitt a religion. He denied himself pleasures and
+convenient expressions for his impulses in order to spare others
+displeasure and inconvenience. And his nature demanded a similar
+sacrifice of his fellows--as a reward and a symbol of his own
+correctness. Such explanation of his conduct as, it is easier to follow
+the desires of others than to give expression to the desires of one's
+self, would have been, to Hazlitt, spiritual and legal sacrilege.
+
+In dreamers, the rising young attorney sensed a poorly concealed effort
+to evade this primal responsibility toward him and the society of which
+he was an inseparable part. Men who walked with their heads in the
+clouds were certain to step on one's feet. Dreamers were scoundrels or
+lunatics who sought to justify their unfitness for society by ridiculing
+it as unworthy and by phantasizing over new values and standards which
+would be more amiable to their weaknesses. There were political dreamers
+and dreamers in morals and art. Hazlitt bunched them together, branded
+them with an identical rage, and spat them out in one word, "nuts."
+
+Dreamers challenged his sense of superiority by hinting at soul states
+and social states superior to those he already occupied. Dreamers
+disturbed him. For this he perhaps hated them most. Their phantasies
+sometimes lifted him into moments of disorder, moments of doubt as
+revolting to his spirit as were sores revolting to his skin. Then also,
+dreamers had their champions--men and women who applauded their lunatic
+writings and cheered their lunatic theories.
+
+The punishment of lawbreakers vindicated his own virtue. But his rage
+against dreamers was such that their punishing offered him no sense of
+satisfactory vindication. His railing and ridicule against creatures who
+yearned, grimaced--neurasthenics, in short--left him with no fine
+feeling of the victorious sufficiency of himself. Thus to conceal
+himself from doubts always threatening an appearance, it was necessary
+for him to assume a viciousness of attitude not entirely sincere. So he
+read with unction political speeches and art reviews denouncing the
+phantasts of his day, and from them he borrowed elaborate invective. Yet
+his invective seemed like a vague defense of himself who should need no
+defense and thus again doubt raised a dim triumph in his heart.
+
+"Yes, I'm a reactionary," he would say. "I'm for the good old things of
+life. Things that mean something." And even this definition of faith
+would leave him unsatisfied.
+
+The paradox of George Hazlitt lay in the fact that he was himself a
+dreamer. Champions of order and champions of disorder share somewhat in
+a similarity of imaginative impulses.
+
+Six months had passed since Hazlitt had wept on the stairs as he left
+Rachel's room. Dry-eyed now and clear-headed, he sat one winter
+afternoon against his chosen background--the swarm and clutter of a law
+court. His brief-cases were packed. His law books had been bundled back
+to his office.
+
+He was waiting beside a vivid-faced young woman who sat twisting a
+tear-damp handkerchief in her hands. The jury that had listened for
+three weeks to the tale of the young woman's murder of a hospital
+interne who had seduced and subsequently refused to marry her, had
+sauntered out of the jury-box to determine now whether the young woman
+should be hanged, imprisoned, or liberated. The excitements attending
+the trial had brought a reaction to Hazlitt. He seemed suddenly to have
+lost interest in the business of his defense of the wronged young woman.
+This despite that he had for three weeks maintained a high pitch of rage
+against the scoundrel who had violated his client and subsequently
+driven her insane by even more abominable cruelties.
+
+Hazlitt's concluding remarks to the jury on the subject of dishonored
+womanhood and the merciless bestiality of certain male types had been
+more than a legal oration. He had expressed himself in it and had spent
+two full days lost in admiration of the echoes of his bombast.... "Men
+who follow the vile dictates of their lower natures, who sow the
+whirlwind and expect to reap the roses thereby; cynical, soulless men
+who take a woman as one takes a glove, to wear, admire, and discard;
+depraved men who prowl like demons at the heels of virtue, fawning their
+ways into the pure heart of innocence and glutting their beastly hungers
+upon the finest fruits of life--the beauty and sacrifice of a maiden's
+first love--are such creatures men or fiends, gentlemen of the jury?"
+And then ... "spurned, taunted by the sneers of one of these vipers, her
+pleadings answered with laughter and blows of a fist, the soul of
+Pauline Pollard grew suddenly dark. Where had been sanity, innocence,
+and love, now came insanity. Her girl's mind--like sweet bells jangled
+out of tune--brought no longer the high message of reason into her
+heart. We sitting here in this sunny courtroom, gentlemen, can think and
+reason. But Pauline Pollard, struggling in the embrace of a leering
+savage, listening to his fiendish mockeries of her virtue--the virtue he
+had stolen from her--ah! the soul and brain of Pauline Pollard vanished
+in a darkness. The law is the law, gentlemen. There is no one respects
+it more than I. If this girl killed a man coldly and with reason
+functioning in her mind, she is guilty. Hang her, gentlemen of the jury!
+But, gentlemen, the law under which we live, you and I and all of us,
+also says, and says wisely, that a mind not responsible for its acts, a
+soul whose balance has been destroyed by the shrieking voices of mania,
+shall not be held guilty...."
+
+The jury that had listened with ill-concealed envy to the recital of the
+amorous interne's promiscuous exploits, listened to Hazlitt and
+experienced suddenly a fine rage against the deceased. Out of the young
+attorney's florid utterings a question fired itself into the minds of
+the jurors. The deceased had done what they all desired to do, but dared
+not. This grinning, unscrupulous fiend of a hospital interne had
+blithely taken what he desired and blithely discarded what he did not
+desire. The twelve good men and true bethought them of their wives whom
+they did not desire and yet kept. And of the young women and the things
+of flesh and spirit they desired with every life-beat in them and yet
+did not take. Was this terrible denial which, for reasons beyond their
+incomplete brains, they imposed upon themselves, a meaningless,
+profitless business? The bland interne was dead and unfortunately beyond
+their punishment. Yet the fact that he had lived at all called for a
+protest--some definitely framed expression which would throw a halo
+about their own submission to women they did not desire, and their own
+denial to women they did desire. The law, whose arrangements of words
+are omniscient, provided such a halo.
+
+Dr. Hamel, the interne under discussion, was dead and buried, and
+therefore, properly speaking, not on trial. Nor yet was Pauline Pollard
+on trial. The persons on trial were twelve good men and true who were
+being called upon to decide, somewhat dramatically, whether they were
+right in living in a manner persistently repugnant to them; whether
+somebody else could get away with something which they themselves, not
+daring to attempt, bitterly identified as sin.
+
+In thirty minutes the still outraged jury was to file in and utter its
+dignified protest. Pauline Pollard would again be free. And twelve men
+would return to their homes with a high sense of having meted out
+justice, not to Pauline or her amorous interne, but to themselves.
+
+Enticing speculation, the yes or no of these twelve men, three days ago.
+But now Hazlitt sat with an odd indifference in his thought. The crowd
+waiting avidly for the dramatic moment of the verdict; living
+vicariously the suspense of the defendant--depressed him. The newspaper
+reporters buzzing around, forming themselves into relays between the
+press table and the door, further depressed him. He felt himself
+somewhere else, and the scene was a reality which intruded.
+
+There was a dream in Hazlitt which sometimes turned itself on like a
+light and revealed the emptiness of life without Rachel, the emptiness
+of courtrooms, verdicts, crowds. Yes, even the emptiness of the struggle
+between good and evil. He sat thinking of her now, contrasting the
+virginal figure of her with the coarseness of the thing in which he had
+been engaged. There was something about her ... something ... something.
+And the old refrain of his dream like a haunting popular ballad, started
+again here in the crowded courtroom.
+
+He remembered the eyes of Rachel, the quick gestures of her full-grown
+hands that moved always as in sudden afterthoughts. Virginal was the
+word that came most often to his thought. Not the virginity that spells
+a piquant preface to sensualism. She would always be virginal, even
+after they were married. In his arms she would remain virginal, because
+there was something in her, something beyond flesh. His heart choked at
+the memory of it, and his face saddened. Something he could not see or
+place in a circle of words, that did not exist for his eyes or his
+thought, and yet that he must follow. Even after he had won her there
+would be this thing he could not see; that trailed a dream song in his
+heart and kept him groping toward the far lips of the singer. Yes, they
+would marry. She had refused to see him twice since the night he had
+wept on the stair, leaving her. But the memories of that night had
+adjusted themselves. He had seen love in the eyes of Rachel as he held
+her hand. She had laughed love to him, given him for an instant the
+vision of beauty-lighted places waiting for him. The rest had been ...
+neurasthenia. Thus he had forgotten her words and his tears and the
+vivid moment when he had seen himself reflected in her eyes as a horror.
+He had tried twice to see her. He would continue trying, and some day
+she would again open the door to him, laughing, whispering ... "I'm so
+lonely. I'm glad you've come." In the meantime he would continue sending
+her letters. Once each week he had been writing her, saying he loved
+her. No answers had come. But this, curiously, did not anger him. He
+wrote not so much to Rachel as to a dream of her. She remained intact in
+her silence ... as he knew her ... an aloof, virginal being whose
+presence in the world was its own song.
+
+There was a commotion. Hazlitt looked about him and saw strange faces
+light up, strange eyes gleam out of the electric-glowing dusk. Snow was
+falling outside. Pauline's hand gripped his forearm. Her fingers burned.
+Raps of a gavel for silence. The judge spoke. A sad-faced man, with a
+heavy mustache combating his words, stood up in the jury-box and spoke.
+In a vast silence a clerk beside the judge's bench cleared his voice,
+moistened his lips, and spoke.
+
+So he had won another case. Pauline was free. Snow outside and rows of
+lighted windows. She was overwrought. Let her weep for a spell. Snow
+outside. Three weeks and one day. Everybody seemed happy with the
+verdict. People were good at heart. A triumph for decency cheered them.
+People were not revengeful at heart, only decent. Congratulations ...
+"Thank you, thank you! No, Miss Pollard has nothing to say now. She is
+too overcome. To-morrow...." The persistent press! What did they expect
+her to say? Absurd the way they kept interviewing her. The snow would
+probably tie up traffic. Eat downtown....
+
+"If you're ready, Miss Pollard."
+
+"Oh, I must thank the jurors."
+
+Handshakes. Twelve good men with relaxed faces. "There, there, little
+woman. Start over. We only did our duty and what was right by you."
+
+Everybody stretched his legs. Mrs. Hamel was sobbing. Well, she was his
+mother. It would only have satisfied her lower instincts of vengeance to
+have jailed Pauline.
+
+"All right, Miss Pollard." He took her arm. Curious, what a difference
+the verdict had made in her. She was a woman like any other woman
+now.... His overcoat might do for another season.... Pretty girl. Hard
+to get used to the idea she wasn't a defendant.
+
+"This way, Miss Pollard".... Take her to a cab and send her home. If
+she'd ever get started. What satisfaction did women find in kissing and
+hugging each other? "Thank God, Pauline. Oh, I'm so glad".... Girl
+friends. Well, she'd be back among them in a few days, and in a month or
+so the thing would be over.
+
+At last! Hazlitt blinked. The whirl of snow and crowds emptying out of
+buildings gave him a sense for an instant of having stepped into a
+strange world. The sharp cold restored his wandering energies and a
+realization of his victory in the courtroom brought him a belated glow.
+He was young, on an upgrade, able to command success.
+
+Hazlitt felt a sudden lusty kinship toward the swarm of bodies
+unwinding itself through the snowfall. A contact with other ... a
+pleasant, comforting contact. What more was life, anyway? A warmth in
+the heart that came from the knowledge of work well and honestly done.
+Look the world squarely in the eyes and say, "You have no secrets and I
+have no secrets. We're friends."
+
+"Shall we go to your office, Mr. Hazlitt?"
+
+Why there? Hazlitt smiled at the young woman. She was free. He patted
+the gloved hand on his arm and was surprised to see her eyes grow alive
+with tears.
+
+"I would like to talk to you--now that it's over. I feel lost. Really."
+She returned his smile as one determined to be brave, though lost.
+
+The snow hid the buildings and left their window lights drifting. Faces
+passing smiled as if saying, "Hello, we're all together in the same snow
+with no secrets from each other.... All friends".... Hazlitt walked with
+the girl through the streets. The traffic and the crowds were intimate
+friends and he spoke to them by patting Pauline's hand. An
+all's-well-with-the-world pat.
+
+"Eighth floor, please...."
+
+The elevator jiggled to a stop and they stepped into the corridor.
+Scrawny-faced women were crawling patiently down the floor. They slopped
+wet brushes before them, wrung mops out over pails, and crawled an inch
+farther down the floor. Hazlitt smiled. This, too, was a part of
+life--keeping the floors of the building scrubbed. He won law cases.
+Old women scrubbed floors. It fitted into an orderly pattern with a
+great meaning to its order. He paused for a moment to admire the
+cleanliness of the washed surface. Homage to the work of others--of old
+women on their knees scrubbing floors.
+
+"Well, it's all over, Miss Pollard."
+
+She was sitting beside the desk where she had sat the first time they
+had discussed her defense. Hazlitt, unloading his brief-case, looked at
+her. Uncommonly pretty. Trusting eyes. What a rotten fellow, the
+interne!
+
+"I don't know why I wanted to come here." Pauline's eyes stared sadly
+about the room. "I'm free, but ..." She covered her face and wept.
+
+"Now, now, Miss Pollard!"
+
+"Oh, it's still awful."
+
+"You'll forget soon."
+
+"I'll go away. Somewhere. Alone." A louder sob.
+
+"Please don't cry."
+
+Hazlitt watched her tenderly. The weeping increased. A lonesomeness and
+a vagueness were in the girl's heart. The tick-tock of the city had a
+foreign sound. She was a stranger in its streets. There had been
+something else, and now it was gone. A wilderness, a tension, the
+familiar face of Frankie Hamel telling her to go to hell one night and
+stop bothering him with her damned wailing ... and Frankie dying at her
+feet whispering, "What the devil, Pauline?" Then the trial. Hot and
+cold hours. A roomful of silent, open-mouthed faces listening to her
+weep, watching her squirm with proper shame and anguish as she told her
+story to the jurors ... the details of the abortion. "And then I
+couldn't stand it. I don't remember what happened. Oh, I loved him! I
+don't remember. He cursed me. He called me a ... Oh, God, names. Awful
+names! I told him I was going to kill myself. I couldn't live, disgraced
+... without his love. I'd bought a gun to kill myself. And he laughed. I
+don't remember after that; except that somehow he was ... he was dead.
+And I wasn't...."
+
+These things were gone. The trial was over and done. Now there was
+nothing left but the city with its street-cars and offices.
+
+"Oh, everything's so changed," she murmured. Hazlitt stood behind her
+chair, hand on her shoulder. Poor child! The law could not free her from
+the remorse for her crime and mistake. Lawlessness carried its own
+punishment. Virtue its own rewards, sin its own torments.
+
+"You'll forget," he answered softly. The law sometimes punished. But
+after all this was the real punishment ... beyond the power of the law
+to mete out. Punishment of sin. Conscience. Poor child! Inexorable fruit
+of evil. Despair, remorse....
+
+"You must forget. You're young. You can begin over. Please don't cry."
+
+Thus Hazlitt comforted her who was weeping not with remorse for what had
+been, but that it had gone. No word consciousness stirred her grief. An
+unintelligible sorrow, it swelled in her heart and filled her with
+helplessness. Life had gone from her. She was mourning for it. Mourning
+for a murderess and a sinner who had gone, abandoned her and left her a
+naked, uninteresting Pauline Pollard again--a nobody surrounded by
+nobodies. And once it had been different. Lighted faces listening to her
+in a room. Frankie whispering, "What the devil, Pauline?"
+
+A fresh burst of tears brought Hazlitt in front of her. Gently he moved
+her hands from her face.
+
+"You mustn't," he began over again.
+
+"Oh, I won't ever be able to...."
+
+"Yes you will, little girl."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+She was standing. Snow outside. Rows of lighted windows drifting.
+Thoughts slipped out of his head. Traffic probably tied up.
+
+"Please don't cry."
+
+She dropped her head against his shoulder and wept anew. It was nice to
+have somebody asking her not to cry. It made it easier and more
+purposeful to weep.
+
+Hazlitt sighed. Tears ... tears ... the live odor of hair. Arms that
+felt soft. She was mumbling close to him, "I can't help it. Please
+forgive me."
+
+"Yes, yes! There, there!" Of course he would forgive her. Forgiveness
+made him glow. But as he spoke his voice depressed him. What should he
+do? Could he help her? What was life, anyway? Snow outside and rows of
+lighted windows drifting. Her body close, warm, and saddening. The
+firmness of his nerves dissolved. He had his sorrow too ... Rachel. Far
+away. Drifting like the snow outside. Rachel ... the odor of hair
+brought her back. Should he cry? Her knees had touched him once like
+this. She had held her arm about his shoulder once, like this. But, oh,
+so different!... The girl seemed to come closer to him.
+
+He had been holding a stranger politely. Now the stranger relaxed. Soft,
+warm, familiar body. He grew frightened. Somehow the clinging of the
+girl's body, the murmur of her tears, brought a sorrow into his heart. I
+am not Rachel, but I am like her.... What made him think that? Yes, she
+was like her, warm, soft, and woman. Like her--like her. Why had they
+kissed? And her hands clasping nervously at his shoulders? She was not
+in love? Not Rachel. But she wanted something. And he too. Something
+that was a dream song. Here were the lips of the singer, eager, reaching
+to his own. Pressing, asking more. How had this happened? Should he
+speak? But what? Nothing to say. Had he forgotten Rachel? Remembering
+Rachel? Who was this? The questions blurred. Rachel, sang his heart. For
+a moment he embraced the warm shadow of a dream. And then a woman was
+offering herself to him. No dream now. Her thighs riveted themselves
+against him. Under her clothes her body seemed to be moving, coming to
+him.
+
+Hazlitt grew dizzy. He had been consoling her. No more. Now what? He
+threw his strength into his embrace. Their bodies moved together.
+
+"Oh ..." A moan as if she were still weeping. Her lips parted in
+desperate surrender. Her kiss took the breath out of him.
+
+"Dearest!" His voice carried him out of her arms. He knew suddenly that
+but for the word and the familiar sound of his voice he would have
+possessed her. But the word rang an alarm in his ears. Fright, nausea,
+relaxed muscles. A wiliness in his thought.... "Do you feel better now?"
+
+She failed to hear. Her fingers still clutched.
+
+"There ... there, don't cry!" He felt cold. His hands on her arms
+pressed them gently away, his fingers patting them with a fatherly
+diapason. George Hazlitt, attorney-at-law.
+
+"Better now, Pauline?" An error to have called her Pauline. Look bad in
+the record. Committed him to "Pauline."
+
+"Oh, George!"
+
+The thought of Rachel listened in amazement ... George ... Pauline.
+Dearest! He must be careful. She had grown numb against him. A numb
+woman sewed to his lapels. He lowered her as if she were lifeless and he
+fearful of disturbing her. She looked harmless in a chair. Was it
+possible to talk now? Not yet. Take her hand; careful not to squeeze it.
+Pat it as he'd done in the street. An all's-well-with-the-world pat.
+
+Somebody rattled the doorknob. Hazlitt started eagerly. Relief. But,
+good God, no lights in the office. The cleaners would come in and think
+things. Her hair in disorder and her face smeared with weeping would
+make them think things. An oath disentangled itself from his confusion.
+The door opened. Two scrawny-faced women with mops and brooms....
+
+"It's all right. Go ahead. We're just leaving. Are you ready, Miss
+Pollard?"
+
+The Miss Pollard was a masterpiece. But did it deceive the mops and
+brooms? Damn them! They walked arm in arm down the corridor.
+
+"I think the elevators have stopped. Wouldn't it be a joke if we had to
+walk down?"
+
+She refused to answer. Witness remains silent. Why couldn't she be
+interested in jokes?... the woman of it. Nothing had happened. She had
+nothing to think about. Why not jokes? He frowned at the grilling of the
+elevator door. An elevator bobbed up.
+
+In the street, "I'll get a cab, Miss Pollard." Take a firm stand and not
+call her Pauline again. But she was silent. Nothing had happened. He
+grew frightened. She was trying to bulldoze him by pretending. Bundle
+her into a cab and get rid of her.
+
+Suddenly, as if he'd been thinking it out when he hadn't, "You must
+forgive me for--that. I didn't mean to, please."
+
+Anything rather than her silence. Even an apology. Nothing had happened,
+but he would apologize anyway to be on the safe side. She looked at him
+and said, "Oh!"
+
+"Please, Miss Pollard, you make me feel like a cur."
+
+A chauffeur leaned forward from his seat and thrust open the cab door.
+Pauline entered without hesitation. She might have the decency to
+hesitate when he was apologizing for nothing. Hazlitt stuck his head in
+after her. The thing was ludicrously unfinished and he was making an ass
+of himself. She should have hesitated.
+
+"Tell your mother I hope she'll be better soon."
+
+"Where to, mister?"
+
+He gave an address and added, "Just a minute, please."
+
+Hazlitt reentered the cab with his head. The thing was still unfinished.
+Wishing good health to her mother made it worse--as if he were trying to
+cover up something. He must be frank. Drag everything into the open and
+show he wasn't afraid. But she was weeping again. He paused in
+consternation. Her hand reached toward him. A voice, vibrant and soft
+with tears, whispered in the gloom of the cab. A love voice. "Good-by,
+George!"
+
+He watched the tail light dart through the traffic and then began his
+defense. Gentleman of the jury ... jury ... he had done nothing. It was
+she who had suggested the office. A low, vulgar ruse to trap him. The
+evidence was plain on that point. Overruled. But he had attempted only
+to console her. Irrelevant and immaterial to the facts at issue in the
+case. But she had flung her arms around him. Not he! Never he! The woman
+was mad. Yes, a mad woman. Dangerous. She had done the same to the
+interne. Overruled. Overruled. What? Frank Hamel, gentleman of the jury,
+glutting his beastly hungers on the finest fruit of life--the innocence
+and sacrifice of a maiden's first love. No, not Hamel. Hazlitt. Are such
+creatures men or fiends? What was he thinking about Oh, yes, the
+interne. Dead, buried ... we, the jury, find the defendant not
+guilty.... But the dead interne was saying something.
+
+For moments George Hazlitt looked out upon a new world--a miserable
+world--vast, blurred, upside down. People were moving in it. Dead
+internes. They passed with faces intent upon their own solitudes.
+Buildings were in it. They burst a skyrocket of windows into the night.
+There was snow. It fell twisting itself out of the darkness. Familiar
+faces, buildings, snow. Theater facades making a jangle of light through
+the storm. Entrances, exits, cars clanging, figures hurrying, signs
+sputtering confusion in the snow. All familiar, all a part of the great
+tick-tock of the city.
+
+Hazlitt stopped and stared at the familiar night of the streets. A gleam
+and a flurry were sweeping his eyes. Snow. But faces and buildings and
+lights were a part of it. They swarmed and danced about him, sending a
+shout to his heart. "We're upside down ... we're upside down ... heels
+in air.... She made love to the interne as she did to you ... and the
+fiend is dead. Lies ... lies ... but who gives a damn?"
+
+The horn of a motor screeched. A woman and a man pattered by on a run,
+leaving a trail of laughter. From afar came the sound of voices--of
+street evangels singing hymns on a corner. The soul of George Hazlitt
+grew sick. Night hands fastened themselves about his throat. Upside down
+... heels in air. The things he had said to the jury were lies. Lies and
+disorder. Right and wrong. God in heaven, what were they, if not right
+and wrong?
+
+The thing came to Hazlitt without words, with a gleam and a flurry as of
+snow. He stood blind--a little snow-covered figure shivering and lost in
+a lighted, crowded street. All because a woman, warm and clinging, had
+kissed him on the mouth and moved her body. But once she had kissed
+another man thus--on the mouth, with her body moving, and therein lay a
+new world--a world of flying-haired Maenads and growling satyrs that
+lived behind the tick-tock of windows. Standing in the snowstorm an
+insane notion took possession of Hazlitt. It had to do with Evil. Order
+was an accident. Men and women were evil. The tick-tock was a pretense.
+
+The notion passed. Doubt needs thought to feed upon, and Hazlitt gave it
+none. Or he would have ended as Hazlitt and become someone else. He
+walked again with a silence in his head. Another block, and life had
+again focused itself into tableaux. The moment of doubt had shaken him
+as if rough hands had reached from an alley and clutched wildly at his
+throat. But it had gone, and the memory of it too was gone. Hands that
+had nobody behind them; emotion that came without the stabilizing
+outline of words. So the world stood again on its feet. Tick-tock, said
+the world to George Hazlitt; and his brain gave an answer, "Tick-tock!"
+
+For the paradox of Hazlitt was not that he was a thinker, but a dreamer.
+His puritanism had put an end to his brain. Like his fellows for whose
+respect and admiration he worked, he had bartered his intelligence for a
+thing he proudly called Americanism, and thought for him had become a
+placid agitation of platitudes. But he could still dream. His emotions
+avenged his stupidity. Walking in the street--he felt a desire to
+walk--he shut himself in. It seemed to him now that his love had become
+a part of the snow and the far-away dark of the sky. Rachel ... Rachel,
+his thought called as if summoning something back.
+
+It came to him slowly--the image of the virginal one--doubly sweet and
+beautiful now that he was unclean. How had it happened? She had been
+weeping; he comforting her. Two strangers, they had sat in his office.
+One a murderess weeping for her sins; the other a kindly hearted,
+clean-minded attorney consoling her, pointing to her the way of hope.
+And then like two animals they had stood sucking at each other's breath.
+God, what could he do? Nothing. He was unclean. He recalled with a dread
+the thought that had come to him in the embrace ... was she Rachel? Yes,
+she had been Rachel and he had lowered his dream to her lips, as if in
+the lust of a strange woman's kiss there lay the image of Rachel, the
+virginal mystery of Rachel. If he had been man enough not to drag the
+memory of Rachel into it, it would be easy now. But he would look
+squarely at the facts, anyway. That must be his punishment and his
+penance. Yes, say it ... it was with his love for Rachel he had embraced
+and almost possessed the body of a stranger.
+
+Hazlitt quickened his walking. He was confronted with the intricate
+business of forgiving himself. He felt shame, but shame was something
+that could be walked off. Faster ... with an amorous mumble soothing him
+and the hurt. After all, was it so important? Yes ... no. Forgive
+himself, but not too quickly. He walked.... Words made circles in his
+head--abject and sorrowful circles about the dream of the virginal one.
+
+A man with a curious smile stopped in front of him to light a pipe.
+Hazlitt paused and looked at the street. He would take a car. His legs
+were tired. The wind and snow put out the match of the man who was
+lighting a pipe. Hazlitt looked at him. What was he smiling about? We're
+all in the snow ... all without secrets in the snow. Hail fellows of the
+street ... Curious, he should feel sad for a man who was smiling on a
+street corner. Tiredness. The man was cursing the snow good-humoredly.
+Suddenly the pipe was lighted and the man seemed to have forgotten it.
+His eyes gleamed for an instant across Hazlitt's face, and with an
+abrupt nod of recognition the man passed on. Walking swiftly, bent
+forward, vanishing behind a flurry of snow.
+
+Hazlitt peered down the track for his car. He wondered how the man knew
+him. It pleased his vanity to be recognized by people he couldn't place.
+It showed he was somebody. Yes, George Hazlitt, attorney-at-law. He
+recalled ... they had met once in an office. A newspaperman--editor or
+something. Probably looking for news. Hazlitt was glad he had been
+recognized. The man would think of him as he walked on in the snow--of
+his victory in the courtroom and his future. That was part of life, to
+be thought of and envied by others.
+
+Beside him a newsboy raised a shout ... "Extra! Pauline Pollard
+acquitted!..." People would read about it in their homes. His name.
+Wonder who he was. A voice across the street answered, "Extra! Germans
+bombard Paris!..." The damned Huns! Why didn't America put an end to
+their dirty business by rushing in?
+
+He stepped into the warm street-car and sat staring moodily out
+of the window. He was a part of life, but there was something
+beyond--a--mystery. "Extra!..." He should have bought a paper. There was
+the newspaper fellow again, still walking swiftly, bent forward, staring
+into the snow.... Oh, yes, Erik Dorn. He had met him once.... The car
+passed on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Erik Dorn laughed as he walked swiftly through the snow in the street.
+It seemed to him he had been laughing incessantly for a week, and that
+he would continue to laugh forever. His thought played delightedly with
+his emotions ... a precocious child with new fantastic toys. He was in
+love. A laughable business!
+
+Five months of uncertainty had preceded the laugh. An irritated,
+inexplicable moodiness as if the shadow of a disease had come into his
+blood. On top of this moodiness a violence of temper, a stewing,
+cursing, fuming about. A five months' quarrel with his wife....
+
+His love-making had been somewhat curious. Walks with Rachel--a
+whirligig of streets, faces, words. A dance and a flash of words, as if
+he were exploding into phrases. As if his vocabulary desired to empty
+itself before Rachel. His garrulity amazed him. Everything had to be
+talked about. There was a desperate need for talk. And when there was
+nothing to talk about for the moment, his words abhorring idleness, fell
+to inventing emotions--a complete set of emotions for himself and for
+Rachel. These were discussed, explained, and forgotten.
+
+Finally the strange talk that had ended a week ago--a last desperate
+concealment of emotion and desire in a burst of glittering phrases.
+Phrases that whirled like the exotic decorations about the wild body of
+a dancer, becoming a dance in themselves, deriving a movement and a
+meaning beyond themselves. Then the end of concealment. An exhausted
+vocabulary sighed, collapsed. A frantic discarding of ornaments and the
+nude body of the dancer stood posturing naively, timidly. Therewith an
+end to mystery. The thing was known.
+
+It had happened during one of their walks. Leaden clouds over day-dark
+pavements. Warehouses, railroad tracks, factories--a street toiling
+through a dismantled world. Their hands together, they paused and
+remained staring as if at a third person. He had reached out rather
+impersonally and taken her hand. The contact had shocked him into
+silence. It was difficult to breathe.
+
+"Rachel, do you love me?"
+
+She nodded her head and pressed his hand against her cheek. They walked
+on in silence. This brought an end to talk. Talk concealed. There was
+nothing more to conceal. His vocabulary sighed as if admitting defeat
+and uselessness. At a corner grown noisy with wagons and trucks Rachel
+stopped. Her eyes opened to him. He looked at her and said, as if he had
+fallen asleep "I too am in love." He laughed dreamily. "Yes, I've been
+since the beginning. Curious!"
+
+She might laugh at him. It was evident he had avoided making love to her
+during the five months in fear of that. The only reason he hadn't
+embraced, kissed, and protested affection five months ago was the
+possibility that she would laugh--and perhaps go away.
+
+Even now, despite the absence of laughter, a part of the fear he had
+still lingered. He was no longer Erik Dorn, man of words and mirror of
+nothings. He had said he loved her. Avoiding, of course, the direct
+remark. But he had indicated it rather definitely. It would undoubtedly
+lessen him to her, make him human. She had admired him because he was
+different. Now he was like everybody else saying an "I love you" to a
+woman. Perhaps he should unsay it. Again, a dreamy laugh. But it made
+him happy. A drifting, childish happiness. He looked at her. Her eyes
+struck him as marvelously large and bright. Yet in a curious way he
+seemed unaware of her. No excitement came to him. Decidedly there was
+something unsensual about his love--if it was love. It might be
+something else. It is difficult for an extremely married man to
+distinguish offhand. He desired nothing more than to stand still and
+close his eyes and permit himself to shine. Vague words traced his
+emotions. A fullness. A completion. An end of nothing. Thrills in his
+fingers. Remarkable disturbance of the diaphragm. To be likened to the
+languorous effects of some almost stimulating drug.
+
+In a great calm he slowly forgot himself, his words, and Rachel.
+Standing thus he heard her murmur something and felt his hand once more
+against her cheek. A pretty gesture. Then she was walking down the dark
+street, running from him. She had said good-bye. He awoke and cursed. A
+bewildering sensation of being still at her side as if he had gone out
+of himself and were following her. He remained thus watching the figure
+of Rachel until it disappeared and the street grew suddenly cold and
+empty. A strange scene mocked him. Strange smoke, strange warehouses,
+strange railroad tracks. Cupid awaking in a cinder patch.
+
+He walked on, still bewildered. Nothing had happened to him. Instead,
+something had happened to the streets. The city had suffered an
+amputation. There was something incomplete about its streets and crowds.
+His eye felt annoyed by it. He was not thinking of Rachel. He felt as if
+she had suddenly ceased to exist and left behind her an unexistence. It
+was this emptiness outside that for the moment annoyed and then
+frightened him. An emptiness that had something to give him now. His
+senses reached eagerly toward the figures of people and buildings and
+received nothing. What did he want of them? They were a pattern,
+intricate and precise, with nothing to give. Yet he wanted. Good God, he
+wanted something out of the streets of the city. Then he remembered, as
+if recalling some algebraic formula, "I'm in love." His laughter had
+started at that moment.
+
+At home it continued in him. Anna had gone to visit relatives in
+Wisconsin. He spent an hour writing her a long amorous letter. He was in
+love with Rachel, but a new notion had planted itself in him. Whatever
+happened, Anna must not be made unhappy. Love was not a reality. Anna
+and her happiness were the realities that must be carefully considered.
+This thing that had popped into life in the cinder patch was a
+mood--comparable to the mood of a thirsty man taking his first sip of
+water.
+
+" ... the memory of you comes before me," he scribbled to his wife, "and
+I feel sad. I am incomplete without you. Dear one, I love you. The
+streets seem empty and the hours drag...."
+
+In writing to his wife he seemed to recover a sense of virtue. He smiled
+as he sealed the envelope. "It must be an old instinct," he thought.
+"People are kindest to those they deceive. Thus good and evil balance."
+
+His father, sitting before a grate fire, desired to talk. He would talk
+to him in circles that would irritate the old man and make his eyes
+water more.
+
+"People don't live," he began. "To live is to have a dream behind the
+hours. To have the world offering something."
+
+"Yes, my son. Something ..."
+
+"Then the people outside one take on meaningful outlines. There comes a
+contact. One is a part of something--of a force that moves the stars,
+eh?"
+
+The old man nodded, and mumbled in his beard. Dorn felt a warmth toward
+his father. His stupidity delighted him. He would be able henceforth to
+talk to the old man and say, "I love Rachel," and the old man would
+think he was coining phrases for a profitless amusement. It would be the
+same with Anna. He would be able to make love to Anna differently
+hereafter. A rather cynical idea. He laughed and beamed at Isaac Dorn.
+Did it matter much whom one kissed as long as one had a desire for
+kissing? In fact, his desire for Rachel seemed at an end, now that he
+had mentioned it to her. A handclasp, a silence trembling with emotion,
+a sudden light in the heart--properly speaking, this was all there was
+to love. The rest was undoubtedly a make-believe. As he walked out to
+post the letter he tried to recall the emotions or ideas that had
+inspired him to marry Anna. There had undoubtedly been something of the
+sort then. But it had left no memory. Their honeymoon, of which she was
+always speaking, even after seven years, with a mist in her eyes--good
+Lord, had there been a honeymoon?
+
+He spent the next afternoon with Rachel. A silence of familiarity had
+fallen upon them. There was a totality in silence. Walking through the
+streets beside her, Dorn mused, "Undoubtedly the thing is over. It
+begins even to bore a bit." He noted curiously that he was unconscious
+of the streets. No tracing their pictures with phrases. They were
+streets, and that was an end of it. They belonged where they were.
+
+His eyes dropped to his companion. A face with moonlight grown upon it.
+Beautiful, yes. Sometime he would tell her. Pour it out in words. There
+was a paradox about the situation. He was obviously somewhat bored. Yet
+to leave her, to put an end to their strolling through the strange
+moments, would hurt. Had he ever lived before? Banal question. "No, I've
+never lived before. Living is somewhat of a bore, a beautiful bore."
+
+When they parted she stood looking at him as one transfixed.
+
+"Erik!"
+
+She made his name mean something--a world, a heaven. For an instant his
+laughter ended and a sadness engulfed him. Then once more he was alone
+and laughing. Rachel was walking away, something rather ridiculously
+normal about her step. Yes, he would laugh forever. Lord, what a jest!
+Like water coming out of a stone. Laugh at the crowds and buildings that
+desired to annoy him by sweeping toward him the memory of Rachel saying
+"Erik!" He diverted himself, as he hurried to his home, by staring into
+people's eyes and saying, "This one has a dream. That one hasn't. This
+one loves. The streets hurt him. That one is dead. The streets bury
+him."
+
+On the third day the bombardment of Paris interfered with his plans. He
+remained too late in the office to walk with Rachel. As he sauntered
+about the shop, assisting and directing at the extras and replates, he
+vaguely forgot her. Word had come from the chief to hold the paper open
+until nine o'clock. If Paris failed to fall by nine everybody could go
+home and spend the rest of the night wrangling with his wife or looking
+at a movie. If it fell by nine there would be a final extra.
+
+"I hope the damned town falls five minutes after nine," growled Warren,
+"if it's got to fall. Let it fall for the morning papers. What the hell
+are they for, anyway? I've got a rotten headache."
+
+Dorn told him to run along. "I'll handle the copy, if there is any. A
+history of Paris out of the almanac will answer the purpose, I guess."
+
+Warren folded his newspapers and left. Dorn sat scribbling possible
+headlines for the next re-plate: "Germans Bombard Paris ..." and then a
+bank in smaller type: "French Capital Silent. Communication Cut Off." He
+paused and added with a sudden elation, "Civilization on Its Knees."
+
+The hum and suspense of the night-watch pleased him. He liked the idea
+of sitting in a noisy place waiting to flash the news of the fall of
+Paris to the city. And the next day the four afternoon papers would
+carry a small box on the front page announcing to the public that, as
+usual, each of them had been first on the street with the important
+announcement. The fall of Paris! His thought mused. Babylon Falls....
+Civilization on Its Knees. The City Wall of Jericho Collapses. Carthage
+Reduced to Ashes. Rome Sacked by Huns. Yes, there had been magnificent
+headlines in the past. Now a new headline--Paris. There would be a
+sudden flurry; boys running between desks; Crowley trying to shout and
+achieving a frightful whisper; a smeared printer announcing some ghastly
+mistake in the composing room; and Paris would be down--fallen. Nothing
+left to do except grin at the idea of the morning papers cursing their
+luck. He sat, vaguely hoping there might be tidal waves, earthquakes,
+cataclysms. On this night his energies seemed to demand more work than
+the mere fall of Paris would occasion. "Might as well do the thing up
+brown and put an end to the world--all in one extra," he smiled.
+
+A messenger boy brought a telegram. He opened it and read,
+
+"I am going away. RACHEL."
+
+All a part of the night's work. Killing off Paris. Answering telegrams
+to vanishing sweethearts. He stuffed the message into his pocket. On
+second thought he tore it up. Anna was coming home the next day. "Wife
+Finds Tell-tale Telegram...." Another headline.
+
+"Wait a minute, boy."
+
+The messenger lounged into an editor's chair. Dorn scribbled on a
+telegraph blank:
+
+"Wait till Friday. I must see you once more. I will call for you at
+seven o'clock Thursday. We have never been together in the night. ERIK."
+
+The messenger boy and the telegram disappeared. Still the laughter
+persisted. There was a jest in the world. Paris seemed a part of it.
+Everything belonged to it.
+
+"I wonder what the writers of Paris are saying," Crowley inquired.
+
+"Enjoying themselves, as usual," Dorn answered. "I'll tell you a secret.
+We live in a mad and inspiring world."
+
+There was no final headline that night. Wednesday brought problems of
+conduct. It was obvious that Rachel was going away because of Anna. Her
+departure was a fact which presented itself with no finality. It
+resembled an insincere thought of suicide. Rachel, having gone, would
+still remain. The emotional prospects of the farewell closed his thought
+to the future. He spent Wednesday waiting for a seven o'clock on
+Thursday. An hour had detached itself from hours that went before and
+that followed. At home in the evening he endeavored to avoid his wife.
+His letters to her during her visit in Wisconsin had brought her back
+violently joyous. She desired love-making. He listened to her pour out
+ardent phrases and wondered why he felt no sense of betrayal toward her.
+"Conscience," he thought, "seems to be a vastly over-advertised
+commodity." He sat beside Anna, caressing her hand, smiling back into
+her passion-filled eyes, and gently checking an impulse in him to
+confide to her that he was in love with Rachel. It would be pleasant to
+tell her that, provided she would nod her head understandingly, smile,
+and stroke his hair; and answer something like, "You mean Rachel is in
+love with you. Well, I can't blame her. I'm horribly jealous, but it
+doesn't matter." An incongruous sanity warned him to avoid confessions,
+so he contented himself by rolling the situation over on his tongue,
+tasting the jealousy of his wife, the drama of the denouement, and
+remaining peacefully smiling in his leather chair.
+
+Thursday arrived. The afternoon dragged. He sat at his desk wondering
+whether he was sorrowful or not. The thought of meeting Rachel elated
+him. The thought that she was leaving and that he would not see her
+again seemed a vague thing. He put it out of his mind with ease and
+devoted himself to dreaming what he would say, the manner in which he
+would bid farewell.
+
+Walking now swiftly in the street toward Rachel's home his thought still
+played with his emotions. It was this that partially caused his
+laughter. Also, now that he was going to see her, there was again the
+sense of fullness. An unthinking calm, complete and vibrant, wrapped him
+in an embrace. The fullness and the calm brought laughter. His thought
+amused him with the words, "There's a flaming absurdity about
+everything."
+
+He delighted in dressing his emotions in absurd phrases, in words that
+grimaced behind the rouge of tawdry ballads. Thinking of Rachel and
+feeling the sudden lift of sadness and bewilderment in his blood, he
+murmured aloud: "You never know you have a heart till it begins to
+break." The words amused him. There were other song titles that seemed
+to fit. He tried them all. "I don't know why I love you, but I do-o-o."
+Delightful diversion--airing the mystic desires of his soul in the
+tattered words of the cabaret yodelers. "Just a smile, a sigh, a
+kiss...." A sort of revenge, as if his vocabulary with its intricate
+verbal sophistications were avenging itself upon interloping emotions.
+And, too, because of a vague shame which inspired him to taunt his
+surrender; to combat it with an irony such as lay in the ridiculous
+phrases. This irony gave him a sense of being still outside his emotions
+and not a submissive part of them. "I am still Erik Dorn, master of my
+fate and captain of my soul," he smiled. But perhaps it was most of all
+the reaction of a verbal vanity. His love was not yet pumping rhapsodies
+into his thought. Instead, the words that came seemed to him somehow
+banal and commonplace. "I love you. I want to be with you all the time.
+When we are together things grow strange and desirable." Amorous
+mediocrities! So he edited them into a further banality and thus
+concealed his inability to give lofty utterance to his emotions by
+amusing himself with deliberately cheapened insincerities. "Saving my
+linguistic face," he thought suddenly, and laughed again.
+
+Rachel was sad. They left her home in silence.
+
+"We'll go toward the park," he announced. It irritated him to utter
+matter-of-fact directions. Why when he had had nothing to talk about had
+he been able to talk? And now when there was something, there seemed
+little to say? Words were obviously the delicate fruit of insincerity.
+Silence, the dark flower of emotion.
+
+"I must go away." Rachel slipped her arm into his. He stared at her. She
+seemed more sorrowful than tears. This annoyed. It was ungrateful for
+her to look like weeping. But she was going from him. He tried to think
+of her and himself after they had parted, and succeeded only in
+remembering she was at his side. So he laughed quietly.
+
+"Yes, to-morrow the guillotine falls," he answered. "To-night we dance
+in each other's arms. Immemorial tableau. Laughter, love, and song
+against the perfect background--death. Let's not cheat ourselves by
+being sad. To-morrow will be time enough."
+
+He realized he was collapsing into a pluck-ye-the-roses-while-ye-may
+strain, and stopped, irritated. There was something he should talk to
+her about--the causes of her departure. Plans. Their future. Was there a
+future? Undoubtedly something would have to be arranged. But his mind
+eluded responsibilities.
+
+"I'm happy," he whispered. "I talk like a fool because I feel like one.
+Heedless. Irresponsible. You've given me something and I can only look
+at it almost without thought."
+
+"It seems so strange that you should love me," she answered. "Because
+I've loved you always and never dreamed of you loving." She had become
+melting, as if her sadness were dissolving into caresses. "Let's just
+walk and I'll remember we're together and be happy, too."
+
+Thoughts vanished from him. He released her hand and they walked in
+silence with their arms together. A sleep descended. Their faces,
+tranquil and lighted by the snow, offered solitudes to each other.
+
+It was now snowing heavily. A thick white lattice raised itself from the
+streets against the darkness. The little black hectagonals of night
+danced between its spaces. Long white curtains painted themselves on the
+shadows of the city. The lovers walked unaware of the street. The snow
+crowded gently about them, moving patiently like a white and silent
+dream over their heads. Phantom houses stared after them. Slanting
+rooftops spread wings of silver in the night and drifted toward the
+moon. The half-closed leaden eyes of windows watched from another world.
+
+The snow grew heavier, winding itself about the yellow lights of street
+lamps and crawling with sudden life through the blur of window rays.
+Beneath, the pavements opened like white and narrow fans in a far-away
+hand. Black figures leaning forward emerged for an instant from behind
+the falling snow and disappeared again.
+
+Still the lovers moved without words--two black figures themselves, arms
+together, leaning forward, staring with burning hearts and tranquil
+faces out of a dream, as if they did not exist, had never existed; as if
+in the snow and night they had become an unreality, walking deeper into
+mists--yet never quite vanishing but growing only more unreal. Snow and
+two lovers walking together with the world like a dream over their
+heads, with life lingering in their eyes like a delicately absent-minded
+guest--the thought drifted like a memory through their hearts.
+
+Then slowly consciousness of themselves returned, bringing with it no
+relief of words. Their hearts seemed to have grown weak with tears, and
+in their minds existed nothing but the dark vagueness of despair--the
+despair of things that die with their eyes open and questing. Faces
+drifting like circles of light in the storm. At the end of the street a
+park. Here they would vanish from each other. The snow would continue
+falling gently, patiently, upon an empty world.
+
+The cold of Rachel's fingers pressed upon his hand. Her face turned
+itself to him. A moment of happiness halted them both as if they had
+been embraced. A wonder--the why and where of her leaving. But an
+indifference deprived him of words.
+
+"This is all of life," he muttered. Rachel staring at him nodded her
+head in echo. They were standing motionless as if they had forgotten how
+to live. Beyond this there were no gestures to make, nowhere to go. They
+had come to a horizon--an end. Here was ecstasy. What else? Nothing.
+Everything, here. Sky and night and snow had fallen about their heads in
+an ending. They stood as if clinging to themselves. Dorn heard a soft
+laugh from her.
+
+"I thought I had died," Rachel was murmuring. He nodded his head in
+echo.
+
+A lighted window lost in the snow drew their eyes. People sat in a
+room--warm, stiff figures. The lovers stood smiling toward it. Words,
+soft and mocking, formed themselves in Dorn. A pain was pulling his
+heart away. The ecstasy that had raised him beyond his emotions seemed
+suddenly to have cast him into the fury of them. He would say mocking
+things--absurd phrases to which he might cling. Or else he must weep
+because of the pain in him. "Two waifs adrift in a storm, peering into a
+bakery window at the cookies." That was the key. A laugh at the dolorous
+asininity of life. "Face to face with the Roman Pop U Lace. We who are
+about to die salute you." Laugh, a phrase of laughter or he would stand
+blubbering like an imbecile.
+
+He struggled for the theatric gesture and found himself shivering at
+Rachel's side, his arm clinging about her shoulders. Lord, what a jest!
+After the moment they had lived through, to stand round-eyed and
+blubbering before the gingerbread vision of joys behind a lighted
+window. The whine of a barrel-organ. The sentimental whimpering of a
+street-corner _Miserere_. And he must weep because of it--he who had
+stood with his head thrust through the sky. His thought, like an
+indignant monitor, collapsed with scoldings. Let it come, then! With a
+sigh he gave himself to tears, and they stood together weeping.
+
+The little lighted room seemed an enchantment floating in the scurry of
+the storm. It reached with warm fingers into their hearts, whispering a
+broken barrel-organ lullaby to them. Life shone upon them out of the
+lighted window and behind it the world of rocking-chairs and fireplaces,
+wall pictures and table lamps, lay like a haven smiling a good-by to
+them. Their hearts become tombs, closed slowly and forever upon a
+vision.
+
+"The world will be a black sky and the memory of you like a shining star
+that I watch endlessly." He listened to his words. They brought a dim
+gladness. His phrases had finally capitulated to his love. He could talk
+now without the artifice of banality to hide behind. Talk, say the
+unsayable, bring his love in misty word lines before his eyes; look and
+forget a moment.
+
+Rachel's voice at his side said, "I love you so. Oh, I love you so!"
+
+Yes, he could talk now. His heart wagged a tongue. The pain in him had
+found words. The mystic desires and torments--words, words.
+
+"We'll remember, years later, and be grateful we didn't bury our love
+behind lighted windows, but left it to wander forever and remain forever
+alive. Rachel, my dear one."
+
+"I love you so!" she wept.
+
+More words ... "it would have been always the same. We've lived one
+moment and in all of life there's nothing more than what we've had.
+Lovers who grow old together live only in their yesterdays. And their
+yesterdays are only a moment--till the time comes when their yesterdays
+die. Then they become little, half-dead people, who wait in lighted
+rooms, empty handed, fumbling greedily with trifles...."
+
+"I love you!" She made a refrain for him. "I don't know the things you
+do. I only love you."
+
+"Rachel ..." He had no belief in what he was saying. The things he knew?
+What? Nothing but pain and torment. Yet his heart went on wagging out
+words: "All life is a parting--a continual and monotonous parting. And
+most hideous of all, a parting with dead things. A saying good-by to
+things that no longer exist. We part with living things, and so keep
+them, somehow. Your face makes life for the moment familiar. Visions
+bloom like sad flowers in my heart. Your body against mine brings a
+torment even into my words. Oh, your weeping's the sound of my own
+heart dying. Rachel, you are more wonderful than life. I love you! I
+feel as if I must die when you go away. Crowds, streets, buildings--all
+empty outlines. Empty before you came, emptier when you have gone."
+
+He paused. His thought whispered: "I'll remember things I say. I mustn't
+say too much. I'm sad. Oh, God, what a mess!"
+
+They walked into the park. A sudden matter-of-factness came into Dorn's
+mind. He had sung something from his heart. Yet he remembered with
+astonishment it had been a wary song. He had not asked her to stay. Had
+he asked her she would have remained. Curious, how he acquiesced in her
+going. A sense of drama seemed to demand it. When he had received her
+message the night in the office he had agreed at once. Why? Because he
+was not in love? This too, a make-believe, more colored, more persuasive
+than the others? Wrong. Something else. Anna. Anna was sending her away.
+The figure of Anna loomed behind their ecstasies. It stood nodding its
+head sorrowfully at a good-by in the snow.
+
+They were deep in the park. Trees made still gestures about them. The
+ivory silhouettes of trees haunted the distance. A spectral summer
+painted itself upon the barren lilac bushes. Beneath, the lawn slopes
+raised moon faces to the night. Deep in the storm the ghost of a bronze
+fountain emerged and remained staring at the scene.
+
+It was cold. The wind had died and the snow hung without motion, like a
+cloud of ribbons in the air. The white park gleamed as if under the
+swinging light of blue and silver lanterns. The night, lost in a dream
+wandered away among strange sculptures. In the distance a curtain of
+porphyry and bisque drew its shadow across the moon.
+
+Rachel pointed suddenly with her finger.
+
+"Look!" she whispered. She remained as if in terror, pointing.
+
+Three figures were converging toward them--black figures out of the
+distant snow. Figures of men, without faces, like three bundles of
+clothes, they came toiling across the unbroken white of the park, an air
+of intense destinations about them. Above the desolate field of white
+the three figures seemed suddenly to loom into heroic sizes. They reared
+to a height and zigzagged across a nowhere.
+
+"See, see!" Rachel cried. She was still pointing. Her voice rang
+brokenly. "They're coming for me, Erik. Erik, don't you see? People
+wandering toward me. Horrible strangers. Oh, I know, I know!" She
+laughed. "My grandmother was a gypsy and she's telling my fortune in the
+snow. Things that will jump out of space and come at me, after you're
+gone."
+
+The three men, puffing with exertion, converged upon the walk and passed
+on with a morose stare at the lovers. Dorn sighed, relieved. He had
+caught a strange foreboding sense out of the tableau of the white field
+and the three converging black figures.... If he loved her why was he
+letting her go? If he loved her....
+
+He walked on suddenly wearied, saddened, uncertain. It was no more than
+a dream that had touched his senses, a breath of a dream that lingered
+for a moment upon his mirror. It would pass, as all things pass. And he
+would fall back into the pattern of streets and faces, watching as
+before the emptiness of life make geometrical figures of itself. Yes, it
+was better to have her go--simpler. Perhaps a desire would remain, a
+breath, a moonlit memory of her loveliness to mumble over now and then,
+like a line of poetry always unwritten. Let her go. Beautiful ...
+wonderful.... These were words. Was he even sad? She was--what? Another
+woman.
+
+In the shadow of a snow-covered wall he paused. The snow had ended.
+
+"Come closer," he whispered. She remained silent as he removed her
+overcoat. He dropped it in the snow and threw his own beside it.
+
+"We'll be warm for a minute against each other."
+
+She was a flower in his arms. She seemed to vanish and become mist.
+Slowly he became aware of her touch, of her arms holding him and her
+lips. She was saying:
+
+"I am yours--always--everywhere. I will be a shrine to you. And whenever
+you want me I will come crawling on my knees to you."
+
+Dying, dying! She was dying. Another moment and the mist of her would be
+gone. "Rachel.... Rachel. I love you. I send you away. Oh, God, why do I
+send you away?"
+
+She was out of his arms. Undressed, naked, emptied, he stood unknown to
+himself. No words. Her kiss alone lived on his lips. She was looking at
+him with burning wild eyes. Expression seemed to have left her. There
+was something else in her face.
+
+"I must look at you. To remember, to remember!" she gasped. "Oh, to
+remember you! I have never looked at you. I have never seen you. It's a
+dream. Who is Erik Dorn? Who am I? Oh, let me look at you...."
+
+The eyes of Rachel grew marvelously bright. Burned ... burned.
+
+Dorn stared into an empty park. Gone! Her coat still in the snow. His
+own beside it. He stood smiling, confused. His lips made an apology. He
+walked off. Oh, yes, their coats together in the snow. A symbol. He
+stumbled and a sudden terror engulfed him. "Her face," he mumbled, "like
+a mirror of stars." He felt himself sicken. What had her eyes said? Eyes
+that burned and devoured him and vanished. "Rachel," he wept, "forever!"
+He wondered why he spoke.
+
+The park, white, gleaming, desolate, gave him back her face. Out of the
+empty night, her face. In the trees it drifted, haunting him. The print
+of a face was upon the world. He went stumbling toward it in the snow.
+He covered his eyes with his hands as he walked.
+
+"Her face," he mumbled, "her face was beautiful...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+In a dining-room of the city known as the Blue Inn, Anna Dorn sat
+waiting for her husband. Opposite her a laughing-eyed man was talking.
+She listened without intelligence. He was part of old memories--crowded
+rooms in which lights had been turned off. They had danced together in
+their youth. She had worn his fraternity pin and walked with him one
+night under a moon and kissed him, saying: "I will always love you. The
+other boys are different. You are so nice and kind, Eddie." And Eddie
+had gone away east to continue a complacent quest for erudition in a
+university. Almost forgotten days and places when there had been no Erik
+Dorn, and when one debated which pumps to wear to the dance. Erik had
+blotted them out. A whimsical, moody young Mr. Dorn, laughing and
+carousing about the city and singling her out one night at a party....
+"We must get out of here or we'll choke to death. Come, we'll go down to
+the lake and laugh at the stars. They're the only laughable things in
+the world."
+
+She looked sadly at the man whose kindly voice sought to rally her out
+of a gloom. Before the laughing stars there had been another day--other
+stars, another Anna. All part of another world. Eddie Meredith and
+another world sat dimly apparent across the white linen of the table.
+Anecdotes of old friends they had shared, forgotten names and incidents
+reached through the shadows of her thought and stirred an alien memory.
+He hadn't changed. Ten years--and he was still Eddie Meredith, with eyes
+that looked for simple pleasures and seemed to find them. He had always
+found something to laugh about. Not the way Erik laughed. Erik's laugh
+was something that had never ceased to hurt. Strange that Eddie's voice
+had never grown tired of laughing during the ten years.
+
+The ache in her heart lightened and she listened with almost a
+smile--the ghost of another Anna smiling. It was the other Anna who had
+walked through youth with a joyous indifference to life, to everything
+but youth. Buried now deep under years, Eddie warmed it back. Eddie sat
+talking to the ghost that had been Anna Winthrop and that could not
+answer him.
+
+He was a poor talker. She was too used to Erik. Simple, threadbare
+phrases, yet she had once thought him brilliant. Perhaps he was--a
+different kind of brilliance. She noted how his words seemed stimulated
+with an enthusiasm beyond their sense. Trifles assumed an importance.
+For moments she felt herself looking at the joyousness of an old friend
+and forgetting. Then as always through the day and night.... "Erik,
+Erik," murmured itself in her mind ... "he doesn't love me. Erik, dear
+Erik!" Over and over, weaving itself into all she said and saw.
+Sometimes it started a panic in her. She would feel herself grow dark,
+wild. Often it seemed to bring death. Things would become vague and she
+would move through the hours unaware of them.
+
+The joyousness of Eddie drifted away. She remained smiling
+blankly at him. His words slipped past her ear. Inside, she was
+wandering--disheveled thoughts were wandering through a darkness. At
+night she lay beside him as he slept, with her eyes wide open and her
+lips praying, "Dear Jesus, sweet brother Jesus, give Erik back to me!"
+... Or she would crawl out of bed and walk into a deserted room to weep.
+Here she could mumble his name till the anguish of her tears choked her.
+As the cold streets grew gray she would hurry to bathe her face, even
+rouging her cheeks, and return to their bed to wait for Erik to awake,
+that she might caress him, warm something back in him with her kisses,
+and perhaps hear him whisper her name as he used to do. But he drew
+himself away, his eyes sometimes filling with tears. "It's nothing,
+Anna, nothing. Please don't ask. I don't know what it is. My head or
+something. I feel black inside...." And he would hurry to work, not
+waiting for her to join him at breakfast.
+
+Then there had been nights when he held her in his arms thinking she was
+asleep, and she felt his tears dropping over her face--tears of
+silence. She would lie trembling with a wild joy, yet not daring to open
+her eyes or speak, knowing he would move away. These moments, feigning
+sleep and listening to Erik weeping softly against her cheek, had been
+her only happiness in the four black months since the change had come to
+him. He still loved her. Yes.... Oh, God, it was something else. Perhaps
+madness. She would drift to sleep as his weeping ceased, long after it
+ceased, and half dreams would come to her of nursing him through
+terrible darknesses, of warming him with her life, of magically driving
+away the things that were tormenting him out of his mind--great black
+things. Through the day she hungered for his return from work, that she
+might look at him again, even though the sight of him, dark and aloof,
+tore at her heart till she grew faint.
+
+She had never thought of questioning him calmly. There had been no
+suspicion of "someone else." That was a thing beyond even the wildest
+disorder of her imaginings. It was only that Erik was restless, perhaps
+tired of his home, of her too much loving and longing to go
+somewhere--away. Her awe of his brain, of his strange, always
+impenetrable character, adjusted itself to the change in him. There were
+mysterious things in Erik--things she couldn't hope to understand. Now
+these unknown things had grown too big in him. He was different from
+other men, not to be questioned as one might question other men. So she
+must wander about blindly, carefully, and drive things away.
+
+She came out of her sorrow reveries and smiled. Eddie was still talking.
+The music of a violin, harp, and piano was playing with a rollicking
+wistfulness through the clatter and laughter of the cafe. Eddie was
+saying, "There, that's better. That makes you look like Anna. You were
+looking like somebody else."
+
+His jolly eyes had a keenness. She must dissemble better. Erik would
+come in a moment and Eddie must never think....
+
+"I've heard about your husband, the lucky dog!" Eddie beamed at her
+impudently. "Think," he exploded, "of meeting you accidentally after ten
+years. Wow! Ten years! They say themselves quickly, don't they? By the
+way, there's a curious fellow coming to meet me here. I'll drag him in.
+If your Erik don't like it I'll sit on him till he does. His name's
+Tesla--Emil Tesla. Bomb-thrower or something. I don't know exactly. He's
+helped me with my collection. Oh, I forgot. You don't know about that. I
+keep thinking that you know me. You see nothing has changed in me. I'm
+still the same Eddie--richer, balder, foolisher, perhaps. It seems you
+ought to know all about the ten years without being told. But I'll tell
+you. I'm an art collector on the sly. Pictures--horrible things that
+don't look like anything. I don't know why I collect them, honestly.
+Pictures mean nothing to me. Never did. Particularly the kind I pick
+up. But it's a habit that keeps me cheerful. Better than collecting
+stamps. Cubist, futurist, expressionist. Ever see the damn things? I
+gobble them up. I guess because they're cheap. Here he is--the young
+fellow with the soft face."
+
+Meredith rose and jubilantly waved a napkin. A stocky man in loose
+clothes nodded at him and approached.
+
+"Not Mrs. Erik Dorn," he repeated. Anna nodded. The sound of her
+husband's name on others' lips always elated her, even now. She lost for
+a moment the aversion she felt at the touch of Tesla's hand. It seemed
+boneless.... They would all eat together. Anna was an old school friend.
+Years ago, ah! many years.
+
+Tesla fastened a repugnantly appreciative eye upon her, as if he were
+becoming privy to an exclusive secret. She frowned inwardly. An ugly man
+with something bubbly about him.
+
+"I was telling Mrs. Dorn you were a bomb-thrower or something," Meredith
+announced. His good spirits frisked about the table like a troupe of
+frolicsome puppies.
+
+"Only an apprentice," Tesla's soft voice--a voice like his
+hands--answered. "But why talk of such things in the presence of a
+beautiful lady." He bowed his head at her. She thought, "An unbearable
+man, completely out of place. How in the world could Eddie...."
+
+The music had changed. Muted cornets, banjos and saxophones were
+wailing out a tom-tom adagio. People were rising from tables and moving
+toward a dancing space. Eddie stood beside her bowing with elaborate
+stiffness.
+
+"My next dance, Miss Winthrop."
+
+Anna looked up blankly.
+
+"Good Lord, have you forgotten your own name? Come on. You know Dorn,
+don't you, Emil? Well, throw a fork at him when he shows up. Come, we
+haven't danced together for ten years. The last time was...."
+
+"The last time was the senior prom," Anna interrupted quickly. "You see
+I haven't forgotten." She stood mechanically.
+
+As they walked between tables and diners, he said, "I sure feel like a
+boy again seeing you."
+
+"I'm afraid I've almost forgotten how to dance, Eddie. My husband
+doesn't dance much."
+
+"Here we are! Like old days, eh? Remember Jimmie Goodland, my deadly
+rival for your hand?"
+
+They were dancing.
+
+"Well, he's married. Three kids."
+
+"And how many children have you, Eddie?"
+
+"Me?" He laughed. "Have I forgotten to tell you that? Well, I'm still at
+large, untrammeled, free. There've been women, but not _the_ woman."
+
+His voice put on a pleasing facetiousness.
+
+"Mustn't mind an old friend getting sentimental. But after you they had
+to measure up to something--and didn't."
+
+Since the night Erik had singled her out at the party no man had spoken
+to her that way. She listened slightly amazed. It confused her. His
+eyes, as they danced, were jolly and polite. But they watched her too
+keenly. Erik might misunderstand. Her love somehow resented being looked
+at and spoken to like that. She hurried back to their first topic.
+
+"What became of Millie Pugh, Eddie?"
+
+"Married. A Spaniard or something. Two kids and an automobile. Saw them
+in Brazil somewhere."
+
+"And Arthur Stearns?"
+
+"Fatter than an alderman. Runs a gas works or something in Detroit.
+Married. One kid."
+
+Anna laughed. "You sound like an almanac of dooms."
+
+"Well, all married but me--little Eddie, the boy bachelor, faithful unto
+death to the memories of his childhood. Do you remember the night we ran
+Mazurine's out of ice-cream?"
+
+This was another world, another Anna. She closed her eyes dreamily to
+the movement of the dance and music--delicious drugs.
+
+"Faster," she whispered.
+
+They broke into quicker steps. "Erik.... Erik.... my own. Love me again.
+Come back to me...." Still in her thought, but fainter, deeper down.
+Not words but a sigh that moved to the rhythm of the music.
+
+"And how may children have you?"
+
+She answered without emotion, as if she were talking with a distant part
+of herself. "There was a little boy. He died as a baby. We haven't any."
+
+Deep, kindly eyes looking at her as they danced. "I'm so sorry, Anna."
+
+She whispered again, "Faster!" A shadow over his face. She must be
+careful of his eyes--eyes that laughed, but keen, almost as keen as
+Erik's. "My Erik ... my own...." It was all a dream, a nightmare of her
+own inventing. Nothing had happened. Imaginings. Erik loved her. Why
+else should he weep and kiss her when he thought her asleep? He loved
+her, he loved her!
+
+Her face grew bright. Faster. Always to dance and dream of Erik. She
+must tell Eddie....
+
+"Erik is wonderful. I'm dying to have you meet him. Oh, Eddie, he's
+wonderful!"
+
+Now she could laugh and enjoy herself. Something had emptied out of her
+breasts--cold iron, warm lead. She was lighter, easy to bend and glide
+to the music. Everything was easy. Her face lighted by something deeper
+than a smile, she danced in silence. Eddie was far away--ten years away.
+His eyes that were smiling at her were no eyes at all. They were part of
+the music and movement that caressed her with the sweetness of life, of
+being loved by Erik....
+
+Tesla watched his friend lead the red-haired lady away to dance. For a
+while there lingered about him the air of unctious submission that had
+revolted Anna. Then it vanished. His face as he sat alone seemed to
+tighten. The flabbiness of his eyes became something else. Diners at
+other tables caught glimpses of him while they ate. A commanding figure,
+rugged, youthful-faced. Features that made definite lines, compelling
+lines, in the blur of other features. A man of certainties, yet with
+something weak about him. His eyes were like a child's. They did not
+quite belong in his face. There, eyes should have gleamed, stared with
+intensities. Instead, eyes purred--abstract, tender eyes; the kind that
+attracted women sometimes because they were almost like a women's eyes
+dreaming of lovers.
+
+"Hello, Tesla!"
+
+Again the fawning lights, smiles, bowings. This was Dorn--a Somebody.
+Somebodies always changed Tesla. There was a thing in him that smirked
+before Somebodies, as if he were a timorous puppy wagging its tail and
+leaping about on flabby legs.
+
+"Mrs. Dorn is sitting here with a friend. They're dancing. We're all at
+this table, Mr. Dorn."
+
+Dorn caught the eager innuendo of his voice. He knew Tesla vaguely as a
+radical, an author of pamphlets. Tesla continued to talk, a sycophantic
+purr in his words.... The war was financed by international bankers.
+Didn't he think so? America was being drawn in by Wall Street--to make
+the loans to the Allies stand up. But something was going to happen. The
+eyes of the workers were opening slowly all over the world. In Russia
+already a beginning of realities. Ah, think of the millions dying for
+nothing, advancing or improving nothing by their death. Soldiers,
+heroes, workingmen, all blind acrobats in another man's circus. But
+something was happening. Revolution. This grewsome horseplay in Europe's
+front yard would start it. And then--watch out!
+
+The voice of Emil Tesla, eager, fawning, had yet another quality in it.
+It promised, as if it could not do justice to the things it was saying
+and must be careful, soft, polite. Dorn felt the man and his power. Not
+a puppy on flabby legs but a brute mastiff with a wild bay that must
+come out in little whines, because the music was playing, because he was
+talking to Somebody. A man physically beaten by life, his body scraping,
+bowing; his words mumbling confusedly in the presence of other words.
+Yet a powerful man with a tremendous urge that might some day hurl him
+against the stars. He had something....
+
+To Tesla's sentences Dorn dropped a yes or no. Tesla needed no replies.
+He purred on eagerly before his listener, seeming to whine for his
+appreciation and good will, yet unconscious of him. A waiter brought
+wine. Dorn stared at the topaz tint in his glass. His eyes had changed.
+They no longer smiled. A heaviness gleamed from them. The thing in his
+heart would not go. Heavy hands turning him over and over, as if life
+were tearing him, crowds and streets pulling at him. There had been no
+rest since Rachel had gone.
+
+He sat almost oblivious of Tesla. In the back of his brain the city
+tumbled--an elephantine grimace, a wilderness of angles, a swarm of
+gestures that beat at his thought. But before his eyes there were no
+longer the precise patterns of another day. He was no longer outside. He
+had been sucked into something, the something that he had been used to
+refer to condescendingly as life. People sitting in a room like this had
+been furniture that amused him. Now they were alive, repulsive, with a
+meaning to them that sickened him. Streets had once been stone and
+gesture. Now they, too, were meanings that sickened. A sanity in which
+he alone was insane, surrounded him; a completion in which he alone
+seemed incomplete. Men and women together--tired faces, lighted
+faces--all with destinations that satisfied them. And he wandering,
+knocked from place to place by heavy hands, pushed through crowds,
+dropped into chairs. Time itself a torment into which he kept thrusting
+himself deeper.
+
+The change in Erik Dorn had come to him with a cynicism of its own. It
+laughed with its own laughter. A mind foreign to him spoke to him
+through the day.... "You would smile at life, Erik; well, here it is.
+Easy for a sleeper to smile. But smile now. Life is a surface, eh?
+shifting about into designs for the delectation of your eyes. Watch it
+shifting then. Darkness and emptiness in a can-can. Watch the tumbling
+streets that have no meanings. No meanings? Yet there's a torment in
+them that can hoist you up by your placid little heels and swing you
+round ... round, and send you flying. A witch's flight with the scream
+of stars whistling through it. Flight that has no ending and no
+direction ... no face of Rachel at its ending. Burning eyes, devouring
+eyes ... face like a mirror of stars. There's a face in the world and
+you go after it, heels in air, tongue frozen, breathing always an
+emptiness that chokes. Easy for sleepers to dawdle with words and say
+carelessly life is this, life is that. What the hell's the difference
+what life is? It means nothing to me. People and their posturings mean
+nothing. But what about now? A contact, a tying up with posturings, and
+the streets and crowds tearing you into gestures not your own...."
+
+Aloud he would say, "My love for her has given me a soul and I've become
+a fool along with other fools."
+
+He did not think of Rachel in words. There were moments of dream when he
+made plans--a fantastic amorous rigmarole of Rachel and himself walking
+together over the heads of the world; child dreams that substituted
+themselves for the realities he demanded. But these were infrequent. He
+was learning to avoid them as one avoids a drug that soothes and then
+doubles the hunger of the nerves.
+
+As now in the cafe, listening to Tesla, watching with dark eyes the
+scene, there was a turning of heavy hands in him to which he must not
+give thought. Watch the cafe, listen to Tesla, talk, eat and spit out a
+disgust for the things of which he was a part--things from which he
+demanded Rachel and a surcease to the pain in him. And that only stifled
+with the emptiness of her.
+
+Out of the wretchedness of garbled emotions that had become the whole of
+Erik Dorn, his vocabulary arose with a facile paint brush and painted
+upon his thought. His phrases wandered about looking for subjects as if
+he must taunt himself with details that forever brought him loathing.
+
+Before he had seen pictures complete, rhythmic pictures of streets and
+crowds, pleasantly blurred and in motion. Now he saw them as if life was
+in a state of continual pause--an arrested cinematograph; grotesquely
+detailed and with the meaning of motion out of it. A picture waiting
+something to set it moving. This something he could not give it.
+Helplessly his words continued to trace themselves over the outlines of
+scenes about him, as if trying to stir them into a life.
+
+This scene consciousness had become almost a mania in the four months.
+But in the mechanical, phraseological movement of his thought he was
+able to hide himself. Thus he listened to Tesla and looked at the cafe.
+The inn was filled with people--elaborately dressed women and shiningly
+groomed men--grouped about white-linened, silver-laden tables; an
+ornamental grimacing little multitude come to the cafe as to some grave
+rite, moving to the tables with an unctious nonchalance. Women dressed
+in effulgent silks, their flesh gleaming among the spaces of exotic
+plumage, gleaming through the flares of luxurious satin distortions. A
+company that gestured, grimaced with the charm of lustful marionettes.
+Flesh reduced to secrecy. Lust, dream in hiding. From the secret world
+they inhabited, moist bodies beckoned with a luscious, perverse denial
+of artifice.
+
+The picture of it shot into his eyes, arousing a hate in his thought. He
+heard Tesla ... "life has changed with the industrialization of society.
+It is no longer a question of who shall run the court. The court is an
+atrophied institution, a circus surviving in the backyard of history.
+It's a question of who shall run the factory. Democracy is a thing that
+touches only politicians. The factory touches people. Democracy cleared
+the way but it's not a way in itself. It's still the court idea of
+government. Steam, gas, and electricity made the French revolution
+obsolete even before it was ended. This war ... good God, Dorn, blood
+pouring over toys we've outgrown!..."
+
+Still fawning voiced, but with a bay underneath. Dorn listened and
+remained elsewhere--among a turning of heavy hands. Yet he thought of
+Tesla, "He makes an impression on me. I'll remember his words. A man of
+power, rooted in visions." He replied suddenly, "I'm convinced the weak
+will rule some day, if that's what you're driving at. The race can
+survive only as long as its weakest survive. Christianity started it.
+Socialism will carry it a step further. The fight against the
+individual. What else is any institutionalism? A struggle to circumvent
+the biological destiny of man, which is the same as the biological
+destiny of fish--extinction. That's what we're primarily engaged in. The
+race must protect its weak, so it invents laws to curb the instincts and
+power of its strong. And we obey the laws--a matter of adjusting
+ourselves ludicrously to our weaknesses and endowing these adjustments
+with high names. Bolshevism will be the law of to-morrow and wear even a
+higher name than Christianity. Yesterday it was, 'only the poor shall
+inherit heaven, only crippled brains and weaker visions shall see God.'
+To-morrow the slogan will have been brought down to earth. Yes, they'll
+run the factories--your masses. There's the strength in them of
+logic--a logic opposed to evolution. They'll run the factories as they
+now run heaven--an Institution nicely accommodated to their fears and
+weaknesses."
+
+Dorn paused. He was not thinking. People said things. An automatic box
+of phrases in him released answers. Tesla was replying, not so
+fawningly, the bay beneath his soft words mastering his sycophantic
+tones. Let him talk. He had something to talk about. He saw something.
+There was a new tableau in Tesla's brain. Let him keep murmuring things
+about it--suavely, unctuously letting off steam.
+
+Like a man returning drearily to his game of solitaire, Dorn fastened
+his eyes again upon the scene. Looking at things would keep him from
+thinking. To think was to cry out. He had learned this. His eyes, dark
+and heavy, fastened themselves upon the walls of the inn lost in
+shadows, painted with nymphs and satyrs sprawling over tapestried
+landscapes. He devoured their details, his heart searching in them for
+the mystery of Rachel and finding only a deeper emptiness--insistently
+naked bodies of nymphs lying like newly bathed housemaids amid stiff
+park sceneries. Miracles of photographic lechery. Would people about him
+look like that naked? Thank God they were dressed! An ankle in silk was
+better than a thigh in sunlight. An old saw ... beauty lay in the
+imagination. Women removed their beauty with their clothes. The nymphs
+on the wall reminded one chiefly that they were careful to scrub their
+legs all the way up.
+
+He sighed and watched the eyes of diners look at the walls. Her face--a
+mirror of stars. What else was there but her face? Other faces, of
+course. A revulsion of other strange faces. Men studying the naked
+figures on the walls with profound but aloof interest, eyeing the women
+near them shrewdly as they turned away. Women with serious,
+unconcentrated eyes upon the paintings, turning tenderly towards their
+escorts. He would die of looking at faces that were not hers. A
+love-sick schoolboy. God, what an ass! Tesla was becoming an
+insufferable bore. What in God's name did he have to do with masses
+raising their skinny arms from a smoking field and crying aloud,
+"Bread!" Tesla had a lot to do with it. The skinny arms, the smoking
+field, and the balloon with the word "bread" in it were Tesla's soul.
+But his soul was different--heavy hands turning.
+
+Dorn drank wine from his glass. Anna, dancing with a plump, laughing
+stranger, flitted through the distance. A deeper turning over of iron in
+his heart at the glimpse of her. The scene no longer could divert him.
+The thought of Anna dropped like a curtain upon a picture. What could he
+do? What? At night he grew sick lying beside her. It wasn't conscience.
+There was nothing wrong about loving someone else. But there was an
+uncanniness about it. Lying beside a woman who didn't know what was in
+his mind. He would lie thinking, "Oh, Rachel, I love Rachel," repeating
+almost idiotic love words for Rachel in his mind. And Anna would smile
+patiently at him, unaware. That was the most intolerable thing. The fact
+she didn't know. And also the fact that he must remain inarticulate. He
+must sit with his heart choking him and his head in a blaze, and keep
+stuffing words back down his throat. Through the day he tormented
+himself with the thought, "I must tell her. I can't keep this thing up
+any longer." But when he saw her it was impossible to tell her. A single
+phrase would end it. He held the phrase on his lips--as if it were a
+knife balanced over Anna's heart. "I love Rachel." That would end it.
+But it was impossible. He couldn't say it. Why? He sat, trying to get a
+glimpse of her dancing again and tried to avoid answering himself. It
+was something he mustn't answer. He must get away from his damned
+thought. His eyes fastened themselves upon the fountain in the center of
+the room. It was Anna that tormented him, not Rachel. Anna ... Anna....
+The tension broke. He was looking at the fountain surmounted by a marble
+nude crouched in a posture of surprise; probably disturbed by her
+nudity. It was necessary for nudity to be disturbed by itself. Did
+virgins eyeing themselves in mirrors blush with shame? Unquestionably.
+The nude peered into the water of a large tiled basin. A gush of water
+over her managed to veil her unsuccessfully in an endless spray. Water
+filled the air with an odorless spice.
+
+" ... the first blow will come out of Russia, Dorn. The Russians have
+not been side-tracked into the phantasms of democracy. They still think
+straight. Civilization hasn't crippled them with phrases. They are still
+what you would call biological. And dreams live in them. Yes, I know
+what you'll say ... heavy dreams. But here in America there are no
+dreams--yet. Nothing but paper. Paper thoughts. Paper morals. Everything
+paper. Russia will send out fire to burn up this paper. Destroy it.
+Leave nothing behind--not even ashes."
+
+True enough. Why answer it? But what difference did it make if paper
+burned? Was man after all a creature consecrated to institutions, doomed
+to expend himself upon institutions? A hundred million nervous systems,
+each capable of ecstasies and torments, devoting themselves to the
+business of political brick-laying. Always yowling about new bricks.
+Politics--a deformity of the imagination; a game of tiddledy-winks
+played with guns and souls.
+
+He breathed with relief. Abstractions were a drug. But his thinking
+ended. Blue electric lights cast an amorous glow--an artificial
+moonlight--upon tables surrounding the fountain. Beneath the cobalt
+water of the basin, colored fish gliding like a weaving procession of
+little fat Mandarins. The remainder of the room also blue from shaded
+lights. That was why they dubbed it the Blue Inn. Blue lights made the
+Blue Inn. The air was heavy with the uncoiling lavender tinsel of
+tobacco smoke. A luxurious suppression as about some priapic altar ...
+artificial shadows, painted lights, forlorn fountain ripplings.
+
+"Oh, Erik, I've been dancing. This is Mr. Meredith. I once told you
+about him. The music is simply wonderful here."
+
+Tesla, flabby-eyed and almost maliciously polite, as if he would expose
+the innate absurdity of politeness, tipped over a water glass in his
+floppings. Anna, still alive with the joyousness that had come to her,
+seated herself beside her husband. Her hand rested eagerly on his arm.
+He must love her ... must. Must. It had been only a nightmare she'd
+invented. Oh, God, did anything matter as long as they loved each other?
+
+"Tired, dearest?"
+
+He looked at her and tried to lighten his eyes.
+
+"Yes, a little. The damned war."
+
+"I'm so sorry."
+
+She mustn't ask him to dance. He was tired. She would coddle him. He was
+only a baby--tired, sleepy, sad. She must ask no questions. Only love.
+Before her love the darkness of his face would clear away as before
+sunshine.
+
+"I'm so happy, Erik darling!"
+
+Her fingers quivered on his arm. He looked at her and smiled out of
+misty eyes. Of all the unbearable things in an unbearable world her
+happiness was the most unbearable. She nodded, as if she understood. Her
+pretense of understanding was a ghastly business. But Anna smiled. Poor
+Erik, he was only a boy. If only they were alone! If Eddie and Tesla and
+the whole world would go away and leave her with him, to kiss his eyes
+and stroke his hair. Sleep, baby, sleep.... What a crazy, wild thing,
+thinking that Erik no longer loved her. No longer loved her! Dear God,
+she was only a part of him. He must love her.... Must!
+
+The talk kept on--words bubbling from Tesla, Eddie frisking with
+laughter.
+
+"You must dance with me, Erik. It's been so long since we danced."
+There--she shouldn't have asked. She didn't mean to. Her eyes
+apologized. When he answered, "No, I'm tired," there was wine from a
+glass that warmed the little coldness his words dropped into her.
+
+Listening to her, answering with words he tried to soften and make
+alive, Dorn tried to occupy himself with the details of the scene again.
+Could he keep on living as two persons--one of them turning over and
+over in a fire that consumed him--and the other making phrases,
+gestures, as if there were no fire consuming him? If he kept his eyes
+working, perhaps. He hated Anna. But that was because he couldn't bear
+the thought of her suffering. He hated her because he must be kind to
+her.
+
+Meredith was ordering the dinner. Dorn stared out over the room.
+
+Anna was watching him with her senses. Why didn't he speak to her as
+Eddie did? Perhaps he was going mad. His eyes suffered. He looked at
+things and seemed to hurt himself with looking. She kept her voice
+vibrant with a hope of joyousness. "I mustn't give in to the nightmare.
+It's only imagining...."
+
+"Erik, dearest, do eat something. Let me order for you."
+
+Talk, talk! Dorn listened. Anna was saying, "Eddie thinks as you do
+about the war, Erik. Isn't that odd?" Yes, that anybody should be able
+to think as he did. He was a God. A super-God. If only she hated him. A
+moment of hate in her eyes would be heaven.
+
+"A plain case of accepting an evil and making the best of it," laughed
+Meredith. "If we go in all I ask is for God's sake let's keep our eyes
+open and not slobber around."
+
+Soft remonstrances from Tesla with polite references to Wall Street.
+Food on platters. An air of slight excitement with Anna directing the
+talk and serving. What made her so vivacious? The sight of an old
+friend, Meredith? Meredith ... oh, yes, school days, long ago. A wild
+hope unfolded itself in Dorn. He looked at the man anew. Fantastic
+notion. But throw them together, day and night. Cafes, dancing, music,
+propinquity. He was her type--kindly, unselfish, prosperously elate
+over life. He'd help her on with her wraps and be polite over doorways.
+Perhaps. He turned to his wife and laughed softly. A way out. Give her
+to the man. Give her away. End her love for him--her damned, torturing
+love that made him turn over inside and weep at night when she was
+asleep; that hounded him like an unclean memory. It was only her love
+that made him unclean. He looked at her with his eyes lighted.
+
+"Dancing makes a difference, doesn't it, dear? I'd dance myself, only my
+legs are tired."
+
+He smiled as he spoke with the unctuousness of a villain administering
+poison in a bouquet of roses. But a way to get rid of her love. He
+didn't mind her, but the thing in her. That was the whole of it. Why
+hide from it? God, if he could only kill it he'd be free. Otherwise he'd
+never be free. Even if he went away there'd be the thought of her
+love.... Anna's face bloomed with joy at his words.
+
+"We'll come here another night when you're not tired, honey."
+
+"Yes," he answered, "make a party of it. How about that, Mr. Meredith?"
+
+"Surest thing."
+
+They forgot Tesla.
+
+"Oh, Erik!" She embraced his arm with both her hands. Under the table
+she pressed her thigh trembling against him.
+
+The music from the platform had changed. Cornets, banjos, saxophones,
+again. The boom and jerk of voices arose as if in greeting. Foreheads
+of diners glistening with a fine sweat. Sweat on the backs of women's
+necks, on their chins, under their raised arms; gleaming on the cool
+intervals of breasts, white and bulbous breasts peeping out of a secret
+world.
+
+"If I may, Anna...."
+
+Eddie was taking her away. The plot was working. Dorn's heart warmed
+toward the man. A rescuer, a savior. He nodded his head at his wife. He
+must make it look as if he were sorry it wasn't he going to dance with
+her; smile with proper wistfulness; shake his head sadly.
+
+Anna, suddenly beside herself, laughed, and, leaning over touched his
+hair quickly with her lips. Damned idiot, he'd overdone it! No. Perhaps
+she was guilty. Apologizing for impulses away from him toward Meredith?
+He sat hoping feverishly, caressing a diagnosis as if he could establish
+it by repeating it over and over.
+
+Tesla again, this time on art. Art of the proletaire. Damn the
+proletaire and Tesla both! He had a plot working out. Would their hands
+touch, linger, sigh against each other? Of course. They were human--at
+least their hands were. And then, dances every night. What a miserable
+banal plot! Another day-dream. Forget. Beyond Tesla's soft voice ... an
+opening and shutting of mouths swollen in delicious discomforts. Look at
+them. Identify mouths. Tell himself the angles they made. People ...
+people ... a wriggling of bodies in a growing satiety of tepid lusts.
+
+"True art, Dorn, is something beyond decoration. Dreams made real. But
+the right kind of dreams--things that touch people. The other art was
+for sick men. That is--men sickened of life. The new art will be for
+healthy men, men reaching out of everything about them. And we must give
+them bread, soup, and art."
+
+Yes, that might as well be true as anything else. Anything was truth.
+Anything and everything. Here he was in a scene that had no relation to
+him. Yet he wasn't detached.
+
+"Speaking of art, Dorn, we've found a new artist, a wonder. She's going
+to do some things for _The Cry_. I got her interested. I must tell
+Meredith about her. Maybe you know her--Rachel Laskin. One of her things
+is coming out in the next issue. I'll send you a copy."
+
+Coolly, amazedly, Dorn thought, "What preposterous thing makes it
+possible for this man to talk of Rachel as if she were a reality ...
+like the people in the cafe? To him she's like the people in the cafe.
+He knows her like the people in the cafe."
+
+He answered carelessly, "Oh, yes; Miss Laskin. I remember her well. That
+reminds me: you don't happen to have her address? I've got some things
+she left at the office we can't use."
+
+Tesla dug an address out of a soiled stack of papers. His pockets seemed
+alive with soiled papers. Rachel's address was a piece of soiled paper
+like any other piece of soiled paper. Mumbling silently, Dorn sighed.
+Just in time. Anna again, and Meredith. He looked at them, recalling his
+plot. Were they in love? Tesla--the blundering idiot--"I was telling
+Dorn of a new artist I've found, Eddie. Rachel Laskin, a sort of Blake
+and Beardsley and something else. Thin lines, screechy things. You'll
+like them."
+
+"Oh, yes, I always like them," Meredith smiled.
+
+And Anna, "Oh, I know Rachel Laskin well. We're old friends. She's a
+charming, wonderful girl. I liked her so much. Where is she?"
+
+"In New York."
+
+"I'll have to look at her work," Meredith added. "That's me. Always
+looking at other people's work and saying, fine, great, and never
+knowing a thing about it. Ye true art collector, eh, Emil?"
+
+Anna went on, "Erik was amused with her. She is rather odd, you know,
+and sort of wearing on the nerves. But you can't help liking her."
+
+An amazing description of a face of stars. Dorn smiled.
+
+Tesla said, "I only saw her once. A nervous girl, and she seemed upset."
+
+More from Anna: "I hope she'll come back to Chicago. She was such fun. I
+really miss her...."
+
+All mad. Babbling of Rachel. Dorn stared cautiously about him. The
+torment in him became a secret swollen beyond its proper dimensions.
+They would look at him now and understand that he was not Erik Dorn, but
+somebody else huddled up, burning and flopping around inside. Love was a
+virulent form of idiocy. It meant nothing to people outside. Everything
+inside. Anna talking about Rachel started a panic in him. She was
+playing with memories of Rachel. Do you remember this? and that? As if
+he, of course, had forgotten her. Yes, there was an "of course" about
+it. A gruesome "of course." Gruesome--an excellent word. It meant Anna
+petting and laughing over a knife that was to plunge itself into her
+heart. When? Soon ... soon. He had an address copied from a soiled piece
+of paper.
+
+They bundled out of the cafe. Waiters, wraps. Eddie helped with the
+wraps. Alien streets, dark waiting buildings, lights, and then
+good-nights. The moments whirled mysteriously away. What did the moments
+matter? He was going to Rachel. Ah! When had he decided that? He didn't
+remember reaching any decision in the matter.
+
+They entered a cab alone. The cab rolled away over snow-packed streets.
+But he couldn't leave Anna. Yes he could. Why not? No. Impossible. A
+faint thought like a storm packed into a nutshell.... "I will."
+
+"You were wonderful to-night, Erik. When I see you with other men I just
+thank God for you."
+
+That was the intolerable thing--his wonderfulness, his damned
+wonderfulness. It existed in her. He couldn't leave it behind.
+
+Her hand lay warm in his.
+
+"Kiss me, dearest!"
+
+He kissed her and laughed. He was happy, then? Oh, yes, he was going to
+Rachel. Simple. Four months of misery, making a weeping idiot out of
+himself. And now, a decision had been reached. His head on her shoulder,
+she wanted it so, she was whispering caresses to him. This was Anna. But
+it would soon be Rachel. What difference did such things make? One
+woman, another woman....
+
+"You're like Jimmie was."
+
+Happy tears filled her eyes, to be noted and remembered now that he was
+going to Rachel. Jimmie was a baby who had died--his baby. Offspring was
+a more humorous word. To be noted and remembered. What a dream!
+
+"I'm so happy, Erik. Everything seems wonderful again when you smile and
+laugh like this. Your cheeks make such a nice little curve and your head
+on my shoulder, where it belongs ... for always and ever...."
+
+Let her sing. He could stand it. What did it matter? But would she die
+when he left. He would have to say something outright. God, what a thing
+to say outright. Kill not only her but the wonderful selves of him that
+lived in her. That didn't mean anything. Anyway, it was rather silly to
+waste time thinking.... To-night, after the ride ... going to Rachel.
+He had her address. He would walk up, ring the bell. She would answer
+and her face would look in surprise at him.
+
+"My Erik, my own sweet little one!"
+
+Dreaming of Jimmie, of him and Jimmie together.... "I don't ever want to
+move. I want us to keep on riding like this forever and ever...."
+
+Quite exquisite tragedy. A bit crude. But reality was always rather
+crude. Crude or not, what was more exquisite than happiness laughing
+with an unseen knife moving toward its heart? At least he was an
+appreciative audience. With his head on her shoulder. Why not? Life
+demanded that one be an audience sometimes ... sit back and listen to
+the fates whispering. What a ride! Dark waiting houses moving by. Seven
+years together, growing closer and more subtly together--yet not
+together at all. Anyway, he was sick of living that way. Even without
+Rachel ... a mess. Night lies. Passion lies. A dirty business. No, not
+that. She was beautiful. Anna, not Rachel. He was the unclean one.
+
+"Are you happy, beloved?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Lord, what an answer to give her. A prayer! Insufferably exquisite gods
+of drama--she was praying. Tears rushing from her eyes.
+
+"Sweet Jesus ... sweet brother Jesus ... thanks for everything. Oh, I've
+been so unfaithful. Not to believe. Thanks for my wonderful Erik."
+
+He must kill her, swiftly, before she could know that prayers were vain.
+Easier to kill her body than to listen to this. How, though? With his
+hands about her throat. Murder was an old business. It would be mercy to
+her. But he was too much a coward. A cowardly audience listening to
+words ... far away from him.
+
+"Beloved ... darling. Oh, it's so good to have you back again."
+
+"Don't talk." He put his arm tightly around her, his fingers fumbling at
+her bare neck. But that was only a pretense, a bit of insipid
+melodrama--his fingers. He was an actor frightened by his part.
+
+The taxi driver was demanding $4.50--an outrage.
+
+"That's too much, Erik."
+
+But he paid. Should he tell him to wait? He would need him in a few
+minutes. No, too cold-blooded to tell him to wait. And anyway, Anna was
+listening. He was still an audience. He would jump on the stage and
+begin acting later. Soon.
+
+"Keep the change."
+
+"Thanks, sir."
+
+An insane world ... a polite and jovial taxi-cab driver carrying
+lunatics about the streets.
+
+"Oh, dear, look! Father's sitting up." She was disappointed. "And I
+wanted to kiss and hug you before we went upstairs."
+
+Dorn unlocked the door of his house. He still had a house and could
+unlock its door without its meaning anything. To-morrow he would have no
+house. That was the difference between to-day and to-morrow. The old man
+would be there. That would make it easier. He shivered. "I'm going to do
+something then".... This was alarming.
+
+Anna's arms were around him before he could remove his coat. She clung,
+laughing, kissing. Let her.... "The doomed man ate a hearty breakfast of
+ham and eggs and seemed in good spirits." Reporters, with a sense of the
+dramatic, usually wrote it that way. Ham and eggs were a symbol. Should
+he mull around for extenuating epigrams--a fervid rigmarole on the
+mysteries and ethics of life? Or strike swift, short?... "Death was
+instantaneous. The drop fell at 10:08 A.M. sharp." Always sharp. Damn
+his reporters!
+
+"Anna ..."
+
+She bloomed at the sound of her name.
+
+"I want to talk, Anna."
+
+"No, let's not talk. I'm so happy.... Aren't you up rather late,
+father?"
+
+Thank God she was getting nervous. One can't kill a smile.
+
+"Anna, come to me."
+
+An old phrase of their love-making. He hadn't meant to use it. But
+phrases that have been used for seven years get so they say themselves.
+She moved quickly toward him. His father--smiling beyond her shoulder.
+Now for the slaughter....
+
+"Do you love me enough to make me happy, Anna?"
+
+"I would give my life for you."
+
+He was deplorably calm--too calm. His eyes were looking at books on
+shelves, at chairs, at pictures on the walls, as if everything was of an
+identical importance.
+
+"I know, but that isn't it."
+
+"What then, Erik?"
+
+He couldn't say it. Particularly with his father smiling--an irritating
+old man who would never die. Should he fall at her feet and whimper? He
+couldn't. Her face was his, her eyes his. It wasn't leaving Anna.
+Himself, though. Yes, he was confronting himself. Seven years of selves.
+All wonderful. Everything he had said and done for seven years lived in
+Anna. So he must kill seven years of himself with a phrase. No. Yet he
+was talking on. It soothed him, untightened the agony in him.
+
+"Listen, Anna. I can't tell you, but I must. My words circle away from
+me. They run away from what I want to tell you. Anna ... I must go
+away--leave you."
+
+Tears in his eyes, over his face. His voice, warm, blurring with tears.
+He choked, paused.
+
+"Erik...."
+
+A white sound. Something bursting.
+
+"If I stay, I'll go mad."
+
+"No ... no ... Erik ..."
+
+Still white sounds, only whiter. Blank sounds, caused by speechlessness.
+Sounds of speechlessness.
+
+"I may come back, if you'll take me back sometime...."
+
+A man was always an imbecile. Imbecility is a trademark. But there were
+no sounds now. His eyes tried to turn away from her. A face had ceased
+to live and give forth sounds. He remained looking at it. A cold,
+emptied face, like a picture frame with a picture recently torn out of
+it.
+
+"Anna, for God's sake, hate me. Hate me. Loathe me the rest of
+your life. I've lied and lied to you--nothing but lies.... No,
+that's not true. But now it is. Think of me as vile when I go
+away.... Otherwise..."
+
+Tears blubbered out of him.
+
+... "otherwise I'll die thinking of you. Don't look at me that way. Yell
+at me.... You've known it. I can't help it.... It's something. I can't
+help it."
+
+Behind this voice he thought: "It's not me alone. Nights of love ...
+kisses ... Jimmie ... seven years.... Little things. Oh, God, little
+things. We're all leaving her--pulling ourselves out of her."
+
+"Where are you going, my son?"
+
+Could he lie now? Yes, anything that made it easier.
+
+"Nowhere. Anywhere. I must go. Otherwise I'll choke to death. Take care
+of her. There's money. All hers. I'll write later about it. Anna ...
+don't please."
+
+The thing was a botch. Wrong, all wrong. But that didn't matter. His
+coat and hat mattered more than phrases. Looking for a coat and hat when
+he should be winding up the scene properly. These were preposterous
+banalities that distinguished life, unedited, from melodrama. Where was
+his hat? His hat ... hat ... Life, Fate, Tragedy had mislaid his
+insufferable hat. Ah ... on the floor.
+
+She was standing staring at him. Would she die on her feet? Quick,
+before the shriek. It was coming ... a madness that would frighten him
+forever if he heard it. What a scoundrel he was! Why deny it? But in a
+few years he would be dead and no longer a scoundrel, and all this so
+much forgotten dust.
+
+"Write to us, my son. And come back soon."
+
+He closed the door softly behind him and started to walk. But his legs
+ran. It had been easy ... easy. He stumbled, sprawled upon the iced
+pavement, bruising his face. He picked himself up unaware that he had
+stopped running. Night, houses, streets, what matter? In a few
+years--dust. But he had left in time. That was the important thing.
+Another minute and he would have heard her. A terrible unheard sound.
+He had left it behind. He had left her unfinished. Why was he running?
+Oh, yes--Anna.
+
+He paused and held his eyes from staring back at his house. His eyes
+would pull him back to the door. Little things--oh, the little things
+made hurts. He must turn a corner. Light does not travel around corners.
+
+Gone. The house was gone with all its little things. One jerk and he had
+ripped away....
+
+He walked slowly. A coldness suddenly fell into him. Rachel. He had
+forgotten about Rachel. Never a thought for Rachel. Disloyal. Where
+was she--the mirror of stars? Nowhere. He didn't love her. Was he
+insane? He loved Anna, not Rachel. He must go back. The thing was
+lopsided--pretense. He'd been pretending he was in love with Rachel.
+Love ... schoolboy business. Mirror of stars! Something scribbled on a
+valentine. That was love. Rachel. No.... There was another face. Cold,
+emptied--a circle of deaths. Anna's face. But he must remember Rachel
+because he was going to Rachel--remember something about her. Say her
+name over and over. But that wasn't Rachel. That was a word like ...
+like pocketbook. Something about her....
+
+Ah! yes. Her coat lying in the snow. He sighed with a determined effort
+at sadness ... her little coat in the snow!
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+WINGS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"Boom, boom," said the city of New York, "we have gone to war!"
+
+And all the other cities, big and little, said a boom-boom of their own.
+A mighty nation had gone to war.
+
+A time of singing. Songs on the lips of crowds. Lights in their eyes.
+High-pitched, garbled words, brass bands, flags, speeches.... Mine eyes
+have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord but we don't want the
+Bacon, All we Want is a Piece of the Rhine(d).... A brass monkey playing
+"Nearer, My God, to Thee" on a red banjo.... _Allons, les enfants_ ...
+_le jour de gloire est arrive!_ You tell 'em, kid! Store fronts,
+cabarets, hotel lobbies, sign-boards, office buildings all become
+shining citadels of righteousness beleaguered by the powers of darkness.
+Newspaper headlines exploding like firecrackers on the corners. A
+bonfire of faces in the streets. A bonfire of flags above the streets.
+
+Boom, boom!... societies for the relief of martyred Belgium. Societies
+for Rolling Cigarettes, Bandages, Exterminating Hun Spies, Exterminating
+Yellow Dogs and Slackers.... Wah, don't let anybody be a slacker! A
+slacker is a dirty dog who does what I wanna do but am afraid to do.
+Who lies down. Who won't stand up on his hind legs and cheer when he's
+supposed to.... Societies for Knitting Sweaters, Giving Bazaars,
+Spotting Hun Propaganda. A bonfire of committees, communes, Jabberwocks,
+clubs, Green Walruses, False Whiskers, Snickersnees, War Boards, and
+Eagles Shrieking from their Mountain Heights with an obligato by the
+Avon Comedy Four--I'm a Jazz Baby....
+
+A mighty nation had gone to war. Humpty Dumpty and the March Hare
+wheeled out the Home Guards. Said the Debutante to her Soldier Boy in
+the moonlight, "To Hell with the chaperone, War is War...." Somebody
+lost Eighty Hundred Billion Dollars trying to build aeroplanes out of
+Flypaper and a new kind of Cement. And the Press, slapping Fright Wig
+No. 7 on its bald head, announced to the Four Winds, " ... once more
+glory, common cause, sacrifice, welded peoples of America, invincible
+host, lay common blood, altar liberty, sacred principle, government of
+the people by the people for the people perish earth" ... And the
+Pulpits obliged with an "O God who art in Heaven girthed in shining
+armor before Thee Thy cause Liberty Humanity Democracy Thy blessing
+inspire light of sacrifice brave women and hero men give us strength O
+Lord not falter see way of Righteousness stern hearts bear great burden
+Thou has given us carry on till powers of darkness routed virtue again
+triumphant. Thy will done on earth as it is in Heaven...."
+
+And the soldiers entraining for the cantonments--clerks and salesmen,
+rail-splitters and window-washers with the curve of youth on their
+faces--the soldiers said, "Whasamatter with Uncle Sam? Rah ... Wow ...
+Good-bye ... We'll treat 'em rough ... ashes to ashes and dust to dust
+if the Camels don't get you the Fatimas must...." And in the cantonments
+the soldiers said, " ... this lousy son of a badwoman of a shavetail
+can't put nothin' over on me ... say ... oh, I hate to get up in the
+morning, oh, how I long to remain in bed...." And in France the soldiers
+sang " ... there are smiles that make you happy there are smiles that
+make you sad.... The Knights of Columbus are all right but the Y. M. C.
+A. is a son of a badwoman of a grafting mess...."
+
+"Yanks Land in France ... Yanks in Big Battle ... Yanks Sink Submarines"
+... bang banged the headlines. Don't eat meat on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
+Help the Red Cross buy Doughnuts for the Salvation Army and keep an eye
+on Your Austrian Janitor.... Elephants, tom-cats, and chorus-girls; a
+hallelujah with a red putty nose, Seventy-six Thousand Press Agents
+Walking on their Hands, Jabberwocks, Horned Toads, and Prima Donnas ...
+here comes the Liberty Loan Drive ...
+
+A mighty nation had gone to war. Boom! Boom!
+
+And in a moon-lighted room overlooking a fanfare of roofs, Erik Dorn
+whispered one night to Rachel,
+
+"You have given me wings!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Time to get up. An oblong of sunlight squeezing through beneath the
+drawn blind and slapping itself boldly on the gloomy carpet ... "shame
+on all sleepy heads. Here's another day...."
+
+Rachel smiled as she opened her eyes. She lay quietly, smiling. It was
+as it was yesterday--as the day before. One opened one's eyes and life
+came quickly back with a "Hello, here I am--where you left me." So one
+lay, fearful to move, like a cup of wine that is too full and mustn't be
+joggled with even a kick at the bed sheets.
+
+One lay and smiled. Thoughts and stockings side by side somewhere on the
+floor. Put on stockings in a minute. Put on thoughts in a minute. Dress
+oneself up in phrases, hats, skyscrapers, and become somebody.
+
+Rachel's eyes livened slowly. Pleasant to be nobody--a bodyless,
+meaningless smile awake in the morning. Opened eyes on a pillow. A deep,
+deep sigh on a pillow. An oblong of sunshine on the floor. A happy bed.
+A happy ceiling. A happy door. Nothing else. Nobody else.
+
+But a hat, a blue straw hat with a jauntily curved brim, sat on a
+candlestick and winked. Which reminded one that one was alive. After
+all, one was somebody. Time to get up. All the king's horses and all the
+king's men demanded of one to arise and get dressed and go out and be
+somebody. Rachel kicked at the sheets. Protest against the Decrees of
+Destiny. " ... those are my feet kicking. Hello, here I am."
+
+There was a note on the pillow adjacent. It read: "At eight o'clock
+to-night I'll return. Please don't get run over in the streets. ERIK."
+
+Well, why not kiss the note, embrace the pillow and sigh? Why try to be
+anything but an idiot?... "Yes, Mr. Erik Dorn, I will be very careful
+and not let myself get run over in the streets."
+
+Rachel's head fell on the adjacent pillow and she lay whispering, "I
+love you," until the sound of her voice caused her to laugh.... Time to
+get up. Dear me! She closed her eyes and rolled herself out of bed....
+"Ouch!..." She sat up on the floor, legs extended, and stared at a shoe.
+Alas! a shoe is a crestfallen memory. A crestfallen yesterday lurks in
+old shoes. Shoes are always crestfallen. Even the shoes of lovers
+waiting under the bed weep and snivel all night. But why sit naked on
+the floor, stark, idiotically naked on the floor with legs thrust out
+like a surprised illustration in _La Vie Parisienne_ and toes curling
+philosophically toward a shoe?... "I'll do as I please. Very well."
+
+Sanity demanded clothes. But a sudden memory started her to her feet.
+She stood up lightly and hurried toward the large oval mirror.... "Your
+breasts are white birds dreaming under the stars. Your body is like the
+Queens of China parading through the moon...."
+
+She looked at herself in the mirror. Yes. But why not the Emperors of
+Afghanistan Walking on Their Hands? Thus ... "my Body is like the
+Presidents of the United States Riding Horseback...."
+
+She placed her hands on her slim hips and tautened her figure. When Erik
+was away all one could do was play with the things he had said. Was she
+as beautiful as he thought? A joyousness flowed through her. The mirror
+gave her back a memory of Erik. She was a memory of Erik.
+
+When she looked at herself in the mirror she saw only something that
+lived in the admiring eyes of Erik. Beautiful legs, beautiful body and
+"eyes like the courts of Solomon at night, like circles of incense." ...
+All were memories of Erik.
+
+She whispered softly to the figure in the mirror, "Erik knows your eyes.
+They are the beckoning hands of dreams." Thus Erik spoke of them. "I
+mustn't laugh at myself. I am more beautiful than anything or anybody in
+the whole world. There is nobody as beautiful as the woman Erik Dorn
+loves."
+
+If she were only in a forest now where she could run, jump in the air,
+scream at birds, and end by hurling herself into dim, cool water.
+Instead, an absurd business of fastening her silk slip.
+
+She seated herself on the bed, her stockings hanging from her hand, and
+fell again to listening to Erik. His word made an endless echo in her
+head.... "Perins a droll species. A sort of indomitable ass. Refuses to
+succumb to his intelligence. If you think he's in love with your Mary
+you're a downright imbecile. The man adjusts his passions to his phrases
+as neatly as a pretty woman pulling on her stockings...." She didn't
+like Erik to refer to pretty women pulling on their stockings. What an
+idiot! If Erik wanted to he could go out and help all the pretty women
+in New York pull on their stockings. As if that had anything to do with
+their love. Somebody else's stockings! A scornful exclamation point. Now
+her skirt, waist, shoes, and hat, and she was somebody.
+
+Somebody walking out of a house, in a street, looking, smiling, swinging
+along. The beautiful one, the desired one out for a promenade,
+embarrassed somehow by the fact that she was alive, that people looked
+at her and street-cars made frowning overtures to her. This was not her
+world. Yet she must move around in it as if she were a fatuous part of
+its grimacings and artifices. Shop windows that snickered into her eyes
+... "shoes $8 to-day. Hats, $10.50.... Traveling-cases only $19...." She
+must be polite and recognize its existence by composing her features,
+wearing a hat, saying "pardon me" when she trod on anyone's feet or
+bumped an elbow into a stomach. A stranger's world--gentlemen in straw
+hats; gentlemen in proud uniforms marching off to war; a fretwork of
+gentlemen, signs, windows, hats, and automobiles and a lot of other
+things, all continually tangling themselves up in front of her nose. A
+city pouring itself out of the morning sky and landing with a splash and
+a leap of windows around her feet. Thus the beautiful one, out for a
+promenade and moving excitedly through a superfluous world.
+
+She plunged into a perilous traffic knot and emerged unscathed. But that
+was wasting time. Time--another superfluous element, a tick-tock for the
+little wingless ones to crawl by. Then she remembered--a moon-lighted
+room ... "you have given me wings!" Her thought traced itself excitedly
+about the memory. This had happened. That had been said. Yesterday,
+to-day and to-morrow--all the same. Memories mixing with dreams. Wings!
+Yes, wings that beat, beat on the air and left one moving behind a blue
+dress, under a jaunty hat like all other jaunty hats. But something else
+moved elsewhere. There were two worlds for her. But not for Erik. One
+world for Erik. Where would his wings take him? Beyond life there was
+still life. A wall of life that never came to an end or a top. That was
+the one world for Erik. Hurl himself against it, higher, higher. Soar
+till the superfluous ones became little dots on a ribbon of streets.
+
+Tears came into her eyes. The strange world drifted away--a flutter of
+faces. A silence seemed to descend upon the streets as if their roaring
+were not a noise but the opened mouth of a dumb man. Erik had come to
+her. Arm in arm, smiling tears at him she walked through the spinning
+crowd in a path hidden from all snickering windows and revolving faces.
+A dream walk. These were her wings.
+
+Consciousness returned. She rubbed her eyes with the knuckles of her
+hands and laughed softly. She must not excite herself with hysterical
+worries. Wondering about Erik. There had been days when she had moved
+like a corpse through the streets, a corpse always finding new and
+further deaths. Death days with her heart tearing at empty hours, with
+time like a disease in her veins. Days before he had come. Now all life
+was in her. Why invent new causes of grief? She must talk sane words to
+herself. But the sane words bowed a polite adieu and putting on their
+hats walked away and sat down behind the snickering windows.... Other
+words arrived quickly, breathlessly.... There was something in his eyes
+that frightened, something that did not rest with her but seemed to
+reach on further. In the midst of their ecstasies his eyes, burning,
+unsatisfied, making her suddenly chill with fear, would whisper to her,
+"There is something more." In each other's arms it was she who came to
+an ending, not he. His kisses, his "I love you," were the clawing of
+fingers high up on the wall. For her they were the obliteration, the
+ending beyond life.
+
+The street unraveled itself about her with a bang of crowds and a whirl
+of flags, a zigzag of eyes like innumerable little tongues licking at
+the air. The tension of her thought relaxed. She remembered that when he
+walked in streets he was always making pictures. She thought of his
+words.... "It's a part of me that love hasn't changed, except to
+increase. A pestiferous sanity keeps demanding of me that I translate
+incoherent things into words. The city keeps handing itself to me like a
+blank piece of paper to write on. And I scribble away."
+
+She would do as he did, scribble words over faces and buildings as she
+walked. The city was a ... a swarm of humanity. Swarm of humanity. My
+God, had she lost the power of thought? Imagine telling Erik, "A crowd
+of people I saw to-day reminded me of a swarm of humanity." There was no
+sanity in her demanding words. Because there was no incoherence outside.
+Things weren't incoherent but non-existent. The city was no mystery.
+There was nothing to translate. It was an alien, superfluous world. That
+was the difference between them. To Erik it was not alien or
+superfluous. Even in their ecstasies there was still a world for him,
+like some mocking rival laughing at him, saying, "You can embrace
+Rachel. But what can you do to me? See if you can embrace me and swallow
+me with a kiss...."
+
+That's why he stayed away till eight o'clock, moving among men, writing,
+talking, doing work on the magazine. But there was nothing for her to
+do. She inhabited a world named Erik Dorn, a perfect world in which
+there was no room even for thought.
+
+Erik had written her a note from the office once ... "my heart is a
+dancing star above the graves of your absence...." But that was almost a
+lie because it was true only for one moment. Things occupied him that
+could not occupy her.
+
+Another block. Four more blocks. Noisy aliveness of streets that meant
+nothing. She thought, "People look at me and envy me because I'm in a
+hurry as if I had somewhere important to go. People envy everybody who
+is in a hurry to get somewhere. Because for them there are no
+destinations--only halting places for their drifting. Perhaps I should
+go home and paint something so as to have it to show him when he comes;
+or sit down somewhere and think up words to give him. I won't be able to
+talk to-night. I must just be ... without thinking ... of anything but
+him. Why doesn't he sometimes mention Anna? Is he afraid it might offend
+me to remind me of Anna? Would it? No. Many people live in the world.
+Another woman lived in Erik Dorn and he was unaware of her as the sky
+is unaware of me. And she died. But she isn't dead. Only her world died.
+Her sky fell down...."
+
+Tears came to Rachel's eyes. Her hands clenched.... "Anna, Anna, forgive
+me! I'm so happy. You must understand...."
+
+She felt a revulsion. She had thought something weak, silly. "Who is
+Anna that I must apologize to her? A woman. A woman Erik never loved. Do
+I ask apologies of her for having lived with him--kissed him?"
+
+There was a luncheon appointment with Mary James. Mary would bring a
+man. Perrin, maybe. Mary always brought a man. Without a man, Mary was
+incomplete. With a man she was even more incomplete. Mary insisted on
+lunching. Rachel hurried toward the rendezvous. She thought, "People can
+make me do anything now. Mary or anybody else. I was able once to walk
+over them. Now they lead me around. Because nothing matters. And people
+don't sicken me with their faces and talk. They're like noises in
+another room that one hears, sometimes sees, but never listens to or
+looks at. They ask questions. And you sit in a secret world beyond them
+with your hat and dress, properly attentive."
+
+Here was the hotel for the rendezvous. Mary out of breath,
+
+"Rachel! Hello! Wait a minute. Whee! What do you think you're doing?
+Pulling off a track meet or something? Been tryin' to catch up to you
+for an hour."
+
+Rachel looked at her. She was a golden-haired monkey full of words.
+
+"Charlie's at the Red Cat." A man. "We're going to lunch there. What in
+God's name's the matter with you?" A pause in the thick of the crowd.
+"Heavens, Rachel, are you well? I mean...."
+
+Rachel laughed. If you laughed people thought you were making answers.
+
+They arrived at the Red Cat. Small red circular tables. Black walls. A
+painstaking non-conformity about the decoration. A sprinkling of diners
+saying, "We eat, but not amid normal surroundings. We are emancipated
+from normal surroundings. It is extremely important that we eat off
+little red circular tables instead of big brown square tables in order
+to conform with our mission, which is that of non-conformity."
+
+Mary led the way to a table occupied by a tall, broad-shouldered youth
+with a crooked nose and humorously indignant eyes. He resembled a
+football player who has gone into the advertising business and remained
+a football player. Mary referred to him with a possessive "Charlie."
+
+Charlie said, "Why do you always pick out these joints to eat in, Mary?
+Been sittin' here for ten minutes scared to death one of these females
+would begin crawlin' around on the walls. There's a waiter here with
+long hair and two teeth missin' that I'm goin' to bust in the nose if
+he doesn't stop."
+
+"Stop what, Charlie?'
+
+"Oh, lookin' at me...."
+
+The luncheon progressed. Olives, watery soup, delicate sandwiches....
+
+An air of breathlessness about Rachel seemed to discommode her friends.
+Charlie, piqued at her inattentiveness, essayed a volubility foreign to
+his words. He was not so "nice a young man" as Hazlitt. But he boasted
+among friends that girls had had a chance with him. They could stay
+decent if they insisted but he let them understand it wouldn't do them
+any good so far as marrying them was concerned because he wasn't out for
+matrimony. There was too much to see.
+
+Mary interspersed her eating with quotations from advanced literature,
+omitting the quotation marks. A slim, shining-haired girl--men adored
+her hair--pretty-faced, silken-ankled, Mary had a mission in life. It
+was the utilizing of vivacious arguments on art, God, morals, economics,
+as exciting preliminaries for hand-holding and kissing with eyes closed,
+lips murmuring, "Ah, what is life?" Technically a virgin, but devoted
+exclusively to the satisfying of her sex--a satisfying that did not
+demand the completion of intercourse but the stimulus of its suggestion,
+Mary utilized the arts among which she dabbled as a bed for artificial
+immoralities. In this bed she had managed for several years to remain an
+adroitly chaste courtesan. Her pride was almost concentrated in her
+chastity. She guarded it with a precocious skill, parading it through
+conversation, hinting slyly of it when its existence seemed for the
+moment to have become unimportant. Her chastity, in fact, had become
+under skillful management the most immoral thing about her. She had
+learned the trick of exciting men with her virginity.
+
+The thing had become for her an unconscious business. After several
+years of it she evolved into a flushed, nervous victim of her own
+technique. She managed, however, to preserve her self-esteem by looking
+upon the perversion of her normal sexual instincts into a species of
+verbal nymphomania as an indication of a superior soul state. Radical
+books excited her mind as ordinarily her body might have been excited by
+radical caresses. Amateur theatricals, publicity work for charitable
+organizations, an allowance from her home in Des Moines, provided her
+with a practical background.
+
+Charlie was her latest catch. Later he would hold her hand, slip an arm
+around her, press her breasts gently and with a proper unconsciousness
+of what he was doing, and she would let him kiss her ... while music
+played somewhere ... preferably on a pier. Then she would murmur as he
+paused, out of breath, "Ah, what is life, Charlie?" And if instead of
+playing the game decently Charlie abandoned pretense and made an
+adventurous sortie, there would ensue the usual denouement ... "Charlie
+... Oh, how could you? I'm ... I'm so disappointed. I thought you were
+different and that love to you meant something deeper and finer
+than--just that." And she would stand before him, her body alive with a
+sexual ardor that seemed to find its satisfaction in the discomfiture of
+the man, in his apologetic stammers, in her own virtuous words; and
+reach its climax in the contrite embrace which usually followed and the
+words, "Forgive me, dearest. I didn't mean.... Oh, will you marry me?"
+
+These were things in store for Charlie. But he must listen first. There
+were essential preliminaries--a routine of the chase. Her trimly shod
+foot crawled carefully against his ankle. There were really two types of
+men. Men who blushed when you touched their ankle under the table, and
+men who pretended not to blush. Charlie blushed with a soup-spoon at his
+lips. He glanced nervously at Rachel but she seemed breathlessly asleep
+with her eyes open--a paradoxical condition which baffled Charlie and
+caused him to withdraw disdainfully from further consideration of her.
+
+Rachel, eating without hunger, was remembering an actress in vaudeville
+making a preliminary curtain announcement to her "Moments from Great
+Plays" ... "Lady Godiva accordingly rode na-aked through the streets of
+Coventry, but, howevah, retained her vuhtue...."
+
+"Oh, but Charlie, you're not listening," explained Mary. "I was saying
+that chastity in woman is something man has insisted upon in order to
+show his capacity for waste. He likes the world to know that all his
+possessions are new and that he can command the purchase of new things
+because it shows his capacity for waste by which his standard of
+respectability is gauged in the eyes of his fellows...."
+
+Charlie lent an ear to the garbled veblenisms and gave it up. The
+mutterings and verbal excitements of women in general were mysteries
+beyond Charlie's desire to comprehend. They had, for Charlie, nothing to
+do with the case. It was pleasing, though, to have her talk of chastity.
+Chastity had a connection with the case. It was closely related to
+unchastity. He nodded his head vaguely and focused his attention on
+questing for the foot under the table that had withdrawn itself. The
+long-haired waiter with the missing teeth was an annoyance. He turned
+and glowered at him.
+
+"Don't you think so, Rachel?" Mary pursued.
+
+A monkey chattering. Another monkey kicking at her toes under the table.
+A room full of monkeys and all the monkeys looking at her, talking to
+her, kicking her foot, inspired by the curious hallucination that she
+was a part of their monkey world. Rachel laughed and eyes turned to her.
+People were always startled by laughter that sounded so sudden. There
+must be preliminaries to laughter so as to get the atmosphere prepared
+for it.
+
+"Rachel, I'm talking to you, if you please."
+
+Mary, puckering her forehead very importantly, was informing her that
+Mary existed and was demanding proof of the fact. That was the secret of
+people. They didn't really exist to themselves until somebody recognized
+them and proved they were alive--by answering their questions. People
+lived only when somebody talked to them--anybody. The rest of the time
+they went along with nothing inside them except stomachs that grew
+hungry.
+
+She answered Mary, "Oh, there are lots of things you don't know." And
+laughed, this time careful of not sounding too sudden. She meant there
+was something that lived behind hours, there was a dream world in which
+the words and faces of people were ridiculously non-existent. But Mary
+was a literal-minded monkey and thought she was referring to quotations
+from books superior to the ones she used.
+
+"Oh, is that so?" said Mary.
+
+Charlie, also literal-minded and still after the foot, echoed Rachel,
+"You bet your life it is."
+
+"And I suppose you know all about them, Miss Laskin." Very sarcastic. An
+inflection that had made her a conversational terror in the Des Moines
+High School.
+
+Mary was always conscious of not having read enough and of therefore
+being secretly inferior to more omnivorous readers. She did not think
+Rachel read much, but Rachel was different. Rachel was an artist and
+had ideas. Mary respected artists and was always sarcastic toward them.
+It usually made them talk a lot--particularly male artists--and thus
+enabled her to find out what their ideas were and use them as her own.
+Nevertheless, despite her most careful parrotings the artists always
+managed to have other ideas always different from the ones she stole
+from them. Fearing some devastating rejoinder from Rachel--Rachel was
+the kind of person who could blurt out things that landed on you like a
+ton of bricks--she sought to fortify Charlie's opinion of her by
+replacing her foot against his ankle.
+
+"Well, what are they, Rachel?"
+
+What were the things Mary knew nothing about? A large order. Rachel's
+tongue began to wag in her mind. Stand up and make a speech. Fling her
+arms about. High-sailing words. Absurd! A laugh would answer. Laughs
+always answered. Rachel laughed. She would suffocate among such people,
+exasperating strangers with inquisitive faces and nervous feet.
+
+At the conclusion of the luncheon Charlie had reached a new stage in his
+amorous maneuverings. He had paid no further attention to Rachel,
+although vividly conscious of her. But Mary offered definite horizons. A
+bird in the hand. There was something exciting about Mary not to be
+encountered in the Junos and Aphrodites of his cabaret quests. Mary
+appeared virtuous--and yet promised otherwise. She used frank
+words--lust, chastity, virginity, sexuality. Charlie quivered. The
+words sticking out of long, twisted sentences, detached themselves and
+came to him like furtively indecent caresses. Mary promised. So he
+agreed to go with her to the Players' Studio where she was rehearsing in
+some kind of nut show.
+
+"You must come too, Rachel. Frank Brander has done some gorgeous
+settings for the next bill."
+
+Long hours before eight o'clock.
+
+"I've got some important things on at the office," Charlie hesitated.
+
+"Yes, I'll go," Rachel answered. This, mysteriously, seemed to decide
+Charlie. He would go too.
+
+In the buzzing little auditorium of the Players' Studio, Charlie
+endeavored to further his quest. But the atmosphere seemed,
+paradoxically enough, a handicap. A free-and-easy atmosphere with men
+and women in odd-looking rigs sauntering about. The place was as immoral
+as a honky-tonk. Charlie stared at the young women in smocks and bobbed
+hair, smoking cigarettes, sitting with their legs showing. They should
+have been prostitutes but they weren't. Or maybe they were, only he
+wasn't used to that kind. Too damn gabby. Mary had jumped up on the
+small stage and was talking with a group of young men and women. He
+moved to follow, but hesitated. He didn't have the hang of this kind of
+thing. The sick-looking youths loitering around, casually embracing the
+gals and rubbing their arms, seemed to know the lingo. Charlie sat down
+in disgust and yielded himself to a feeling of stiffly superior virtue.
+
+In a corner Rachel listened to Frank Brander.
+
+"We've got quite a promising outfit here, Miss Laskin. Why don't you
+come around and help with the drops or something? The more the merrier.
+We're putting on a thing by Chekov next week and a strong thing by
+Elvenah Jack. Lives down the street. Know her? Oh, it isn't much." He
+smiled good-naturedly at the miniature theater. "But it's fun. I'll show
+you around."
+
+Rachel submitted. Brander was a friend of Emil Tesla. He drew things for
+_The Cry_. He had a wide mouth and ugly eyes that took things for
+granted--that took her for granted. She was a woman and therefore
+interested in talking to a man. He held her arm too much and kept saying
+in her thought, "We've got to pretend we're decent, but we're not. We're
+a man and woman." But what did that matter? Long hours before eight
+o'clock.
+
+On the stage Brander became a personality. A group of nondescript faces
+deferred to him. A woman with stringy hair and an elocutionist's mouth,
+grew dramatic as he passed. They paused before Mary. Brander had stopped
+abruptly in his talk. He turned toward Mary and stared at her until she
+began to grow pink. Rachel wondered. Mary wanted to run away, but
+couldn't. Brander finally said shortly, "Hello, you!" His eyes blazed
+for an instant and then grew angry.
+
+"Come on, Miss Laskin." He jerked her and she followed. In the wings
+half hidden from the group that crowded the tiny stage Brander said, "Do
+you know that girl?"
+
+Rachel nodded.
+
+"She's no good," he grinned. "I like women one thing or the other. She's
+both. And no good. I got her number."
+
+Rachel noticed that he had moved his hand up on her arm and was gently
+pressing the flesh under her shoulder. He kept saying to her now in her
+thought, "I've got a man's body and you've got a woman's body. There's
+that difference between us. Why hide it?" His voice became soft and he
+said aloud, "Don't you like men to be one kind or the other? And not
+both?"
+
+Rachel looked at him blankly. She must pretend she didn't know what he
+was talking about. Otherwise she would begin to talk. He was a man to
+whom one talked because he demanded it. His face, ugly and boyish,
+seemed to have rid itself of many expressions and retained a certainty.
+The certainty said, "I'm a man looking for women."
+
+Brander laughed.
+
+"Oh, you're one of the other kind," he said. "Beg pardon. No harm done.
+Let's go out front."
+
+Out front in the half-lighted auditorium Brander suddenly left her. She
+saw him a few minutes later standing close to a nervous-voiced woman who
+was saying, "Oh, dear! Dear me! I'll never get this part. I won't! I
+just know it!"
+
+Brander was toying idly with a chain that hung about the woman's neck.
+He was looking at her intently. Mary approached, bearing Charlie along.
+She began whispering to Rachel, "That man's a beast. I hate him. He
+thinks he's an artist, but he's a beast. You'll find out if you're not
+careful."
+
+Rachel asked, "Who?"
+
+"Brander," Mary answered.
+
+Charlie interrupted, indignation rumbling in his voice,
+
+"A bunch of freaks, all of them. I don't see why a decent girl wants to
+hang around in a dump like this."
+
+He was more grieved than indignant. A woman with dark hair and long
+gypsy earrings had suddenly laughed at him when he sat down beside her.
+Mary patted his arm.
+
+"I know, Charlie. But you don't understand. My turn in a few minutes,
+Rachel. We'll wait here till the Chekov thing comes on. Do you know
+Felixson? He's got a wonderful thing for the bill after this. A
+religious play. Awfully strong. That's him with the bushy hair. You must
+know him."
+
+Charlie grunted.
+
+"You don't mean you act in this damn joint?"
+
+"Oh, I'm just helping out for next week. It's lots of fun, Charlie."
+
+Rachel stood up suddenly from the uncomfortable bench seat.
+
+"I must go," she murmured. "I'm sorry."
+
+Turning quickly she walked out of the place. Behind her Charlie laughed.
+"A wild little thing."
+
+Mary with her body pressed closely against him combated an influence
+that seemed at work upon Charlie.
+
+"She's changed a great deal, poor girl," said Mary.
+
+"What is she?"
+
+"An artist. She says wonderful things sometimes. Awfully strong things
+and just hates people."
+
+"A nut," agreed Charlie.
+
+"Oh, she's sort of strange. Puts on a lot, of course." Mary felt
+uncomfortable. Rachel had managed to leave behind a feeling of the
+unimportance of everybody but Rachel. She was leaning against Charlie
+for vindication. His body, trembling at the contact, provided it; but
+his words annoyed her.
+
+"Well, she's different from the gang in here--I'll say that for her."
+
+"Oh, let's forget her," Mary whispered. "I don't like this place.
+Really, I ..." She hesitated and thought, "Rachel thinks she's
+mysterious and enigmatic and everything, but she's an awful fool. She
+can't put it over on me." Yet she sat, despite the vindication of
+Charlie's amorous embarrassment, and wondered, parrot fashion, "Ah, what
+is life?"
+
+Outside Rachel was walking again. The memory of her meeting with Mary,
+of Brander's ugly appealing face that whispered frankly of his sex, was
+dead in her. Little toy people playing at games. Erik hated them. Erik
+said ... well, it was something too indecent to repeat. She couldn't get
+used to Erik's indecent comparisons. But they were like that--the toy
+people in the little toy village. She didn't hate them the way Erik did.
+Some of them were just playing. But there were others. Why think of
+them? Walk, walk. Just be. A perfect circle.... "There's nothing to do.
+I don't want anything. To-night he'll talk to me. And I'll make real
+answers." Why did she want to be kissed? Kisses were for people like
+Mary. "Oh, he'll kiss me and I'll become alive."
+
+It was late afternoon. Still, long hours before eight o'clock. It
+pleased Erik when she told him how empty the day had been. But she
+mustn't harp too much on that. It would sound as if she were making
+demands on him. No demands. He was free. They weren't married. A crowd
+was solidifying in 10th Street. She walked slowly, watching the people
+gathering at the corner. The office of _The Cry_ was there. She
+remembered this and hurried forward.
+
+Something was happening. An excitement was jerking people out of their
+silences. Blank, silent faces around her suddenly opened and dropped
+masks. Bodies drifting carelessly up and down the street broke into
+runnings.
+
+Around the corner people were shouting, pressed into a ball of wild
+faces and waving arms. It was in front of the office of _The Cry_ that
+something was happening.
+
+"Kill the dirty rascal! Make the son-of-a----kiss the flag!"
+
+Words screeched out of a bay of sound.
+
+"Kill him! Kill the son-of-a---- String him up!"
+
+On the edge of the ball that was growing larger and seeming about to
+burst into some wild activity, Rachel stood tip-toed. She could see two
+burly-looking men dragging a bloody figure out of a doorway. Blood
+dropped from him, leaving stains on the top step. The two men were
+twisting his wrists as if they wanted them to come off. Yet they didn't
+act as if they were twisting anybody's wrists off. They seemed to be
+just waiting.
+
+It was Tesla between them. His face was cut. One of his arms hung limp.
+Blood began to spurt from his wrists and drop from his fingers as if he
+were writing something on the top step in a foolish way. At the sight of
+him the noises increased. The ball of faces grew angrier. Policemen
+swung sticks. They yelled, "Back, there! Everybody back!" Runners were
+coming from all directions as if the city had suddenly found a place to
+go and was pouring itself into 10th Street.
+
+"Hey ... hey ... they've got him!"
+
+Nobody asked who, but came running with a shout.
+
+The street broke over Rachel. Tesla vanished. Roaring in her ears, faces
+tumbling, lifting in a wildness about her. A make-believe of horror. Her
+thought gasped, "Where am I? What is this?" Her feet were carrying her
+into the boiling center of a vat of bodies. Then she saw Tesla again,
+standing above them. A blood-smeared man with a broken arm, his head
+raised. But he was somebody else.
+
+Caught in the pack she became far away, seeing things move as with an
+almost lifeless deliberateness. Tesla's face was the center. His swollen
+eyes were trying to open. His paralyzed mouth was trying to form itself
+back into a mouth. A mist covered him as if the raging street and the
+many voices focused into a film and hid him. Behind this film he was
+doing something slowly. Then he became vivid. He was shouting,
+
+"Comrades ... workers ..."
+
+A roar from the street concealed him and his voice. But the vividness of
+him lingered and emerged again.
+
+"Comrades!"
+
+A fist struck against his mouth. His head wabbled. Another fist struck
+against his eye. The two men holding his wrists were striking into his
+uncovered face with their fists. A gleeful, joyous sound went up. Rachel
+stared at the wabbling head of Tesla. The street laughed. Fists hammered
+at an uncovered face. People were coming on a run to see. A bell
+clanged. Beside her a man shrieked, "Make him kiss the flag, the dirty
+anarchist!"
+
+Things slowed again. A film was over the scene. Tesla was being dragged
+down the steps. His head kept falling back as if he wanted to go to
+sleep. Then something happened. A laugh, high like a scream, lit the
+air. It made her cold. The men dragging Tesla down the steps paused, and
+their fists moving with a leisureliness struck into his face, making no
+sound and not doing anything. It was Tesla who had laughed. The fists
+kept moving through a film. But he laughed again--a high laugh like a
+scream that lit the air with mystery.
+
+When the pack began to sift and sweep her into strange directions she
+felt that Tesla was still laughing, though she could no longer hear him.
+The street became shapeless. Something had ended. A bell clanged away.
+People were again walking. They had dull faces and were quiet. She
+caught a glimpse of the step on which Tesla had stood behind a mist and
+cried, "Comrades!" She remembered often having stood on the step herself
+in coming to the office of _The Cry_. This made her sicken. It was her
+wrists that had been twisted, her uncovered face that had been struck
+by fists.
+
+The emotion left her as a hand tugged eagerly at her arm. It pulled her
+up on the crowded curbing.
+
+"Good God, Rachel, what are you doing here?"
+
+She looked up and saw Hazlitt in uniform. He kept pulling her. Why
+should Hazlitt be pulling her out of a crowd in 10th Street? She tried
+to jerk away. She must run from Hazlitt before he began talking. He
+would make her scream.
+
+Turning to him with a quiet in her voice she said carefully:
+
+"Please let me go. You hurt my arm."
+
+But his hand remained. His eyes, shining and indignant, prodded at
+her.... The street was quiet. Nothing had happened. Unconscious
+buildings, unconscious traffic, faces wrapped in solitudes--these were
+in the streets again. She turned and looked with amazement at her
+companion. People do not fall out of the sky and seize you by the arm.
+There was something stark about Hazlitt pulling her out of the street
+mob and holding her arm. He was an amputation. You pulled yourself out
+of a filth of faces and sprawled suddenly into a quiet, cheerful street
+holding an arm in your hand, as if it had come loose from the pack. It
+seemed part of some arrangement--Tesla, the pack, Hazlitt's arm. Her
+amazement died. Hazlitt was saying:
+
+"I knew you'd be in that mob. I thought when I saw them haul that dirty
+beggar out ..."
+
+He halted, pained by a memory. Rachel nodded. The curious sense of
+having been Tesla came again to her. He had laughed in a way that
+reminded her of herself. She would laugh like that if they struck at her
+face. Her eyes turned frightenedly toward Hazlitt. What was he going to
+do? Arrest her? He was in uniform. But why should he arrest her? His
+eyes had the fixed light of somebody performing a duty. He was arresting
+her, and Erik would come home and not find her. Her lithe body became
+possessed of an astounding strength. With a vicious grimace she tore
+herself from his grip and confronted him, her eyes on fire.
+
+"Please, Rachel. Come with me till I can talk. You must ..."
+
+A white-faced Hazlitt, with suffering eyes. Then he was not arresting
+her. The street bobbed along indifferently.
+
+"I'm going away in an hour. You'll maybe never see me again. But I can't
+go away till I've talked to you. Please."
+
+It didn't matter then. She would be home in time. And it was easier to
+obey the desperate whine of his voice then run into the crowd. He would
+chase after her, whining louder and louder. They entered a hotel lobby.
+Hazlitt picked out a secluded corner as if arranging for some rite. He
+was going to do something. Rachel walked after him, annoyed,
+indifferent. What did it matter? This was George Hazlitt--a name that
+meant nothing and yet could talk to her.
+
+Sitting opposite her the name began, "Now you must promise me you won't
+get up and run away till I'm through--no matter what I say."
+
+She promised with a nod. She must be polite. Being polite was part of
+the idiotic penalties attached to adventuring outside her real world, in
+unreal superfluous streets. What had made Tesla laugh? His laugh had not
+been unreal. Almost as if it were a part of her. Blood dropping from his
+fingers. A bleeding man.
+
+"I'm leaving for France, Rachel. I couldn't go away without seeing you.
+I've spent a week trying to find you and this morning they told me to
+inquire at _The Cry_."
+
+Was he apologizing for Tesla? She remembered the faces that had swept by
+in 10th Street. His had been one of them. Hazlitt had twisted Tesla's
+wrists and struck into his uncovered face.
+
+Rachel slipped to her feet and stared about her. A hand caught at her
+arm and pulled her into the chair.
+
+"You promised. You can't leave till you hear me."
+
+She sank back.
+
+"Give me five minutes. I'm unworthy of them. But I've found you and must
+talk now. I can't go across without telling you."
+
+She looked up. Tears almost in his eyes. His voice grown low. He seemed
+to be whispering something that didn't belong to the sanity of the hotel
+lobby and the two large potted palms in the corner.
+
+"I'm unclean. I've been looking for you to ask you to forgive me."
+
+Hazlitt's hands crept over his knees.
+
+"Oh, God, you must listen and forgive me."
+
+This was a mad monkey uttering noises too unintelligible for even an
+attentive hat, dress, and pair of shoes to make anything of.
+
+"Rachel, I love you. I don't know how to say it. There's something I've
+got to say. Because ... otherwise I can't love you. I can't love you
+with the thing unsaid."
+
+He looked bewilderedly about him and gulped, his face red, his eyes
+tortured.
+
+"It's about a woman."
+
+"Perhaps," she thought, "he's going to boast. No, he's going to cry.
+What does he want?"
+
+The sound of his voice made her ill. If he were going to make love why
+didn't he start instead of gulping and covering his face and choking
+with tears in a hotel lobby as if he were an actor?
+
+"I was drawn into it. I couldn't help it. One afternoon in my office
+after the trial. Then she kept after me. The thought of you has been
+like knives in me. I've loved you all through it and hated myself for
+thinking of you, dragging you into it. I dragged the thought of you down
+with me. But she wouldn't let me go. God, I could kill her now. I broke
+away after weeks. She got somebody else. I've been living in hell ever
+since--on account of you. I'm unclean and can't love you any more. If it
+hadn't been for my going across I'd not have come to you. But the war's
+given me my chance. I can't explain it. I went in to--to wipe it out.
+But I had to find you and tell you. I didn't want to think of dying and
+having insulted you and not ..."
+
+He stopped, overcome. Rachel was nodding her head. She must make an
+answer to this. It was a riddle asking an answer.
+
+"For God's sake, Rachel, don't look like that. Oh, you're so clean and
+pure. I can't tell you. You're like a star shining and me in the mud.
+You've always hated me. But it's different now. I'm going to France to
+die. I don't want to live. If you forgive me it'll be easier. That's why
+I had to talk, Rachel, forgive me. And then it won't matter what
+happens."
+
+She let him take her hand. It was an easy way to make an answer. A
+desire to giggle had to be overruled. The words he had spoken became
+absurd little manikins of words, bowing at each other, striking idiotic
+postures before her. But he had done something and for some astounding
+reason wanted her to forgive him for what he had done. He was a fool. An
+impossible fool. He sat and looked like a fool. Not even a man.
+
+Hazlitt raised her hand to his face. Tears fell on it. Rachel felt them
+crawling warmly over her fingers. They were too intimate.
+
+"You make me feel almost clean again. Your hand's like something clean
+and pure. If I come back...."
+
+He stared at her in desperation. He seemed suddenly to have forgotten
+his intention to die in France. He recalled Pauline. Was he sorry? No.
+It was over. Not his fault. All this to Rachel was a ruse. Clever way to
+get her sympathy. Not quite. But he felt better.
+
+He became incomprehensible to Rachel. The things he had said--his
+weeping, gulping--all part of an incomprehensible business. She nodded
+her head and looked serious. It was something that had to do with a
+far-away world.
+
+"Good-bye. Remember, I love you. And I'll come through clean because of
+you...."
+
+She held out her hand and said, "Good-bye."
+
+But he didn't go. Now he was completely a fool. Now there was something
+so completely foolish about him that she must laugh. The light in his
+face detained her laughter.
+
+"You forgive me ... for ..."
+
+She nodded her head again. It seemed to produce a magical effect--this
+nodding of her head up and down. His eyes brightened and he appeared to
+grow taller.
+
+"Then if I die, I'll go to heaven."
+
+She winced at this. An unbearable stupidity. But Hazlitt stood looking
+at her for an instant quite serious, as if he had said something noble.
+He saluted her, his hand to his cap, his heels together, and went away.
+
+The memory lingered. Hazlitt had always been incomprehensible. His
+stupidity was easy enough to understand. But something under it was a
+mess. Now he was a fool. Stiff and idiotic and making her feel ashamed
+as if she were sorry for him.... Tesla came back and stood on a step
+dropping blood from his fingers. Brander came back and whispered with
+his ugly face. Hazlitt, Tesla, Brander--three men that jumped out at her
+from the superfluous streets. Like the three men in the park walking
+horribly across the white park in the night.... An idiot, a bleeding
+man, and an ugly face. But they had passed her and gone. They were
+things seen outside a window.
+
+Her eyes looking at a clock said to her, "Two hours more. Oh, in two
+hours, in two hours!"
+
+She sat motionless until the clock said, "One hour more, one more hour!"
+
+Then she stood up and walked slowly out of the hotel. Things had changed
+since she had left the streets. The strange world full of Marys,
+Hazlitts, and Teslas had added further superfluities. A band of music.
+Soldiers marching. Buildings waving flags and crying, "Boom, boom! we
+have gone to war!..."
+
+She came to her home. A red-brick house like other red-brick houses. But
+her home. What a fool she had been to leave it. It would have been
+easier waiting here. She walked into the two familiar rooms filled with
+the memory of Erik--two rooms that embraced her. Her hat fell on the
+bed. She would have to eat. Downstairs in the dining-room. Other
+boarders to look at. But Erik would have eaten when he came. He
+preferred eating alone.
+
+Rachel took her place at one of the smaller tables and dabbled through a
+series of uninteresting dishes. An admiring waitress rebuked her ...
+"Dearie, you ain't eating hardly anything."
+
+She smiled at the waitress and watched her later bringing dishes to a
+purple-faced fat man at an adjoining table. The fat man was futilely
+endeavoring to tell secrets to the waitress by contorting his features
+and screwing up his eyes. He reminded Rachel of Brander, only Brander
+told secrets without trying. She finished and hurried out. She would be
+hungry later, but it didn't matter. Erik would be there then.
+
+In the hallway Mrs. McGuire called, "Oh, Mrs. Dorn!"
+
+Being called Mrs. Dorn always frightened her and made her dizzy. She
+paused. Some day Mrs. McGuire would look at her shrewdly and say,
+"You're not Mrs. Dorn. I called you Mrs. Dorn but I know better. Don't
+think you're fooling anybody. Mrs. Dorn, indeed!"
+
+But Mrs. McGuire held out her hand.
+
+"A letter for your husband. Do you want to sit in the parlor, Mrs. Dorn?
+You know I want all my boarders to make themselves entirely at home."
+
+"Thank you," said Rachel. "You're so nice. But I have some work to do
+upstairs."
+
+Escaping Mrs. McGuire was one of the difficult things of the day. A
+buxom, round-faced woman in black with friendly eyes, Mrs. McGuire had a
+son in the army and a sainted husband dead and buried, and a childish
+faith in the friendliness and interest of people. Rachel hurried up the
+stairs. In her room she looked at the letter. For Erik. Readdressed
+twice. From Chicago. She stood holding it. It said to her, "I am from
+Anna. I am from Anna. Words of Anna. I am the wife of Erik Dorn."
+
+Anna was a reality. Long ago Anna had been a reality. A background
+against which the dream of Erik Dorn raised itself. She remembered
+sitting close to Anna and smiling at her the first time she had visited
+Erik's home. Why had she gone? If only she had never seen Anna! Her
+tired, sad eyes that smiled at Erik. Rachel's fingers tightened over the
+envelope. She laughed nervously and tore the letter. He was hers. Anna
+couldn't write to him.
+
+A pain came into her heart as the paper separated itself into bits in
+her fingers. She felt herself tearing something that was alive. It was
+cruel to tear the letter. But it would save Erik pain. ... To read
+Anna's words, to hear her cries, see her sad tired eyes staring in
+anguish out of the writing--that would hurt Erik.
+
+She dropped the bits into the waste-paper basket and stood wide-eyed
+over them. She had dared. As if he had belonged to her. What would he
+say? But he wouldn't know. Unless Mrs. McGuire said, "There was a letter
+for you, Mr. Dorn." Why hadn't she read the letter before tearing it up?
+Perhaps it was important, saying Anna had died. When Anna died Erik
+would marry her. She would have children and live in a house of her own.
+Mrs. Rachel Dorn, people would call her. This was a dream.... Mrs.
+Rachel Dorn. He would laugh if he knew; or worse, be angry. But ... "Oh,
+God, I want him. Like that. Complete." Anna had had him like that. The
+other thing. Not respectability. But the possession of little things.
+
+She would have to tell him about the letter. She couldn't lie to him,
+even silently. The clock on the dresser, ticking as it had always
+ticked, said, "In a half-hour ... a half-hour more."
+
+She sprang from the bed and stood listening.
+
+Someone was coming down the hall. Strange hours fell from her. Now Erik
+was coming. Now life commenced. The empty circle of the day was over.
+
+Her body grew wild as if she must leap out of herself. Her eyes hung
+devouringly upon the blank door--a door opening and Erik standing,
+smiling at her. It was still a dream. It would never become real. She
+would always feel frightened. Though he came home a hundred thousand
+times she would always wait like now for the door to open with a fear
+and a dream in her heart. But why did he knock?
+
+She opened the door with a feverish jerk. Not Erik. A messenger-boy
+blinking surprised eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Dorn?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Sign here, second line."
+
+A blank door again. The message read:
+
+"I'll be home late. Don't worry. ERIK."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Warren Lockwood was a man who wrote novels. He had lived in the Middle
+West until he was thirty-five and begun his writing at his desk in a
+real-estate office of which he had been until then a somewhat bored half
+owner.
+
+During the months Erik Dorn had been working on the staff of "the _New
+Opinion_--an Organ of Liberal Thought," he had encountered Lockwood
+frequently--a dark-haired, rugged-faced man with a drawling,
+high-pitched masculine voice. Dorn liked him. He talked in the manner of
+a man carefully focusing objects into range. Lockwood was aware he had
+gotten under the skin of things. He talked that way.
+
+The change from the newspaper to the magazine continued, after several
+months, to irritate Dorn. The leisureliness of his new work aggravated.
+There was an intruding sterility about it. The _New Opinion_ was a
+weekly. From week to week it offered a growing clientele finalities.
+There were finalities on the war, finalities on the social unrest;
+finalities on art, life, religion, the past, present, and future. A
+cock-sure magazine, gently, tolerantly elbowing aside the mysteries of
+existence and holding up between carefully manicured thumb and
+forefinger the Gist of the Thing. The Irrefutable Truth. The Perfect
+Deduction.
+
+There were a number of intelligent men engaged in the work of writing
+and editing the periodical. They seemed all to have graduated from an
+identical strata. Dorn, becoming acquainted with them, found them
+intolerable. They appealed to him as a group of carefully tailored
+Abstractions bombinating mellifluously in a void. The precision of logic
+was in them. The precision of even tempers. The precision of aloof eyes
+fastened upon finalities. Theoretical radicals. Theoretical
+conservatives. Theoretical philosophers. Any appellation preceded by the
+adjective theoretical fitted them snugly. Of contact with the
+hurdy-gurdy of existence which he as a journalist felt under the ideas
+of the day, there was none. Life in the minds of the intellectual staff
+of the _New Opinion_ smoothed itself out into intellectual paragraphs.
+And from week to week these paragraphs made their bow to the public.
+Mannerly admonitions, courteous disapprovals. A style borrowed from the
+memory of the professor informing a backward class in economics what the
+exact date of the signing of the Magna Charta really was.
+
+Lockwood was the exception. He wrote occasional fictional sketches for
+the magazine. Dorn had been attracted to him at first because of the
+curious intonations of his voice. He had not read the man's
+novels--there were four of them dealing with the Middle West--but in the
+repressed sing-song of his voice Dorn had sensed an unusual character.
+
+"He's a good writer, an artist," he thought, hearing him talking to
+Edwards, one of the editors. "He talks like a lover arguing patiently
+and gently with his own thoughts."
+
+After that they had walked and eaten together. The idea of Warren
+Lockwood being a lover grew upon Dorn. Of little things, of things
+seemingly unimportant and impersonal, the novelist talked as he would
+have liked to talk to Rachel--with a slow simplicity that caressed his
+subjects and said, "These are little things but we must be careful in
+handling them, for they're a part of life." And life was important.
+People were tremendously existent. Dorn, listening to the novelist,
+would watch his eyes that seemed to be always adventuring among secrets.
+
+Once he thought, "A sort of mother love is in him. He keeps trying to
+say something that's never in his words. His thoughts are like a lover's
+fingers stroking a girl's hair. That's because he's found himself. He
+feels strong and lets his strength come out in gentleness. He's found
+himself and is trying to shape secrets into words."
+
+In comparing Lockwood with the others on the staff of the magazine he
+explained, "There's the difference between a man and an intellect.
+Warren's a man. The others are a group of schoolboys reducing life to
+lessons."
+
+There grew up in Dorn a curious envy of the novelist. He would think of
+him frequently when alone, "The fellow's content to write. I'm not. He's
+found his way of saying what's in him, getting rid of his energies and
+love. I haven't. He feels toward the world as I do toward Rachel. An
+overpowering reality and mystery are always before him; but it gives him
+a mental perspective. What does Rachel give me? Desires, ambitions--a
+sort of laughing madness that I can't translate into anything but
+kisses. I'm cleverer than I was before. I talk and write better. There's
+a certain wildness about things as if I were living in a storm. Yes, I
+have wings, but there's no place to fly with them. Except into her arms.
+There must be something else."
+
+And he would rush through the day, outwardly a man of inexhaustible
+energies, stamping himself upon the consciousness of people as a
+brilliant, dominating personality. Edwards, with whom he discussed
+matter for editorials and articles, had grown to regard him with awe.
+
+"I've never felt genius so keenly before," Edwards explained him to
+Lockwood. "The man seems burning up. Did you read his thing on Russia
+and Kerensky? Lord, it was absolutely prophetic."
+
+Lockwood shook his head.
+
+"Dorn's too damn clever," he drawled. "Things come too easily to him.
+He's got an eye but--I can't put my finger on it. You see a fella's got
+to have something inside him. The things Erik says cleverly and
+prophetically don't mean anything much, because they don't mean anything
+to him. He makes 'em up as he goes along."
+
+Edwards disagreed. He was a younger man than Lockwood, with an
+impressionable erudition. Like his co-workers he had been somewhat
+stampeded by Dorn's imitative faculties, faculties which enabled the
+former journalist to bombinate twice as loud in a void three times as
+great as any of his colleagues.
+
+"Well, I've met a lot of writing men since I came East," he said. "And
+Dorn's the best of them. He's more than a man of promise. He's opened
+up. Look what he's done in the new number. Absolutely revolutionized the
+liberal thought of the country. You've got to admit that. He's a man
+incapable of fanaticism."
+
+"That's just it," smiled Lockwood. "You've hit it. You've put your
+finger on it. He's the kind of man who knows too damn much and don't
+believe anything."
+
+The friendship between Lockwood and Dorn matured quickly. The two men,
+profoundly dissimilar in their natures, found themselves launched upon a
+growing intimacy. To Lockwood, heavy spoken, delicate sensed, naive
+despite the shrewdness of his forty-five years, Erik Dorn appealed as
+some exotic mechanical contrivance might for a day fascinate and
+bewilder the intelligence of a rustic. And the other, in the midst of
+magnificent bombinations that amazed his friend, thought, "If I only
+had this man's simplicity. If on top of my ability to unravel mysteries
+into words I could feel these mysteries as he does, I might do
+something."
+
+At other times, carried away by the strength of his own nature, he would
+find himself looking down upon Lockwood. "I'm alive. He's static. I live
+above him. There's nothing beyond me. I can't feel the things out of
+which he makes his novels, because I'm beyond them."
+
+He would think then of Lockwood as an eagle of a rustic painstakingly
+hoeing a field. On such days the disquiet would vanish from Dorn's
+thought. He would feel himself propelled through the hours as if by some
+irresistible wind of which he had become a part. To live was enough. To
+live was to give expression to the clamoring forces in him. To sweep
+over Edwards, hurl himself through crowds, pulverize Warren, bang out
+astounding fictions on the typewriter, watch the faces of acquaintances
+light up with admiration as he spoke--this sufficed. The world
+galvanized itself about him. He could do anything. He could give vision
+to people, create new life around him. This consciousness sufficed. Then
+to rush home from a triumphant day, a glorious contempt for his fellows
+lingering like wine in his head--and find Rachel--an eagle waiting in a
+nest.
+
+Joy, then, become a mania. Desires feeding upon themselves, devouring
+his body and his senses and hurling him into an exhausted sleep as if
+death alone could climax the madness of his spirit--these Dorn knew in
+the days of his strength.
+
+But the days of disquiet came, confronting him like skeletons in the
+midst of his feastings upon life. The ecstasy he felt seemed suddenly to
+turn itself inward and demand of him new destinations. On such days he
+had fallen into the habit of going upon swift walks through the less
+crowded streets of the city. During his walking he would mutter, "What
+can I do? What? Nothing. Not a thing." As if secret voices were debating
+his destiny.
+
+Restless, vicious spoken, venting his strainings in a skyrocket burst of
+phrases upon the inanity and stupidity of his fellow creatures for which
+he seemed to possess an almost uncanny vision, he fled through these
+days like the victim of some spiritual satyriasis. No longer a wind at
+his heels riding him into easy heights, he found himself weighted down
+with his love, and strangely inanimate.
+
+The direction in which he was moving loomed sterilely before him. His
+love itself seemed a feverishly sterile thing. His work upon the
+magazine, his incessant exchange of intolerant adjectives with admiring
+strangers--these became absurdly petty gestures, absurdly insufficient.
+There was something else to do. As he had longed for Rachel in the black
+days before their coming together, he longed now for this something
+else. Without name or outline, it haunted him. Another face of stars,
+but this time beyond his power to understand. Yet it demanded him, as
+Rachel had demanded him, and towards it he turned in his days of
+disquiet, inanimate and bewildered.
+
+"I must find something to do," he explained to himself, "that will give
+me direction. People must have a monomania as a track for their living,
+or else there is no living."
+
+Then, as was his custom, he would begin an unraveling of the notion.
+
+"Men with energies in them wed themselves quickly to some consuming
+project, even if it's nothing more than the developing of a fish market.
+Rachel isn't a destination. She's a force that fills me with violence
+and I have no direction in which to live to use this violence. I don't
+know what to do with myself. So I'm compelled to live in the violence
+itself. In a storm. A kind of Walkyrie on a broomstick. But, good God,
+what else is there? Sit and scribble words about fictitious characters.
+Bleat out rhapsodies. Art is something I can spit out in conversation.
+If I do anything it's got to be something too difficult for me to do. My
+damned cleverness puts me beyond artists who find a destination for
+their energies in the struggle to achieve the thing with which I begin.
+If not art, then what? War, politics, finance. All surfaces meaning
+nothing. If I did them all there'd still be something I hadn't done. I
+want something that's not in life. Life's too damned insufficient. I
+want something out of it."
+
+Rachel had thought at first that his fits of brooding restlessness came
+from a memory of Anna. But phrases he had blurted cut half-consciously
+had given her a sense of their causes. The thought of Anna had died in
+him. Neither consciousness of her suffering nor memory of the years they
+had lived together had yet awakened in him. He had been moving since the
+night he had walked out of his home and there had been no looking back.
+
+Undergoing a seeming expansion of his powers, Erik Dorn had become a
+startling, fascinating figure in the new world he had entered. The
+flattery of men almost as clever as himself, the respect, appreciation
+of political, literary, and vaguely social circles, of stolid men and
+eccentric acquaintances, were continually visited upon him. He was a
+personality, a figure to enliven dinner parties, throw a glamour and a
+fever into the enervated routine of sets, cliques, and circles.
+
+He had made occasional journeyings alone and sometimes with Rachel into
+the homes of chance acquaintances, and had put in fitful appearances at
+the various excitements pursued by the city's more radical
+intelligentsia--little-theater premiers, private assemblings of shrewd,
+bored men and women, precious concerts, electric discussions of
+political unrest. From all such adventurings he came away with a sense
+of distaste. Friendships, always foreign to his nature, had become now
+almost an impossibility. He felt himself a procession of adjectives
+exploding in the ears of strangers.
+
+With Warren Lockwood alone he had been able to achieve a contact. In
+the presence of the novelist there was a complement of himself both in
+the days of his disquiet and strength. Together they took to frequenting
+odd parts of the city, visiting lonely cafes and calling upon strangers
+known to the novelist. The man's virile gentleness soothed him. He was
+never tired of watching the turns of his naivete, delighting as much in
+his friend's unsophisticated appreciation of the arts as in the vivid
+simplicity of his understanding of people and events.
+
+He had finished a stormy conference with the directors of the magazine
+on the subject of a new editorial policy toward Russia--new editorial
+policies toward Russia had become almost the sole preoccupation of the
+_New Opinion_--when Lockwood arrived at the office, resplendent in the
+atrocities of a new green hat and lavender necktie.
+
+"There's a fella over on the east side you ought to meet," Lockwood
+explained. "I was going over there and thought you'd like to come
+along."
+
+He leaned over, seriously confidential.
+
+"If you can lay off a while in this business of revolutionizing the
+liberal thought of the whole country, Erik, I'll tell you something.
+Between you and me, this man we're going to see is the greatest artist
+in America. I know."
+
+Lockwood waved his hand casually as if dismissing once and for all an
+avalanche of contradictions. Dorn hesitated. It was one of his days of
+disquiet; and he had left a note with Rachel saying he would be home at
+eight. It was now six.
+
+"If you've got a date," went on Lockwood, "call it off. Lord, man, you
+can't afford missing the greatest artist in the world."
+
+Dorn frowned. He might telephone. But that would mean explanations and
+the pleading sound of a voice saying, "Of course, Erik." He would send a
+message, and scribbled it on a telegraph blank:
+
+"I'll be home late. Don't worry.
+
+"ERIK."
+
+"We'll make a night of it," he laughed.
+
+Lockwood looked at him, shrewdly affectionate.
+
+"What you need," he spoke, "is a good drink and some fat street woman to
+shake you out of it. You look kind of tied up."
+
+"I am," grinned Dorn. "Wound up and ready to bust."
+
+Lockwood nodded his head slowly.
+
+"Uh-huh," he said, as if turning the matter over carefully in his
+thought. "Why don't you buy a new hat like I do when I get feeling sort
+of upside down? Buying a new hat or tie straightens a man out. Come on!"
+He laughed suddenly. "This artist's name is Tony. He's an old
+man--seventy years old."
+
+They entered the street, Lockwood watching his companion with dark,
+fixed eyes as if he were slowly arriving at some impersonal diagnosis.
+
+"A lot of fools," he announced abruptly, waving his hand at the crowds.
+"They don't know that something important's happening in Russia." He
+pronounced it Rooshia. Dorn saw his eyes kindle with a kindliness as he
+denounced the rabble about them.
+
+"What do you figure is happening in Rooshia?" he inquired of the
+novelist.
+
+"I don't figure," smiled Lockwood. "I feel it. Something important that
+these newspaper Neds around this town haven't got any conception of.
+It's what old Carl calls the rising of the proletaire." He chuckled.
+"Old Carl's sure gone daft on this proletaire thing." His face abruptly
+hardened, the rugged features becoming set, the swart eyes paying a
+far-away homage. "But old Carl's a great poet--the greatest in America.
+God, but that old boy can write!"
+
+Dorn nodded. In the presence of the novelist the unrest that had held
+him by the throat through the day seemed to ebb. There was companionship
+in the figure beside him. They walked in silence for several blocks. The
+day was growing dark quickly and despite the crowds in the streets,
+there seemed an inactivity in the air--the wait of a storm.
+
+Into a ramshackle building on the corner of a vivaciously ugly street
+Lockwood led his friend in quest of the greatest artist. An old man in a
+skull cap, woolen shirt, baggy trousers and carpet slippers appeared in
+a darkened doorway. With his long white beard he stood bent and
+rheumatic before them, making a question mark in the gloom of the hall.
+
+"Hello, Tony," Lockwood greeted him. "I've brought a friend of mine
+along to look at your works."
+
+The old man extended thin fingers and nodded his head. Dorn entered a
+large room that reminded him of a tombstone factory. Figures in clay,
+some broken and cracked, cluttered up its floor and walls. In a corner
+partly hidden behind topsy-turvy busts and more figures was a cot with a
+blanket over it. Dorn after several minutes of silence, looked
+inquiringly at his friend. The works of art, despite an obvious vigor of
+execution, were openly banal.
+
+"He's got some more in the basement," announced Lockwood with an air of
+triumph. "And there's some stuck away with the family upstairs. The
+whole street here's full of his works."
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"He doesn't talk much English," went on Lockwood. "But I'll tell you
+about him. I got the story from him. He's the greatest artist in the
+world."
+
+As Dorn moved politely from figure to figure, the old man like a museum
+monitor at his heels, Lockwood went on explaining in a caressing
+sing-song:
+
+"This old boy came to New York when he was in his twenties. And he's
+been living here ever since and making statues. He's working right now
+on a statue of some general. Been working for fifty years without
+stopping, and there's nobody in this town ever heard of him or come near
+him. Get this picture of this old boy, Erik, buried in this hole for
+fifty years making statues. Working away day after day without anybody
+coming near him. I brought a sculptor friend of mine who kept squinting
+at some of the things the old boy did when he first came over and
+saying, 'By God, this fella was an artist at one time.' Get the picture
+of this smart-aleck sculptor friend of mine saying this old boy was an
+artist."
+
+The eyes of Warren Lockwood grew hard and seemed to challenge. He
+extended his arm and waved his hand gently in a further challenge.
+
+"The fools in this town let this old boy stay buried," he whispered,
+"but he fooled them. He kept right on making statues and giving them
+away to the folks that live around here and hiding them in the basement
+when there wasn't anybody to take them."
+
+Lockwood grasped the arm of his friend excitedly and his voice became
+high-pitched.
+
+"Don't you get this old man?" he argued. "Don't you get the figure of
+him as an artist? Lord, man, he's the greatest artist in the world, I
+tell you!"
+
+Dorn nodded his head, amused and disturbed by the novelist's excitement.
+The old sculptor was standing in the shadow of the figures piled on top
+of each other against the wall. He wore the air of a man just awakened
+and struggling politely to grasp his surroundings.
+
+"A sort of altruistic carpenter," thought Dorn. "That's what Warren
+calls an artist. Works diligently for nothing."
+
+The respect and awe in the eyes of his friend halted him.
+
+"Yes, I get him," he added aloud. "Living with a dream for fifty years."
+
+Lockwood snorted and then with a quiet laugh answered: "No, that isn't
+it. You're not an artist yourself so you can't quite get the sense of
+it." He seemed petulent and defeated.
+
+They left the old man's studio without further talk. It had started to
+rain. Large spaced drops plumbed a gleaming hypotenuse between the
+rooftops and the streets. They paused before a basement restaurant.
+
+"It looks dirty," said Lockwood, "but let's go in."
+
+Here they ordered dinner. During their eating the noise of thunder
+sounded and the splash of the storm drifted in through the dusty
+basement windows. A thick-wristed, red-fingered waitress slopped back
+and forth between their table and an odorous kitchen door. Lockwood kept
+his eyes fastened steadily upon the nervous features of his friend. He
+thought as the silence increased between them: "This man's got something
+the matter with him."
+
+Gradually an uneasiness came over the novelist, his sensitive nerves
+responding to the disquiet in the smiling eyes opposite.
+
+"You're kind of crazy," he leaned forward and whispered as if confiding
+an ominous, impersonal secret. "You've got the eyes of a man kind of
+crazy, Erik."
+
+He sat back in his chair, his hands holding the edge of the table, his
+chin tucked down, as if he were ruminating, narrow-eyed, upon some
+involved business proposition.
+
+"I get you now," he added slowly. "I'll put you in a book--a crazy man
+who kept fooling himself by imitating sane people."
+
+Dorn nodded.
+
+"Insanity would be a relief," he answered. "Come on."
+
+He stood up quickly and looked down at his friend.
+
+"Let's keep going. I've got something in me I want to get rid of."
+
+In the doorway the friends halted. The grave, melodious shout of the
+rain filled the night. The streets had become dark, attenuated pools.
+The rain falling illuminated the hidden faces of the buildings and
+silvered the air with whirling lines.
+
+As they stood facing the downpour Dorn thought, "Rachel's waiting for
+me. Why don't I go to her? But I'd only make her sad. Better let it get
+out of me in the rain."
+
+Holding his friend's arm he stood staring at the storm over the city.
+Through the sparkle and fume of the rain-colored night the lights of
+cafe signs burned like golden-lettered banners flung stiffly into the
+downpour. About the lights floated patches of yellow mist through which
+the rain swarmed in flurries of gleaming moths. There were lights of
+doors and windows beneath the burning signs. The remainder of the street
+was lost in a wilderness of rain that bubbled and raced over the
+pavements in an endless detonation.
+
+He spoke with a sudden softness: "I didn't get your artist, Warren, but
+you don't get this storm. It's noise and water to you."
+
+The novelist answered with a sagacious nod.
+
+"There's something alive in a night like this," Dorn went on, "something
+that isn't a part of life."
+
+He pulled his friend out of the doorway. They walked swiftly, their
+shoes spurting water and the rain dripping from their clothes. Dorn felt
+an untightening. His eyes hailed the scene as if in greeting of a
+friend. He became aware of its detail. He smiled, remembering the way in
+which he had been used to hide his longing for Rachel in the desperate
+consciousness of scenes about him. Now it was something else he was
+hiding. Beneath his feet he watched the silver-tipped pool of the
+pavement. Gleaming in its depths swam reflections of burning lamps, like
+the yellow script of another and wraith-like world staring up at him out
+of a nowhere. The rest was darkness and billowy stripes of water. People
+had vanished. Later a sound of thunder crawled out of the sky. A vein
+of lightning opened the night. Against its blue pallor the street and
+its buildings etched themselves.
+
+"Stiff, unreal, like a stage scene," murmured Dorn. "Another world."
+
+The rain flung itself for an instant in great ghostly sheets out of the
+lighted spaces. He caught a glimpse in the distance of a hunched, moving
+figure like some tiny wanderer through tortuous fields. Then darkness
+resumed, seizing the street. A wind entered the night outlining itself
+in the wild undulations of the rain reaching for the pavements.
+
+Dorn forgot his companion, as they pressed on. Disheveled rain ghosts
+crowded around him. The fever that had burned in him during the day
+seemed to have become a part of the storm. The leap and hollow blaze of
+the lightnings gave him a companionship. His eyes stared into the
+inanimate bursts of pale violet outlines in the dark. His breath drank
+in the spice of water-laden winds. The stumble of thunder, the lash and
+churn of rain were companions. The something else that haunted him was
+in the storm. He turned to Lockwood, who seemed to be lagging, and
+shouted in his ear:
+
+"Great, eh? Altar fires and the racket of unknown gods."
+
+Lockwood, his face filmed with water, grunted indignantly:
+
+"Let's get out of this."
+
+The night was growing wilder. Dorn's eyes bored into the vapors and
+steam of the rain.
+
+"We're in a good street," he cried again. "A nigger street."
+
+A blinding gust of light brought them to a halt. Thunder burst a horror
+of sound through its dead glare. Dorn stiffened and stared as in a dream
+at a face floating behind the glass of a door. A woman's face contorted
+into a stark grimace of rapture. Its teeth stood out white and
+skull-like against the red of an open mouth.
+
+Silence and darkness seized the street. Rain poured. The sound of a
+laugh like some miniature echo of the tumult that had torn the night
+drifted to them. Lockwood had started for the door.
+
+"Come on," he called, "this is crazy."
+
+Dorn followed him. The streaming door opened as they approached and two
+figures darted out. They were gone in an instant and in pursuit of them
+rushed a rollicking lurch of sound. Dorn caught again the shrill
+staccato of the laugh, and the door closed behind them.
+
+Dancing bodies were spinning among the tables. Shouting, swinging noises
+and a bray of music spurted unintelligibly against the ears of the
+newcomers. A chlorinated mist, acrid to the eye, and burning to the
+nose, crawled about the room. Dorn, followed by Lockwood, groped his way
+through the confusion toward a small vacant table against a wall. From
+here they watched in silence.
+
+A can-can was in progress. The dancers, black and white faces glued
+together, arms twined about each other's bodies, tumbled through the
+smoke. Waiters balancing black trays laden with colored glasses sifted
+through the scene. At the tables men and women with faces out of focus
+sat drinking and shouting. Niggers, prostitutes, louts. The slant of red
+mouths opened laughters. Hands and throats drifted in violent fragments
+through the mist. The reek of wine and steaming clothes, the sting of
+perspiring perfumes and the odors of women's bodies fumed over the
+tumble of heads. Against the scene a jazz band flung a whine and a
+stumble of tinny sounds. Nigger musicians with silver instruments glued
+to their lips sat on a platform at the far end of the room. They danced
+in their chairs as they played, swinging their instruments in crazy
+circles. A broken, lurching music came from them, a nasal melody that
+moaned among the laughters.
+
+Dorn's fingers lay gripped about the arm of his friend. His senses
+caught the rhythm of the scene. His eyes stared at the dancing figures,
+blond heads riveted against black satin cheeks; bodies gesturing their
+lusts to the quick whine and stumble of the music; eyes opening like
+mouths.
+
+"God, what an orgie!" he whispered. "Look at the thing. It's insane. A
+nigger hammering a scarlet phallus against a cymbal moon."
+
+His words vanished in the din and Lockwood remained with eyes drawn in
+and hard. When he turned to his friend he found him excitedly pounding
+his fist on the table and bawling for a waiter. A man, seemingly asleep
+amid confusions, appeared and took his order.
+
+"There's a woman in here I've got to find," Dorn shouted.
+
+"You're crazy, man."
+
+"I saw her," he persisted, talking close to his friend's ear. "I saw her
+face in the door. You wait here."
+
+Lockwood seized his arm and tried to hold him, but he jerked away and
+was lost in a pattern of dancing bodies. Lockwood watching him
+disappear, frowned. He felt a sudden uncertainty toward his friend, a
+fear as if he had launched himself into a dark night with a murderer for
+a companion.
+
+"He's crazy," he thought. "I ought to get him out of here before
+anything happens."
+
+He sat fumbling nervously with the stem of a wine-glass. Outside, the
+rain chattered in the darkness and the alto of the wind came in long
+organ notes into the din of the cafe. He caught sight of Dorn pulling an
+unholy-looking woman through the pack of the room.
+
+"Here she is--our lady of pain!"
+
+Dorn thrust the creature viciously into a seat beside Lockwood. She
+dropped with a scream of laughter. The music of the nigger orchestra had
+stopped and an emptiness flooded the place. Dorn bellowed for another
+glass. Lockwood looked slowly at the creature beside him. She was
+watching Dorn. In the swarthy depths of her eyes moved threads of
+scarlet. Beneath their lashes her skin was darkened as if by bruises. An
+odd sultry light glowed over the discolorations. Her mouth had shut and
+her cheeks were without curves, following the triangular corpse-like
+lines of her skull. Her lips, like bits of vermilion paper, stared as
+from an idol's face. She was regarding Dorn with a smile.
+
+He had grown erratic in his gestures. His eyes seemed incapable of
+focusing themselves. They darted about the room, running away from him.
+The woman's smile persisted and he turned his glance abruptly at her.
+The red flesh of her opened mouth and throat confronted him as another
+of her screaming laughs burst. The laugh ended and her gleaming eyes
+swimming in a gelatinous mist held him.
+
+"A reptilian sorcery," he whispered to Lockwood, and smiled. "The face
+of a malignant Pierrette. A diabolic clown. Look at it. I saw it in the
+lightning outside. She wears a mask. Do you get her?" He paused
+mockingly. Lockwood shifted away from the woman. Erik was drunk. Or
+crazy. But the woman, thank God, had eyes only for him. She remained, as
+he talked, with her sulphurous eyes unwaveringly upon his face.
+
+"She's not a woman," he went on in a purring voice. "She's a lust. No
+brain. No heart. A stark unhuman piece of flesh with a shark's hunger
+inside it."
+
+He leaned forward and took one of her hands as Lockwood whispered,
+
+"Christ, man, let's get out of here."
+
+The woman's fingers, dry and quivering, scratched against Dorn's palm.
+He felt them as a hot breath in his blood.
+
+"What's the matter, Warren?" he laughed, emptying a wine-glass. "I like
+this gal. She suits me. A devourer of men. Look at her!"
+
+He laughed and glared at his friend. Lockwood closed his eyes nervously.
+
+"I've got a headache in this damned place," he muttered.
+
+"Wait a minute." Dorn seized his arm. "I want to talk. I feel gabby. My
+lady friend doesn't understand words." The sulphurous eyes glowed
+caresses over him. "You remember the thing in Rabelais about
+women--insatiable, devouring, hungering in their satieties. The prowling
+animal. Well, here it is. Alive. Not in print. She's alive with
+something deeper than life. Wheels of flesh grinding her blood into a
+hunger for ecstasies. She's a mate for me. Come on, little one."
+
+He sprang from the table, pulling the woman after him.
+
+"Wait here, Warren," he called, moving toward the door. It opened,
+letting in a shout and sweep of rain, and they were gone.
+
+"A crazy man," muttered the novelist, and remained fumbling with the
+stem of his glass.
+
+Outside Dorn held the body of the woman against him as they hurried
+through the storm. Her flesh, like the touch of a third person, struck
+through his wet clothes.
+
+"Where we going?" he yelled at her.
+
+She thrust out an arm.
+
+"Up here."
+
+They came breathless up a flight of stairs into a reeking room lighted
+by a gas jet.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+In the cafe, Lockwood waited till the music started again. Then he rose
+and, slapping his soggy hat on his head, walked out of the place. The
+rain, sweeping steadily against the earth, held him prisoner in the
+doorway. He stood muttering to himself of his friend and his craziness.
+Gone wild! Crazy wild with a mad woman in the rain. Long ago he might
+have done it himself. Yes, he knew the why of it. The rain fuming before
+him made him sleepy. He leaned against the place and waited. The storm
+faded slowly into a quiet patter. Starting for the pavement, Lockwood
+paused. A hatless figure had jumped out of a doorway across the street
+and was running toward him.
+
+"It's Erik," he muttered, and hurried to meet him.
+
+Dorn, laughing, his clothes torn and his face smeared with blood under
+his eye, drew near. He took his friend's arm and walked him swiftly
+away. At the corner Dorn stopped and regarded the novelist.
+
+"I've had a look at hell," he whispered, and with a laugh hurried off
+alone. Lockwood watched him moving swiftly down the street, and yawned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+It was near midnight. Rachel's eyes, brightened with tears, watched her
+lover bathing his face.
+
+"It seemed so long," she murmured, "till you came."
+
+"That damned Warren Lockwood led me astray," he smiled. He dried his
+face and came toward her. She dropped to the floor beside him as he sat
+down and pressed her cheeks against his knees. His hands moved tenderly
+through her loosened hair.
+
+"You told me to be careful about getting run over," she smiled sadly,
+"and you go out and get all cut up in a brawl. Oh, Erik,
+please--something might have happened."
+
+"Nothing happened, dearest."
+
+She asked no further questions but remained with her face against his
+knees. This was Rachel whose hair he was stroking. Dorn smiled at the
+thought. After a silence she resumed, her voice softened with emotion:
+
+"Erik, I've been lying to you--about my love. It's different than I said
+it was. I've said always what you've wanted me to say. You've always
+wanted me to be something else than a woman--something like a dream.
+But I can't. I love you as--as Anna loved you. Oh, I want to be with you
+forever and have children. I'm nothing else. You are. I can't be like
+you. For me there's only love for you and nothing beyond."
+
+"Dear one," he answered, "there's nothing else for me."
+
+"Now you're telling me lies," she wept. "There is something I can't give
+you; and that you must go looking for somewhere else."
+
+"No, Rachel. I love you."
+
+"As you loved Anna--once."
+
+"Don't! I never loved Anna--or anyone. Or anything."
+
+"I can't help it, Erik. Forgive me, please. I love you so. Don't you see
+how I love you. I keep trying to be something besides myself and to give
+other names to the things I feel. But they're only sentimental things.
+My dreams are only sentimental dreams--of your kissing me, holding me,
+being my husband. Oh, go way from me, Erik, before I make you hate me!
+You thought I was different. And I did too. I _was_ different. But
+you've changed me. Women are all the same when they love. Differences go
+away."
+
+She looked up at him with tear-running eyes.
+
+"Different than other people! But now I'm the same. I love you as any
+other woman would. Only perhaps a little more. With my whole soul and
+life."
+
+"Foolish to talk," he whispered back to her. "Words only scratch at
+things. I love you as if I had never seen you or kissed you."
+
+"But I'm not a dream, Erik. Oh, it sounds silly. But I want you."
+
+He raised her and held her lithe body close to him. The feeling that he
+was unreal, that Rachel was unreal, rested in his thought. There was a
+mist about things that clung to them, that clung about the joyousness in
+his heart.
+
+"There's nothing else," he whispered. "Love is enough. It burns up
+everything else and leaves a mist."
+
+His arms tightened.
+
+"Erik dear, I'm afraid."
+
+His kiss brought a peace over her face. She had waited for it. She
+looked up and laughed.
+
+"You love me? Yes, Erik loves me. Loves me. I know."
+
+She watched his eyes as he spoke. The eyes of God. They remained open to
+her. She began to tremble and her naked arms moved blindly toward his
+shoulders.
+
+"This is my world," she whispered. "I know, Erik. I know everything. You
+are too big for love to hold. The sun doesn't fill the whole world.
+There are always dark places. I know. Don't hide from me, lover."
+
+She smiled and closed her eyes as her lips reached toward him.
+
+The eyes of Erik Dorn remained open and staring out of the window. There
+was still rain in the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Erik Dorn to Rachel, September, 1918:
+
+" ... and to-night I remember you are beautiful, and I desire you. My
+arms are empty and there is nothing for my eyes to look at. Are you
+still afraid. Look, more than a year has gone and nothing has changed.
+You are the far-away one, the dream figure, and my heart comes on wings
+to you.... I write with difficulty. What language is there to talk to
+you? How does one converse with a dream? Idiot phrases rant across the
+paper like little fat actors flourishing tin swords. I've come to
+distrust words. There are too many of them. Yet I keep fermenting with
+words. Interlopers. Busybody strangers. I can't think ... because of
+them.... Alas! if I could keep my vocabulary out of our love we would
+both be better off. Foolish chatter. I thought when I sat down to write
+to you that the sadness of your absence would overcome me. Instead, I am
+amused. Vaguely joyous. And at the thought of you I have an impulse to
+laugh. You are like that. A day like a thousand years has passed.
+Dead-born hours that did not end. Chill, empty streets and the memory of
+you like a solitude in which I sat mumbling to phantoms. And now in the
+darkness my heart sickens with desire for you and the night sharpens
+its claws upon my heart. Yet there is laughter. Words laugh in my head.
+The torment I feel is somehow a part of joyousness. The claws of the
+night bring somehow a caress. Even to weep for you is like some dark
+happiness whose lips are too fragile to smile. Dear one, the dream of
+you still lives--an old friend now, a familiar star that I watch
+endlessly. You see there are even no new words. For once before I told
+you that. It was night--snowing. We walked together. I remember you
+always as vanishing and leaving the light of your face burning before my
+eyes. I shall always love you. Why are you afraid? Why do you write
+vague doubts into your letters? I will be with you soon. You are a
+world, and the rest of life is a mist that surrounds you.... I have
+nothing to write. I discover this as I sit staring at the paper. I
+remember that a year has passed, that many years remain to pass. Dear
+one, I know only that I love you, and words are strangers between us."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Rachel to Erik, September end, 1918:
+
+" ... when I went away you were unhappy and restless. Now that I have
+gone you are again happy and calm. Oh, you're so cruel! Your love is so
+cruel to me. I sit here all day, a foolishly humble exile, waiting for
+you. I keep watching the sea and sometimes I try to feel pain. When your
+letter comes I spend the day reading it.... I am beautiful and you
+desire me. Oh, to think me beautiful and to desire me, suffices. You do
+not come where I am. Nothing has changed, you write with a joyous
+cruelty. In your lonely nights your dream of me still brings you
+torments and I am a star that you watch endlessly. I laugh too, but out
+of bitterness. Because what you write is no longer true and we both have
+known it for long. I am no longer a dream or a star, but a woman who
+loves you. Yes, nothing has changed, except me. And you remedy that by
+sending me away. When you send me away I too become unchanged in your
+thought. I am again like I was on the night we parted in the white park
+and you can love me--a memory of me--that remains like a star....
+
+"But here I am in this lonely little sea village. There is no dream for
+me. I am empty without you and I lie at night and weep till my heart
+breaks, wondering when you will come. It were better if I were dead. I
+whisper to myself, 'you must not write him to come to you, because he is
+too busy loving you. He weeps before the ghost of you. He sits beside an
+old dream. You must not interrupt him. Oh, my lover, do you find me so
+much less than the dream of me, that you must send me away in order to
+love me? My doubts? Are they doubts? We have grown apart in the year. On
+the night it snowed and I went away from you you said, 'people bury
+their love behind lighted windows....' Dearest, dearest, of what do I
+complain? Of your ecstasies and torments of which I am not a part, but a
+cause? Forgive me. I adore you. I am so lonely and such a nobody without
+you. And I want you to write to me that you long for me, to be with me,
+to caress me and talk to me. And instead you send phrases analyzing your
+joyousness. Oh, things have changed. I am no longer Rachel, but a woman.
+I feel so little and helpless when I think of you. Strangers can talk to
+you and look at you but I must sit here in exile while you entertain
+yourself with memories of me. You are cruel, dear one, and I have become
+too cowardly not to mind. This is because I have found happiness--all
+the happiness I desire--and hold it tremblingly. And you have not found
+happiness but are still in flight toward your far-away one, your dream
+figure. I cannot write more. I worship you and my heart is full of
+tears. I will sit humbly and look at the sea until you come."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Rachel to Frank Brander, September:
+
+" ... I answer your letter only because I am afraid you would
+misunderstand my silence. I send your letter back because I cannot throw
+it away. It would make the sea unclean. As you point out, I am the
+mistress of Erik Dorn and he may some day grow tired of me, at which
+time you are prepared to be my friend and protect me from the world. I
+will put your application on file, Mr. Brander, if there is a part of my
+mind filthy enough to remember it."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Rachel to Emil Tesla:
+
+" ... I was glad to hear from you. But please do not write any more. I
+am too happy to read your letters. I never want to draw pictures for
+_The Cry_ again. I hope you will be freed soon. I can think of nothing
+to write to you."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Erik Dorn to Rachel, November, 1918:
+
+"DEAREST ONE!
+
+"Beneath my window the gentle Jabberwock has twined colored tissue-paper
+about his ears and gone mad. He shrieks, he whistles, he blows a horn.
+The war, beloved, appears to have ended this noon and the Jabberwock is
+endeavoring to disgorge four and a half years in a single shriek. 'The
+war,' says the Jabberwock, in his own way, 'is over. It was a rotten
+war, nasty and hateful, as all wars are rotten and hateful, and
+everything I've said and done hinting at the contrary has been a lie and
+I'm so full of lies I must shriek.'
+
+"Anybody but a Jabberwock, dear one, would have died of apoplexy hours
+ago. But the Jabberwock is immortal. Alas! there is something of pathos
+in the spectacle. Our gentle friend with tissue-paper around his ears
+prostrates himself before another illusion--peace. Says the shriek of
+the Jabberwock beneath my window, 'The Hun is destroyed. The menace to
+humanity is laid low. The powers of darkness are dispelled by the breath
+of God and the machine-guns of our brave soldats. The war that is to end
+war is over. Hail, blessed peace!'
+
+"Why do I write such arid absurdities to you? But I feel an impulse to
+scribble wordly words, to stand in a silk hat beside the statue of
+Liberty and gaze out upon the Atlantic with a Carlylian pensiveness.
+Idle political tears flow from my brain. For it is obvious that the war
+the Jabberwock has so nobly waged has been a waste of steel and powder.
+Standing now on his eight million graves with the tissue-paper of
+Victory twined about his ears, the Jabberwock is a somewhat ghastly,
+humorous figure. He has, alas! shot the wrong man. To-morrow there will
+be an inquest in Paris and the Jabberwock will rub his eyes and discover
+that the corpse, God forgive him, is that of a brother and friend and
+that the Powers of Darkness threatening humanity are advancing upon him
+... out of Moscow. I muse ... yes, it was a good war. War is never
+pathetic, never wholly a waste. Maturity no less than childhood must
+have its circuses. But the Jabberwock ... Ah! the Jabberwock ... the
+soul of man celebrating the immortal triumph of righteousness ... the
+good Don Quixote has valiantly slain another windmill and your Sancho
+Panza shakes his head in wistful amusement.
+
+"I did not send you this letter yesterday and many things have happened
+since I wrote it. I will see you in a few days. It has been decided that
+I go to Germany for the magazine. Edwards insists. So do the directors,
+trusting gentlemen. I will stop at Washington and try to get two
+passports and then come on to you, and we will wait together until the
+passports are issued. Another week of imbecile political maneuverings in
+behalf of the passports and I will again be your lover,
+
+                                                     "ERIK."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"We've been separated almost three months," he thought, looking out of
+the train window. "I'll see her soon."
+
+There were four men in the smoking-compartment. They were discussing the
+end of the war. Dorn listened inattentively. He was remembering another
+ride to Rachel. Looking out of a train window as now. Whirling through
+space. A locomotive whistle wailing in the prairies at night like the
+sound of winds against his heart.
+
+The memories of the ride drifted through his mind. He saw himself again
+with the tumult of another day sweeping toward Rachel. What had he felt
+then? Whatever it was, it was gone. For he felt nothing now but a
+sadness. He had telegraphed. She would be waiting, her face alight, her
+hands trembling. He had started from Washington elatedly enough. But now
+in the smoking-compartment where the men were discussing the end of the
+war he felt no elation. He was thinking, "It'll be difficult when we see
+each other." He became aware that he was actually shrinking from the
+meeting. The voices of the men about him began to annoy and he returned
+to his seat in the train.
+
+Early evening. Another two hours and the train would stop to let him
+off. Dear, dear Rachel! He had wept tormented by a loneliness for her.
+Now he was coming to her with sadness. There had been another ride when
+he had come to her in a halloo of storms. Things change.
+
+The porter brushed him and removed his grips to the platform. The far
+lights of a village sprinkled themselves feebly in the darkness. This
+was where Rachel was waiting.
+
+Dorn stepped from the train. It became another world, lighted and human.
+He looked about the dingy little station. Rachel was walking toward him.
+
+"She looks strange and out of place," he thought.
+
+They embraced. Her kisses covering his lips delighted him unexpectedly.
+He found himself walking close to her in the night and feeling happy.
+They entered a darkened wooden house and Rachel led the way upstairs.
+
+"I can't talk, Erik."
+
+She held his hand against her cheek.
+
+"No, don't kiss me. Let me look at you. Sit over here. I must look at
+you."
+
+She laughed softly, but her eyes, unsmiling, stared at him. He remained
+silent. The sadness that had fallen upon him in the train returned now
+like a hurt in his heart. He had expected it to vanish at the sight of
+her. But her kisses had only hidden it. She came to his side after a
+pause and whispered gently,
+
+"Perhaps it would have been better if you hadn't come, dearest. I've
+become almost used to being alone."
+
+He embraced her and for the moment the sadness was hidden again.
+Rachel's hands crept avidly to his face, holding his cheeks with hot
+fingers.
+
+"Erik, oh, Erik, do you love me? I'm not afraid to hear. Tell me."
+
+"Yes, dear one. You are everything."
+
+"What makes you cry?"
+
+He kissed her lips.
+
+"I don't know," he whispered. "Only it's been so long."
+
+"Oh, you are so sad."
+
+Her voice had grown thin. Her eyes, dry, burning, haunted the dark room.
+She removed herself from his arms and stood with her hand in her hair.
+She looked at the dark sea that mirrored the night outside the window.
+Turning to him after a pause she murmured:
+
+"I had forgotten Erik Dorn was here."
+
+A sudden stride, the gesture of another Rachel, and she had thrown
+herself on the bed.
+
+"Oh, God!" she sobbed. "I knew, I knew!"
+
+Dorn, kneeling on the floor, pulled her head toward him. He whispered
+her name. Why was he sad, frightened? A thought was murmuring in him,
+"You must love her."
+
+"Rachel, I love you. Please. Your tears. Dearest, what has happened?
+Tell me."
+
+"Don't ask that." Her tears came anew. "But you come to me sad, as if I
+were no longer Rachel to you."
+
+The thought kept murmuring, "You must love her...."
+
+"Beautiful one," he said softly, "you're weeping because something has
+happened to you."
+
+The thought murmured, "because something has happened to you, not her."
+
+"No, no, Erik!"
+
+"Then why? If you loved me you would be happy."
+
+Absurd sentences. They would deceive no one.
+
+A belated emotion overcame him. Now he was happy. His arms grew strong
+about her. He would say nothing, but lie beside her kissing her until
+the tears ended. This was happiness. He watched her lips begin to smile
+faintly. Her face touched him as if she had sighed. She whispered after
+a long silence, "Oh, I thought you had changed."
+
+He laughed and pulled her to her feet. His head thrown back, his eyes
+amused and warm, he asked, "Do I seem changed now?"
+
+He waited while she regarded him. Why was he nervous? Must he answer the
+question too?
+
+"No," she said, "you are the same."
+
+Her face shining before him. Her head quickly lifted.
+
+"I was a fool. Look, Erik, I am happy--happier than anybody on earth."
+
+She dropped to her knees, kissing his hand.
+
+"I am so happy, I kneel...."
+
+They stood together in the window and laughed.
+
+"There's a wonderful old woman here. We've talked a great deal, about
+everything, and you. You don't mind? To-morrow we'll lie all day on the
+shore. Oh, Erik. Erik!"
+
+"We'll never be alone again, Rachel."
+
+"Never!" she echoed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+A calm had fallen upon Erik Dorn, an unconsciousness of self. He
+sprawled through the sunny days, staring at the sea with Rachel or
+walking alone to the fishing-boats at the other end of the village, or
+sitting with Mama Turpin, the old woman in whose cottage they lived.
+With Mama Turpin he held interminable talks that rambled on through the
+night at times. Religion was Mama Turpin's favored topic. Her round body
+in a rocking-chair, her seamed, vigorous face raised toward the sky, the
+old woman would fall into a dream and talk quietly of her God. She would
+begin, her voice coming out of the dark reminding Dorn of a girl.
+
+"Yes, I have always known this here one thing. Everybody must have a
+religion. Because there's something in everybody that's way beyond their
+selves to understand. And there's nobody to give it to excepting God.
+Some God, anyways...."
+
+Rachel, sitting in the shadows, would listen with her eyes upon Erik.
+The fear that he had brought her was growing in her heart, making her
+thought heavy and her gestures slow. She would listen, almost asleep, to
+his words.
+
+" ... Yes, Mama Turpin, religion comes to all people. But not for long.
+We all get a flame in us at some time and it burns until it burns itself
+out, and then we sit and forget to wonder about things...."
+
+Talk perhaps for her to understand. But why should he hint when words
+outright were easier? Rachel carried questions in her heart.
+
+Among the fishermen Dorn listened sometimes to stories of great catches
+and storms. He was usually silent watching them empty their nets on the
+shore and remove the catch into basins and pails. The men accepted his
+interest in their work with a pleased indifference.
+
+Rachel sometimes walked with him or stretched beside him on the sand.
+But he felt an uneasiness in her presence. Her eyes questioned him
+silently and seemed to answer their own questions.
+
+Since the evening of his coming there had been no scenes. He was
+grateful for this. But the eyes of Rachel sometimes haunted him at night
+as she lay asleep beside him. What spoke in her eyes? He felt calm when
+alone, at peace with himself. But at night while she slept he would
+become sleepless and a sadness would enter him. Thoughts he did not seem
+to be thinking would move through his head. "Things pass. Years pass.
+The sea and the stars remain the same. But men and women change. Life
+eats into men and women--eats things away from them...."
+
+In his sadness there would come to him a memory of Anna. Thoughts of
+Anna and Rachel would mingle themselves.... Anna had once lain beside
+him like this. He remembered now. Her body was different from
+Rachel's--softer, warmer ... a woman named Anna had lived with him. Now
+a woman named Rachel. And to-morrow, what? There were yesterdays. These
+were not sad. Things already dead were not so sad. But things that are
+to die....
+
+His heart would grow weak, seeming to dissolve. Something unspoken in
+the night. Tears in his heart. Calm in his thought. He would figure it
+out sometime. His words were alert little busy-bodies. They could follow
+things into difficult crevices. But was there anything to figure out? He
+was growing old and a to-morrow was haunting him. Some day he would
+close his eyes slowly and in the slow closing of his eyes the world
+would end. Erik Dorn would have ended. Was there such a thing as ending?
+Yes, things were always ending. Now he was different than the night he
+had lain beside Rachel and whispered, "You have given me wings." But
+how? He felt the same. Change came like that. Leaving one the same. He
+would write things from Europe that would startle. He could write....
+But, something unspoken in the night. He must say it to himself.... "You
+must love her...." Then that was it. He no longer loved her.
+
+He lay listening to her breathing. An end to his love. Preposterous
+notion! How, since the thought of parting from her wrenched at his
+heart? "If I went away from Rachel I would die." Unquestionably
+sincere.... "I'd die." Not, of course, die. But feel death. Yet, there
+was something changed. But a man doesn't remain an ecstatic lover. There
+comes a time. Well, he loved her like this--quietly, happily, and if he
+went away from her he would feel an end had come to his life. The other
+love had been words flying in his head. Nice to have felt as he had. But
+life--practical, material rush of hours. Words had flown in his head
+once. He smiled. "Wings, what are they?" He remembered having spoken and
+thought a great deal about wings. Now the idea seemed somewhat absurd.
+They were not a part of life. Inventions. An invention. A phrase to
+explain an unusual state of physical and mental excitement.... Sleep
+intruded and the sadness melted out of him. As he closed his eyes his
+hand reached dreamily for Rachel and lay upon her shoulder.
+
+A week of silence followed. Dorn talked. Politics, economics, the coming
+peace treaty. Rachel listened and made replies. Yet their words seemed
+only the part of a silence between them. A letter from Washington
+interrupted them. A passport was being issued for Erik Dorn, but the
+bureau was not issuing passports for women and would have to deny Mrs.
+Rachel Dorn ... "enclosed please find $1 deposit made for Mrs. Dorn at
+this office."
+
+"Well, that ends it," he laughed. "Perhaps I shouldn't have lied about
+your being Mrs. Dorn. God is a jealous God and punishes liars."
+
+"You must go on," Rachel said. "Perhaps I'll get one later."
+
+"No, we'll both wait. I couldn't go without you."
+
+Rachel regarded him tenderly. They were sitting on Mama Turpin's porch.
+
+"Yes, you will," she said.
+
+He shook his head, pleased at the opportunity for sacrifice. He hoped as
+he smiled that Rachel would plead with him to go alone. In her pleading
+she would point out all the things he was giving up by not going. She
+might even say, "You must go, Erik. You can't sacrifice your career."
+
+Then he could shrug his shoulders, remain silent for a moment as if
+weighing his career beside his love for her, and smile suddenly and say,
+gently, "No. It's ended. Please, it's ended and forgotten." A laugh, a
+bit too casual, would leave the thing on the proper plane. Later there
+would be times when he could grow thoughtful and abstract and Rachel,
+looking at him, would know that he had sacrificed--his career.
+
+On Mama Turpin's porch Dorn's thoughts rambled in silence. Rachel had
+said nothing. He looked at her and grew confused before the straightness
+of her eyes, as if she knew the tawdry little plot moving through his
+mind. Then an irritation ... why didn't she plead? Did she think it was
+nothing to give up his plans? Was it anything? No. He endeavored to
+evade his own questioning, but his thoughts mocked him with answers....
+"I'm playing a game with her. I want her to feel sorry and grateful for
+my not going and to feel that I've made a sacrifice for her. Because I
+could cherish it against her ... later. Have something I could pretend
+to be sad about. It would give me an excuse to scold her.... Merely by
+looking at her I could remind her that she is indebted to me for a
+sacrifice. Make-believe sacrifice gives one the unconsciousness of
+virtue without any of its discomforts. I'm irritated because she refuses
+to play her part in the farce and so makes me seem cheap. She knows I'm
+lying but she can't figure out how or what about. So she looks at me and
+says to herself, 'Erik has changed. He's different.' She means that I've
+become an actor and able to offer her cheap things. But she doesn't know
+that in words."
+
+As he sat thinking, an understanding of himself played beneath his
+thoughts. He was irritated with her. The passport business was something
+he could hang his irritation on. It offered an opportunity to make the
+petulant, indefinable aversion he sometimes felt toward her into a
+noble, self-laudatory emotion.
+
+He stood up abruptly. Make amends by being truthful and putting an end
+to the theatrics.... "Listen, Rachel, it's foolish for us to take this
+seriously. I don't give a damn about going, and I never did. It would
+bore me. It means nothing to me, and it's no sacrifice or even
+inconvenience. Please, I mean it. Put it out of your head."
+
+He leaned over and took her hands.
+
+"I love you...."
+
+Despite himself there was a note of sacrifice. He frowned. His "I love
+you" had startled him. He had said it as one pats a woman reassuringly
+on the shoulder. More, as one turns the other cheek in a forgiving
+Christian spirit. He was not an actor. He had become naturally cheap.
+
+Rachel smiled wanly at him and kissed his hands. He noticed that she
+looked thin about the face and that her eyes seemed ill with too much
+weeping. He wondered when it was she wept. When she was alone, of
+course. For a moment the thought of her flung across the bed and weeping
+stirred him sensually. Then ... what made her cry so much? Good God,
+what did she want of him? He was giving up.... Again he frowned. "I've
+become a cad," he thought. "I can't think honestly any more. Thoughts
+act themselves in my head. I've gotten to thinking lies and thinking
+them naturally without trying to lie...."
+
+"I'm going for a walk," he announced, and went off toward the shore
+where the fishing-boats were drifting in becalmed.
+
+Mama Turpin came out on the porch. Rachel smiled at the old woman.
+
+"It's peaceful here, Mama Turpin."
+
+"Yes, honey. My work's all done for the day now."
+
+"Nothing ever changes here," Rachel murmured. "The sea is just the same
+as when I came. I think I'll be leaving soon, Mama Turpin. Mr. Dorn will
+stay on for a little while. I have some work I must get back to."
+
+She paused and shaded her eyes from the setting sun.
+
+"It's been wonderful down here. I'll never forget it. Perhaps some day
+I'll come back to visit again."
+
+She arose and sighed.
+
+"What's the matter, honey?" the old woman asked, watching her.
+
+Rachel waited till her lips could smile again. Then she said:
+
+"Oh, I hate to leave it here. But I have so much work to do."
+
+She entered the house swiftly. In her room she lay on the bed, her face
+in the pillow as if she were waiting for tears. But none came. She lay
+in silence until it grew dark and she heard Erik outside asking Mama
+Turpin where she was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+It was dawn when they awoke. Rachel opened her eyes first. A lassitude
+filled her. She remained quiet for moments and then sat up and stared at
+Erik. His face was flushed and he was sleeping lightly, his eyes almost
+open.
+
+"Erik," she whispered. When he looked at her she leaned over and kissed
+him.
+
+"Last night was wonderful," she murmured.
+
+He smiled sleepily.
+
+"I want to lie in your arms for just a minute. And then we'll get up,
+Erik."
+
+Her head sank against his shoulder and she remained with her eyes
+closed. He murmured her name. Over Rachel's face a curious light spread
+itself. She sat up and turned her eyes to him.
+
+"My dear one, my lover!"
+
+Dorn regarded her with a sudden confusion. Her eyes and voice were
+confusing. Women were strange. Her eyes were large, burning, devouring
+... "I will be a shrine to you always. Let me look at you. I have never
+looked at you...." Why was he remembering that? He felt himself grow
+frightened. Her eyes were saying something that must not be said. His
+arms reached out. Crush her to him. Hold her tightly. Sing his love to
+her....
+
+She had slipped from the bed and was standing on the floor, shaking her
+head at him. Her face seemed blank. Dorn sat up and blinked ludicrously.
+She had jumped out of his arms. He laughed. Coquetting. But her eyes had
+been strange....
+
+"Listen, Erik, do you mind if I spend the morning alone? I have some
+letters to write and things. Then I'll meet you on the beach and we'll
+go swimming and lie on the sand together. Will you?"
+
+He nodded cheerfully and swung himself out of bed. His calm had
+returned. The memories of the curiously abandoned, shameless Rachel of
+the night lingered for a moment questioningly and then left him.
+
+They ate breakfast together and Dorn strode off alone. He felt surprised
+at himself. He had forgotten all about his trip to Europe.
+
+"The sun and the rest here are doing me good," he thought. "I'm getting
+normal. But a little stupidity won't hurt."
+
+The morning slipped away and he returned to the beach from a walk
+through the village. It was early afternoon and the sands were deserted.
+The sea lay like a great Easter egg under the hot sun, a vast and
+inanimate daub of glittering blue, green, and gold. He seated himself on
+the burning sand and stared at it. Years could pass this way and he
+could sit dreaming lifeless words, the sea like a painted beetle's back,
+the sea like a shell of water resting on a stenciled horizon. A wind was
+dying among the clouds. It had blown them into large shapeless virgins.
+Puffy white solitudes over his head. He looked down and saw Rachel
+coming toward him. She was carrying a woolen blanket over her arms.
+
+She approached and appeared excited. Her face flushed.
+
+"Shall we go in?"
+
+He nodded. Her voice disturbed him. He would have preferred her calm,
+gentle. Particularly after last night. She unloosened her clothes
+quickly and hurried nude toward the water. Dorn, after an uneasy survey
+of the empty beach, watched her. In the glare of the sun and sand her
+body seemed insistently unfamiliar. He would have preferred her
+familiar. He joined her and they pushed into the water together. Her
+excited manner depressed him.
+
+"Let's swim," he called.
+
+A blue, singing moment under the water and they were up, swimming slowly
+into the unbroken sheet of the sea. Rachel came nearer to him, the water
+sparkling from her moving arms.
+
+"Do you like it, Erik?"
+
+He laughed in answer. Her head was turned toward him and he could see
+her dark eyes smiling against the water.
+
+"Wouldn't it be nice," she said softly, "to swim out together like
+lovers in a poem? Out and out! And never come back!"
+
+Her voice, slipping across the water, became unfamiliar. They continued
+moving.
+
+"Yes," he answered at length, smiling back at her. "It would be easy.
+And I'm willing."
+
+They swam in silence. He began to wonder. Were they going out and out
+and never coming back? Perhaps they were doing that. One might become
+involved in a suicide like that. He closed his eyes and his head moved
+through the coldness of the water. What matter? What was there to come
+back to? All hours were the same. He might wait until a thousand more
+had dragged themselves to an ending. Or swim out and out. When he grew
+tired he would kiss her and say, "It is easier to make our own endings
+than to wait for them." The sun would be shining and her eyes would sing
+to him for an instant over the water.
+
+"We'd better turn now, Erik."
+
+"No," he smiled. "We're lovers in a poem."
+
+She came nearer.
+
+"Come, we must go back, Erik."
+
+"No."
+
+He answered firmly. It pleased him to say "no." He felt a superiority.
+He could say "no" and then she would plead with him and perhaps finally
+persuade him.
+
+"Not now, Erik. Some other time, maybe...."
+
+"But it would be a proper ending," he argued. "What else is there? You
+are unhappy. And perhaps I am too. Come, it will be easy."
+
+For a moment a fright came into him. She was not pleading. She was
+silent and looking at him as they drifted. What if she should remain
+silent? "I don't want to die," he thought, "but does it matter?" He
+wondered at himself. He had spoken of dying. Sincerely? No. But if she
+remained silent they would keep swimming until there was nothing left to
+do but die. Then he was sincere? No. He would drown as a sort of casual
+argument. Good God! Her silence was asking his life. What matter? He
+cared neither to live nor to die. He looked at her with an amused smile
+in his eyes. His heart had begun to beat violently.
+
+A sudden relief. She had turned and was swimming toward the shore. He
+hesitated. Absurd to turn back too hurriedly. He waited till she looked
+behind her to see if he were coming. Her looking back was a vindication.
+She had believed then that he might go on, out and out.... He could
+follow her to the shore now....
+
+The swim had exhausted them. Rachel threw herself on the sand, Dorn
+covering her with the blanket. They lay together, the whiteness and the
+blaze of the sky tearing at their eyes. Her hair had spread itself like
+a black fan under her head.
+
+The oven heat of the day dried the burn of the sun into a chalked and
+hammering glare--an unremitting roar of light that seemed to beat the
+world into a metallic sleep. The sea had stiffened itself into a dead
+flame. Molten, staring sweeps of color burst upon their eyes with a
+massive intimacy. The etched horizon, the stagnant gleaming arch of the
+water, and the acetylene burn of the sand gave the scene the appearance
+of a monstrous lithograph.
+
+The figures of the lovers lay without life. Rachel had turned her head
+from the glare. Through veiling fingers Dorn remained staring at the
+veneer of isolation about them. Waves of heat crept like ghost fires
+across the nakedness of the scene. He thought of the sun as a pilgrim
+walking over the barren floor of an empty cathedral. Over him the
+motionless smoke-bellied clouds hung gleaming in the dead fanfare of the
+sky. He thought of them as swollen white blooms stamped upon a board. As
+the moments slipped, he became conscious that Rachel was talking. Her
+voice made a tiny noise in the grave torpitude of the day.
+
+"It's like listening to singing, Erik. What are you thinking of?"
+
+"Nothing. I like the way the heat tightens my skin and pinches."
+
+"Do you remember," she asked softly, "once you said beauty is an
+external emotion?"
+
+He answered drowsily, "Did I? I'm tired, dearest. Let's nap awhile."
+
+"No. I want to hear you talk just a little."
+
+He pressed his face into his arm, drawing his clothes carelessly over
+him for protection.
+
+"I can't think of anything to say, Rachel, except that I'm content. The
+sun brings a luxurious pain into one's blood...."
+
+"Yes, a luxurious pain," she repeated quietly. "Please let's talk."
+
+"Too damn hot."
+
+"I always expect you to say things. As if you knew things I didn't,
+Erik. I've always thought of you as knowing everything."
+
+"Ordinarily I do," he mumbled.
+
+"Wonderful Erik...."
+
+Flattery was annoying. There were times for being wonderful and times
+for grunting at the sand.
+
+"My vocabulary," he mumbled again, "has curled up its toes and gone to
+sleep."
+
+His eyes grew heavy.
+
+Drowsily, "I'm an old man and need my sleep."
+
+He felt Rachel's hand reaching gently for his head.
+
+A cool gloom squatted on the sand about him when he opened his eyes. The
+scene was a stranger. The sea and sand, dark strangers. His body felt
+stiffened and his skin hurt. He sat up and stared about with parched
+eyes.
+
+The sun had gone down. A hollow light lingered in the sky, an echo of
+light. He turned toward the blanket beside him. Rachel was gone. She had
+left the blanket in a little heap, unfolded. Why hadn't she wakened him?
+She must be on the beach somewhere, waiting.
+
+In the distance he saw the shapeless figures of the fishermen moving
+from their grounded boats. Staring about at the deserted scene he felt
+unaccountably sad. It would have been pleasant to have wakened and found
+Rachel sitting beside him.
+
+A sheet of paper was pinned on the blanket. He noticed it as he slipped
+painfully into his shirt. He continued to dress himself, his eyes
+regarding the bit of paper. His heart had grown heavy at the sight of
+it.
+
+When he was dressed he folded the blanket carefully and removed the
+note. A pallor in his thought. Something had happened. He had fallen
+asleep under a glaring sun. Rachel stretched beside him. Now the glare
+of the sun was gone and the sea and the sand were vaguely unreal, dark,
+and unfriendly. The little blanket was empty.
+
+He sat wondering why he didn't read the note. But he was reading it. He
+knew what it said. It said Rachel had gone and would never come back. A
+very tragic business.... "You do not love me any more as you did. You
+have changed. And if I stayed it would mean that in a little while
+longer you would forget all about me. Now perhaps you will remember."
+
+Quite true. He had taught her such paradoxes. He would remember. That
+was logical ... "to remember how you loved me makes it impossible to
+remain with you. Oh, I die when I look at you and see nothing in your
+eyes. It is too much pain. I am going away.... Dearest, I have known for
+a long time."
+
+His eyes skipped part of the words. Unimportant words. Why read any
+further? The thing was over, ended. Rachel gone. More words on the other
+side of the paper. His eyes skimmed ... "you have been God to me. I am
+not afraid. Oh, I am strong. Good-bye."
+
+Still more words. A postscript. Women always wrote postscripts--the
+gesture of femininity immortalized by Lot's wife. Never mind the
+postscript. Tear the paper into bits. It offended his fingers. Walk over
+to the water's edge and scatter it on the sea.
+
+He had lain too long in the sun. Probably burn like hell to-night. "Here
+goes Rachel into the sea." Soft music and a falling curtain.
+
+He read from one of the scraps.... "Erik, you will be grateful
+later...." Let the sea take that. And the "good-bye, my dear one...." A
+patch of white on the darkened water, too tiny to follow. Would she be
+waiting when he came back to the room? No, the room would be empty. A
+comb and brush and tray of hairpins would be missing from the
+dressing-table.
+
+A smile played over Dorn's face. His movements had grown abstract as if
+he were intensely preoccupied with his thoughts. Yet there were no
+thoughts. He walked for moments lazily along the water's edge kicking at
+the sand, his eyes following the last of the paper bits still afloat.
+They vanished and he sighed with relief.... "It's all a make-believe.
+The sea, Rachel, the war. Things don't mean anything. Last night there
+was someone to kiss. To-night, no one. But where's the difference.
+Nothing ... nothing.... Will I cave in or keep on smiling? Probably cave
+in. One must be polite to one's emotions. The sea says she's gone," his
+thought rambled, "dark empty waters say she's gone. Rachel's gone. Well,
+what of it? Like losing a hat. Does anything matter much? An ending.
+Leave the theater. Draw a new breath. Remember vaguely what the actors
+said or what they should have said. All the same. What was in the
+postscript? Not fair to throw it away without reading it. Should have
+read carefully. Took her hours to pick the right words. Night ... night.
+It'll be night soon."
+
+His words left him and he walked faster. He began to run. She would be
+waiting in their room. On the bed ... crying ... "I couldn't leave you,
+Erik. Oh, I couldn't." And later they would laugh about it.
+
+Mama Turpin was on the porch. He slowed his run. To rush breathless past
+the old woman would make a bad impression, if nothing had happened.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Dorn."
+
+Of course she was upstairs. Or would Mama Turpin say good-evening?
+
+"Hello," he called back casually, and walked on, his legs jumping ahead
+of him.
+
+The room was empty. More than empty, for the comb and brush and tray of
+hairpins were missing. His eyes had swept the dressing-table as he came
+in. They were gone.
+
+There would be another note. Why didn't she leave it some place where he
+could find it at a glance, instead of making him hunt around? Hunt
+around. Under the bed. On the chairs. No note. Good God, she was insane!
+Going away--why should she go away?... "we'll have a long talk about it
+and straighten it out, of course, but ..." The insanity of the thing
+remained. Gone!
+
+He stopped and felt his head aching. The sun ... "you won't find me if
+you look for me. Please don't try. One good-bye is easier and better
+than two. Erik, Erik, something has died for always...."
+
+Then he had read it. That had been in the postscript. He had given it a
+glance, not intending to follow the words. Unimportant words.
+
+"Died for always," he mumbled suddenly.
+
+... His head pressed against the pillow in the dark room, he began to
+weep. The odor of her hair was still in the pillow. Yes, the dream had
+died. And she had run from its corpse, leaving behind the faint odor of
+her hair on a pillow. How, died? Better to have her gone.... Tears
+burned in his eyes. He repeated aloud, "better...."
+
+An agony was twisting itself about his heart. His face moved as if he
+were in pain. With his fists he began to beat the bed. It had gone away.
+It had come and smiled at him for a moment, lifted him for a moment, and
+then gone away as if it had never been. But it would come back. He
+would weep and pound on the bed with his fists and bring it back. The
+face of stars, eyes burning, devouring, eyes kindling his soul into
+ecstasies.
+
+"Rachel!" he cried aloud.
+
+Silence. His tears had ended. He lay motionless on the bed, his body
+suddenly weak, his thought tired. Someone had shouted a name in his
+ears. A dead man had shouted the name of Rachel. It was the cry of an
+Erik Dorn who was dead. He'd heard it in the dark room. An old, already
+forgotten Erik Dorn who had laughed in a halloo of storms, heels up,
+head down. Madness and a dream. Wings and a face of stars. They had
+vanished with an old and almost forgotten Erik Dorn who had called their
+name out of a grave. So things whirled away.
+
+He arose and stood looking out of the window. Night had come ... "dark
+rendezvous of sorrows. Silent Madonna of the spaces...." He whispered to
+see if there were still phrases in him. His lips smiled against the
+window. Phrases ... words ... and the rest was a make-believe once more.
+A pattern precise and meaningless. His little flight over. Now it was
+time to walk again.
+
+Anna had stood one night staring at him. He remembered. Oh, yes, he'd
+run away quickly for fear he might hear her shriek. And then, Rachel.
+But these things were passed. It was time to walk. Did he still love
+her? Yes. It would have been easier to walk with her--calmly, placidly,
+their hands sometimes touching. Forgetting other days and other kisses
+together. But he would not lie to himself. An end to that now. Love made
+a liar of a man. At the beginning and at the end--lies. The ache now was
+one of memory, not of loss. The pain was one of death. Dead things hurt
+inside him. Afterward his heart would carry them about unknowingly. The
+dead things would end their hurt. But now, leaden heavy, they kept
+slipping deeper into him as if seeking graves that did not yet exist.
+
+Standing before the window, Dorn's smile grew cold.
+
+"A make-believe," he whispered, "but not quite the same as it was
+before. A loneliness and an emptiness. Ruins in which once there was
+feasting. And now, nothing ... nothing...."
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Long days. Short days. Outside the window was an ant-hill street. And an
+ant-hill of days. In the stores they were already selling calendars for
+the next year. Outside the window was a flat roof. By looking at the
+flat roof you remembered that Mary James was married. Unexpectedly. You
+came out of the ant-hill street, climbed the stairs, and sat down and
+looked at the flat roof. Long days, short days turned themselves over on
+the flat roof, and turned themselves over in your heart.
+
+Occasionally an event. Events were things that differed from putting on
+your shoes or buying butter in the grocery store. There was an event
+now. It challenged the importance of the flat roof. Hazlitt was sitting
+in the room and talking. Rachel listened.
+
+An eloquent event. But words jumbled into sound. Loud sounds. Soft
+sounds. They made her sleepy, as rain pattering on a window made her
+sleepy, or snow sinking out of the sky. There were sleepy words in her
+mind that had nothing to do with the event. Then the event came and
+mingled itself, mixed itself into the words ... "no sorrow. No remorse.
+The dead are dead. Oh, most extremely dead! So I'll sit by my sad
+little window and listen to this unbearable creature make love. The
+idiot'll go 'way in an hour and I'll be able to draw. Funny, my thoughts
+keep moving on, despite everything. Like John Brown's soul, or
+something. Words get to be separate, like the snickers of dead people.
+You think as one adds figures. Thoughts add, and draw pictures the same
+way. A line here. A line there. And you have a face. Curve a line up and
+the face laughs. Curve it down and the face weeps. You lie dead. Always
+dead. You lie dead in the street. The day tears your heart out. The
+night tears your eyes out. And when somebody passes, even a banana
+peddler, your eyes jump back, your heart jumps back, and you look up and
+snicker and say, 'It's all right. I'm just lying here for fun. I'm dead
+for fun.... He still loves me. I must answer him.'"
+
+She spoke aloud:
+
+"No, George, I hear you. But I don't love you. I can't say it more
+plainly, can I?"
+
+Her thoughts resumed. "Dear me. He talks almost as well as Erik. Lord,
+he thinks I'm a virgin. His pure and unfaltering star. Well, well! Why
+am I amused? Is life amusing, after all? Am I really happy? Alas! my
+heart is broken. I must not forget my heart is broken. You forget
+sometimes and begin snickering and somebody rings the bell and hands you
+a telegram reading, 'Your heart is broken.' Rachel of the broken heart!
+It was all very beautiful. This talk of his somehow brings it back ...
+Oh, God. That was a line curved down. What eloquence! There, now, I must
+speak. I'll have to tell him again."
+
+Aloud she went on, "You're mistaken in me, George."
+
+A flurry of silent words halted her.... "Ye gods, what a speech; she is
+not all his fancy painted him. Indeed! Not mistaken. His heart tells
+him. Poor boy! Poor little clowns who pay attention to what their hearts
+say! I mustn't be rude."
+
+She interrupted him, "If you'll listen to me, George ..."
+
+Then, "What'll I say? If only he inspired something by his eloquence--a
+phrase, at least. But my heart snickers at him. Ah! the dead are
+wonderfully dead. I'll tell him I'm not a virgin. That'll be surprising
+news. But how? Like a medical report? The woman was found not to be a
+virgin. The thing seems to hinge on that. Why in God's name does he keep
+virgining?"
+
+"No, George," she answered aloud, "I'm sorry. I don't believe in
+love...." Listen to her! "You see, I've been in love myself. Indeed I
+have. That's why you find me changed."
+
+He protested and her words followed silently. "My laughing makes him
+angry. But I must laugh. Love is something to laugh over, isn't it? Oh,
+God, why doesn't he go 'way?" The flat roof vanished. There was a rising
+event in the room and the flat roof bowed good-bye and walked away.
+
+"Yes, I was in love for quite a while with a man," she answered him.
+"And I'm in love with him yet--in a way. But we've parted. He had to go
+to Europe." Nevertheless he still thought she was a virgin. He'd started
+another virgining speech. There would have to be a medical report. "We
+lived together for over a year. We weren't married, of course, because
+he had a wife. You see, you're terribly mistaken." He must be impressed
+by her calm. "Because what I really am is a vampire. I lured a man from
+his wife, lived with him, and cast him aside."
+
+The event jumped to its feet. No room to talk for a moment, so her
+thought resumed, "I'm lying. He thinks I'm lying. I should have
+confessed in tears. With a few 'Oh, Gods.' Amusing! Amusing! That was
+Erik's favorite word. I'm beginning to understand it now. But there's
+nothing to be amused about ... in itself an amusing circumstance ... but
+you look at the banana peddler and snicker. Will he hit me? Oh, very
+red-faced. Speechless. I'd better talk. If he hit me.... He'll start in
+a minute...."
+
+"Yes, you know him, George," she cried suddenly. "And if you doubt me
+you can ask a lot of people. Ask Tesla or Mary James or Brander or New
+York." She'd make him believe. God, what an idiot! She'd claw his eyes
+out with words. Throw roofs on him. But it was a good thing Erik was in
+Europe, or he'd be killed.
+
+"Yes. I've told you in order to get rid of you. I'd rather be rid of
+you than keep my good name in your estimation. So now, run along and do
+your yelling outside. I'm sick of you."
+
+She paused on a high gesture.... "He's going to hit me. Strike a woman.
+War has brutalized him. Dear me!" But he asked a question ominously and
+she answered,
+
+"Erik Dorn. Yes. Erik Dorn."
+
+This made it worse. It was bad enough without a name. But a name made it
+realler. And very ominous. She moved toward a chair.
+
+"I'll sit still and then he won't hit me. If I'm calm, serene like a nun
+facing the wrath of God. This is melodrama. He can squeeze my shoulders
+all he wants. What good will it do him? If I giggled now he'd kill me.
+Sorry? Oh, so I must be sorry. Because I've offended him. Dear God, what
+a mess!"
+
+She twisted out of his grasp and cried.
+
+"No, I'm not sorry. You fool! I'm glad I was his woman. I'll always be
+glad, as long as I live. Leave me alone. You're a fool. I've always
+thought of you as a fool. You make me want to laugh now. You're a clown.
+I'll give myself to men. But not to you. I gave myself to Erik Dorn
+because I love him. If he wants me again I'll come to him not as a
+lover, because he doesn't love me any more--but as a prostitute. Now do
+you know me? Well, I want you to. So you'll go way and never bother me
+again...."
+
+That was a good speech. She stood dramatically silent as hands seized
+her shoulder again. "He hurts me. Why this? Oh, my shoulder! Does he
+want to? Oh, God, this is me! He'll let me go in a minute if I don't
+move. Very still. Silent ... I don't want him to cry. Can't he see it's
+amusing? If he'd only look at me and wink, I'd kiss him. No, he's a
+fool. I'll not say anything more. Let him cry! His life is ruined. Dear
+me, I have ruined his life. His love. I was his dream. Through the war
+... rose of no-man's land. Amusing, amusing! He looks different.
+Contempt. He has contempt for me. And horror. Oh, get out, get out, you
+fool! You sniveling nincompoop, get out! I want to draw pictures, and
+forget. Console him ... for what? I don't know, I don't know. He's
+going. Thank God! Oh, I don't know anything. Poor man, he should know
+better than to have dreams. Dreams are for devils, not for men or women.
+Dreams ... dreams ... I don't know ... I'll draw a picture. But I don't
+want to. He'll never come back. I'm sad again. The flat roof says
+something. Is it Erik? Dear Erik! Poor Erik! I love you. But I'll begin
+crying. Pretty tears, amusing tears. Erik mine, dead for always. But
+it's not as bad as it was. Another month, year, ten years. Oh, it chokes
+me. I can't help it. Your eyes are the beckoning hands of dream. Whose
+eyes? Mine ... mine.... Mine ... I know. I know. I must keep on dying,
+keep on dying. But I'm not afraid. Look, I can laugh! Amusing that I
+can laugh ... Oh, God ... God...."
+
+Beside her window looking out on the ant-hill street Rachel covered her
+face with her hands. When she removed them she caught a glimpse of the
+figure of Hazlitt walking as if it were a blind man in zig-zags down the
+pavement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The thing that had been buried in Emil Tesla and that used to rumble
+under his fawning words, had come to life one day with two men twisting
+his wrists and hammering at his uncovered face. He had laughed.
+
+The two men came into his office to seize him. When he started to
+protest they walked up to him slowly as if to shake hands. Instead, they
+began beating him. For a moment he wondered why the two men hated him so
+violently. He stood looking into their faces and thinking, "They're like
+me."
+
+The visitors, however, saw no resemblance. They twisted his arm till it
+broke. Then they kept on battering at him with their fists till he fell
+to the floor. While he lay on the floor they kicked him, and his muscles
+grew paralyzed.
+
+He never remembered the walk downstairs. But in the open he saw a crowd
+of faces drifting excitedly beneath him. This was a scene he remembered
+later.
+
+It was while looking at the faces that he had grown strong. He laughed
+because it occurred to him at the moment he was unconquerable. Later, in
+prison, he often thought, "I have only my life to lose. I'm not afraid
+of that. When they hit me they were hitting at an idea. But they could
+only hit me. They couldn't touch the idea. I'll remember when I come
+out--they can only hit me. If they end by shooting me they'll not touch
+the idea even then. That's something beyond their fists and guns. I'll
+remember I'm only a shadow."
+
+A year passed and Tesla came out. He returned to the office of _The
+Cry_. His friends noticed a change. He had grown quiet. He no longer
+bubbled with words. His eyes looked straight at people who spoke to him.
+His manner whispered, "I'm nothing--a shadow thrown by an idea. I don't
+argue, and I'm not afraid. I'm part of masses of people all over the
+world and cannot be destroyed."
+
+The new Tesla became a leader. Among the radicals whose intellects were
+groping noisily with the idea of a new justice he often inspired a fear.
+His smile disquieted them and their arguments. His smile said, "Here,
+what's the use of arguing? There is no argument. It isn't words we must
+give the revolution, but lives. I'm ready. Here's mine."
+
+When he looked at men and women who vociferated in the councils of
+radical pamphleteers, workers, organizers, theorists, new party
+politicians, Tesla thought, "That one's afraid. He's only a logician.
+His mind has led him into revolution. If he changed his mind he would
+become a conservative.... There's one that isn't afraid. He's like me.
+His mind helps him. But no matter what his mind told him he would
+always be in the revolution. Something in him drives him...."
+
+For the rabble of artists and near-artists drifting by the scores into
+radical centers, Tesla held a respectful dislike.
+
+"He's in revolt because he must find something different than other
+people," he thought of most of them. "The revolution to him means only
+himself. It's something he can use to make himself felt more by people.
+And also he's a revolutionist because of the contrariness in him that
+artists usually have. Especially artists who, when they can't create new
+things, make themselves think they're creating new things by destroying
+old things."
+
+Of himself Tesla thought, "I'll fight and not mind if I'm killed.
+Because people will still be left alive, and so the idea of which I'm a
+part will continue to live."
+
+In the days before his going to prison Tesla had felt the need of
+writing and talking his revolution. This was because of an impatience
+and intolerance toward the enemy. Now that was gone. The enemy had
+become a blatant, trivial thing. The things it said and did were
+unimportant. He read with amusement the rabid denunciations of the
+radicals in the press of the day. The grotesque hate hymns against the
+new Russia, the garbled shriekings and pompous anathemas that fell
+hourly upon the heads of all suspects, inspired no argument in him.
+
+Tesla's days were busy with organization. He had almost ceased his
+activities as pamphleteer, although still editor of _The Cry_. With a
+group of men, silent as himself, he worked at the radicalization of the
+factories and labor unions. Each day men left Tesla to seek employment
+in shops throughout the country, in mines and mills. Their duties were
+simple. Tesla measured them carefully before sending them on.... This
+one could be relied upon to work intelligently, to talk to workingmen at
+their benches and during noon hours without antagonizing, or, worse,
+frightening them. Another was dubious. His eyes were too bright. He
+would be discovered and arrested by the company. But he might do some
+good. The arrest of a radical always did some good to the cause. Where
+would Christianity have been without the incompetent agitators who
+blundered into the clutches of the Roman law and the amphitheater?
+
+Aloud he would say, "Work carefully. Remember that the revolution is for
+all; that the workers, no matter what they say to you, are comrades.
+Remember that strikes are better than fights. The time hasn't come yet
+for fighting. What we must do is put into the hearts of the workers the
+knowledge that there is nothing in common between them and their bosses.
+The workers are the producers. They work and make no money. The bosses
+are the exploiters. They don't work and make all the money. If you get
+the workers to thinking this they'll want more money themselves and
+declare strikes. By strikes we can paralyze industry and give the
+workers consciousness of their power. This is only a step; but the first
+and most important step. Make strikes. Make dissatisfaction. But don't
+argue about fighting and revolution."
+
+Over and over Tesla repeated his instructions through the days. He spoke
+simply. Men listened to him and nodded without questioning. They saw
+that his eyes were unafraid and that if he was sending them upon
+dangerous missions, he would some day reserve a greater mission for
+himself. Tesla had become a leader since he had laughed on the step
+overlooking the pack of faces.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+At his desk in _The Cry_ office Tesla was preparing the April issue of
+the magazine for the printer. It was night. A garrulous political poet
+named Myers was revising proofs at a smaller desk. Brander and a tall,
+thin woman stood talking quietly to each other in a gloomy corner of the
+office. Rachel, who had returned to the place after a hurried supper
+with Tesla, waited listlessly. He had promised to finish up in a
+half-hour, but there was more work than he had figured.
+
+"We're reprinting a part of the article on the White Terror in Germany
+that Erik Dorn has in the _New Opinion_," Tesla said. Rachel nodded her
+head. Later Tesla asked her, "This Dorn, what is he? His writing is
+amusing, sometimes violent, but always empty. He doesn't like life much,
+eh?"
+
+"I don't know," said Rachel.
+
+"Yes," Tesla smiled. "He hates us all--reds and whites, radicals and
+bourgeoisie. Yet he can write in a big way. But he isn't a big man. He
+has no faith. I remember him once in Chicago. He hasn't changed."
+
+Rachel's eyes remained steadily upon the socialist as he cleared his
+desk. He stood up finally and came to where she was sitting.
+
+"It's necessary to have something besides self," he said softly. "I was
+born in a room that smelled bad. Perhaps that's why the world smells bad
+to me now. I still live there. It's good to live where there are smells.
+Our radicals sit too much in hotel lobbies that other people keep clean
+for them."
+
+Brander thrust his large figure between them, the tall, thin woman
+moving vaguely about the room.
+
+"Sometimes I think you're a fake, Emil," he said. "You're too good to be
+true."
+
+He grinned at Rachel.
+
+"By the way," he went on, looking at her, "I brought something to show
+you." His hands dug a paper out of his coat pocket. "You see, I've
+preserved our correspondence."
+
+He held out a letter. Rachel's eyes darkened.
+
+"Oh, there's no hurry," Brander laughed. "So long as you keep the
+application on file, you know."
+
+Tesla, listening blankly, interrupted:
+
+"It's late. We should go home. I'll go home with you, Rachel, and talk."
+
+The thin woman, watching Brander anxiously, approached and seized his
+arm.
+
+"All right," the artist whispered. "We'll go now."
+
+Rachel felt a relief as Brander passed out of the door with the woman.
+
+"He disturbs you," Tesla commented. She nodded her head. Words seemed
+to have abandoned her. There was almost a necessity for silence. They
+walked out, leaving Myers still at his desk.
+
+In the deserted streets Rachel walked beside Tesla. She felt tired.
+"He's never tired," she thought, her eyes glancing at the stocky figure.
+He wasn't talking as he said he would.
+
+The night felt sad and cold. A dead March night. If not for Emil, what?
+"Perhaps I'll kill myself. There's nothing now. I'm always alone. No
+to-morrows."
+
+In the evenings she came to the office to meet Emil for supper because
+there was nothing else to do. Emil seemed like an old man, always
+preoccupied, his eyes always burning with preoccupations. After supper
+he usually walked home with her, talking to her of poor people. There
+seemed no hatred in him, no argument. Poor people in broken houses.
+Christ came and gave them a God. Now the revolution would come with
+flaming embittered eyes but wearing a gentle smile for the poor people
+in broken houses, and give them rest and happiness.
+
+But to-night he was silent. When they had walked several blocks he began
+to talk without looking at her.
+
+"Come with me," he asked. "I live alone in a little house. We can be
+happy there. You have nobody."
+
+Rachel repeated "Nobody."
+
+She looked at him but his eyes avoided her.
+
+"My mother died long ago," he went on. "She was an old woman. She used
+to live in this house where I live. We were always poor. I had brothers
+and sisters. They've all gone somewhere. Things happened to them. I have
+only my work now. Nobody else. But I'm alone too much. Since we have
+seen each other I have been thinking of you. Brander has told me
+something but that doesn't matter. I would like to marry you."
+
+He paused and seemed to grow bewildered.
+
+"Excuse me," he mumbled. Rachel took his hand and held it as they
+walked. Tears in her whispered "Nobody ... nobody." The homely face of
+Tesla was looking at her and saying something with its silence: "I am
+not for you as Erik was. But that is gone. Dead for always...."
+
+He was kind. It would be easy to live with him. But not married. A chill
+drifted through her. It didn't matter what she did. Life had ended one
+afternoon months ago. She remembered the sun shining on the sand, the
+burning sea, and Erik asleep. The memory said "I am the last picture of
+life."
+
+It would be easy with Tesla. He loved elsewhere ... a wild gentle
+thing--people. Poor people in broken houses. He would give her only
+kindness and companionship. And if he would let her cry to-night and
+make believe she was a child crying....
+
+They had taken a different direction. This was the neighborhood where
+Tesla lived. Rachel looked about her in fear. She remembered the
+district. Now she was coming to live here in these streets where people
+begin to give forth an odor.
+
+As she walked beside Tesla his silence became dark like the scene
+itself. She had always thought of him as somewhat strange. Now she
+understood why he had seemed strange to her. Because he carried an
+underworld in his heart. In his nose there was always the odor of the
+streets from which he had sprung, and in his mind there was always the
+picture of them. Other things did not fool him.
+
+"Is it far?" she asked.
+
+He looked at her, smiling.
+
+"No," he said. "Do you want to go?"
+
+She pressed his hand. It would be better. But her heart hurt. That was
+foolish. Emil was somebody different. Not like a man, but an old man--or
+an old background. There would be things to think about--Revolution.
+Before, revolution was people arguing and being dragged to jail.
+Sometimes people fighting. But it was something else--a thing hidden and
+spreading--and here in the dark street about them where Emil lived.
+
+Emil seemed to vanish into a background. She walked and thought of the
+streets in which Emil lived. Here in the daytime the rows of sagging
+little houses were like teeth in an old man's mouth. From them arose
+exhalations of stagnant wood, decaying stairways; of bodies from which
+the sweats of lust and work were never washed. Soft bubbling alleys
+under a stiff sun. The stench like a grime leadened the air. Something
+to think about in places like this. Revolution crawling up and down soft
+alleys ... something in the mud waiting to be hatched.
+
+In this street lived men and women whose hungers were not complicated by
+trifles. In this way they were, as they moved thick-faced and unsmiling,
+different from the people who lived in other streets and who had
+civilized their odors and made ethics of their hungers. The people who
+lived here walked as if they were being pushed in and out of the sagging
+houses. Shrieking children appeared during the daytime and sprawled
+about. They rolled over one another, their faces contorted with a
+miniature senility. They urinated in gutters, threw stones at one
+another in the soft alleys, ran after each other, cursing and gesturing
+with idiot violence. They brought an awkward fever into the street.
+Oblivious of them and the debris about them, barrel-shaped women
+strutted behind their protuberant bellies, great flapping shoes over the
+pavements. They moved as if unaccustomed to walking in streets.
+
+When it grew dark the men coming home from the factories began to crowd
+the street. They walked in silence, a broken string of shuffling figures
+like letters against the red of the sky. Their knees bent, their jaws
+shoved forward, their heads wagged from side to side. They vanished
+into the sagging houses, and the night came ... an unwavering gloom
+picked with little yellow glows from windows. The houses lay like
+bundles of carefully piled rags in the darkness. The shrieking of the
+children died, and with it the pale fever of the day passed out of the
+air. There were left only the odors.
+
+There were odors now, coming to them as they walked. Invisible banners
+of decay floating upon the night. Stench of fat kitchens, of soft
+bubbling alleys, of gleaming refuse. Indefinable evaporations from the
+dark bundles of houses wherein people had packed themselves away. They
+came like a rust into her nose.
+
+She was moving into a new world. Drunken men appeared and lurched into
+the darkness with cursings and mutterings. Sometimes they sang. The
+smoke of the factory chimneys was now invisible, but the chimneys, like
+rows of minarets, made darker streaks in the gloom. And in the distance
+blast furnaces gutted the night with pink and orange flares. Figures of
+girls not yet shaped like barrels came into the street and stood for
+long moments in the shadows. Rachel watched them as she passed. They
+moved away into the depths of the soft alleys and vanished. It was late
+night. The exhalations of alleys and houses increased as if some great
+disintegration was stewing in the night. A new world....
+
+Rachel's fingers reached for Tesla's hand. She felt surprised. There was
+no thought of Erik. This about her was a world untouched by the shadow
+Erik had left behind. So she could live here easily. And Emil was not a
+man like Erik. Erik, who stood alone, stark, untouched by life. Emil was
+a background. It would be easy. Her fingers, tightly laced in his, grew
+cold. Erik would come back. "Come back," murmured her thought. "Oh, if
+he should come back! No, I mustn't fool myself. It's over. And I can
+either live or die. I'll live a little while. Why? Because I still love
+him. Erik mine!"
+
+But it didn't sadden her to walk up the dark steps of Tesla's house.
+"Erik, good-bye!" Not even that mattered. Erik was gone. That was all
+something else. Not gone. Oh, God, no! Only Erik had died. She still
+lived with a dead name in her heart. But here were odors--strange
+people.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+It was barely furnished but clean inside. Later Rachel sat, her head in
+Tesla's arms, and wept. She was not sad. Her thought faltered, reaching
+for words, but drifting away. This is what had become of her--nothing
+else but this.
+
+Tesla looked quietly at her and kept murmuring, "Little girl, the world
+is big. There are other things than self. Must you cry? Cry, then. I
+know what sadness is."
+
+His hands moved gently through her loosened hair and he smiled
+sorrowfully.
+
+"Dear child," he whispered, "you can always cry in my arms and I will
+understand. It is the way the world sometimes cries in my heart. I
+understand.... Yes ... yes...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+A kaleidoscope of cities. A new garrulity. Words like busy little brooms
+sweeping up after a war. A world of foreigners. Europe was running about
+with empty pockets and a cracked head. England had had a nose-bleed,
+France a temporary castration, and the president of the United States
+was walking around in Paris in an immaculate frock-coat and a high silk
+hat. The President was closeted in a peace conference mumbling
+valorously amid lifted eyebrows, amused shoulder shruggings, ironic
+sighings. A long-faced virgin trapped in a bawdy house and calling in
+valiant tones for a glass of lemonade.
+
+Erik Dorn drifted through a haze of weeks. This was London. This, Paris.
+This, Rotterdam. And this, after a long, cold ride standing up in a
+windowless coach, Berlin. But all curiously alike. People in all of them
+who said, "We are strangers to you."
+
+There was nothing to see. No impressions to receive. More cities, more
+people, more words and a detachment. The detachment was Europe. In his
+own country there was no detachment. He was a part of crowds,
+newspapers, buildings. Here he was outside. Familiar things looked
+strange. The eyes busied themselves trying to forget things before
+them, scurrying after details and worried by an unrelation in
+architecture, faces, gestures.
+
+It was mid-December when he sat in a hotel room in Berlin one night and
+ate blue-colored fish, boiled potatoes, and black, soggy bread. He had
+been wandering for days through snow-covered streets. Now there was
+shooting in the streets.
+
+"Germany is starving," said an acquaintance. "Our children are dying off
+by the thousands, thanks to the inhuman blockade."
+
+But despite even the shooting in the streets Dorn noticed the Germans
+had lost interest in the war. The idea of the war had collapsed. In
+England and France the idea was still vaguely alive. People kept it
+alive by discussing it. But even there it had become something
+unnatural.
+
+One thing there was in common. Only a few people seemed to have been
+killed. London was jammed. Even though the newspapers summed it up now
+and then with "a generation has been killed." Paris, too, was jammed.
+And Berlin now, jammed also. The war had been fought by people who were
+dead. And the people who were alive were living away its memory.
+
+In Berlin a week, and he thought, "A circus has pulled down its tent,
+carted off its gaudy wagons, its naphtha lights, and its boxes of
+sawdust. And a new show is staking out the lot."
+
+The new show was coming to Berlin. Fences and building walls were
+plastered with its lithographs ... "The Spirit of Bolshevism Marches
+... Beware the Wrecker of Mankind...." Posters of gorillas chewing on
+bloody knives, of fiends with stringy hair setting the torch to
+orphanages and other nobly drawn edifices labeled "Kultur, Civilization,
+Humanitat...." The spielers were already on the job. Machine-guns barked
+in the snow-covered streets. A man named Noske was a _Bluthund_. A man
+named Liebknecht was a _Schweinhund_.
+
+In his hotel room Dorn, eating blue-colored fish, spoke to an
+acquaintance--an erudite young German who wore a monocle, whose eyes
+twinkled with an odd humor, and who under the influence of a bottle of
+Sekt was vociferating passionately in behalf of a thing he called _Welt_
+Revolution.
+
+"I don't understand it yet, von Stinnes," Dorn smiled. "I will later. So
+far I've managed to do nothing more than enjoy myself. Profundity is
+diverting in New York, but a bore in Berlin. There's too much of it.
+Good God, man, there are times when I feel that even the buildings of
+the city are wrapped in thought."
+
+Von Stinnes gestured with an almost English awkwardness. His English
+contained a slight French accent. His words, amused, careless, carried
+decision. He spoke knowingly, notwithstanding the Sekt and the smile
+with which he seemed to be belying his remarks. Thus, the Majority
+Socialists were traitors. Scheidemann had sold the revolution for a kiss
+from Graf Rantzau. The masses.... "Ah, m'sieur, they are arming. There
+will be an overthrow." And then, Ludendorff had framed the
+revolution--actually manufactured it. All the old officers were back.
+Noske was allowing them to reorganize the military. The thing was a
+farce. Social Democracy had failed. The country was already in flames.
+There would be things happening. "You wait and see. Yes, the
+Spartikusten will do something ..."
+
+Dorn nodded appreciatively. He felt instinctively that he had stumbled
+upon a man of value and service. But he listened carelessly. As yet the
+scene was more absorbing than its details. The local politik boiling
+beneath the collapse of the empire had not yet struck his imagination.
+There were large lines to look at first, and absorb.
+
+Snow in unfamiliar streets, night soldier patrols firing at shadows,
+eager-eyed women in the hotel lobbies, marines carousing in the Kaiser's
+Schloss--a nation in collapse. Teutonia on her rump, helmet tilted over
+an eye, hair down, comely and unmilitary legs thrust out, showing her
+drawers and laughing. Yes, the Germans were laughing. Where was there
+gayety like the Palais de Danse, the Fox Trot Klubs, Pauligs; gayety
+like the drunken soldiers patrolling Wilhelmstrasse where a paunchy
+harness-maker sat in Bismarck's chair?
+
+Gayety with a rumble and a darkness underneath. But such things were
+only wilder accents to laughter. If the detachment would leave him, if
+he could familiarize himself, he could lay hands on something; dance
+away in a macabre mardi-gras.
+
+Two bottles of Sekt had been emptied. A polite Ober responded with a
+third. Von Stinnes grew eloquent.
+
+"Not before March, Mr. Dorn. It will come only then. This that you hear
+now, pouf! Hungry men looking for crumbs with hand-grenades. The
+revolution is only picking its teeth. But wait. It will overturn, when
+it comes. And even if it does not overturn, if it fails, it will not
+end, but pause. You hear it whispering now in the streets. Hungry men
+with hand-grenades. Ah, m'sieur, if you wish we will work together. I am
+a man of many acquaintances. I am von Stinnes, Baron von Stinnes of a
+very old, a very dissolute, a very worthless family. I am the last von
+Stinnes. The dear God Himself glows at the thought. I will work for you
+as secretary. How much do you offer for a scion of the nobility?"
+
+"Three hundred marks."
+
+"A month?"
+
+"No, weekly," laughed Dorn, "and you buy half the liquor."
+
+Von Stinnes bowed.
+
+"An insult, Mr. Dorn. But I overlook it. One becomes adept in the matter
+of overlooking insults. You will need me. I am known everywhere. I was
+with Liebknecht in the Schloss when he slept in the Kaiser's bed. Ho! it
+was a symbol for you to see him crawl between the sheets. Alas! he
+slept but poorly, with the marines standing guard and frowning at the
+bed as if it were capable of something. For me, I would have preferred
+beds with more pleasant associations. And when Bode tried to be dictator
+in his father's chamber in the Reichstag--yes," von Stinnes closed his
+eyes and laughed softly, "he seized the Reichstag with a company of
+marines. And he sat for two days and two nights signing warrants,
+confiscation orders. Until a soldier brought him a document issued by
+Eichorn the mysterious policeman who was dictating from the Stadt House.
+And poor Bode signed it. He was sleepy. He could not read with sleep. It
+was his own death warrant. It was I who saved him by taking him to the
+house of Milly. He slept four days with Milly, in itself a feat."
+
+Von Stinnes swallowed another glass of wine. His eyes seemed to belie
+his unsteady, careless voice. His eyes remained intent and mocking upon
+Dorn.
+
+"You have come a few weeks too late. There were scenes, dear God, to
+make one laugh. In the Schloss. Yes, we bombarded the Schloss--but after
+we had captured it. The Liebknecht ordered. Everything was done in
+symbols. Therefore the symbol of the bombardment of the Schloss. So we
+rushed out one night and opened fire, and when we had knocked off the
+balcony and peeled the plaster from the walls, we rushed in again and
+sang the _Marseillaise_. What wine, m'sieur! Ho, you have come a few
+weeks too late. But there will be other comedies. And I will be of
+service. I belong to three officers' clubs. One of them is respectable.
+Women are admitted. The other two ... women are barred. And look...." He
+slapped a wallet on the table and extracted a red card, "'member of the
+Communist Partei--Karl Stinnes,'" he read. "Listen, there are 75,000
+rifles in Alexander Platz, waiting for the day."
+
+"Where did you learn your English, von Stinnes?"
+
+"Oxford. Italian in Padua. French, m'sieur, in Paris. During the war."
+The baron laughed. "Ah, _pendant la guerre, m'sieur, en Paris_."
+
+"And now," Dorn mused, "you are a Spartikust."
+
+The baron was on his feet, a wine glass raised in his hand.
+
+"_Es lebe die Welt Revolution_," he cried, "_es lebe das Rate
+Republik!_"
+
+"What did you do in Paris, von Stinnes?"
+
+"Pigeons, my friend. I played with pigeons and with vital statistics and
+made love to little French girls whose sweethearts were dying in the
+trenches. And in London. But I talk too much. Yes, my tongue slips, you
+say. But I am lonely and talk is easy.... I drink your health ...
+_hein!_ it was a day when we met...."
+
+Dorn raised his glass.
+
+"To the confusion of the seven deadly virtues!" he laughed.
+
+"I drink," the baron cried. "We will make a tour. We will amuse
+ourselves. I see that you understand Germany. Because you understand
+there is something bigger than Germany; that the world is the head of a
+pin spinning round in a glass of wine. I have been with the other
+correspondents. Pigs and donkeys. The souls of shopkeepers under the
+vests."
+
+The baron seated himself carefully and pretended an abrupt seriousness.
+
+"I have made up my mind to die behind the red barricades. Perhaps in
+March. Perhaps later. Another glass, m'sieur. Thanks. I shall die
+fighting for the overthrow of the tyranny of the bourgeoisie ... Noske
+and his _parvenu_ Huns. Ho! Dorn, we will amuse ourselves in a crazy
+world, eh, what? The tyranny of the bourgeoisie!"
+
+The baron laughed as he rolled over the phrase.
+
+"There will be great deal to enjoy," Dorn smiled. The wine was making
+him silent.
+
+"Yes, to enjoy. To laugh," the baron interrupted. "I cannot explain now.
+But you seem to understand. Or am I drunk? _Ein galgen gelachter, nicht
+wahr?_ I will take quarters at the hotel. I know the management well. I
+saved the place from being looted in the November excitement. Have you
+seen the Kaiser Salle? His Majesty dined there once. A witless popinjay.
+Liebknecht is a man. Flames in his heart. But a poor orator. He will be
+killed. They must kill him. A little Jew, Haase, has brains. You will
+meet him. And the Dadaists--they know how to laugh. The cult of the
+absurd. Perhaps the next emperor of Germany will be a Dada. An Ober
+Dada--who knows? Once the world learns to laugh we may expect radical
+changes. And in Muenchen I know a dancer, Mizzi. Dear God, what legs! You
+must come there to see legs. Faces in the Rhineland. Ankles in Vienna.
+But legs, dear God, in Muenchen! It is the Spanish influence. Let us
+drink to Mizzi...."
+
+The wine was vanishing. The baron paused out of breath and sighed. His
+face that seemed to grow firmer and more ascetic as he drank, took on a
+far-away shrewdness as if new ideas had surprised it.
+
+"I've felt many things," Dorn spoke, "but thought nothing yet. So far
+Europe has remained strange. I am in a theater watching a pantomime. I
+have entered in the middle of the second act and the plot is a bit
+hidden. But we will have to find some serious work to do. I must meet
+politicians, leaders; listen to laments and prophecies...."
+
+"All in time, all in time," the baron interrupted. "Am I not your
+secretary? Well, then, trust me. You will talk to-morrow with Ebert. We
+begin thus at the bottom. Of all men in Germany who know nothing, he
+knows least. Thursday, Scheidemann. Treachery requires some shrewdness.
+The man is not quite an imbecile. If your Roosevelt were a Socialist he
+would be a Scheidemann. Daumig, Pasadowsky, Erzburger--rely upon me,
+m'sieur. And Ludendorff. Ah, there we have real work. If Ludendorff will
+talk now. He is supposed to be in Berlin. I will find him and arrange
+for you. And so on. You will meet all the great minds, all the big
+stomachs. I will take you to Radek who is hiding with a price on his
+head. And Dr. Talheimer on the Rote Fahne, if they do not arrest him too
+soon. Bernstorff is in the hotel. A man with too much brains. Yes, an
+intelligent bungler. He will die some day with a sad smile, forgiving
+his enemies. And if we need women, mention your choice. Mine runs to the
+married woman of title. A small title is to be preferred. It is a slight
+insurance against disease. Others prefer the gamins. There is not enough
+difference to quarrel about. Or do you want a little red in your amours?
+A _sans culotte_ from Ehrfurst or Spandau? In Essen you will find
+Belgian women. They will love for nothing. For that matter, a bottle of
+wine and a bar of chocolate and you can have anyone. There is no virtue
+left, thank God. And yet, for variety, I sometimes think there should be
+a little. Ah, yes, yes! I miss the virgins of my youth. Another bottle,
+eh? Where's the button? What do you think of German plumbing? It is our
+Kultur. We are proud of our plumbing. It was the ideal for which we
+fought. To introduce our plumbing throughout Europe--make a German
+bathroom of the world."
+
+A sound of heavier firing in the streets interrupted. The two sat
+listening, the baron's face alive with an odd humor.
+
+"_Es lebe die Welt Revolution_," he whispered. "Do you hear it? Only a
+murmur. But it starts all over Germany again. Workingmen with guns. You
+will see them later. I among them. Stay in Europe, my friend, and see
+the ghost of Marat rising from a German bathtub."
+
+"Who are shooting?" Dorn asked.
+
+"Shadows," the baron laughed. "The government wishes to impress the good
+burgher that there is danger. So the government orders the soldiers to
+shoot at midnight. The good burgher wakes and trembles. _Mein Gott, das
+Bolshevismus treibt! Gott sei dank fuer den Regierung._ ... So the good
+burgher gives enthusiastic assent to the increase in the military
+budget. Dear God, did he not hear shooting at midnight? But they play
+with more than ghosts. Noske's politik will end in another color.
+To-night there are only shadows to shoot at. To-morrow ... remember what
+I tell you...."
+
+The telephone rang and Dorn answered. A voice in English:
+
+"The gentlemen will have to put out the lights. The Spartikusten are
+coming."
+
+"Thank you...."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"We must put out the lights."
+
+The baron laughed.
+
+"It is nonsense. Come, your hat. We will go have a look."
+
+They hurried down to the lobby. An iron door had been drawn across the
+entrance of the hotel. In the lobby the shooting seemed a bombardment of
+the building. A group of American and English correspondents were
+lounging in the heavy divans, drinking gin and talking to a trio of
+elaborately gowned women. The talk was in French.
+
+"Hello, Dorn," one of the Englishmen called. Dorn approached the table,
+von Stinnes following, and whispering, "I will request the porter to
+open the gate."
+
+"Baron von Stinnes, Mr. Reading."
+
+The Englishman shook hands and smiled.
+
+"I know the baron, Dorn. Rather old friends, what? Have a drink, damn
+it!"
+
+"Later, if you please," von Stinnes bowed stiffly. Reading beckoned Dorn
+aside with an air of secrecy. Walking him to another part of the lobby
+he began whispering:
+
+"I'd let that blighter alone if I were you, Dorn. I'm just telling you
+because you're rather new to these bloody swine."
+
+Dorn nodded.
+
+"I see," he said, and walked back to von Stinnes. Reading resumed his
+place with the party.
+
+"Perhaps it was a timely warning," the baron murmured as Dorn drew near
+him. The gate had been opened and the two emerged. "I make a guess at
+what Reading told you," the baron pursued.
+
+"It is immaterial," Dorn answered. "I engage you not for your honesty
+and many virtues, but because you're amusing...."
+
+"Thus you relieve my conscience," von Stinnes sighed.
+
+The wide avenue was deserted. Moonlight lay on the new-fallen snow. A
+line of soldiers wheeled suddenly out of the Brandenburger Tor and came
+marching quickly toward the walkers.
+
+"_Weiter gehen, weiter gehen_," a voice from the troop called. Two
+detached themselves from the ranks and approached rapidly.
+
+"_Ausweise...._"
+
+Von Stinnes glared through his monocle and answered in German, "What is
+the matter with you? Are you crazy? I am Baron von Stinnes. My friend is
+a member of the American Commission."
+
+Dorn extracted a bit of stamped paper--his special credentials from the
+German Foreign Office. The soldier glanced at it without troubling to
+read....
+
+"_Sehr gut, mein Herrschaften_," he mumbled. Dorn caught a glimpse of
+his face. Its importance had vanished. The line of soldiers marched on.
+When they had turned a corner the sound of firing suddenly resumed.
+
+"Shadows again," chuckled von Stinnes.
+
+Snow-covered streets, moonlight, waiting buildings, cold and
+shadows--here was reality. The thing under the gay tumult of the cafes.
+Under the baron's laughter. They were passing a stretch of empty shop
+windows.
+
+"It's cold," Dorn muttered. The baron looked at him with a smile.
+
+"It is cold everywhere in Germany," he said quietly. "Men's hearts are
+cold with hunger and fear. Brains are confused. Stomachs empty. The top
+has been knocked off. The soldiers in the streets are the sad little
+remains of a dead Germany. The new Germany lies cold and hungry in a
+workingman's bed. Life will come out of the masses. And I am always on
+the side of life. Not so? The old is dead. We drink wine to the new."
+
+The sound of dance music drifted out of a cafe.
+
+"Shall we stop?" the baron hesitated.
+
+Dorn shook his head.
+
+"Enough cafes. The streets are better. Dark windows."
+
+They walked in silence through the snow, the baron humming a Vienna
+waltz as the blurred echoes of machine-gun fire rose in the night around
+them.
+
+... Hours later Dorn lay sleepless in his bed. The smoke of wine was
+slipping out of his thought.
+
+"I'm alone," he murmured to himself. An emotionless regret came to him.
+
+"There are still years to live." He wrapped himself closer in the
+silk-covered quilts. "But how? Does it matter? I have loved, and that
+is over. Rachel is ended. Haven't thought of her for weeks. And now, I
+am like I was, only older and alone; yet not sad. So people adjust
+themselves to decay. Senses that could have understood and wept at
+sorrow die, along with the things whose death causes sorrow. Ergo, there
+is no sorrow. Wings gone, tears gone, everything gone. Empty again, yet
+content. I want nothing.... No desires...."
+
+His brain was mumbling sleepily as the cold wind from the opened window
+swept pleasantly through the room.
+
+"Women to divert me. Wine to make me glad. And a companion--the baron.
+Droll tragedian! And scenes for my eyes. Yes, yes.... They keep shooting
+outside. Still shooting after five years. Shooting each other. The world
+speaks a strange language. What imbecility! Yet life is in the masses.
+It'll come out, perhaps. From Russia. Russians--a pack of idealists ...
+a pack of illiterate Wilsons with whiskers. I'm like the baron. I admire
+revolution. Why? Because it diverts."
+
+He closed his eyes for moments. Still no sleep, and his thought resumed,
+"Rachel, I once loved you. I can say it now without hurt. Empty memories
+now--like drawings in outline. And some day even the outlines will leave
+me."
+
+A curious ache came into his heart. "Ah, she still touches me--still a
+little. Poor dear one! What a farce! A glorious farce! The nights when
+she whispered. Her face, I remember, yes, a little. Ghosts! Your eyes
+are the beckoning hands of dream. That was the best sentence.... The
+rest were good too--sometimes."
+
+He smiled sleepily on his pillow ... "still shooting. It will be amusing
+here. Some day when we're old, Rachel and I will see each other again.
+Old eyes questioning old eyes. Old eyes saying, 'So much has died. Only
+a little more remains to die.' Sleep ... I must sleep now. To-morrow,
+work, work! And forget. But nothing to forget. It forgets itself. It
+says good-bye. A sun gone down. What is it old Carl wrote?... 'The past
+is a bucket of ashes, a sun gone down ... to-morrow is another
+day....'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The detachment vanished. Streets familiarized themselves.
+
+"_Ich steh auf den Standpunkt_," said the politicians; and the racket of
+machine-guns offered an obligato.
+
+The new garrulity that had seemed strange to Dorn lost its strangeness.
+It became the victrola phrases of a bewildered diplomacy. But the
+diplomacy was not confined to frock-coats. It buzzed, snarled up and
+down the factory districts, in and out of the boulevard cafes and the
+squat resident sectors.
+
+The German waiting for the knife of Versailles to fall was vomiting a
+vocabulary of fear, hope, threat, despair. Under cover of a confused
+Social Democracy the German army was slowly reorganizing itself.
+
+It was three months after his arrival in Berlin that Dorn wrote his
+curious sketch of the German situation. The three months had witnessed a
+change in him. He had become a workman--industrious, inquisitive,
+determined. Under the guidance of von Stinnes he had managed to
+penetrate the heart of German _politik_. Tours through the provinces,
+daily interviews with celebrities, statesmen, leaders of the scores of
+political factions; adventures under the surface of the victrola phrases
+pouring from the government buildings and the anti-government buildings,
+had occupied even his introspections. Seemingly the empire had turned
+itself into a debating society. Life had become a class in economics.
+
+Three months of work. Unfocused talents drawn into simultaneous
+activity. And Dorn arose one morning to find himself an outstanding
+figure in the turmoil of comment and commentators about him. Von Stinnes
+had wheedled his history out of him for publication in Berlin. Its
+appearance was greeted with a journalistic shout in the capitol.
+Radicals and conservatives alike pounced upon it. Haase, leader of the
+Independent Socialists, declaimed it almost in full before the National
+Assembly in Weimar.
+
+Dorn had put into it a passionate sense of the irony and futility of his
+day. Its clarity arrested the obfuscated intellect of a nation groping,
+whining, and blustering under the shadow of the knife of Versailles.
+
+The writing of it had rid him for the time of Rachel, of Anna, of the
+years of befuddling emptiness that had marked his attitudes toward the
+surfaces of thought about him. The emotionless disillusion of his nature
+had finally produced an adventure for him--the adventure of mental
+fecundity.
+
+He had gone to Weimar to write. Here the new government of Germany had
+assembled. Delegates, celebrities, frock-coats, strange hair formations;
+messiah and magician had come to extricate the nation from its unhappy
+place on the European guillotine. The narrow streets stuttered with
+argument.... Von Stinnes and a girl named Mathilde Dohmann accompanied
+him to the town. The Baron, bored for the moment with his labors, had
+immersed his volatile self in a diligent pursuit of Mathilde. He had
+discovered her among communist councils in Berlin and naively attached
+her as a part of Dorn's secretarial retinue.
+
+"She will be of service," he announced.
+
+Dorn, preoccupied with the scheme of his history, paid little attention
+to her. Arrived in Weimar he became entirely active, viewing with
+amusement the Baron's sophisticated assault upon the ardent-voiced,
+red-haired political spitfire whom he called Matty. Alone in an old
+tavern room, he gave himself to the arrangements of words clamoring for
+utterance in his thought. Old words. Old ideas. Notions dormant since
+years ago. Phrases, ironies remembered out of conversations themselves
+forgotten. The book was finished towards the middle of March--a history
+of the post-war Germany; with a biography between the lines of Erik
+Dorn. Von Stinnes had forthwith produced two German scholars who, under
+his direction, accomplished the translation with astonishing speed.
+Excerpts from the thin red-and black-covered volume found their way
+overnight into the press of the nation. Periodicals seized upon the
+extended brochure as a _Dokument_. In pamphlet form the gist of it
+started upon the rounds of Europe. The garrulity of the day had been
+given for the moment a new direction.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+"We will go to Munich. There will be a revolution in Munich. I have news
+from secret sources."
+
+Baron von Stinnes, lounging wearily in front of a chess-board, spoke and
+raised a cup of mocha to his lips. Dorn, picking his way through a
+German novel, looked up gloomily and nodded.
+
+"Anywhere," he agreed. "Munich, Moscow, Peking."
+
+In a corner of the room Mathilde was curled on the luxurious hotel divan
+watching through half-closed eyes the figures of the men. The Baron
+turned toward her and frowned. In return her face, almost asleep, became
+vivid with a sneer. The Baron's love-making had gone astray.
+
+"Matty is going to try to carry a million marks into Munich for the
+Communists," he announced.
+
+The girl stared von Stinnes into silence.
+
+"How do you know that?" she asked slowly.
+
+He lowered his cup and with a show of polite deliberation removed his
+monocle and wiped it with a silk handkerchief.
+
+"I know many things," he smiled. "The money comes from Dr. Kasnilov and
+will be brought to Dr. Max Levine in Munich, and the good Max will buy a
+garrison of Landwehr with it and establish the soviet republic of
+Bavaria."
+
+"You know Levine?"
+
+"Very well," smiled the Baron.
+
+Mathilde sat up. Her voice acquired a vicious dullness.
+
+"You will not interfere with me, von Stinnes."
+
+"I, Matty?" The Baron laughed and resumed his mocha. "I am heart and
+soul with Levine. If Dorn cannot go I will have to go alone. It is
+necessary I be in Munich when the Soviets are called out."
+
+"You will not interfere with me, von Stinnes," the girl repeated, "or I
+will kill you."
+
+"You have my permission, Fraeulein. The logical time for my death is long
+past."
+
+Mathilde's sharp young face had grown alive with excitement. She sat
+with her eyes unwaveringly upon the Baron as if her thought were groping
+desperately beneath the smiling weariness of the man.
+
+"Mr. Dorn," she spoke, "von Stinnes is a traitor."
+
+Dorn smiled.
+
+"If one million marks will cause a revolution, I'll take them to Munich
+myself," he answered. "I'm sick of Berlin. I need a revolution to divert
+me."
+
+"I fear I am in the way," von Stinnes interrupted. He arose with
+formality. "Mathilde would like to unburden herself to you, Dorn. I am,
+she will inform you, a secret agent of Colonel Nickolai, and Colonel
+Nickolai is the head of the anti-bolshevist pro-royalist propaganda in
+Prussia." He paused and smiled. "I will meet you in the lobby when you
+come down."
+
+He walked toward the door, halting before the excited face of the girl.
+
+"Ah, Matty, Matty," he murmured, "you will not in your zeal forget that
+I love you?"
+
+He bowed whimsically and passed out. Dorn laid aside his book and
+approached the divan. In the week since their return from Weimar he had
+become interested in the moody, dynamic young creature. The fact that
+she had resisted the expert persuasions of the Baron--a subject on which
+the nobleman had discoursed piquantly on their ride to Berlin--had
+appealed to him.
+
+"Karl is a good fellow," he said, seating himself next to her. "And if
+it happens he is employed by Noske and Nickolai it doesn't alter my
+opinion of him."
+
+"He is a scoundrel," she answered quietly.
+
+"That is impossible," Dorn smiled. "He is merely a man without
+convictions and therefore free to follow his impulses and his employers.
+I thank God for von Stinnes. He has made Europe possible. A revolution
+alone could rival him in my affections."
+
+The girl remained silent, and Dorn watched her face. He might embrace
+her and make love. It would perhaps flatter, please her. She fancied him
+a man of astounding genius. She had practically memorized his book.
+Thus, one had only to smile humorlessly, permit one's eyes to grow
+enigmatic, and think of a proper epigram. He recalled for an instant the
+two women who had succumbed to his technique since he had left America.
+They blurred in his memory and became offensive. Yet Matty had been of
+service and perhaps her moodiness was caused by a suppressed affection.
+As an amorous prospect she was not without interest. As a reality,
+however, she would obviously become a bore. In any case there was
+nothing to hinder polite investigation, mark time with kisses until von
+Stinnes brought on his promised revolution. He thought carefully.
+Pessimism was the proper note. Dramatize with an epigram the emptiness
+of life. His forte--emptiness. Not love but a hunger to live.
+
+"Matty, I regret sadly that you are not a prostitute."
+
+Startling!
+
+"It would save me the trouble of having to fall in love with you, dear
+child."
+
+She smiled, a sudden amusement in her eyes.
+
+"You too, Mr. Dorn. I had thought different of you."
+
+"As a creature beyond the petty agitations, eh?"
+
+"As a man."
+
+"It is possible for a Man, despite a capital M, to love."
+
+"Yes, love. It is possible for him only to love. And you do not."
+
+"Much worse. I am sad."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Perhaps because it is the only emotion that comes without effort."
+
+"So you would fall in love with me to forget that I bore you."
+
+"A broader ambition than that. To forget that living bores me,
+Mathilde."
+
+"There is someone else you love, Mr. Dorn."
+
+"There was." He smiled humorlessly. "Do you mind if I talk of love? I
+need a conversational antidote."
+
+"And if you talk of love you may be spared the trouble of having to make
+love," she laughed quietly. "But I would rather talk of von Stinnes. I
+am worried."
+
+"You are young," Dorn interrupted, "and full of political error. I am
+beginning to believe von Stinnes. The most terrible result of the war
+has been the political mania it has given to women."
+
+Mathilde settled back on the divan and stared with mocking pensiveness
+at her shoes. Dorn, speaking as if he desired to smile, continued:
+
+"Do you know that when one has loved a woman one grows sad after it is
+ended, remembering not the woman, but one's self? The memory of her
+becomes a mirror that gives you back the image of something that has
+died--a shadow of youth and joy that still bears your name. It is the
+same with old songs, old perfumes. All mirrors. So I walk through life
+now smiling into mirrors that give back not myself, but someone
+else--another Dorn."
+
+He arose and looked down at her.
+
+"Does that interest you?"
+
+"I understand you."
+
+"There are many ways of making love. Sorrowful phrases are the most
+entertaining, perhaps."
+
+"You make me think you have loved too much."
+
+"Yes, it would be difficult to kiss you. I would become sad with memory
+of other kisses. Because you are young--as I was then."
+
+"Was it long ago?"
+
+"Things that end are always long ago."
+
+"Then it was only yesterday."
+
+"Yes, yesterday," he laughed, pleased with the ironic sound of his
+voice. "And what is longer ago than yesterday?"
+
+She had risen and stood before him, an almost boyish figure with her
+fists clenched.
+
+"I have something else I am in love with," she whispered. "I am in love
+with----"
+
+"The wonderful revolution, I know."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And some day in the future you, too, will look into a mirror and see
+not yourself but a glowing-faced girl that was in love with what was
+once called the revolution."
+
+"But if things end it is only because we are too weak to hold them
+forever. So while we are strong we must hold them twice as eagerly."
+
+"Sad. All most deplorably sad, Mathilde. Hands shuffle us into new
+combinations, when we would prefer the old. Thus you, too, will some day
+listen to the cry that rises from all endings."
+
+"You are designing. You wish to make me sad, Mr. Dorn. And succeed."
+
+"Only that I may contemplate the futility of your love and smile. As I
+cannot quite smile at my own. We do not smile easily at corpses."
+
+His hands covered her fingers gently.
+
+"I will give myself to you, if you wish," she whispered.
+
+"And I prefer you like this," he smiled. "If you will come close to me
+and lay your head against me." He looked down at her as she obeyed.
+"There is an odor to your hair. And your cheek is soft. These things are
+similar things. You are almost like a phantom."
+
+"Of her."
+
+"No. She is forgotten. It's something else. A phantom of something that
+once lived in me, and died. It comes back and stares at me sometimes out
+of the eyes of strange women, out of the sounds of music. Now, out of
+your hair."
+
+"And you do not want me, Erik?"
+
+"I want you. But I prefer to amuse myself by fancying that you are
+unattainable."
+
+"I've liked you, Erik. The rest does not matter to me. I grew old
+during the war, and careless. My father and two brothers died. And
+another man."
+
+"So we both need diversion."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Diversion," he murmured, "the little drug. But what is there to drugs?
+No, come; we are lovers now."
+
+"We will go to Munich together."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And will you carry the money for Levine? They would never search you
+and they might recognize and search me. And besides, von Stinnes would
+not dare interfere if it was you, even if he is a spy, because he likes
+you too well."
+
+Her voice had become eager and vibrant. Dorn smiled ruefully, the faint
+mist of a sigh in his thought. The girl had worked adroitly. Of course,
+he was someone to carry the money to the Munich radicals.
+
+"It is just an ordinary-looking package. The station will be under a
+guard and all the roads coming in, too. They are expecting the
+revolution and ..." She paused and grew red. Dorn's eyes were looking at
+her banteringly. "You are thinking I have tricked you," she cried, "and
+that it was only to use you as a ... as a carrier that I ... Well,
+perhaps it is true. I do not know myself. I told you you could have me.
+Yes, I give myself to you now ... now.... Do you hear?"
+
+She laughed with bitterness.
+
+"I have never given myself before. I would rather you smiled and were
+kind. But if you wish to laugh ... and call it a bargain ... it does not
+matter."
+
+She had stepped away from him and stood with kindled eyes, waiting.
+
+"One can be chivalrous in the absence of all other impulses, Mathilde.
+And all other impulses have expired in me. So I will take the package.
+We will start to-morrow early. And as for the rest ... I will spare you
+the tedium of martyrdom."
+
+He moved toward the door. "Come, we'll go downstairs. Von Stinnes will
+be getting impatient."
+
+Mathilde came to him swiftly. He caught a glimpse of her face lighted,
+and her arms circled his neck. She was looking at him without words. A
+coldness dropped into his heart. There had been three of them
+before--he, Mathilde, and a phantom. Now there were only Mathilde and
+himself.
+
+"She was not tricking," he thought, and felt pleased. "At least not
+consciously."
+
+Her arms fell from him and she stared frightenedly.
+
+"Forgive me, Erik. I thought you loved me. And I would have liked to
+make you happy...."
+
+He nodded and opened the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+They sat in the compartment of the train crawling into Munich. The Baron
+drooped with sleep. Dorn stared wearily out of the window. Springtime. A
+beginning of green in the fields and over the roll of hills. Formal
+sunlight upon factories with an empty holiday frown in their windows.
+
+"I hear shooting," he smiled at Mathilde. "We're probably in time."
+
+The girl nodded. Despite the sleepless night sitting upright in the
+compartment, her eyes were fresh and alive. The desultory crack of a
+rifle drifting out of the town as if to greet them brought an impatience
+into her manner. The train was moving slowly.
+
+"Yes, we're in time," she murmured. "See, the white guards are still in
+possession."
+
+A group of soldiers with white sleeve-bands over the gray-green of their
+uniforms passed in an empty street.
+
+"There will be white guards at the station, too," she went on. "The
+attack will come to-night. It must."
+
+She looked intently at von Stinnes who, opening his eyes suddenly,
+whispered, "Ah, Mathilde ... there was once another Muenchen...."
+
+An uproar in the station. A scurry of guards and soldiers. White
+sleeve-bands. Machine-guns behind heaped bags of sand. A halloo of
+orders across the arc of the spacious shed. Passengers pouring out of
+the newly arrived train, smiling, weeping, staring indifferently.
+
+The officer desired the passengers to line themselves up against the
+train. A suggestive order, and confusion. Whispers in the crowd....
+"Personally, I prefer the guillotine.... No, no, madame. There is no
+danger. These are good boys. Soldiers of the government. You can tell by
+the sleeve-bands. White. Merely baggage inspection."
+
+Dorn waited his turn. A group of soldiers approached slowly, delving
+into pockets for weapons, peering into opened pieces of baggage. Babble,
+expostulation, eager politeness of innocent travelers, and outside the
+long crack of rifles, an occasional rip of a machine-gun. The group of
+soldiers paused before him.
+
+"I am an American," he spoke in English, "with the American commission."
+
+The announcement produced its usual effect. Bows, salutes, smiles. He
+pulled out his passport and foreign-office credentials. An officer
+stepped forward and glanced at them.
+
+"Very good," in courteous English, "you will pardon for the delay. We
+are having a little trouble here."
+
+He indicated the city with a nod of his head and smiled wryly. In German
+he continued sharply, "Gottlieb, Neuman, you will escort this gentleman
+and his friends to whatever place they wish to go. Take my car at post
+10."
+
+Two soldiers saluted. The officer bowed with a smile. The travelers
+moved off with their escort toward the street. Mathilde kept her eyes on
+von Stinnes as they entered a gray automobile.
+
+"Von Stinnes and I will sit in the back," she whispered to Dorn.
+
+The Baron nodded.
+
+"Careful of your Leugger," he whispered, "the soldiers will see it. You
+can shoot me just as easily if you keep it hidden. I have frequently
+fired through my pocket."
+
+In a hotel room a half-hour later, Mathilde, grown jubilant as a child,
+was clapping her hands and laughing.
+
+"It was too simple!" she cried.
+
+Dorn drew a small suitcase from under the bed and opened it.
+
+"Here it is," he laughed. He removed an oblong package. His eyes sought
+von Stinnes, standing near the window leisurely smoking a cigarette.
+
+"You will find Levine in the Gambrinus Keller," von Stinnes spoke
+without turning around. "I advise you to go at once, Matty, before the
+streets crowd up."
+
+He wheeled and held an envelope toward the girl.
+
+"Take this. It will make it easier for you to get in. They are very
+careful right now. It's a letter of credentials from Dr. Kasnilov."
+
+Mathilde opened the envelope mechanically, her eyes seeking the thought
+under the Baron's smile.
+
+"Thanks," she spoke in German. "I will go now. I will see you after. At
+dinner to-night. Here."
+
+She walked quickly from the room, the oblong package under her arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The thing hiding in the alleys and shops of the world--the dark, furtive
+hungers that Russia was thawing into life, emerged on a bright April day
+in the streets of Munich. Working men with guns. A sweep of
+spike-haired, deep-eyed troglodytes from the underworld of labor.
+Factories, shops, and alleys vomited them forth. Farm hovels and
+stinking bundles of houses sent them singing and roaring down the
+forbidden avenues, past the forbidden sanctuaries of satrap and burgher.
+
+From behind curtained windows the upper world looked on with amazement
+and disgust. A topsy-turvy April morning. A Spring day gone mad. Here
+were the masses celebrated in pamphlet and soap-box oration. An ungodly
+spectacle, an overturning. Grinning earth faces, roaring earth voices
+come swaggering into the hallowed precincts of civilization. Workingmen
+with guns marching to take possession of the world. An old tableau
+decked with new phrases--the underfed barbarian at the gate of the
+grainary.
+
+The singing and the roaring continued through the morning.
+
+"_Es lebe die Welt Revolution!_ _Es lebe das Rate Republik!_ _Hoch!_
+_die soviet von Bayern_ ... _Hoch!_ _Hoch!_"
+
+From the twisting, blackened streets, "_Hoch!_" Men and women squeezing
+aimlessly around corners. Closely packed drifts of bobbing heads. A
+crack of rifles dropping punctuations into the scene. "_Hoch!_ _Hoch!_"
+from faces clustered darkly about the grimacing, inaudible orators in
+the squares.
+
+Red flags, red placards like a swarm of confetti on the walls and in the
+air. A holiday war.... The morning hours marched away.
+
+With noon, a silence gradually darkened the scene. A silence of
+shuffling feet and murmuring tongues. The revolution had sung its songs.
+An end of songs and cheerings. Drifting, silent masses. An ominous,
+enigmatic sweep of faces. Red placards under foot in cubist designs down
+the streets.
+
+The afternoon waned, the hundred thousands closed in. Darkness was
+coming and the pack was welding itself together. Rifles were beginning.
+Machine-guns were beginning. Holiday was over. Quieter streets. The
+orators become audible. Still faces, raised and listening. The orators
+had news to give.... One of the garrisons had gone over to the soviets.
+Two garrisons had vanished. Treachery. A long murmur ... treachery. The
+armies of General Hoffmann were marching upon Munich ... twenty
+kilometers from Munich. They would arrive in the night. ... "We will
+show them, comrades, whether the revolution has teeth to bite as well as
+a song to sing."
+
+A growl was running through the twilight.... _Es lebe das Rate
+Republik!_ A fierce whisper of voices. Workingmen looking to their guns,
+massing about the government buildings. A new war minister in the
+uniform of a marine, speaking from a balcony. Workingmen with guns,
+listening. Women drifting back to the hovels and stinking bundles of
+houses. In the cafes, satraps and burghers eating amid a suppressed
+clamor of whispers, plans. The foolishness was almost over. The armies
+of General Hoffmann were coming ... Twenty kilometers out.... Arrive at
+night. The corps students themselves would saber the swine out of the
+city....
+
+Night. Darkened streets. Tattered patrols hurrying through mysteriously
+emptied highways, shouting, "Indoors! Inside, everybody!" Suddenly from
+a distance the bay of artillery. Workingmen with guns were storming the
+cannon of the artillery regiment outside the city. A haphazard
+cross-fire of rifles began to spit from darkened windows ... an upper
+world showing its teeth behind parlor barricades.
+
+In the shadows of the massive government buildings an army was forming.
+No ranks, no officers. Easy to drift through the sunny streets singing
+the _Marseillaise_ and the International ... to mooch along through the
+forbidden avenues dreaming in the daylight of a new world ... with red
+flags proclaiming the new masters of earth. Hundred thousands, then. But
+now, how many? Too dark to see, to count. An army, perhaps. Perhaps a
+handful....
+
+Feverish salutes in the shadows.... "_Gruss Gott, genosse!_"
+
+Was it alive? Did the revolution live? What was happening in the empty
+streets? Who was shooting? And the armies of Hoffmann? _Gruss Gott,
+genosse._ Under Rupprecht the armies had lain four years in the
+trenches. Great armies, swinging along like a single man, that had once
+battered their way almost into Paris against the English, against the
+French.
+
+"_Gruss Gott, genosse._ _Hoffmann kommt_ ... _Ja wohl, Gruss Gott!_"
+
+Now twenty kilometers away and coming down the highroad against
+Munich--against the drifting little clusters of lonely men whispering in
+the shadows--the great armies of the Kaiser, an iron monster clicking
+down the road toward Munich. Would there be artillery to meet them?
+_Gruss Gott, genosse, wer shusst dort?_ No, they had only guns, old guns
+that might not shoot. Old knives at their belts.... Darkness and
+rifle-spattered silences. Where was the revolution? The shadows
+whispered, "_Gruss Gott...._"
+
+The shadows began to stir. A voice was talking in the night. High up
+from a window. Egelhofer, the communist. No, Levine. Who? A light in
+the window.... Egelhofer, thin-faced, tall, black-haired. Egelhofer, the
+new war minister. 'Shh! what was he saying?... "_Vorwaerts, der
+Banhoff...._"
+
+Yes, the armies of Hoffmann had come. The shadows stirred wildly.
+Forward ... _es lebe die Welt Revolution!_ This time a battle-cry,
+hoarse, shaking. Men were running. Workingmen with guns, guns that would
+shoot ... _"Der Banhoff ... der Banhoff...."_
+
+The shadows were emptying themselves. A pack was running. Two abreast,
+three abreast, in broken strings of men. Groups, solitary figures,
+hatless, bellowing. The revolution was moving. The empty streets filled.
+An army? A handful? Let God show in the morning. Workingmen with guns
+were running through the night. Munich was shaking.... "_Der Banhoff,
+genosse, vorwaerts!_"
+
+The revolution was emptying itself into the great square fronting the
+station. Little lights twinkling outside the ancient weinstubes began to
+explode. There must be darkness. Pop!... pop!... a rattle of glass. A
+blaze of shooting. The railroad station was firing now.
+
+"_Es lebe das Rate Republik!_" from the darkness in the streets. A sweep
+of figures across the open square. Arms twisting, leaping in sudden
+glares of flame. The revolution hurled itself with a long cry upon the
+barricades of thundering lead.
+
+In the single lighted window of the government buildings a face still
+spoke ... _"Ich bin Egelhofer, ihr Krieg's minister ... Ich komm...."_
+
+Waving a rifle over his head, the war minister rushed from the building.
+A marine from Kiel. A new pack loosened itself from the shadows. A war
+minister was leading.
+
+Moving swiftly through the streets, Dorn hurried to the seat of the new
+government--the Wittelbacher Palais. Von Stinnes was waiting there. He
+had been delayed in joining the Baron by the sudden upheaval about the
+hotel.
+
+The wave had passed. Almost safe now to skirt the scene of battle and
+make a try for the Palais. As he darted out of the darkened hotel
+entrance, the thing seemed for a moment under his nose. An oppressive
+intimacy of tumult.
+
+"They're at the station," he thought. "I'll have to hurry in case they
+fall back."
+
+He ran quickly in an opposite direction followed by the leap of firing.
+Several blocks, and he paused. Here was safety. The revolution a good
+half-mile off. He walked slowly, recovering breath. The street was
+lighted. Shop windows blinked out upon the pavements. A few stragglers
+walked like himself, intent upon destinations made serious by the near
+sound of firing. An interesting evening, thus far. A stout, red-faced
+man with a heavily ornamented vest followed the figure of a woman. Dorn
+smiled. Biology versus politics.... "Excuse me, pretty one, you look
+lonely...." A charwoman. Black, sagging clothes. Dorn passed and heard
+her exclaim, "Who, me? You ask me to go with you? Dear God, he asks me!
+I am an honest workingwoman. Run along with you!" The woman, walking
+swiftly, drew alongside. She was chuckling and muttering to herself, a
+curious pride in her voice, "He asked me, dear God--me!"
+
+The abrupt sound of rifle-fire around the corner startled her. Dorn
+halted. The woman turned toward him, puzzled.
+
+"They are shooting a whole lot to-night," she spoke in German.
+
+"Quite a lot," he answered.
+
+She looked back at the red-faced man who had remained where she had left
+him.
+
+"What do you think of that dunce?" she whispered, and hurried on.
+
+Dorn followed leisurely in the direction of the Palais.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+A rabble of dictators, ministerial fledglings, freshly sprouted
+governors, organizers, departmental heads, scurried through the dimly
+lighted corridors of the old Palais. Dorn, with the aid of a handful of
+communist credentials that seemed to flow endlessly from the pockets of
+the Baron, passed the Palais guard--a hundred silent men squatting
+behind a hastily erected barricade of sandbags.
+
+Within he stumbled upon von Stinnes. The Baron drew him into a large
+empty chamber.
+
+"We must be careful," he whispered. His voice buzzed with an elation.
+"Already two ministries have fallen. There is talk now of Levine. He's
+of the extreme left. I thought you would like to see it. It has its
+amusing side." He laughed softly. "I was with the men in the streets for
+a while. There was something there, Dorn. Life, yes ... yes ... It was
+amazing. But here it is different. What is it the correspondents say?
+'All is confusion, there is nothing to report.' ... Yes, confusion.
+There are at present three poets, one lunatic, an epileptic, four
+workingmen and a scientist from Vienna, and two school teachers. They
+are the Council of Ten. Look, there is _Muhsam,_ the one with the red
+vandyke. A poet. He used to recite rhymes in the Cafe Stephanie."
+
+The red vandyke peered into the room. "Stinnes, you are wanted," he
+called. "I have my portfolio. I am the new minister to Russia. I leave
+for Moscow to-morrow."
+
+"Congratulations!" the Baron answered.
+
+A tall, contemplative man with a scraggly gray beard--an angular
+Christ-like figure--appeared. He spoke. "What are you doing here,
+Muhsam? There is work inside."
+
+"And you!" angrily.
+
+"I must think. We must grow calm." He passed on, thinking.
+
+"Landerdauer," smiled the Baron, "the Whitman translator."
+
+"Yes," the vandyke answered, "we have appointed him minister of
+education. What news from the station, Stinnes?"
+
+"It is taken."
+
+Dorn followed the Baron about the corridors, his ears bewildered by the
+screechings from unexpected chambers of debate. He listened, amused, to
+the volatile von Stinnes.
+
+"They are trying for a coalition. Nikish is at the top. A former
+schoolmaster. The communists under Levine won't come in. The workingmen
+are out overthrowing the world, and the great thinkers sit in conference
+hitting one another over the head with slapsticks. Life, Dorn, is a
+droll business, and revolution a charming comedy, _nicht wahr?_ But it
+will grow serious soon. Munich will be cut off. Food will vanish. Aha!
+wait a minute...."
+
+He darted after a swaggering figure. Dorn watched. The baron appeared to
+be commanding and entreating. The figure finally, with a surly shake of
+his head, hurried off. The Baron returned.
+
+"That was Levine," he said. "He won't come in unless Egelhofer is
+ratified as war minister. Egelhofer is a communist. Wait a minute. I
+will tell them to make Egelhofer minister. I will make a speech. We must
+have the Egelhofer."
+
+He vanished again. Dorn, standing against a window, watched frantic men
+scurry down the corridor bellowing commands at one another....
+
+"Yesterday they were garrulous little fools buzzing around cafe tables,"
+he thought. "To-night they boom. Rodinesque. And yet comic. Yes,
+comedians. But no more than the troupe of white-collared comedians in
+Wilhelmstrasse or Washington. The workers were different. There was
+something in the streets. Men in flame. But here are little matches."
+
+He caught sight of Mathilde and called her name. She came and stood
+beside him. Her body was trembling.
+
+"Did you spend the money?" he asked softly.
+
+"Yes, but they will buy the garrisons back again. They have more funds
+than we. Oh, we need more."
+
+"Who will buy them back?"
+
+"The bourgeoise. They have more money than we. And without the garrisons
+we are lost."
+
+She wrung her hands. Dorn struggled to become properly serious.
+
+"There, it may come out very fine," he murmured. "Anyway, von Stinnes is
+making a speech. It should help."
+
+"Stinnes...."
+
+"Yes, trying to bring Egelhofer in as war minister. He talked with
+Levine...."
+
+"I don't understand," she answered. "He is doing something I don't
+understand, because he is a traitor."
+
+She became silent and moved closer to Dorn.
+
+"Oh, Erik," she sighed, "I must cry. I am tired."
+
+He embraced her as she began to weep. Von Stinnes emerged, red-faced and
+elated.
+
+"It is settled," he announced. "Hello! what's wrong with Matty?"
+
+"Tired," Dorn answered.
+
+"We will go to the hotel."
+
+They started down the corridor. A group of soldiers emerged from a
+chamber, blocking their way.
+
+"Baron von Stinnes," one of them called. The Baron saluted.
+
+"You are under arrest by order of the Council of Ten."
+
+Von Stinnes bowed.
+
+"Go to the hotel with Matty, Dorn. I will be on soon."
+
+To the soldiers he added, "Very well, comrades. Take me to comrade
+Levine."
+
+"We have orders...."
+
+"To Levine, I tell you," he interrupted angrily. "Are you fools?"
+
+He removed a document quickly from his coat pocket and thrust it under
+the soldiers' eyes.
+
+"From Levine," he whispered fiercely. "Now where is Levine?"
+
+The soldiers led the way toward the interior of the Palais.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Outside, Dorn supported the drooping figure of the girl. Runners passed
+them crying out, "It is over! We have taken the station!"
+
+They arrived at the hotel. The lobby was thronged with people. A
+chocolate salesman from Switzerland was orating: "They have erected a
+guillotine in Marien Platz. They are shooting down and beheading
+everybody who wears a white collar."
+
+The hotel proprietor quieted the crowd.
+
+"Nonsense!" he cried. "Ridiculous nonsense! We are safe. They are all
+good Bavarians and will hurt nobody."
+
+Dorn led Mathilde to his room. She threw herself on the bed.
+
+"So tired!" she whispered.
+
+"But happy," he added. "Your beloved masses have triumphed."
+
+"Don't. I'm sick of talking...."
+
+"Too much excitement," he smiled.
+
+They became silent. Dorn, watching her carelessly in the dimly lighted
+room, began to think.... "Disillusionment already. The dream has died in
+her. A child's brain overstuffed with slogans, it begins now to ache and
+grow confused. Tyranny, injustice, seem far away and vague. The
+revolution in the streets has blown the revolution out of her heart.
+There will be many like that to-morrow. The over-idealized idealists
+will empty first. The revolution was a dream. The reality of it will eat
+up the dream. Justice to the dreamer is a vision of new stars. To the
+workingman--another loaf of bread."
+
+"Of what are you thinking, Erik?"
+
+"Of nothing ... and its many variants," he answered.
+
+"We've won," she sighed. "Oh, what a day!"
+
+He noted the listlessness in her voice.
+
+"Yes," he said, "another sham has had heroic birth. Out of workingmen
+with guns there will rise some day a new society which will be different
+than the old, only as to-morrow is different than to-day. The rivers,
+Mathilde, flow to the sea and life flows to death. And there is nothing
+else of consequence for intelligence to record."
+
+"You talk like a German of the last century," she smiled. "Oh, you're a
+strange man!"
+
+This pleased him. He thought of words, a ramble of words--but a knock at
+the door. Von Stinnes entered. He was carrying a basket.
+
+"Food," he announced cheerfully. "With food in our stomachs the world
+will seem more coherent for a while."
+
+He busied himself arranging plates of sandwiches on a small table.
+
+"Mathilde asleep?"
+
+He walked to the bed and leaned over her. The girl's eyes were closed.
+
+"Poor child, poor child!" the Baron whispered. He caressed her head
+gently. "We will not wake her up. But eat and leave her food. Do you
+mind if we go out for a while? It is still early and it will be hard to
+sleep to-night. I know a cafe where we can sit quietly and drink wine,
+perhaps with cookies."
+
+Their eating finished, Dorn accompanied his friend into the street.
+
+"It seems as if nothing had happened," he said, as they walked through
+the spring night. "People are asleep as usual, and there is an odor of
+summer in the dark."
+
+Von Stinnes silently directed their way. After a half-hour's walk he
+paused in front of an ancient-looking building.
+
+"We are in Schwabbing now," he said, "the rendezvous of the Welt
+Anschauers. I think this place is still open."
+
+He led the way through a narrow court and entered a large,
+dimly-lighted room. Blank white walls stared at them. Von Stinnes picked
+out a table in a corner and ordered two flasks of wine from a stout
+woman with a large wooden ring of keys at her black waist.
+
+They drank in silence. Dorn observed an unusual air about his friend. He
+thought of Mathilde's suspicions, and smiled. Yet there was something
+inexplicable about von Stinnes. There had been from the first.
+
+"Inexplicable because he is ... nothing," Dorn thought. "A chevalier of
+excitements, a Don Quixote of disillusion...."
+
+"You are thinking of me," the baron smiled over his wine-glass, "as I am
+thinking of you. Here's to our unimportant healths, Erik."
+
+Dorn swallowed more wine. To be called Erik by his friend pleased him.
+He looked inquiringly at the humorous eyes of the man, and spoke:
+
+"You are cut after my pattern."
+
+The Baron nodded.
+
+"Only I have had more opportunities to exercise the pattern," he
+replied. "For the pattern, dear friend, is scoundrelism. And I, God
+bless me ..." He paused and gestured as if in a hopelessness of words.
+
+"There is quality as well as quantity in scoundrelism," Dorn suggested.
+He was thinking without emotion of Anna.
+
+"I have decided to remain in Munich," von Stinnes spoke, "and that
+means that I will die here."
+
+"The day's melodrama has gone to your head," Dorn laughed.
+
+"No. There are people in Munich who know me quite well--too well. And
+among their virtues they number a desire for my death. In Berlin it is
+otherwise. Then too, this business of to-day can't last. It is already
+topheavy with thinkers, and will eventually evaporate in a dozen
+executions. It may come back, though. I cannot forget the workingmen who
+stormed the Banhoff."
+
+He paused and drank.
+
+"Yes, I have decided to stay and play awhile. There will be a few weeks
+more. One will find extravagant diversions in Munich during the next few
+weeks. I am already Egelhofer's right-hand man. I will organize the
+Soviet army, assist in the conduct of the government, try to buy coal
+from Rathenau in Berlin, make speeches, compose earth-shaking
+proclamations, and end up smoking a cigarette in front of a Noske
+firing-squad.... Do not interrupt. I feel it is a program I owe to
+humanity. And in addition, I am growing weary of myself."
+
+Dorn shook his head.
+
+"Romantics, friend. I do not argue against them."
+
+"I wonder," von Stinnes continued, "if you realize I am a scoundrel. I
+have thought at times that you did, because of the way you smile when I
+talk."
+
+"Scoundrels are creatures I do not like. And I like you. Ergo, you are
+not a scoundrel, von Stinnes."
+
+The Baron laughed.
+
+"A convenient philosophy, Erik. Well, I was in the German intelligence
+and worked in Paris during the second year of the war. Prepare yourself
+for a confession. My secrets bore me. And a little cocotte of a countess
+betrayed me. It is a virtue French women have. They are not to be
+trusted, and love to them is something which may be improved by the
+execution of a lover. But there was no execution. To save my skin I
+entered the French intelligence--without, of course, resigning from the
+German. Thus I was of excellent service to the largest number. To the
+French I was invaluable. German positions, plans, maneuvers, at my
+finger tips.... And to the Germans, unaware of my new and lucrative
+connection, I was also invaluable. Again positions, plans, maneuvers. I
+was transferred to Italy by the French and ... But it's a complicated
+narrative. I haven't it straight in my own mind yet. Do you know, I wake
+up at night sometimes with the rather naive idea that I, von Stinnes,
+who prefer Turkish cigarettes to women, even brunettes ... But I
+stammer. It is difficult to be amusing, always. I think sometimes at
+night that I was personally responsible for at least half the
+casualties of the war."
+
+"Megalomania," said Dorn without changing his smile.
+
+"Yes, obviously. You hit it. A distorted conscience image. Ah, the
+bombardments I have perfected. The hills of men I have blown up.
+Frenchmen, Germans, Italians. Yes, a word from me ... I pointed the
+cannon straighter.... But disregarding the boast ... you will admit my
+superiority as a scoundrel."
+
+"It is immaterial," Dorn answered. "If you betrayed the French, you made
+amends by betraying the Germans, and vice versa. As for the Italians ...
+I have never been in Italy."
+
+Von Stinnes laughed.
+
+"You do not believe me, eh?"
+
+"You are lying only in what you do not say," Dorn laughed.
+
+"Yes, exactly. I will go on, if it amuses you."
+
+"It is better conversation than usual."
+
+"I am now with the English," von Stinnes continued. "They play a curious
+game outside Versailles, the English. They have entrusted me with a most
+delicate mission." He paused and drained his glass. "It is quite
+dramatic. I tell it to you because I am drunk and weary of secrets. Five
+years of secrets ... until I am almost timorous of thinking even to
+myself ... for fear I will betray something to myself. But--it is droll.
+The million marks you so gallantly carried in for Matty, they were
+mine, Erik." He laughed. "I gave them to Dr. Kasnilov, and a very
+mysterious Englishman gave them to me...."
+
+"Gifts of a million are somewhat phenomenal," Dorn murmured.
+
+"I stole only a hundred thousand," von Stinnes went on, "which, of
+course, everyone expected."
+
+"But why the English, Karl?"
+
+"A little plan to separate Bavaria from Prussia, and help break up
+Middle Europe. You know feeling between the two provinces is intense.
+There was almost a mutiny in the second war year. And anything to help
+it along. To-morrow, Franz Lipp the new foreign minister of the Soviets
+will telegraph to Berlin recalling the Bavarian ambassador; there _is_
+one, you know--a figurehead. And the good Franz will announce to the
+world that Bavaria has declared its independence of Prussia. This will
+be a politic move for the Soviets as well as England. For the
+bourgeoisie in Bavaria dislike Prussia as much as the communists dislike
+her. But I bore you with intrigue. We have had our little revolution for
+which you must allow me to accept an honest share of credit.... Let us
+have another flask."
+
+"An interesting story," Dorn agreed.
+
+"You still smile, Erik?"
+
+"More than ever."
+
+"Ah, then truly, we are of the same pattern."
+
+Von Stinnes stared at him sadly.
+
+"You are my first companion in five years," he added.
+
+"As you are mine," Dorn answered. "Here ... to the success of all your
+villainies and our friendship."
+
+"Which is not one of them," the Baron murmured. "You believe me?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Ah! it is almost a sensation to be believed ... for speaking the truth.
+I feel as if I have committed some exotic sin. Yes, confession is good
+for the soul."
+
+"Shall we go back to the hotel?"
+
+The Baron leaned forward and grasped Dorn's hand feverishly.
+
+"I do not wish to joke any more," he whispered. "I have told you the
+truth. And you still smile at me. You are a curious man. I have for long
+sat like an exile surrounded by my villainies and smiling alone at the
+world. But it is impossible to live alone, to become someone whom nobody
+knows, whom trusting people mistake for someone else. I have wanted to
+be known as I am ... but have been afraid. Ah! I am very drunk ... for
+you seem still amused."
+
+Dorn squeezed his hand.
+
+"Yes, you are my first friend," he said. The Baron followed him to his
+feet. They were silent on the way to the hotel. Von Stinnes walked with
+his arm linked in Dorn's. Before the latter's room he halted.
+
+"Good night, sweet prince," he mumbled drowsily, "and may angels guard
+thy sleep."
+
+Alone, he moved unsteadily down the hall.
+
+Mathilde was gone. Moving about the room, Dorn found a note left for
+him. He read:
+
+
+"A man was here asking for you. An American officer. I met him in the
+lobby and mentioned there was an American here and he asked your name.
+When I told him he seemed to be excited. He said his name is Captain
+Hazlitt and he is in the courier service on his way from Paris to
+Vienna. I do not like him. Please be careful.
+
+                                                "MATHILDE DOHMANN."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+In the days that followed Dorn sought to interest himself in the details
+of the situation. The thing buzzed and gyrated about him, tiring his
+thought with its innumerable surfaces. Revolution. A new state. New
+flags and new slogans.
+
+"I can't admire it," he explained to Mathilde at the end of the first
+week, "because its grotesqueries makes me laugh. And I cannot laugh at
+it because its intensity saddens me. To observe the business sanely is
+to come to as many conclusions as there are words."
+
+Mathilde had recovered some of her enthusiasm. But the mania that had
+illuminated her thought was gone. She spoke and worked eagerly through
+the days, moving from department to department, helping to establish
+some of the innumerable stenographic archives the endless stream of
+soviet pronouncements and orders were beginning to require. But at night
+her listlessness returned.
+
+"There is doubt in you too," Dorn smiled at her. "I am sorry for that.
+It has been the same with so many others. They have, alas! become
+reasonable. And to become reasonable ... Well, revolution does not
+thrive on reason. It needs something more active. You, Mathilde, were a
+revolutionist in Berlin. Now you are a stenographer. Alas! one collapses
+under a load of dream and finds one's self in an uninteresting Utopia,
+if that means anything. Epigrams lie around the street corners of Munich
+waiting new text-books."
+
+They were walking idly toward the cafe von Stinnes had appointed as a
+rendezvous. It was late and the dark streets were deserted. The shops
+had been closed all week. The Revolution was struggling in poorly
+ventilated council-rooms with problems of economics. Beyond the
+persistent rumors that the city, cut off from the fields, would starve
+in another two days and that the legendary armies of Hoffmann were
+within a stone's throw of the Hofbrau House, there was little
+excitement. "My employers," von Stinnes had explained on the fourth day,
+"are waiting to see if the Soviet can stand against the Noske armies
+from Prussia. The armies will arrive in a few weeks. If the Soviet can
+defeat them and thus establish its authentic independence, my employers
+in Versailles will then finance the Bavarian bourgeoisie and assist in
+the overthrow of the Communists. On the one condition, of course, that
+the bourgeoisie maintain Bavaria as an independent nation. And this the
+bourgeoisie are not at all averse to doing. It sounds preposterous,
+doesn't it? You smile. But all intrigue is preposterous, even when most
+successful."
+
+"I quite believe," Dorn had answered. "I've long been convinced that
+intrigue is nothing more than the fantastic imbecilities unimaginative
+men palm off on one another for cleverness."
+
+Now, walking with Mathilde, Dorn felt an inclination to rid himself of
+the week's political preoccupation. Mathilde was beginning to have a
+sentimental influence upon him.
+
+"Perhaps if she loved me something would come back," he thought. "Anyway
+it would be nice to feel a woman in love with me again."
+
+An innocuous sadness sat comfortably in his heart. Later he would
+embrace her. Kiss ... watch her undress. Things that would mean
+nothing.... But they might help waste time, and perhaps give him another
+glimpse of ... He paused in his thought and felt a dizziness enter his
+silence. Words spun. "The face of stars," he murmured under his breath,
+and laughed as Mathilde looked inquiringly up at him.
+
+The cafe was deserted. Von Stinnes, alone in a booth, called "Hello" to
+them as they entered.
+
+"We have the place almost to ourselves," he said. "There are some people
+in the other room."
+
+He looked affectionately at the two as they sat down, and added, "How
+goes the courtship?"
+
+"Gravely and with cautious cynicism," Dorn answered. "We find it
+difficult to overcome our sanities."
+
+He smiled at the girl and covered her hand with his. Her eyes regarded
+him luminously. They sat eating their late meal, von Stinnes chatting of
+the latest developments.... A mob of communist workingmen had attacked
+the poet Muhsam while he was unburdening himself of proletarian oratory
+in the Schiller Square.
+
+"They chased him for two blocks into the Palais," the Baron smiled, "and
+he lost his hat. And perhaps his portfolio. They are beginning to
+distrust the poets. They want something besides revolutionary iambics
+now. Muhsam, however, is content. He received a postal card this
+afternoon with a skull and cross-bones drawn on it informing him he
+would be assassinated Friday at 3 P.M. It was signed by 'The Society for
+the Abolition of Monstrosities.' He is having it done into an
+expressionist placard and it will undoubtedly restore his standing with
+the Council of Ten. Franz Lipp, the foreign minister, you know, has
+ordered all the telephones taken out of the foreign office building.
+It's an old failing of his--a phobia against telephones. They send him
+into fits when they ring. He has incidentally offered to sign a separate
+peace with the Entente. A crafty move, but premature. And the burghers
+have been ordered under pain of death to surrender all firearms within
+twenty-four hours."
+
+The talk ran on. Mathilde, feigning sleep, placed her head on Dorn's
+shoulder.
+
+"You play with the little one," whispered von Stinnes. "She is in love."
+
+Dorn placed his arm around her and smiled at her half-opened eyes.
+
+A man, walking unsteadily across the empty cafe, stopped in front of the
+booth.
+
+"I've been looking for you," he said. "You don't remember me, eh?"
+
+Dorn looked up. An American uniform. An excited face.
+
+"My name's Hazlitt. Come out here."
+
+Von Stinnes leveled his monocle witheringly upon the interloper and
+murmured an aside, "He's drunk...."
+
+Dorn stood up.
+
+"Yes, I remember you now," he said. The man's tone had oppressed him.
+"What do you want?"
+
+He detached himself from Mathilde and stepped into the room. Hazlitt
+stared at him.
+
+"I owe you something," he spoke slowly. "Come out here."
+
+Watching the man as he approached, Dorn became aware of a rage in
+himself. His muscles had tightened and a nervousness was shaking in his
+words. The man was a stranger, yet there was an uncomfortable intimacy
+in his eyes.
+
+Hazlitt stood breathing heavily. This was Erik Dorn--the man who had had
+Rachel. Wine swept a flame through his thought. God! this was the man.
+She was gone, but this was the man. Shoot him down like a dog! Shoot him
+down! Kill the grin of him. He'd pay. He'd killed something. Shoot him
+down! There was a gun under his coat--army revolver. Better than
+shooting Germans. This was the man.
+
+"You're going to pay for it," he spoke. "Go on, say something."
+
+Dorn's rage hesitated. A mistake. What the devil was up?
+
+"Oh, you've forgotten her," Hazlitt whispered. Shoot him! Voices inside
+demanded wildly that he shoot. Not talk, but kill.
+
+"Rachel," he cried suddenly. His eyes stopped seeing.
+
+Dorn jumped for the gun that had appeared and caught his arm in time.
+Rachel--then this was something about Rachel? Hazlitt ... Rachel. What?
+A fight over Rachel? Rachel gone, dead for always. Get the gun away,
+though....
+
+They were stumbling across the room, twisting and locked together. He
+saw von Stinnes rise, stand undecided. Mathilde's face, like something
+shooting by outside a car window. And a strong man trying to kill him
+... for Rachel. A Galahad for Rachel.
+
+His thought faded into a rage. A curse as the man grabbed at his throat.
+The gun was still in the air. His wrist was beginning to ache from
+struggling with the thing. This was part of the idiocy of things. But he
+must look out. Perhaps only a moment more to live. The man was weeping.
+Mumbling ... "you made a fool out of her ... You dirty...."
+
+As they continued their stumbling and clutching, a fury entered Dorn.
+He became aware of eyes blazing against him--drunken, furious eyes that
+were weeping. With a violent lunge he twisted the gun out of the man's
+hand. There was an instant of silence and the man came hurling against
+him.
+
+Dorn fired. Down ... "my head ..." He lay still. The body of Hazlitt
+sprawled over him. For a moment the two men remained embraced on the
+floor. Then the body of Hazlitt rolled slowly from on top. It fell on
+its back--a dead face covered with blood staring emptily at the ceiling.
+
+Dorn, with the edge of an iron table foot embedded in his head, lay
+breathing unevenly, his eyes closed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The blinds were drawn. Cheering drifted in through the open window.
+Mathilde sat in a chair. She was watching him.
+
+"Hello!" he murmured. "What's up?"
+
+"Erik ..."
+
+She fell to her knees beside the bed and began to weep. He lay quietly
+listening to her. Bandages around his head. A lunatic with a gun. Yes.
+Rachel. The man had been in love with Rachel. Pains like noises in his
+ears.
+
+"You mustn't talk...."
+
+"I'm all right. Where's von Stinnes?"
+
+"'Shh...."
+
+He smiled feebly. She was holding his hand, still weeping. A memory
+returned vividly. A man with blazing eyes. He had lost his temper. But
+there had been something more than that. Two imbeciles fighting over a
+thing that had died for both of them. Clowns at each other's throat. A
+background unfolded itself. Against it he lay watching the two men. Here
+was something like a quaint old print with a title, "Fate...."
+
+"Bumped my head," he murmured. But another thought persisted. It moved
+through the pain in his skull, unable to straighten itself into lines
+of words. It was something about fighting for Rachel. He would ask
+questions.
+
+"What happened, Mathilde? Where'd he go?"
+
+"You mean the man? 'Shh.... Don't talk now."
+
+"Come, don't be silly."
+
+The thinness of his voice surprised him.
+
+"What became of the fool?"
+
+"He's dead."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Yes, you shot him. Now be quiet."
+
+"Good God, so I did. I remember. When he jumped at me."
+
+A sinking feeling almost drifted him away. He felt as if he had become
+hungry. The man was dead.... "I killed him. Well ... what of it?"
+
+He opened his eyes and looked at the room. It was day--afternoon,
+perhaps.
+
+"The doctor says you'll be all right in a few days. But you must be
+quiet...."
+
+"Von Stinnes," he murmured. "There'll be trouble. Call him, will you?"
+
+Mathilde turned away. Now the pain was less. He could hear cheering
+outside. A demonstration. Workingmen marching under new flags.
+
+"Von Stinnes is under arrest, Erik."
+
+"What for? A new government?" What a crazy business.
+
+"No. Don't talk, please. Later...."
+
+He was too weak to sit up.
+
+"Things will have to be straightened out," he muttered. "The fool was an
+American officer. There'll be trouble."
+
+"No, don't worry. Von Stinnes has fixed things."
+
+His eyes grew heavy and closed. Sleep ... and let things, fixed or
+unfixed, go to the devil.
+
+When he awoke again the room was lighted. Mathilde, standing by the
+window, turned as he stirred.
+
+"Are you awake?"
+
+"Yes, and hungry."
+
+She brought a tray to his bed. He raised himself carefully, his head
+unbearably heavy. Mathilde watched him with wide eyes as he sipped some
+broth.
+
+"What did they arrest the Baron for?" he asked.
+
+She waited till he had finished, and cleared the bed, sitting down on
+the edge. Her face lowered toward him till her lips touched and kissed
+him.
+
+"For murder," she whispered. Another kiss. "Now you must be quiet and
+I'll tell you. He gave himself up when the police came. We carried you
+out first. And then I left him."
+
+"But," Dorn looked bewilderedly into the eyes of the girl.
+
+"It was easier for him than for you. They would take you away for trial
+to America. But he will be tried here. And he will come out all right.
+Don't worry. We thought your skull was fractured, but the doctor says
+it was only a hard blow."
+
+She lowered her head beside him on the pillow and whispered, "I love
+you! Poor Erik! He is defenseless--with a broken head."
+
+"You are kind," he answered; "von Stinnes, too. But we must set matters
+right...."
+
+"No, no, be still!"
+
+He grew silent. It was night again. In the morning he would be strong
+enough to get up. A misty calm, the pain almost gone, veins throbbing
+and a little split in his thought ... but no more.
+
+"I will sleep by you," Mathilde spoke. She stood up and removed her
+waist and shoes. He watched her with interest. Another woman curiously
+like Anna, like Rachel--like the two creatures in Paris. Shoulders
+suddenly bare. Possessive, unashamed gestures.... She lay down beside
+him with a sigh.
+
+"Poor Erik! I take advantage of a broken head."
+
+"No," he smiled.
+
+They lay motionless, her head touching his shoulder timidly.
+
+"I could live with you forever and be happy," she whispered.
+
+"We will see about forever--when it comes."
+
+"Do you like me--perhaps--now?"
+
+He would have preferred her silent. Silence at least was an effortless
+lie. To make love was preposterous. How many times had he said, "I love
+you?" Too many. But she was young and it would sound pretty in her ears.
+
+"Mathilde, dear one."
+
+Her arm trembled across his body.
+
+It was difficult, but he would say it.... "Yes, in an odd sort of way,
+Mathilde, I love you...."
+
+"Ah! you are only being polite--because I have fed you broth."
+
+"No. As much as I can love anything...."
+
+"Later, Erik. 'Shh! Sleep if you can. Oh, I am shameless."
+
+She had moved against him. He thought with a smile, "What an original
+way of nursing a broken head!"
+
+Later, tired with a renewed effort to straighten out words about the
+fool and Rachel and himself, he closed his eyes. Mathilde was still
+awake.
+
+"I'll see von Stinnes in the morning," he murmured drowsily. "Von
+Stinnes ... a gallant friend...."
+
+... Someone knocking on the door aroused him. Dawn was in the room.
+
+"Matty," he called. She slept. He found himself able to rise and his
+legs carried him unsteadily to the door. A tall marine, outside.
+
+"Herr Erik Dorn?"
+
+Dorn nodded dizzily.
+
+The man went on in German. "I come from Stinnes. I have a letter for
+you."
+
+He took the letter from his hand and moved hurriedly to a chair.
+
+"Thanks," vaguely. The marine saluted and walked off. Mathilde had
+awakened.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+She slipped out of bed and hurried to him.
+
+"A letter," he answered. He allowed her to help him back to his pillow.
+Reclining again, his dizziness grew less.
+
+"I'll read it for you," she said.
+
+"No. Von Stinnes...."
+
+"It may be important."
+
+"I'll be able to read in a moment."
+
+She shook her head and slipped the envelope from his weakening fingers.
+
+"I know about von Stinnes. Don't be afraid. May I?"
+
+He nodded and she began to read:
+
+
+"DEAR ERIK DORN:
+
+"I write this at night, and to-morrow I will be ended. You must not
+misunderstand what I do. It is a business long delayed. But I have made
+a full confession in writing for the Entente commission--ten closely
+written pages. A masterpiece, if I have to boast myself. And in order to
+avoid the anti-climax which your sense of honor would undoubtedly
+precipitate, I will put a period to it in an hour. A trigger pulled, and
+the nobility of my sad country loses another of its shining lights. I am
+overawed by the quaint justice of life. I end a career of villainy with
+a final lie. It would really be impossible for me to die telling a
+truth. The devil himself would appear and protest. But with a lie on my
+lips, it is easy. Indeed, somehow, natural. But I pose--a male Magdalene
+in tears. Do not misunderstand--too much. You are my friend, and I would
+like to live a while longer that we might amuse ourselves together. You
+have been an education. I find myself even now on this auspicious
+midnight writing with your words. But I mistrust you, friend. You would
+deny me this delicate martyrdom if I lived. For you are at bottom
+lamentably honorable. So now, as you read this, I am dead (a sentence
+out of Marie Corelli) and the situation is beyond adjustment. Please
+accept my service as gracefully as it is rendered. The confession, as I
+said, is a masterpiece. It would please my vanity if sometime you could
+read it. For in this, my last lie, I have extended myself. Dear friend,
+there is a certain awe which I cannot overcome--for the drama, or
+comedy, finishes too perfectly. You once called me a Don Quixote of
+disillusion. And now, perhaps, I will inspire a few new phrases. Let
+them be poignant, but above all graceful. I would have for my epitaph
+your smile and the whimsical irony of your comment. Better this than the
+hand-rubbing grunt of the firing-squad returning to barracks after its
+labors. Alas! that I will not be near you to hear it. But perhaps there
+will come to me as I submit myself to the opening tortures of hell, an
+echo of your words. And this will bring me a smile with which to cheat
+the devil. I bequeathe to you my silver cigarette-case. You are my
+brother and I say good-bye to you.
+
+                                     "KARL VON STINNES."
+
+"No postscript?" Dorn asked softly.
+
+Mathilde shook her head. There was silence.
+
+"Will you find out about him, please?" he whispered.
+
+The girl dressed herself quickly and left the room without speaking.
+Alone, Dorn lay with the letter in his hand.
+
+He spoke aloud after minutes, as if addressing someone invisible.
+
+"I have no phrases, dear friend. Let my tears be an epigram."
+
+
+
+
+
+PART V
+
+SILENCE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The sea swarmed under the night. A moon road floated on the long dark
+swells. From the deck of the throbbing ship Dorn looked steadily toward
+the circle of moving water. In the salon, the ship's orchestra was
+playing. A rollicking sound of music drifted away into the dark monotone
+of the sea.
+
+A romantic mood. A chair on an upper deck. Stars and a moon road over
+the sea. Better to sit mumbling to himself than join in the chatter of
+the cabin. The gayly lighted salon alive with laughter, music, and
+voices touched his ears--a tiny music-box tinkling valiantly through the
+dark sweep of endless yesterdays, endless to-morrows that sighed out of
+the hidden water. The night was an old yesterday, the sea an old
+to-morrow.
+
+A sadness in his heart that kept him from smiling, a strange comedy of
+words in his thought, a harlequin with the night sitting on his lap.
+There were things to remember. There were memories. Unnecessary to
+think. Words formed themselves into phrases. Phrases made dim pictures
+as if the past was struggling fitfully to remain somehow alive.... His
+good-bye to Mathilde. And long, stupid weeks in Berlin. The girl had
+been absurd. Absurd, an impulsive little shrew. With demands. Four
+months of Mathilde. Unsuspected variants of boredom. Clothed in her
+unrelenting love like an Indian in full war dress. Yet to part with her
+had made him sad.
+
+The sea rolled mystically away from his eyes.
+
+"An old pattern," his thought murmured, "holding eternities. And the
+little music keeps tinkling downstairs. A butterfly of sound in the
+night. Like a miniature of all living. Ah, I'm growing sentimental.
+Sitting holding hands with the sea. She was sad when I left her. What of
+it? Von Stinnes. Dear friend! No sadness there. He was right. New
+phrases, graceful emotions. What an artist! But Warren couldn't write
+the story. It has to be played by a hurdy-gurdy on a guillotine."
+
+He let his words wander gropingly over the water until a silence entered
+him. Thus life wandered away. The sea beat time to the passing of ships,
+changing ships. But always the same beat. It was the constancy of the
+stars that saddened him. September stars. The stars were yesterdays.
+Yes, unchanging spaces, unchanging yesterdays, and a ship's orchestra
+dropping little valses into the dark sea. He opened a silver
+cigarette-case--an heirloom with a crest on it. Von Stinnes again.
+Curious how he remembered him--a memory neither sad nor merry--but final
+like the sea. A phantom of word and incident that bowed with an
+enchanting irony out of an April day. The other, the fool with the
+gun.... Good God, he was a murderer! He smiled. Von Stinnes, a
+melancholy Pierrot doffing his hat with a gallant snicker to the moon.
+Hazlitt, a pantaloon. Yet tragic. Yes, there was something in the cafe
+that night--two men hurling themselves drunkenly against the taunting
+emptiness of life. The rage had come because he had remembered Rachel. A
+sudden mysterious remembering. A remembering that she was gone. It had
+torn for a moment at his heart, shouted in his ears and driven him mad.
+
+Something had taken Rachel out of him. Time had eaten her image out of
+him. He had remembered this in the cafe. But why had he fired at the
+stranger? Because the man's eyes blazed. Because he had become for an
+instant an intolerable comrade.
+
+"We fought each other for what someone else had done to us," Dorn
+murmured. "Not Rachel but someone that couldn't be touched. Absurd!"
+Hazlitt slipped like a shadow out of his mind--an unanswered question.
+
+The throbbing ship with its tinkling orchestra, its laughing, chattering
+faces, was carrying him home over a dark sea. At night he sat alone
+watching the circle of water. Four vanished nights. Four more nights. He
+sighed. The sadness that lay in his heart desired to talk to him. He
+struggled to change his thinking. Ideas that were new to him arose at
+night on the ship.
+
+"Not now," he whispered. He was postponing something. But the night and
+the rolling sea were swallowing his resistance. Words that would tell
+him the pain in his heart waited for him.... "Anna. Dear God, Anna! It's
+that. But why Anna now? It was easy before."
+
+Words of Anna waited for him. He stared into the dark.
+
+"I want her. I must go back to her. Anna, forgive me!"
+
+A murmur that the darkness might understand. The long rolling sea
+listened automatically. Weak fool! Yet he felt better. He could think
+now without hiding from words that waited.
+
+His heart wept in silence. The unbidden ones came.... Anna--standing
+looking at him. A despair, a death in her face. Something tearing itself
+out of her. What pain! But no sound. An agony deeper than sound in her
+eyes. He trembled at the memory. The crucified happy one....
+
+Dear God, would he always have to remember now? Other pictures were
+gone. They had drifted away leaving little phrases dragging in his
+thought. Now Anna had found him. Not a phantom, but the thing as he had
+left it, without a detail gone. The gesture of her agony intact. His
+thought shifted vainly away. He knew she was standing as he had left
+her--horribly inanimate--and he must go back. He would hold her in his
+arms, kiss her lips, kneel before her weeping for forgiveness. Ah! he
+would be kind. At night he would sit holding her head in his arms,
+stroking her hair; whispering, "Forget ... forget! A year or two of
+madness--gone forever. But years now waiting for us. New years.
+Everything is gone but us. That brought me back. Mists blew away. Dear
+Anna, I love you."
+
+He was making love to Anna, his wife. A droll finale. Tears came in his
+eyes. There lay happiness. She would move again. The rigid figure that
+he had left behind and that was waiting rigidly, would smile again. He
+plunged desperately into the dream of words to be. The music from the
+salon had ended. Better, silence. Nothing to remind one of the fugitive
+tinkle of life. A dark, interminable sea, a moon road, a sigh of rolling
+water and a ship throbbing in the night.
+
+"Dear Anna, I love you." And she would smile, her white face and eyes
+that were constant as the stars. Constant, eternal. Love that was no
+mystery but a caress of sea nights. Forgive him. And her sorrow would
+heal under his fingers. It would end all right. The two years--the
+halloo of strange sterile things--buried under the smile of her eyes ...
+deep, sorrowful, beautiful. Words to be. "Anna we will grow old
+together, holding to each other and smiling; lovers whom the years make
+always younger." Words that were to heal the strange sadness that had
+come to him and start a dead figure into life.
+
+He stood up and walked to the rail, staring into the churn of water
+underneath.
+
+"It's slow," he murmured. "Four more days."
+
+Anna's love would hide the world from him. But a fear loosened his
+heart. The smell of sea whirled in his veins.
+
+"Perhaps," he thought dreamily, "perhaps there will be nothing. She will
+say no."
+
+He hesitated, straightened with a sigh.
+
+"A wife deserter, a seducer, a murderer. I mustn't expect too much, eh,
+von Stinnes?"
+
+He smiled at the night. The sound of the Baron's name seemed to bring a
+strength into him. He walked toward his berth, his head unnecessarily
+high, smoking at his cigarette and humming a tune remembered from the
+Munich cafes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+There were people in New York who came to Erik Dorn and said: "Tell us
+about Europe. And Germany. Is it really true that...." As if there were
+some inner revelation--a few precious phrases of undistilled truth that
+the correspondent of the _New Opinion_ had seen fit to withhold from his
+communications.
+
+The skyscrapers were intact. Windows shot into the air. Streets bubbled
+with people. A useless sky clung tenaciously to its position above the
+roof-gardens. The scene was amiable. Dorn spent a day congratulating
+himself upon the genius of his homeland. He felt a pride in the
+unbearable confusion of architecture and traffic.
+
+But in the nine months of his absence there had been a change; or at
+least a change seemed to have occurred. Perhaps he had brought the
+change with him. It was evident that the Niagara of news pouring out of
+Europe into the press and periodicals of the day had inundated the
+provincialism of his countrymen. People were floundering about in a daze
+of facts--groping ludicrously through labyrinths of information.
+
+It had been easy during the war. Democracy-Autocracy; a tableau to look
+at. Thought had been unnecessary. In fact, the popular intelligence had
+legislated against it. The tableau was enough--a sublimated symbol of
+the little papier-mache rigmarole of their daily lives, the immemorial
+spectacle of Good and Evil at death grips, limelighted for a moment by
+the cannon in France. The unreason and imbecility of the mob crowned
+themselves. Thought became _lese majeste_.
+
+Dorn returned to find the tableau had suffered an explosion. It had for
+some mysterious reason glibly identified as reaction burst into
+fragments and vanished in a skyrocket chaos. Shantung, Poland, little
+nations, pogroms, plebiscites, Ireland, steel strikes, red armies,
+Fourteen Points, The Truth About This, The Real Story of That, the
+League of Nations, the riots in Berlin, in Dublin, Milan, Paris, London,
+Chicago; secret treaties, pacts, betrayals, Kolchak--an incomprehensible
+muddle of newspaper headlines shrieked from morning to morning and said
+nothing. The distracted mob become privy for the moment to the vast
+biological disorder eternally existent under its nose, snorted, yelped,
+and shook indignant sawdust out of its ears.
+
+In vain the editorial Jabberwocks came galloping daily down the slopes
+of Sinai bearing new tablets written in fire. The original and only
+genuine tableau was gone. The starry heavens which concealed the Deity
+Himself had become a junkpile full of its fragments.
+
+"In the temporary collapse of the banalities that conceal the world
+from their eyes," thought Dorn, "they're trying to figure out what's
+really what around them--and making a rather humorous mess of it."
+
+He went about for several days dining with friends, conferring with
+Edwards and the directors of the _New Opinion_, and slowly shaping his
+"experiences abroad" into phonograph records that played themselves
+automatically under the needles of questions.
+
+At night, he amused himself with reading the radical and conservative
+periodicals, his own magazine among them.
+
+"The thing isn't confined to the bloated capitalists alone," he laughed
+one afternoon while sitting with Warren Lockwood in the latter's rooms.
+"The radicals are up a tree and the conservatives down a cellar. What do
+you make of it, Warren?"
+
+"I haven't paid much attention to it," the novelist smiled. "I've been
+busy on a book. What's all this stuff about Germany, anyway? I read some
+things of yours but I can't figure it out."
+
+Dorn exploded with another laugh.
+
+"You're all a pack of simpletons and bounders, still moist behind the
+ears, Warren. The whole lot of you. I've been in New York three days and
+I've begun to feel that there isn't a remotely intelligent human animal
+in the place. I'm going to retreat inland. In Chicago, at least, people
+know enough to keep their mouths shut. I'll tell you what the trouble
+is in a nutshell. People want things straight again. They want black and
+white so's they can all mass on the white side and make faces at the
+evil-doers who prefer the black. They don't want facts, diagnosis,
+theories, interpretations, reports. They want somebody to stand up and
+announce in a loud, clear voice, 'Tweedledum is wrong. Tweedledee is
+right, everything else to the contrary is Poppycock.' Thus they'd be
+able to put an end to their own thinking and bury themselves in their
+own little alleys and be happy again. You know as well as I, it makes
+them miserable to think. Restless, irritable, indignant. It's like
+having bites--the more they're scratched the worse they itch. It's the
+war, of course. The war has been a failure. The race has caught itself
+red-handed in a lie. Now everybody is running around trying to confess
+to everybody else that what he said in the past was a lie and that the
+real truth is as follows. And there's where the trouble begins. There
+ain't no such animal."
+
+"I see," said Lockwood, smiling.
+
+"Yes, you do," Dorn grinned. "You don't see anything. The trouble is ...
+oh, well, the trouble is as I said that the human race is out in the
+open where it can get a good look at itself. The war raised a
+curtain...."
+
+"What about the radicals, though? They seem to be saying something
+definite?"
+
+"Yes, shooting one another down by the thousands in Berlin--as they will
+some day in New York. Yes, the radicals are definite enough.... The
+revolution rumbling away in Germany isn't a standup fight between
+Capital and Labor. It's Radical _versus_ Radical. Just as the war was
+Imperialist _versus_ Imperialist. One of the outstanding lessons of the
+last decade is the fact that the world's natural enemies haven't yet had
+a chance at each other, being too busy murdering among themselves. It's
+coming, though. Another tableau. All this hysteria and uncertainty will
+gradually simmer down into another right-and-wrong issue--with life
+boiling away as always under a black and white surface."
+
+"Do you think we're going to go red here?" Lockwood asked pensively.
+
+"It'll take a little time," Dorn went on. He had become used to reciting
+his answers in the manner of a schoolmaster. "But it's bound to happen.
+Bolshevism is a logical evolution of democracy--another step downward in
+the descent of the individual. Until the arrival of Lenine and Trotzky
+on the field, there's no question but what American Democracy was the
+most atrocious insult leveled at the intelligence of the race by its
+inferiors. Bolshevism goes us one better, however. And just as soon as
+our lowest types, meaning the majority of our politicians, thinkers, and
+writers, get to realizing that bolshevism isn't a Red Terror with a bomb
+in one hand and a dagger in the other, but a state of society surpassing
+even their own in points of weakness and abnormal silliness, they'll
+start arresting everybody who isn't a bolshevist. Capital will put up a
+fight, but capital is already doomed in this country. It isn't respected
+for its strength, vision, and creative powers. It is tolerated to-day
+for no other reason than that it has cornered the platitude market. I'm
+telling you, Warren, that when we get it drummed into our heads that
+bolshevism isn't strong and powerful, but weaker, more prohibitive, more
+sentimental, more politically inefficient, and generally worse than our
+own government, we'll have a dictator of the proletaire in Washington
+within a week."
+
+Lockwood sighed unhappily and lighted a pipe.
+
+"If you were talking about men and women maybe I could join you," he
+answered. "But I got a hunch you're just another one of those newspaper
+Neds. The woods are full of smart alecks like you and they make me kind
+of tired, because I never can figure out what they're talking about. And
+I'll be damned if they know themselves. They think in big hunks and keep
+a lot of words floating in the air.... What old Carl calls 'Blaa ...
+blaa....'"
+
+The two friends sat regarding each other critically. Dorn nodded after a
+pause.
+
+"You're right," he smiled. "I'm part of the blaa-blaa. I heard them
+blaa-blaa with guns in Munich one night. And up in the Baltic. You're
+right. Anything one says about absurdity becomes absurd itself. And
+talking about the human race in chunks is necessarily talking absurdly.
+Tell me about that fellow Tesla."
+
+"They deported him to Rooshia," Lockwood answered. "There was quite a
+romance about the girl. That was your girl, wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes, Rachel. She wouldn't tag along, eh?"
+
+"No. I suppose they wouldn't let her. I don't know. There was a lot of
+stuff in the newspapers."
+
+The novelist seemed to hesitate on the brink of further information. His
+friend smiled understandingly.
+
+"It doesn't matter, Warren. Go ahead. Shoot."
+
+"Cured, eh?"
+
+"No--dead."
+
+Lockwood nodded sagely, his mouth half open as if his words were staring
+at Dorn.
+
+"Well, there isn't much I know. I met a little girl the other day--Mary
+James; know her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She was quite excited. She told me something about an artist that used
+to hang around Tesla. It seems that he kidnapped her and carted her to
+Chicago. This James girl was all upset."
+
+An interruption in the person of Edwards the editor occurred. The talk
+lapsed once more into world problems with Lockwood listening,
+skeptically open-mouthed.
+
+Late in the evening Edwards suddenly declared, "You're making a big
+mistake leaving New York, Erik. You've got a market now. Your stuff
+went big."
+
+"I'm through," Dorn answered. He arose and took his hat. "I'm leaving
+for Chicago to-morrow."
+
+He paused, smiling at Lockwood.
+
+"I'm going home."
+
+The novelist nodded sagely and murmured, "Uh-huh. Well, good-night."
+
+Making his way slowly through the night crowds and electrophobia of
+lower Manhattan, Dorn felt peacefully out of place. His thought had
+become: "I want to get back to where I was." In the midst of the
+mechanical carnival of Broadway he caught a memory of himself walking to
+work with a stream of faces--of a sardonic Erik Dorn to whom the street
+was a pattern; to whom the mysteries tugging at heels that scratched the
+pavements were the amusing variants of nothing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+"Eddy."
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"I have some news for you."
+
+The round, smiling face of Eddy Meredith that refused to change with
+age, beamed at Anna.
+
+"Erik's back."
+
+The beam hesitated.
+
+"He wrote. He's coming to see me."
+
+"Anna...."
+
+"Yes, dear, I know. It sort of frightens me, too. But," she laughed
+quietly, "there is nothing to be frightened about. He didn't give any
+address or I would have written him telling him."
+
+"He must know you're divorced," Meredith spoke nervously.
+
+"I don't know if he does, Eddy."
+
+She reached her hand out and placed it over his, her eyes glancing at
+the figure of Isaac Dorn. He was asleep in a chair.
+
+"Please, dearest, don't worry," she whispered.
+
+"It'll be hard for you."
+
+Meredith's face acquired an abnormal expression.
+
+"Maybe you'll feel different." He sighed, and Anna shook her head.
+"When's he coming?"
+
+"To-morrow night."
+
+"Did he say anything in the letter?"
+
+She stood up and went to a desk.
+
+"Here it is." A smile touched her lips. "He always wrote curious
+letters. Words and words when there was nothing to say. And a single
+phrase when there was something." She read from a sheet of paper--"'Dear
+Anna, I am coming home. Erik.'"
+
+In the corner Isaac Dorn opened his watery eyes and stared at the
+ceiling.
+
+"Are you awake, father?"
+
+"Yes, Anna."
+
+"Did I tell you I'd heard from Erik?"
+
+The old man mumbled in his beard.
+
+"He'll be out to-morrow night," she said, smiling at him. He nodded his
+head, stared at her, and seemed to doze off again.
+
+"Father is failing," Anna whispered. Meredith had arisen. His face had
+grown blank. He walked toward the hall, saying, "I'll go now."
+
+Anna came quickly to him. Her hands reached his shoulders and she stood
+regarding him intently.
+
+"There's nothing any more, dear. It all ended long ago. Perhaps I'll be
+sad when I see him. But sad only for him."
+
+Meredith smiled and spoke with an effort at lightness.
+
+"Remember, I don't hold you to anything. I want you only to be happy. In
+your own way. Not in my way. And if it will mean happiness for you to
+... for you to go back, why ..." He shrugged his shoulders and continued
+to smile with hurt eyes.
+
+"Eddy...." Her face came close to his. He hesitated until her arms
+closed tightly around him. He felt her warm lips cling and open.
+
+"You've never kissed like that before, Anna." There was almost a fear in
+his voice.
+
+"Because I never knew I wanted you," she whispered, "till now--till this
+minute; till you said about my going back."
+
+Her face was alive with emotion. A laugh, and she was in his arms again.
+They stood embraced, murmuring tenderly to each other.
+
+Later in her bedroom Anna undressed slowly. Her thoughts seemed to be
+quarreling with her emotions, her emotions with her thoughts. This was
+Erik's room--ancient torture chamber. Something still clinging to its
+walls and furniture. Ah, nights of agony still in the air she breathed.
+Her words formed themselves quietly. They came to peer into her
+heart--polite visitors standing on tiptoe before a closed cell that hid
+something.
+
+"Is there anything?" she murmured. "No. I'm different."
+
+She thought of the day she had come out of a grave and resumed living.
+It had seemed as if she must learn to walk again, to breathe, to
+discover anew the meanings of words. At first--listless, uncertain. Then
+new steps, new meanings. Her mind moved back through the year. She had
+wept only once--on the night of the divorce. But that was as one weeps
+at an old grave, even a stranger's grave. The rest had been Eddy.
+
+"I've changed. And I've been happier in many ways."
+
+She was talking to herself. Why? "I'm a different Anna." But why think
+of it? It was settled.
+
+She lay in the bed and her eyes opened at the darkness. Here was where
+she had lain when she had died. Each night, new deaths. Here the lonely
+darkness that had once choked her, torn at her eyes and made her scream
+aloud with pain. Things on the other side of a grave. Memories become
+alien. Things of long ago, when the whisper of the dark came like an
+insanity into her brain. "Erik gone! Erik gone! Gone!" A word that beat
+at her until she died--to awake in the morning and stumble once more
+through a day.
+
+Now she regarded the dark quietly. Black. It had no shape. It lay
+everywhere about her. But it did not burn nor choke. A peaceful,
+harmless dark that could only whisper as if it were asking something.
+What was it asking? Long arms of night reaching out for something. But
+there was nothing to give, even if she wanted to. Not even tears.
+Nothing to give, even though it whispered for alms. Whispered, "Erik ...
+Erik!" But there was no little memory. No big memory. Dead. Torn out of
+her. So the dark whispered to a dead thing in her that did not stir. A
+smile like a tired little gesture passed over her. "Poor Erik, poor
+Erik!" she murmured. "He must be thinking things that are no more."
+
+She grew chill for an instant.... The memory of agonies, of the screams
+her love had uttered as it died.
+
+"Poor Erik!"
+
+She buried her cool cheek restlessly in the pillow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Everything the same as it had been. As if he had stepped out of the
+office for a walk around the block and come back. But a sameness that
+had lost its familiarity. Old furniture, old faces, intensely a part of
+his consciousness, yet grown strange. It was like forgetting suddenly
+the name of a life-long friend.
+
+His entrance created a stir of excitement. He had spent the preceding
+two days arranging with the chief for his return. Barring the
+Nietzschean who had functioned in his absence, none had expected him.
+
+He pushed open the swinging door with an old gesture, and walked to his
+desk. Here he sat fumbling casually with proofs and the contents of
+pigeonholes. An old routine saying, "Pick me up." Familiar trifles
+rebuked him. The staff sauntered up one by one to greet him. Crowley,
+Mortinson, Sweeney.
+
+"Well, glad to see you back. We've sure missed you around here."
+
+Handshakes, smiles, embarrassed questions. A few strange faces to be
+resented and ignored. A strange locker arrangement in a corner to be
+frowned at. But the rest of it familiar, poignant--a world where he
+belonged, but that somehow did not seem to fit as snugly as once.
+Handshakes in the hall. A faint cheer in the composing-room as he
+sauntered for the first time to the stone. Slaps on the back. Busy men
+pausing to look at him with suddenly lighted faces. "Well, Mr. Dorn,
+greetings! How are ye? You're looking fine...."
+
+His world. It was the same, only now he was conscious of it. Before he
+had sat in its midst unaware of more than a detail here, a gesture
+there. Now he seemed to be looking down from an airplane--a strange
+bird's-eye view of things un-strange.
+
+He returned to his desk. The scene again reached out to embrace him.
+Familiar colored walls, familiar chatter and flurry of the afternoon
+edition going to press. He felt its embrace and yet remained outside it.
+There were things in him now that could never be a part of the
+unchanging old shop.
+
+During a lull in the forenoon he leaned back in his chair and stared
+into the pigeonholes. Memories like the unfocused images of a dream one
+remembers in the morning jumbled in his thought. The scene around him
+made things he recalled seem unreal. And the things he recalled made the
+scene around him seem unreal. He tried to divert himself by remembering
+definitely.... "We lay in a moon-lighted room and I whispered to her:
+'You have given me wings.' I held a gun and pulled the trigger as he
+jumped at me.... Then von Stinnes took the blame.... There's a
+restaurant in Kurfursten Damm where Mathilde and I.... What a night in
+Munich!... at the Banhoff. What do I remember most? Let me see.... Yes
+... there was a note pinned on the blanket saying she was gone and I ...
+But there's something else. What? Let me see...."
+
+He tried to evoke clearer pictures. But the sentences that passed
+through his mind seemed sterile, impotent. The past, set in motion by
+his effort, evaded him. Its details blurred like the spokes of a swiftly
+turning wheel. He smiled.
+
+"A sinner's darkest punishment is forgetting his sins," he murmured to
+himself. He thought of the evening before him. "Better not think of
+that. Read proofs." He had deferred his meeting with Anna until he
+should be able to come to her from his desk in the office.
+
+As the day passed an impatience seized him. The unfinished event brought
+a fear with it.... "I must put it out of my mind until to-night." But it
+remained and grew.
+
+In the afternoon he sat for an hour talking to Crowley and Mortinson. He
+listened to them chuckle at his anecdotes. Their faces beaming with
+affectionate interest seemed nevertheless to say, "All this is
+interesting, but not very important. Not as important as sitting in the
+office here and sending the paper to press day after day."
+
+The words he was uttering bored him. He had heard them too often. Yet he
+kept on talking, trying to bury his impatience and fear in the sound of
+his voice. His anecdotes were no longer memories. They seemed to have
+become complete in themselves, related to nothing that had ever
+happened. He wondered as he talked if he were lying. These things he was
+saying were somehow improvisations--committed to memory. He kept on
+talking, eagerly, amusingly.
+
+The afternoon passed. A walk through familiar streets and it was time
+for dinner.
+
+"I'm not hungry. I'll eat, though."
+
+Yes, the evening ahead was important--very important. That accounted for
+the tedium of the day. But it would be dark soon. There would be a
+to-morrow. There had been other important evenings. It was not necessary
+to get too nervous. He had writhed before in the embrace of interminable
+hours, hours that seemed never to arrive. Then suddenly they came,
+looming, swelling into existence like oncoming locomotives that opened
+with a sudden rush from little discs into great roaring shapes. And once
+arrived they had seemed to be present forever. But suddenly the roaring
+shapes were little discs again. Hours died as people died--with an
+abrupt obliteration. Yet each new moment, like each new face, became
+again interminable. Time was an endlessness whose vanishing left its
+illusion unchanged.
+
+But now it was night.
+
+"At the end of this block is a house. Two doors more. I have no key.
+Ring the bell. God, but I'm an idiot. She'll answer the door herself.
+What'll I say? That's her step. Hello? No. Walk in. Naturally."
+
+He stopped breathing. The door opened. His legs were made of whalebone.
+But there was a new odor in the hallway.... And something new here in
+her face. He stood looking at the woman with whom he had lived for seven
+years and when he said her name it sounded like that of a stranger. His
+features had a habit of smiling. An old habit of narrowing one of his
+eyes and turning up the right corner of his lips. He stood unconscious
+of his expression, his smile a mask that had slapped itself
+automatically over his face.
+
+But they must talk. No, she had him at a disadvantage. Her silence could
+say everything for her. His silence could say nothing. He reached
+forward and took her hands.
+
+"Anna...."
+
+She was different. A rigidness gone. When he had left her she was
+standing, stiffened. Now her hands were limp. Her face too, limp. Her
+eyes that looked at him seemed blind.
+
+"I've come back, as you see."
+
+That was banal. One did not talk like that to a crucified one. Her hands
+slipped away and she preceded him into the room. He looked to see his
+father, but forgot to ask a question about him. Anna was standing
+straight, looking straight at him. Not as if he were there, but as if
+she were alone with something.
+
+"You must let me talk first, Erik."
+
+Willingly. It was difficult to breathe and talk at the same time. He sat
+down as she moved into a chair opposite.
+
+Something was happening but he couldn't tell yet. She was changed. Older
+or younger, hard to tell. But changed. It was confusing to look at
+someone and look at a different image of her. The different image was in
+his mind. When she talked he could tell.
+
+"Did you know that I had gotten a divorce, Erik?"
+
+That was it, then. She wasn't his wife any more. A sort of hocus-pocus
+... now you are my wife, now you aren't my wife.
+
+"No, Anna."
+
+"Four months ago."
+
+"I was in Germany...." Mathilde, von Stinnes, _es lebe die Welt
+Revolution_, made a circle in his head.
+
+"Yes, I know. I'm sorry you didn't find out."
+
+It was impossible. Something impossible was happening. Of course, he had
+known it would happen. But he had fooled himself. A clever thing to do.
+He was talking like a little boy reciting a piece from a platform.
+
+"I've come back to you because everything but you has died. I begin with
+the end of what I have to say. I came back from Europe ... because I
+wanted you...."
+
+She interrupted. "I wrote you a letter when I found out about her. I
+sent it to New York."
+
+"I never got it."
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+Quite a formal procedure thus far. A letter had miscarried. One could
+blame the mails for that. And a divorce. Yes, that was formal too ...
+"whereas the complainant further alleges ..." He felt that his legs were
+trembling. If he spoke again his voice would be unsteady. He did not
+want that. But someone had to speak. Not she. She could be silent.
+
+"Anna"--let his voice shake. Perhaps it would help matters. "You've
+changed...."
+
+"Yes, Erik...."
+
+"I haven't much right to ask for anything else...."
+
+Why in God's name could he think clearly and yet only talk like a
+blithering fool? He would pause and gather his wits. But then he would
+start making a speech ... four-score and seven years ago our
+forefathers....
+
+"I'm sorry you came, Erik...."
+
+This couldn't be Anna. He closed his mouth and stared. A dream full of
+noises, voices, Anna saying:
+
+"We mustn't waste time regretting or worrying each other about
+things.... It's much too late now."
+
+He wanted to say. "It is impossible that you do not love me because you
+once loved me, because we once lay in each other's arms ... seven
+years." But there was no Anna to say that to. Instead, a stranger-woman.
+An impulse carried him away. He was kneeling beside her, burying his
+face in her lap. It didn't matter. There was no one to see. Perhaps her
+hand would move gently over his hair. No, she was sitting straight.
+Still alone with something. She was saying:
+
+"I'm sorry. Please, Erik, don't."
+
+"I love you."
+
+"No. No! Please, let's talk...."
+
+He raised his face. It was easier now that he was crying. He wouldn't
+have to be grammatical ... or finish sentences.
+
+"I understand, Erik. I was afraid of this. For you. But you mustn't.
+'Shh! it's all over."
+
+"No, Anna. It can't be. You are still Anna."
+
+"Yes. But different."
+
+He stood up.
+
+"Really, Erik," she was shaking her head and smiling without expression,
+"everything is over. I would rather have written it to you. I could have
+made it plain. But I didn't know where to reach you."
+
+He let her talk on and stood staring. Her face was limp. There was
+nothing there. He was looking at a corpse. Not of her, but somehow of
+himself. There in her eyes he lay dead--an obliteration. He had come
+back to a part of him that had died. It was buried where one couldn't
+see, somewhere behind her eyes.
+
+"I have nothing more to say, Erik. But you must understand what I have
+said. Because it means everything."
+
+He listened, staring now at the room, remembering. They had lived
+together once in this room. There was something beautiful about the
+room. A face that held itself like a lighted lamp to his eyes. "Erik,
+Erik, I love you. Oh, I love you so. I would die without you. Erik, my
+own!" The walls and books and chairs murmured with echoes. The familiar
+slanting books on their shelves. The large leather chairs under the
+light. He must weep. The little things that were familiar--mirrors in
+which he saw images and words ... a white body with copper hair fallen
+across its ivory; white arms clinging passionately to him; a voice,
+rapturous, pleading. He must weep because he had come back to a world
+that had died, that looked at him whispering with dead lips, "Erik, my
+beloved. Oh, I'm so happy ... so happy when you kiss me ... my
+dearest...."
+
+He closed his eyes as tears burned out of them. Anna in a blur. Still
+talking quietly. Embarrassed by his weeping. He was offering her his
+silence and his tears. He had never stood like this before a woman. But
+it was something other than a woman--an ending. As if one came upon a
+figure dead in a room and looked at it and said without surprise, "It is
+I."
+
+"So you see, Erik, it's all over. I can't tell you how. It took a long
+time, but it seemed sudden. I don't know what to say to you, but it will
+be better to leave nothing unsaid. I'm trying to think of everything.
+I'm going to be married next month. Remember, I'm not the Anna you knew.
+She isn't getting married again. I'm somebody totally different. I feel
+different. Even when I walk. You never knew me. I can remember our years
+together clearly. But it seems like a story that was once told me. Do
+you understand, Erik? I am not bitter or sad, and I have no blame for
+you. You are more than forgiven...."
+
+No words occurred to him. Somewhere behind the smooth face of her he
+fancied lived a woman whose arms were about his neck and whose lips were
+hungering for him.
+
+"It's all very clear to me, Erik. I've thought of it often. You made me
+a part of yourself and when you deserted me, you took that with you, and
+left me as I am; as I was born...."
+
+"Will you play something on the piano for me, Anna?"
+
+"No, Erik."
+
+He seated himself slowly and remained with his head down. There was
+nothing to think.
+
+"I'll go in a few minutes," he muttered.
+
+Anna, standing straight, watched him as if she were curious. He felt her
+eyes trying to acquaint themselves with him, and failing. He was growing
+angry. Better leave before he spoke again. Anger was in him. It was she
+who had been the unfaithful one. He could smile at that. He stood up
+then, and smiled. This was a part of life, to be felt and appreciated. A
+handshake, a smile that von Stinnes would have applauded, and he would
+have lived another hour.
+
+"On the boat I made love to you," he said softly, "and I am not unhappy.
+It is only--my turn to weep a bit."
+
+He regarded her calmly. Yes, if he wanted to ... there was something
+waiting.... Even though she thought it dead. If he wanted to, there was
+a grave to open, slowly, with tears and old phrases.
+
+She let him approach her. He felt her body grow rigid as he placed his
+arms around her. His lips touched her cold cheek.
+
+"It was to make sure that you were dead," he whispered.
+
+She nodded.
+
+... Another hour ended. He had returned. Now he was going away again and
+the hour was a disc whirling away, already lost among other discs.
+
+The street was chilly. He walked swiftly. His thoughts were assembling
+themselves. Words that had lain under the tears in the room thawed out.
+
+"She will marry Meredith and the old man will come to live with me. I
+should have gone upstairs and said hello. But he was probably asleep.
+I'll take my books and furniture. She won't need them with Meredith.
+Get an apartment somewhere. How old am I? About forty. Not quite.
+Changed completely. Curious, I didn't want her after she'd talked about
+it. I suppose because I didn't really come for her--for somebody else.
+Conrad in quest of his youth. Lost youth. How'd that damn book end?
+Well, what of it, what of it? Things die without saddening one. Yet one
+becomes sad. A make-believe. That's right. No matter what happens you
+keep right on thinking and breathing as if it were all outside. Yes,
+that's it--outside; a poignant comedy outside that talks to one. Death
+is the only thing that has reality. We must not take the rest too
+seriously. If I get too bored I can remember that I killed a man and
+develop a stricken conscience. Poppycock!... The old man'll be a
+nuisance. But he's quiet, thank God! Well, well ... I'm too civilized. I
+suppose I made an ass of myself. No.... A few tears more or less...."
+
+His thought paused. He walked, looking at things--curbings, houses,
+street trees, lights in windows. He resumed, after blocks:
+
+"Good God, what a thing happened to her! To change like that. An
+awfulness about it. Death in life. Have I changed? No. I'm the same. But
+that's a lie. I was in love once ... a face like a mirror of stars. The
+phrase grows humorous with repetition. It doesn't mean anything. What
+did it mean? Like trying to remember a toothache ... which tooth ached.
+But it only lasted ... let's see. Rachel, Rachel.... Nothing. It was
+gone a week after I came to her. The rest was--a restlessness ...
+wanting something. Not having it. Well, it doesn't matter now."
+
+In his hotel room he undressed without turning on the lights. He felt
+nervous, vaguely afraid of himself.
+
+"I might commit suicide. Rather stupid, though. I'll die soon enough.
+Maybe a few more things left to see and feel and forget. Who knows? I'll
+have to look up some of the ladies."
+
+He crawled into bed and grew promptly sleepless.
+
+"If I'm honest I'll be able to amuse myself. If not ... oh, Lord, what a
+mess! No. Why is it? Life runs away like that--hits you in the eye and
+runs away."
+
+He closed his eyes and sighed. Like himself, the world was full of
+people who lived on. Things ended for them and nobody could tell the
+difference, not even themselves. Being happy--what the devil was that?
+Happiness--unhappiness--you slept as soundly and ate as heartily.
+
+"I'm a little tired to-night." An excuse for something. He was afraid.
+He reached over to the small table near the bed and secured a cigarette.
+Lighting it, he lay on his back, blowing smoke carefully into the dark
+and watching the tobacco glow under his nose.
+
+"Damn good thing I'm not an author. End up as a cross between
+Maeterlinck and Laura Jean. One could write a volume on a cigarette
+glowing in the dark."
+
+He puffed until the tobacco was almost ended. He placed the
+still-kindled stub on the table and sighed:
+
+"Yes, that's me. Life has had its lips to me blowing smoke and fire out
+of me. And now a table top on which to glow reminiscently for a moment.
+And cool into ashes. Apologies to Laura Jean, Marie Corelli--and God."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Rachel, removing her heavy coat, walked briskly to the grate fire
+burning in the rear of the studio. She stood looking into the flames and
+rubbing the cold out of her hands.
+
+"Well, I kept the appointment, Frank."
+
+Brander, the artist, sprawled on a cushion-littered couch, sat up
+slowly. His heavy eyes regarded her.
+
+"We had quite a talk. You know his wife has remarried."
+
+"That so?" Rachel laughed.
+
+"Mr. Dorn sends you his regards."
+
+"That'll be enough."
+
+"I must say he's much cleverer than you, Frank."
+
+"What did you talk about? Soul stuff, eh?"
+
+"Oh, not entirely."
+
+She came over to the couch and patted his cheeks.
+
+"My hands--feel how cold they are."
+
+"Never mind your hands. What did our good friend have to say for
+himself?"
+
+"Oh, talk." Her dark eyes glanced enigmatically from his stare.
+
+Brander swore. "I want to know, d'you hear?"
+
+"Dear me! Soulmate bares all." She laughed and walked with a sensual
+swing down the long room.
+
+Brander, without stirring, repeated, "Yes, everything."
+
+Rachel's face sobered.
+
+"Why, there's nothing Frank--of interest."
+
+"Hell, I've caught you crying over him."
+
+"Well, what of that? A woman's tears, you know, a woman's tears, don't
+mean anything."
+
+"They don't, eh?"
+
+"No." The sight of him hunched amid the cushions seemed to appeal to her
+humor. A large, strong monkey face against blue, green, and yellow
+pillow faces. She laughed.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you something. There's going to be no soul stuff in
+this. You're mine. And if you start any flapdoodle hand-holding with our
+good friend, I'll knock your heads together into a pulp."
+
+He raised his large shoulders and glowered majestically. Rachel, paused
+beside a canvas, regarded him with half-closed eyes and smiling lips.
+
+"He sent his kindest wishes to you."
+
+Brander left his seat and strode toward her.
+
+"That's enough."
+
+"And asked us to call. And if we couldn't come together, I might call
+alone," she spoke quickly. Her eyes were mocking. An oath from Brander
+seemed to amuse her.
+
+"You're in love with him," he muttered, his fingers tightening about
+her wrist. "Come, out with it! I want to know."
+
+"Yes." Rachel's eyes grew taunting. "He is the knight in shining armor,
+fairy prince, and the man in the moon."
+
+"Never mind laughing. I want to know."
+
+"Well, listen then." Her voice grew vibrant as if a laugh were talking.
+"His eyes are the beckoning hands of dream. Poor Frank doesn't know what
+that means."
+
+Brander swung her toward the couch. She fell amid the cushions with a
+laugh. He stood looking at her and then walked slowly.
+
+"Don't touch me. Don't you dare!"
+
+A grin crossed the artist's face.
+
+"I know you and your kind," he answered, "mooney girls. Mooney-headed
+girls. I've had 'em before."
+
+"Keep away...."
+
+Her face as he bent over her glowed with a sudden terror.
+
+"Mooney girls," repeated Brander.
+
+His hands reached her shoulders and held her carelessly as she squirmed.
+
+"You're hurting me."
+
+"I'll hurt you more. Talk out now. Are you in love with that loon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"More than me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Brander's face reddened. His hand struck her chin. Rachel shut her eyes
+to hold back tears.
+
+"Are you still?"
+
+"Yes. Always." Her teeth clenched. "Go on, hit me, if you want to. I
+love him. Love him always. Every minute. As I did. Do you hear? I love
+him."
+
+She opened her eyes and shivered. He was going to kill her. He tore at
+her clothes, beating her with his fists until her head rattled on her
+neck.
+
+"I'll fix your love for him," Brander whispered. The pain of his blows
+and shakings were making her dizzy.
+
+"Frank ... dear, please...."
+
+"Do you love him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She tried to bury her head in her arms, but he untwisted her gesture.
+His hands, striking and clawing at her, made her scream. A mist--he had
+seized her.
+
+"Frank! Frank!"
+
+"Do you love him now?"
+
+She opened her eyes and stared wildly into Brander's face. It grinned at
+her. Her arms clutched his body.
+
+"No, no!" she cried, her mouth gasping. "Don't talk. Don't ask
+questions. Love ..." she laughed aloud eagerly, brazenly. Her thin arms
+tightened fiercely about him. "I love this."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Isaac Dorn was sitting in a chair beside the gas-log fire in his son's
+apartment. His thin fingers lay motionless on his knees. His head had
+fallen forward.
+
+It was early evening when his son entered the room. Dorn paused and
+looked at the silent figure in the chair. The old man raised his head as
+if he had been spoken to and muttered. "Eh?"
+
+He saw his son and smiled. He would like to talk to him. It was lonely
+all day in the house. And things were beginning to fade from his eyes.
+It was hard even to see if Erik was smiling. Yes, his face was happy.
+That was good. People should look as Erik did--amused. Wait ... wait
+long enough and it all blurred and faded gently away.
+
+"What made you so late, Erik?" he asked. Now his son was laughing. That
+was a good sign.
+
+"A lot of work at the office. The Russians are at it again. And I met an
+old friend this afternoon. A dear old friend. Old friends make one
+sentimental and garrulous. So we talked."
+
+He noticed the old man's eyes close but continued addressing him.
+
+"We discussed problems in mathematics. How many yesterdays make a
+to-morrow. That gas-log smells to high heaven."
+
+He leaned over and turned out the odorous flames. He noticed now that
+the old man had dozed off again. But his talk went on. It had become a
+habit to keep on talking to his father who dozed under his words. "She's
+going to drop around and visit us. And we will perform a gentle autopsy.
+Stir a little cloud of dust out of the bucket of ashes, eh? And perhaps
+we will come to life for a moment. Who knows? At least, we shall weep.
+And that is something. To be able to weep. To know enough to weep. Her
+name is Rachel."
+
+He paused and walked toward the window.
+
+"Rachel," he repeated, his eyes no longer on the old man. "Her name is
+unchanged...."
+
+He opened von Stinnes's silver case and removed a cigarette. He stood
+gazing at the snow on roofs, on window ledges, on pavements. Crystalline
+geometries. Houses that made little puzzle pictures against the stagnant
+curve of the darkening sky. A zigzag of leaden-eyed windows, and windows
+ringed with yellow light peering like cat eyes into the winter dusk. The
+darkness slowly ended the scene. Night covered the snow. The city opened
+its tiny yellow eyes.
+
+A street of houses before him. A cigarette under his nose. An old man
+asleep. Outside the window the snow-covered buildings stood in the dark
+like a skeleton world, like patterns in black and white.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERIK DORN***
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