JAMES HUNEKER (continued 3)

"What's the difference?" he asked himself in disgust as he found his top-coat and sat down to wait for the girl, "what's the difference between this crowd, cultured, artistic men and pretty sluts, and the ugly howling fanatics up in New England?" Inevitably the image of Easter arose in his slightly smoky brain. What tremendous minutes they had been when he held her close to him in the mystic blackness; held and possessed her. The present was but the mimique of a monkey-cage. No enchantment of the senses beyond optical titillation. Without strong drink such carnivals of turpitude appal. He almost regretted the champagne. He hadn't long to wait. The girl appeared, slightly tipsy, but very appealing in her innocence—for her youth made her innocent, notwithstanding her frivolity. He recognized her with difficulty, so genteel her externals. A picture-hat shaded her baby face. She was in evening dress, ivory-coloured silk cut low revealing a young bosom. Charming, said Ulick, and how much more provocative her charm when properly clothed. "Oh, Ulick, you are such a dear to wait so long. Let's go home. I love you already." Drunk or sober, she spoke with the accent of truth. As they went out, the door opened by the discreet butler, his features as impassive as an undertaker's, big, red-haired Stanley spied them and joyously shouted after them: "Good-bye, Ulick. You've picked a winner! Dora is a darling. Look out for the newspaper buzzards. There's a bunch of them at the corner. They will try to flash-light you!" As the street door closed behind them, a night-hawk drove to the curb. Ulick bundled Dora in and asked her the address. Up on Lexington Avenue somewhere in the nineties. A tall apartment house. The driver nodded, and turned his horse's head eastward. Footsteps were heard. Ulick peeped through the back glass. "It's the newspaper men and some policemen. I hope they won't pull the place." "Never fear! the Zephyr knows how to butter their bun!" replied Dora, snuggling close to him. "No cops will ever enter that house, but I suppose the newspapers will print the shocking news. They never got in yet, but they will tell what happened just the same. In their minds." And then she promptly fell asleep, her head on his shoulder. She smelt of champagne. Another wasted night, he sighed, as the ramshackle cab rattled through the empty avenue, gray dawn thrusting its cold nozzle into the dreary city-scape. He, too, began to doze....

XIII

Through muddy dreams he struggled into half-consciousness. He fought with naked spectres for the possession of Mona. There were centaurs but they battled among themselves. He ran through endless vistas of magnificent halls, as full of flowers as a hothouse, and as he ran, himself naked, the flowers became alluring nude women, each with a pie and gluttonously eating. It was a nightmare full of mare's nests. Nothing happened, yet every moment was fraught with tragedy—the tragedy of indigestion. Ulick struggled. He put out a hand. It touched human flesh, a face, a nose. His chest was oppressed by a strange weight. Something living lay across him, the owner of the face. He could feel regular breathing. Releasing an arm he rubbed his eyes trying hard to locate himself. Who the woman so closely embracing him? A woman without peradventure of a doubt. It was not the first time that he had awakened in the company of a stranger; toujours la femme! Such happenings are not unusual in the life of adventurous youth. If he had been a drinking man he could have understood his slippery memory. Drinking? Wine? There was a distinct scent of stale alcohol about him, and then he realized that it was the hot breath of Dora. He gently lifted her head and placed it on the pillow. She murmured, nothing intelligible. Ulick greatly desired to know the time, greatly desired to bathe, dress and escape. It is an instinct of a healthy animal that as soon as it has coupled with its female it hastens away to sleep elsewhere. Homo sapiens invented affection, and then followed sentimentality. He got out of bed without disturbing the girl. The room was in semi-obscurity. Tip-toeing, he reached one of the heavily-curtained windows. Peeping out he saw that it must be midday, or later. What to do? He tried several door-knobs, finally found himself in a bath-room where he speedily switched on light. His clock told him a quarter past eleven, but it had run down. Some one tried the door and asked: "Are you up dearie? What time is it, I wonder? Oh! my poor head! I must have a cup of tea or I'll go crazy." Dearie! It was the classic phrase in all its perfection, consecrated by the generations of women, thought Ulick, and he called out: "All right, Dora I'll be with you in two minutes."

But if he was in prime condition after a cold dip and a rub, his lady friend was not. The dainty Dora of the bacchanale had given place to a girl with puffy eyelids, discoloured complexion, bloated cheeks, sagging mouth, bad breath and tarnished glance. She was suffering, and hardly took time to twist her abundant hair into shape. Withal, a charming creature, as she stood in the daylight before her glass. An expression of discontent, bred of late hours and dissipation was contradicted by her young eyes, which incessantly smiled. She couldn't have been more than eighteen and her figure was nubile in its firm flesh and flowing contours. Decidedly a treasure-trove for an erotic man. Ulick went to her and she met him half-way. They embraced so desperately that she cried: "You are such a dear, you are such a man!" And again they made the eternal gesture which mankind shares in common with his simian cousins at the Zoo or of the jungle. Youth must have its fling and the almighty has set his seal upon the multiplication of the species. And youth is better so employed than killing, or swindling, or guzzling, believed Ulick. Dora and Ulick were now thoroughly satisfied with one another and they made room in their consciousness for the play of a still more powerful instinct than reproduction. They were both hungry at the same time. Dora declared her headache vanished; Ulick, glad of the news, nevertheless wished she wouldn't address him with the inevitable "dearie." It sounded as naked as a cornet solo, this familiar appellation of the bordel. How unoriginal is man, how little he changes with the ages. In every tongue since the Babel scandal there is the equivalent of "dearie"; only, it is the property, this vocable, of the women of whom Dante wrote: "As the rill that runs from Bulicamé, to be portioned out among the sinful women...." Ulick felt relieved when breakfast was announced.

Dora, thanks to her invincible youth, had partly recovered. Last night was a thousand years ago for her; only the present existed. Eternity is now. She wore a morning-gown as pretty as herself. And she was pretty; in his eyes she kept growing prettier each time he looked at her. He said so. She rushed round the table to kiss him. A tempestuous temperament. The breakfast-room was also the living-room. It was in a tasteful key, the furnishing banal. The view gave on a sea of roofs and spires. The park, with its sunburnt foliage, even then a green that had decayed for want of proper soil, lay across the west prospect. Dora informed him that the apartment was in the tallest building on upper Lexington Avenue. He believed her. There was one balcony, and of stone. Together they stood upon it smoking their first cigarette. Both were in an expansive mood. Strong tea, buttered toast and marmalade unloosed their tongues. Before they left the room she had rung and another pretty girl entered. She was a quadroon, lovely of hair, complexion, and with a profile that would not have been out of place on an antique medal. Ulick, who Paris born and bred, had no "democratic" prejudices on the score of colour, admiringly stared at the girl as she noiselessly went about her task. Dora didn't like his look. "I see," she primly remarked, "you for the black-and-tan!" His inquiring expression, for he didn't understand, caused her to jerk her head in the direction of the maid. "I mean the slavey." "Oh!" he carelessly confessed, "I had a little chocolate-coloured mistress from Mauritius when I lived in Paris, and she wasn't half as pretty as this girl. Since Baudelaire set the fashion young French poets and artists have gone in for dusky concubines. I hear that at the time there was such a demand that the Isle de France was positively emptied of those young women. You know, Dora, Manet painted a marvellous negress in his Olympe, the slim, nude courtesan with the depraved eyes in the Luxembourg. It ought to be in the Louvre—perhaps it will be some day—"

Dora pouted. "I don't care a snap for your old poets and their nigger brides. Give me a cigarette. Be nice to me. Can't you cuddle me a little bit?" Perfect, said he, mentally. The type, he reasoned, is confined to no particular race. Customs differ; women, never. He became impatient. He mentioned an afternoon engagement at 5 o'clock. It must be all that now, and he kissed Dora good-bye. She was nettled. "You are just a man, after all. You are all alike as peas in a pod. I expected you to take me out to dinner, then to some show. What a dull night I've before me." He was sorry. "I'll be back by seven," he assured her, and she gave a little cry of mingled joy and triumph. "You are a dear, Ulick. I'll be ready for you. Change your clothes. You look a sight in those togs." "Thanks—one reason why I must get down town. Fresh linen, my love." "Where do you live?" He gave the Utopian Club address. He didn't like women to track him home; unless it were Easter or Mona. What were those two girls doing now? And why did he dream of Mona Milton, Mona of all girls, instead of Easter—or Dora? Dreams are silly, meaningless, and you can't rationalize them. He started to go, when Dora significantly said: "Don't forget the mantelpiece." For the second time that afternoon he was puzzled. "The mantelpiece," he echoed and searched for one with his eyes. Dora was not embarrassed. "The rent, angel-child, must be punctually paid on the first of the month. Our landlord is a terror. This apartment house is filled with well kept ladies. No questions are asked. The elevator runs all night. We don't bother with the police. So, my sweet laddybuck plank down the mazuma, or must I make a noise like a dollar-mark for this stupid young chap from Paris?" He understood. He opened his wallet and gave her a handful of notes; thereat she ecstatically screamed and hugged him. He escaped.

XIV

Ulick was fond of Dora. No mistake as to the order of his sentiment. She was the average lust-cat of commerce; yet she was "different." Yes, he quoted Stendhal to her, and after he had related a certain anecdote of Stendhal's life in Milan, she put fingers in her ears; "Don't tell me another thing about the dirty old man, or I'll hate you." "Dirty old man" was a critical pronouncement that wouldn't please the Stendhalians. Nevertheless it somehow suits Henry Beyle, who, genius that he was, must have been precisely what Dora called him. Well, most men are that; they don't have to be old, either. "What is life? A dirty business. Birth is repulsive, death horrible. You can't escape either, though you can cheat the worms by cremation—that foretaste of the lower regions." They went out to dinner. Ulick had hoped to see again the dark girl with the soft strange eyes. How often he had tried to analyze that expression to be found only in the eyes of a negress. A touch of melancholy, a hint of fear, a sweet submissiveness, and the naiveté of a child—these, with the heavy, slumberous lids, the full cup of the eyeball and the unconcealed languourous passion, pleased the aesthetic sense of the young man. Alas! she was not in sight. She had been released for the evening. Dora knew her business. The young man was entirely too susceptible; besides, she didn't like a "coon" servant, as she called her, butting-in. The girl's fate was assured.

They dined in the city, then visited a music-hall. He was mildly amused though sleepy and he made up his mind not to spend that night under Dora's roof. He went out during the entr'acte for a puff of fresh air and was annoyed on his return to find Paul Godard planted in the box beside Dora and calmly twisting the rings on her left hand. The men bowed; Ulick distantly. But good-tempered, irrepressible Paul exclaimed: "I say, Invern, we do coincide in our tastes, don't we?" Ulick nodded, not in the gayest spirit. Dora divined his irritation and was flattered. He is jealous of me, she thought, and plucked at his sleeve. "Old cross-patch, sit nearer. Mr. Godard won't mind." (The hell he won't! muttered Ulick.) "You won't mind, Paul, will you? Ulick is such a bear—no, I mean a dear. Ulick," she shook his listless arm, "Ulick, you ought to have heard Paul sing your praises just before you came back. He said you were the only critic whose criticisms he read. Now, be good—old crank!" The atmosphere became frigid. Paul felt it, and he was not exactly thin-skinned. He kissed Dora's hand, whispered, and inclining his head in Ulick's direction, went away. Silent, Ulick accompanied Dora to her apartment and excused himself. To his slight surprise she accepted his excuse, and pleaded sleepiness herself; to his jealously acute perception there was an absence of heartiness in their final embrace, but perhaps that was because the chauffeur was watching them. She named a day and he promised. As he left the taxi at the club the man confidentially whispered: "Some girl, that?" Ulick wasn't annoyed. Why should he be? Dora belonged to the public. She came from the people. Her daintiness was superficial. A pretty vulgarian, her appeal was universal to males in rut. The wealthy Paul and the humble mechanician both longed for her. So had Ulick, and he would again. She was aware of her attractions and like the busy little merchant she was she sold her wares to the highest bidder. But a demure harlot in demeanor occasionally refined. Silver plate that showed prosaic brass when she was angry or offguard; then her language darkened the air; profanity, abuse, obscenity. The filthiest words in the mud-lard vocabulary hurtled by the heads of her antagonist, whether a sister-cocotte, a chauffeur, or a clubman. Ulick was yet to pass through that verbal ordeal; but it would surely come to him as it did to the rest. She drank too much, and that was her vice. Her profession was in her estimation as honourable as any other. What's the difference between me and the poor dirty wife with a dozen brats? A woman is always kept by a man, wedding-ring or no. Don't I love babies? I dote on them. Thus her philosophy and her preference. She adored children. She loved all the nice young chaps who made her presents and helped to pay her steadily mounting household expenses. If she could only put aside a few dollars every week for the rainy day sure to come. But she never could. The weekly bills were so numerous and so tame, that they ate out of her hands, she would joke. And Paul Godard would surely sleep under her roof this very night, said Ulick, as he wearily undressed himself. I shan't worry much. Dora is a commodity. So is Paul. So am I—for Dora. So is Mona. We are all chattels of chance.

XV

For more than a week Ulick hadn't seen Mona. He hadn't much missed her in the swelter of the new passion, but after ten days passed he began to worry. What if she were sick? Or angry? And that was an unpleasant contingency. The worst of it was that he had no way of knowing the truth. Milt was at the seminary and seldom wrote. Ulick didn't know Mona's parents, not even by sight. Should he risk a call? No, anything but calling. She would be angry with him for breaking her most rigid rule. For some unearthly reason she had made him promise not to visit her, not to seek to know her father and mother; above all, not to divulge the fact of their friendship to her brother. That would be the one unforgivable sin. Ulick had promised, though reluctantly. Why this mystery! He was not married. He was not a criminal; far from it, he was considered a very good catch, not only because of his family connections and youth, but his income was a bait for ambitious mothers with unmarried daughters. He knew all this, so he was surprised at the little shifts and tactics of Mona. She is romantic. She is oversexed—he summoned to his memory her deep-set, passionate eyes; and she likes to make herself not too easy, he decided; but what in the devil has become of her?

He went to their old trysting place in the park. He went—with Dora—to the Casino and pumped M. Dorval. No, that amiable man hadn't seen either Mile. Milton or her student-brother. Suppose she came in now and found me sitting here with Dora. I shouldn't be frightened. She is too sensible not to know the nature of the animal man. But Milt might cut me and put an end to our friendship. I'll wager Mona would continue to meet me. He saw Alfred Stone one afternoon and heard from this indefatigable gossip and news-gatherer that Mrs. Milton and Mona had gone to Hot Springs for a month. He had been to see them (he calls, I can't, ruminated Ulick) and found Mrs. Milton not at all well. Nor was Mona in the best of health. She was snappy and said she needed a change. A change was good for every one, and, continued Alfred, she gave me such a disagreeable look that I beat a retreat. Say, Ulick, what are you up to with that young woman? She's not the Dora kind, you know, not even the Easter kind, and she is Milt's sister. Ulick was aghast. This busybody telling him of his moral remissness, of his intimacy with Mona. How did he find that out? And Dora. And Easter. It was too much for his irritable nerves.

"Mind your own business, Al, and I'll attend to mine." He turned and walked in another direction. He fumed with anger. Dora, too! But Stone was a visitor to every theatre and concert-hall in town. Alfred must have seen Dora with him. What did it matter, anyhow? Dora is all right. A hired woman, nothing more. But it was infernal impudence on Alfred's part to drag in Mona's name, and so suddenly. What could he know in reality? Very little. But he knew. That was the worst of it; and there was the implication of a threat in the use of Milt's name. A warning? That sink of all the iniquities, Alfred Stone, to preach to him. He deserved a kicking. He was too contemptible to punch. Ulick felt his biceps harden. And for heaven's sake why did he bring in the name of Easter? He was certain that Alfred had been jealous from the start about the way Easter deserted him for Ulick. His amour-propre was scratched. He had known her first. He had taken her to the Conservatoire, to Madame Ash, and if he missed introducing her to Lilli Lehmann, had he not urged upon that great artiste the advisability of developing the young singer? And there were the chances to make the connection a profitable one for Alfred. He never forgets self, bitterly said Ulick. He is a rotten little egotist and I wouldn't put him above chantage, polite chantage, if you will, but plain extortion at the end. Parasite, pimp, gambler. He recited a litany of abusive names. If Alfred had a hint of that New Hampshire affair, God help Easter! He would dog her like a detective. The hound. In that case the only resort for me would be to give him a horse-whipping. Would that keep his vile tongue in his mouth? I doubt it. But I'll take his advice. I'll go slow. Why hasn't Mona written me?

XVI

That idea haunted him. Why, at least, hadn't she dropped him a line saying she was going away? Had the miserable spy, Alfred, given her a hint of Dora? He had spoken of the "orgy"—that's what the newspapers called it—at the studio. It made the fortune of the pie-girl, and the list of guest's names had been scrupulously printed, Ulick Invern's among the rest. It gave him vogue at the clubs, did that wretched bacchanale, and at the opera or theatre he saw women curiously regard him. Pulpits had expounded upon the Scarlet Woman sitting, on the Seven Hills of Babylon; meaning both Rome and New York. Why, then, shouldn't Mona have heard, perhaps read, of his complicity in the horrid debauch? Not that it was so horrid to him. More stupid, in fact, than horrid. Nevertheless, she might have written him a sweet scolding letter. No, it wasn't Ned Haldane's abridged version of a Thousand and One Nights that had angered her; it was Dora; Dora and nothing else. He shrugged his shoulders over this solution and went at once to see that bewitching young person. There, the nymph making her orisons, sitting on his lap, he became moody, absent-minded, and surly, so much so that the girl exclaimed: "Ulick Invern, what's the woman's name?" He didn't answer. He was glad she hadn't called him Jewel. Only Mona called him Jewel. Mona and Easter. He softly swore that Dora must never use his pet name, and in that resolution the character of Ulick flew like a flag. His was indeed a multiple personality.

XVII

The Arena was cosy and inviting when, on a night during Easter week, Ulick entered and traversed the length of the room. All the tables were occupied. Mr. Muschenheim met him and for a few minutes they gossiped in German, which language Ulick spoke as well as he did French and English because of his sojourn at Jena. "Your friends are sitting in the next room, in the corner," said his host. Ulick cast inquiring eyes. To his surprise he saw Milt and with him, Alfred. Considering how heartily he had cursed him after their last encounter Ulick's power of social adaptation must have been in excellent working order. He went over to the pair and was welcomed by Milt with unfeigned cordiality. Alfred gave him two chilly fingers. "You here"? Ulick asked. "Yes," replied Milt. "I am home for a week, the Easter holidays, you know," "And he isn't ashamed to sit in a café with his collar buttoned behind," Stoned jeered. "Now, Alfred, what nonsense. On the continent even the clergy go to public places, such as concerts, opera, and restaurants. We must eat and drink like other men. Look at Mgr. Ducey. He is a man of the world, yet an irreproachable ecclesiastic," Alfred sniffed. Ulick didn't dare to ask news of Mona. His heart was heavy with anticipation. The sight of her brother revived his love. What a charming girl she was. What intelligence. How unlike other women? With her the expected never happened. He was annoyed at his false position, and not reassured when his eyes met the searching glance of Milt.

"Well, Ulick, how goes the culture of that famous ego of yours?" The tone was friendly, but for some reason, inexplicable to himself, Ulick felt annoyed. "My ego is all right, Milt. Anyhow, it is freer than yours. Convictions are prisons, you know?" "Ah, Nietzsche. I see you have absorbed his poison, too. My dear boy, those false prophets and corrupters of youth always preach freedom. Freedom for what? While I am not a determinist, yet I admit we can't be free from ourselves. Our personality is an ensemble of our ancestral characteristics. Our instincts are dangerous guides. Just now there is a tendency to place instinct over intellect. Reason unaided by God is a treacherous guide, but instinct alone! Heavens. In twenty years cosmos would be chaos." Milt wiped his forehead.

"Phew!" cried Alfred, "what a sermon you will preach some day, Milt. You will be a regular turkey-cock of God. Instinct or not, our country is galloping hellward. Watch. When it was half aristocratic there was some outward semblance of respect for the government, but today the individual, and his rights, are both growing less and less. Mob rules. The melting-pot! What not! We shall never melt the muckers who are overrunning us. I happen to have a good friend, an abbé from Luxembourg, little, plump, blond; the typical French abbé of the 18th century. He has a theory. He says: "The first swarm of locusts ate up the Indians; then came the Irish; and the English and Dutch disappeared. Followed the Germans, and now the Italians and Slavs. They have eaten up the native American. The Jews are the last and deadliest locusts of all; when they finish with America not a green leaf, a blade of grass, an ear of wheat, will be left in the land." The others were amused at his earnestness. Surely Alfred was of Jewish descent! Ulick interposed: "But Alfred you are a Jew. Why do you class them among the destructive elements? As for the Italians—well, I wish that America had been completely colonized by them. What a different atmosphere would be ours. The fine-arts, and the art of living, would be our heritage instead of our craze for commercialism, not to mention the growing menace of puritanism." "Don't abuse the Puritans," interrupted Milt. "They are a misrepresented people. It is their fanatical offspring who will lay waste America. A moribund branch of Christianity will attempt to shackle freedom and force its prejudices on a free people...."

"Free fiddlesticks"! Alfred was in a rage. "Melting-pot be hanged. There wall be anarchy in this land if these rattlesnakes are not scotched—you can't kill them. A republic is doomed to tyranny; the worst sort of tyranny—public opinion. I grant you, Milt, that the modern breed of those Mayflower pests are more tyrannical than the original lot of religious degenerates—what else were they, crazy as lunatics with their private interpretations of biblical texts; the book of the Apocalypse is responsible for more madmen than any other so-called sacred script in existence—yet the neo-puritan means to put us all in a little hell of his own. He calls it heaven, but it will be hell. The country is overrun by astrologists, fortune-tellers, unchristian scientists, holy howlers. We are not far from being a nation of mad folk. One neurosis follows another. I tell you—anarchy looms ahead. And woman-suffrage—the worst of all our tyrants; woman, the eternal ninny. She is to rule, as if she doesn't play her sex now for all it's worth. Pardon me, Milt—she is right as a cook or a concubine, but as a ruler! Excuse me. And prohibition. It's coming, and in its train, drugs and other tyrannies. Men will smoke bad tobacco in fear and trembling. The melting-pot—I see the locusts swarming for their last attack on the good things of America. Poor old America! She succumbed because she was too sentimental, and sentimentality breeds altruism, and altruism breeds busybodies, and busy bodies breed war. War breeds more war, and then the final catastrophe...."

"Stop it!" commanded Milt, "stop that choral of pessimism. So bad things are not." "Didn't Nietzsche assert that Christianity and alcohol have been the two great means of corruption and still are the worst foes of civilization?" asked Ulick. "Why drag in alcohol?" "If he did, he was quite right," commented Alfred, as he emptied his stein and rapped for another. "Symptoms of mysticism are usually accompanied by sexual impotence." Milt was distressed. The turn of the talk didn't please him, besides, it was Ulick, not Alfred, in whom he was interested. The other, that little Jew atheist with his filthy vices—all the turpitudes, he felt assured—was a rotten branch lopped from his own religion and race. Christianity wanted none of such men; dessicated souls. Vases of iniquity. Vile, accursed, doomed to Gehenna. Nevertheless, with his paternal solicitude for the straying sinner, Milt placed his hand over Alfred's and smiled benignly. "Alfred," he adjured, "Alfred repent while there's time. Here is Ulick fuddling his wits with writings that are of no pith or moment. Their rhetoric it is that seduces him. The petticoats, too,—Hello! who's this? I vow if here isn't Paul Godard." Ulick groaned. Always Paul. He couldn't escape him. Nor did Alfred look overjoyed. Paul, accompanied by an insignificant chap, bustled to the table. "Oh! I say, isn't this a jolly go. You fellows look as if you had the affairs of state burdening your souls. You have? Well, it's time I intervened and brought a new atmosphere to cheer you up. How do, bishop? No, not yet? But soon will be, I hope, Milt. Some day, some day! as Tosti sings. How d'ye do, Ulick? When did you see Dodo last? Fascinating creature. I drink her health. And how are you, Stone? Your bones as sour as ever. Ah! yes, I forgot! This is my friend Bell. But, of course, you know him. He is working the same side of the street as you fellows—excepting the Rev. Milt. What is it you say, Invern? Once a newspaper man always a whore? Isn't that it? A jolly epigram, that...." He rattled on "What I really said was this," ....ly answered Ulick: "Once a millionaire always an imbecile." Paul laughed the loudest. "The tables turned, that deal, and speaking of table-turning, let's get the head-waiter to fetch a larger table. I need elbow room for I feel that I'm going to make a night of it." "What night isn't all night with you?" demanded Ulick. Paul sweetly grinned. "The night you are there," and jerked his hand in the direction of Lexington Avenue. Invern scowled, but kept his temper.

They now sat in the middle of the room around a bigger table. Bell, who had been blinking at the company, blurted out: "Paul, I saw a divorced wife of mine today." "Which one"? asked Paul, winking at Stone. "I think it was the one who plays the violoncello—or should I say, 'cello, Stone? Thank you. Yes, it was Ida. She set me crazy with her practising. That bullfiddle always between her knees—she complained of corns on her knees—always rumbling or buzzing like a big bumble-bee with a basso-profundo stinger. No, I simply couldn't stand it. I gave her grounds for divorce, miles and miles of grounds"—"Don't boast, Bell," admonished Paul—"I don't boast Godard. Whatever fruit fails we men all know that the co-respondent crop never fails. I might add, never frosts." And then he went off into an hysterical burst of laughter. No one smiled. Undaunted, Bell dried his eyes and resumed: "Ida is O. K. She married a house-painter. I don't think any the less of her for that. House-painters make more money than journalists—I beg pardon, Stone—I mean, newspaper men. That constipated gargoyle, Snapgood, he hates the word. He calls himself a journalist. I'm a newspaper man, I am...." "And as ignorant as one, too," sarcastically added Alfred. A chorus of dissent followed. Because Bell was a born ass, the tribe he belonged to was not, necessarily the same. "You should go to London, Alfred. There it takes four newspaper men combined to understand a Yankee joke." It was Milt who spoke. "I don't wonder," retorted Alfred.

Bell was a much-married, much-harried, much-divorced man. Some wags said that he was more divorced than married, more sinning than sinned against. He admitted that he had to pay common-law alimony, as he called it, to his common-law wives. They were legion. This small, stupid-looking chap had a passion for getting into scrapes with girls. He had been divorced four times in four different states by duped women, whose indignation was boundless when they failed to get alimony; rather, failed to collect. Their man was quicksilver. He always escaped. Twice, death had obligingly stepped in and divorced him. In these cases he even escaped paying posthumous alimony; he wouldn't foot the undertaker's bill. His motto was: "Let the dead bury the dead." And so it came to pass, he had married in succession his land-lady's daughter, a greasy frump, a widow with an annuity, a pianiste, a 'cellist. Bell was also musical. He had successively lived with a fat chorus girl, a professional prostitute—he kept this particular episode to himself—a circus-rider, a servant girl, an octoroon, and with two sisters, who worked in an artificial flowershop. He was versatile, Bell. As he was glib of pen and tongue he earned plenty of money and the women flocked about him. He had a certain goatish reputation. Girls giggled when he passed, his eyes lecherously ogling. Little riders! they whispered, and giggled again. Ulick despised him, but his own morals were hardly a whit better; only his tastes were more discriminating; thus he consoled himself.

XVIII

Without a transposition the conversation glided to the theme of women. Bell, who was beginning to feel his liqueur, intoned a toast which he swore he had heard at a dentists' banquet, but a nudge under the table from Alfred kept him from further rambling. Milt wasn't annoyed. He calmly sipped his beer, his hearing keen for fluctuations in the moral market. He had said that a priest must know the human soul inside and out. To be in the world, yet not of it, to wade through the sins and heresies of this ignominious age, yet never wallow in them. To stand in front of the monkey-cage we call life, watch the antics of the inmates but never imperil his soul by approving of the sarabande of sex surrounding him. That was the ideal of Milt. He had the makings in him of a lover, a thinker, a rebel. But never did he lapse into that stupration of the soul, that orgasm of the intellect, we call desire and pride; that mass of confused emotion evoked by the curves of the female form he never indulged in. The brief, dizzy syncope which ensues during the frantic bundling of the two sexes he had never experienced, though he yearned for it, during moments of weakness. But he was a level-headed young man. He knew the strait way, and also the path of flaming ecstacy. He meant to work long and faithfully in the vineyard of the Lord, and to accomplish his self-imposed mission he prepared by studying life from all angles, dubious or beautiful. His heart was a reservoir overflowing with love for his fellow-men. He cherished profound affection for his sister, also profound distrust. Her many excellent, even superlative, qualities were offset by a perverse twist, not congenital. It might prove her undoing. He fervently prayed for her conversion, and by some odd association of ideas he prayed for the salvation of Ulick Invern's soul; that he, with his splendid heritage of faith, family, fortune, talent, be given the boon of light. Ulick and Mona made a pleasant picture in the mind of this candidate for the order of Melchizedek.

"Say, Milt," speculated Stone in his most aggressively malicious manner, "whenever I look at a fresh-colored young priest like you, I don't wonder that the girls swarm about you like flies in a molasses cask. Your purity is written in your eyes. It oozes from your expression. It's an aura. The female ever in pursuit of masculine honey feels this, and you are her idol, as is, in a different fashion, a tenor." Milt protested. Paul suddenly lost his head, crying: "Woman is the split-infinitive in the grammar of life," which was capped by Bell: "Woman is an ecstasy-breeding machine." "I hate speeches beginning with—Woman is this, woman is that," proclaimed Ulick. "When men foregather and booze they suddenly land in that bohemia of dead-sea fruit, the woman question. Women are human like men, and the little difference"—"Bless de Lawd fer de difference, as the darky preacher said—" It was the thick voice of Bell—"is the cause for the lot of rotten talk and theorizing." "Bravo, Ulick"! said Milt, with sentimental vehemence. "Faire remonter tout son sexe dans son cerveau," he added. But Stone was curious. "I'd like to know the trick of that sex-transposition. Women are a nuisance—sometimes; often I should like to do without them; but I acknowledge I can't. What's the method, Milt, camphor or prayer"? Milt, scandalized, didn't reply. To break the embarrassing silence Ulick turned to Paul and asked him if he knew anything new.

"Oh, yes, Marie, the singing comedienne, had just had a row with her last husband. You know that fastidious baronet of hers who wears a bangle on his ankle. The other night at Lady Murchison's dinner I sat next to her. I wished to be friendly so I asked how she was getting along with her young man. "Oh nicely," she said, with that dazzling Celtic smile, "we never quarrel unless we fall in love with the same man." A roar followed. Milt groaned.

"Only the women a man doesn't win are desirable." "Listen to the Rochefoucauld! Bell, where do you get your novel ideas"? "Such ideas should be caged like monkeys"—this from Milt. Then he arose, disgusted. "You chaps are rubbing it in. One would suppose that sex ruled this planet, instead of being perhaps, only a necessary incident, or by-product. I'll move homewards. Will you be seen tomorrow afternoon, Ulick"? He knows something, thought Ulick, but he cordially invited Milt assuring him that he would be found any time after the midday breakfast. Couldn't Milt take that meal with him? Milt consented. "Then sit down a moment, Milt, I should like to tell you of a theory advanced by Remy de Gourmont concerning sex. You spoke of a "necessary incident." Milt sat down. "It's this," resumed Ulick. "De Gourmont insisted that the real protagonist of humanity, indeed, of all organic life, is to be found in the procreative process, which act epitomizes all creation. This theory may not be found in his remarkable Physique de l'Amour, it was something he thought out later. Briefly, we are not the rulers of our personal destiny, but only an envelope of flesh and blood to protect the chief factor of our being, our sex-organs. As long as they are vital our organism flourishes; when they weaken, men and women weaken with them, wither and die. It has a sinister ring, hasn't it, this idea of a hidden force directing our energies, our very fate. It is supported by the seers who through the ages have recognized a blind, remorseless power in whose grip our individual happiness is as helpless as a straw in a hurricane. Only the species counts. Love is always tragic, even the amours of a ragpicker and a gutter-wench. Fatality is stamped on the forehead of every human. Little wonder primitive nations in the dusky depths of Asiatic mystic groves have prostrated themselves before the carved images of the lingam and yoni, the male and female principles. Sex is in the background of every modern religion, from the phallic symbol of the churchspire to the worshipping of the matrix." "I'm off," cried Milt, as he jumped up. "I can't stay here any longer in such a fetid atmosphere to have religion bespattered. Good-night, boys. Ulick—I'll be with you at the Maison Felicé at one o'clock, or thereabouts" He disappeared.

"I say, Ulick," remarked Paul, "you do draw the longbow, don't you, about sex-worship? Did you yarn for Milt's benefit or is it all gospel truth?" "It is in the gospels that you will find it," answered Ulick, who was distrait and feeling anxious over that projected visit. What did it presage! Stone nudged Bell who was in his cups and snoring.

"Give us a rest with your sex-symbolism. I heard a good story this afternoon—wake up Bell, this will fit your case someday—from Dr. Williams. He's my doctor. The best ever. Hasn't sent me a bill for years because the last one we shook dice for and I won. He has a patient, an old chap of sixty who came to him one day and begged, on his knees, the Doc said, for once more, only once! His doctor bluntly told him a man isn't like a woman—toujours prête—but given by nature a certain number of cartridges which he is to use as suits his temperament. If he fires them off in his youth, in middle-age he will be empty-handed and must avoid targets and rifle-ranges. The wise space their shooting and we sometimes, not often, witness the spectacle of an old man, hale and hearty, buying a buxom young target and actually scoring bullseyes. This, however, is an exceptional occurrence. The offspring of aged men are not taken seriously, as is evidenced by the brutal query: 'Who is the other fellow?' Horns seldom decorate the brows of youthful males. To make a short story long the doctor gave the poor old top a doze of some devilish compound, a Brown-Séquard cocktail containing picric acid with mountain oysters, or lamb-fries as a chaser. He was curious enough to ask his patient where he would fire off his last cartridge. The chap became voluble. He had an old wife whom he loved very much, but he kept all physical manifestations for his mistress, a younger woman, who supported her husband and a large family in the sweat of her deceit. A conscientious hard-working woman, who never deceived her lover, except with the aid of her legitimate husband—an arrangement understood, I believe. But the funny thing was that the old fellow became jealous of this same husband. He had boasted so much of the naked conflicts he had waged when young that he greatly desired to give the lady of his affections a touch of his early quality. With the potent fluid of the doctor's drug sizzling in him he literally, so the Doc averred to me, scampered off helter-skelter to his beloved. Not his wife, mind you. Oh, no! That would be wasting powder and shot on a fortress already captured. He had telephoned the faithful concubine, who awaited him, her curiosity aroused. She felt certain that he would again make his usual fiasco. As the rejuvenated old goat bounded over the sidewalk, his blood tingling with the passion of youth and Damiana Mormon Elder's Wafers, a pretty puss of eighteen touched his elbow. She was an impudent mutt, but provocative. She winked and whispered:

"Hello Pop! Come along and I'll give you the time of your life"! and by God he went with her, and that patient Griselda waiting for him in his second home, not to mention the wife of his bosom, at home (where she played a stiff Bridge every afternoon and never bothered her head about her foolish matrimonial partner). Yes, he went to the new rifle-range and heaven knows what lie he invented for the benefit of his mistress. The affair only proves that any woman who can give to an old man the illusion of virility, he will not only marry her, but he will wear her on his heart of hearts; become her slave, in fact. Sex dies hard in us, and despite popular belief, it is the last of the passions, pushing out avarice and gluttony, which pair of entertaining passions are supposed to illuminate the dusty lonesome years of a man's existence. Goethe married his cook, a stout country wench who drank herself into her grave in the august presence of her husband-poet. And all those old women titled and otherwise who marry coachmen, gardeners and grooms, husky young fellows—do they do this for intellectual companionship? The darky woman who said when asked as to her sex emotions: "I'se over eighty. You've got to ask some lady older than me, illustrates that sex fights as long as it can. The original Adam in us. That de Gourmont theory, Ulick, is a horrible idea; sex is hideous if you study it. Let the boys and girls keep their illusions and don't let them believe old Schopenhauer and his instinct of the species dictating their destiny"—"For the sake of sanity, Alfred, shut your trap and let's go home. Wake up, Bell. There's a fresh wife waiting you," said Ulick, glad to get away. "Which wife?" sleepily inquired Bell. "It seems as if a crowd of men can't end the evening without talking sex," grumbled Ulick. "I'm sick of sex." "So are we all," Stone assented, "because sex is a sickly thing. It's not health and conservation, but destruction, disease, death." Ulick fairly ran from him when they reached the street. Sex and damnation! he said between his teeth.

The first news of Easter came over the cables. She made her début at a concert in Berlin under the powerful wing of Lilli Lehmann and achieved a remarkable success. Her brilliant beauty was a factor, but it was her voice, luscious as an August sunset and her emotional temperament that caused the furore. (A press-agent's fiction. There are no "furores" in concert rooms, or at the opera. A lot of noise-loving imbeciles stamp their feet and shout. The claque is always busy. Hysterical criticism does the rest.) Certain exalted personages in the royal-box condescended to express their approval of Fraülein Esther Brandès, who was at once offered huge sums to sign a contract for future European appearances. (These offers are always announced in cablegrams.) Easter must have been ubiquitous for in the foreign dispatches next day was a sensational account of a duel she fought with Mary Garden in the Bois at Paris with Johnstone Bennett—dear old sporting "Johnny" as referee. Sybil Sanderson and Augusta Holmès sat in a balcony and compared scandals. Mary, lithe, elastic, and younger than Easter, pinked her antagonist. The duellists clasped hands and the party, chiefly composed of Parisian newspaper men, adjourned to Pré au Catalan there to drink fresh milk and stale gossip. Rumour had it that the two girls were in love with the same man, no less than the fascinating barytone at the Opera, Maurice Renaud. When Allie Wentworth, who was Easter's second, read this in "Le Soir" she burst into laughter and showed the story to "Johnny", who only lighted a fresh cigarette repeating the classic, "cinq lettres, le mot de Cambronne."

THE FIFTH GATE

At the fifth gate, the warder stripped her; he took off the girdle that encompasses her waist....

I

Alfred Stone as he stood on the boardwalk opposite the Marlborough-Blenheim asked himself why some bold thinker had not elucidated the psychology of Atlantic City. It has no moral landscape, he told himself, though it boasts the finest of seascapes. If there had been invented, as there will be some day, a psychic cinematograph, then, perhaps, a complete picture might be presented of this vulgar and fascinating resort—for vulgar in the sense of popularity it unquestionably is; monumentally vulgar, epically vulgar—epical, that is the precise word. There is a sweep of colour, a breeziness of space, a riot of sound and a chaos of movement that appal because of their amplitude. All creation seems out-of-doors. You jostle elbows with the man from Hindustan, the man from Newark, the man from London, and the man from California. Black, white, red, yellow, brown and nondescript races mingle on the boardwalk in that never-ending promenade from the Inlet to Chelsea. Between the Pickle and the Million Dollar Piers the course of humanity takes its way. In that section it is thickest. At every other step you use the short-arm jolt. In ten minutes you long for the comparative ease of the rush-hour at Brooklyn Bridge.

Atlantic City is a queer Cosmopolis, and a Cosmopolis that could easily perish in a giant inundation, so closely does it hug the rim of the sea. It is ugly, with the attractive ugliness of modern life. It is also many other things. Not Ostend, Dieppe, Brighton in England, Trouville, Scheveningen, Boulogne, nor yet Etretat, Naples, nor the Riviera rival the infinite variety of Atlantic City. It is not a retreat for those introspectively inclined. It is all on the surface; it is hard, glittering, unspeakably cacaphonous, and it never sleeps. If you long to loaf and invite your nerves, Cape May is preferable.

The medley of life, the roaring of megaphones, the frantic rush and gabble of a babel-like chorus, the dazzling single line of booths, divans, stores, holes-in-the-wall hotels, cafés, carrousels, soda-fountains, side-shows, the buzzing of children, the shouting newsboys, the appeals of fakirs, the swift glance of eyes feminine, the scowl of beach-hawks and the innocent mien of bucolics—a Walt Whitman catalogue would not exhaust this metropolis of the sea, this paradise of "powerful uneducated persons," patricians, billionaires and shabby folk. And the piers—a second city on steel and wooden stilts, extending a half mile across the water, containing a hundred diversions. These piers recall the evolution from the lake-dwellers of Central Europe, whose lacustrine deposits we marvel over, just as huge structures reared skyward, modern hotels, are the highly developed habitat of the cliff-dwellers. Doubtless thousands of years hence ardent archeologists will rummage into the deposits of ancient Atlantic City and weave a philosophic system from the strange shapes discovered; combs, coprolites, corsets, hairpins, shovels, flasks, and other "kitchen midden" of the present time.

If the Coleridge of Kubla Khan, or the Poe of the Domain of Arnheim could see the fantastic structures on the beach, those poets would sigh with satisfaction. In our chilly aesthetic air, ruminated Alfred, where utility leads beauty by the nose, the spectacle of an architect giving reign to his fancy and conceiving such an exotic pile as the hyphenated-hotel is a refreshing one. The author of Vathek, William Beckford, could have wished for nothing richer. This architecture might be Byzantine. It suggests St. Marco at Venice, St. Sophia at Constantinople, also a Hindoo palace, with its crouching dome, operatic façade, and its dominating monoliths with the blunt tops of concrete; the exterior decoration is a luxurious exfoliation in hues; turquoise and fawn. It is a dream-architecture, this, with its evocations of Asiatic color and music.

But Atlantic City at night. Alfred recalled it as a picture for such different painters as Whistler or Toulouse-Lautrec. A sight not to be duplicated. Miles of electric lamps light up the boardwalk. Even the darker spaces above the Pickle-Pier are festooned with lace-like fire. It is a carnival of flame. You may start from the Inlet with an open book, walk for miles, perusing it all the while, until you reach the lower end of the promenade and touch the last wooden rail. The enormous amount of electricity consumed seems to make the air vital. Through those garlands of light moves a mob of well-behaved humans. The women are more mysterious than during the day time. If you are still youthful you encounter magnetic glances. Dazzling glances. Sumptuous evening toilettes assault your nerves. Wealth envelopes you. Apparently there is no poverty, no sickness, no unhappiness in existence. The optimistic exuberance of the American is seen here at its most depressing. Mark Tapley run to seed. There is a suggestion of the overblown, of the snobbish, in this al-fresco display; yet if you are not seeking the fly in the ointment you may enjoy as you would enjoy the gorgeous tableaux of Aida or Salammbô. It is all as unreal. How vulgar, how damnably vulgar! exclaimed Alfred, and he remembered the women he had seen at his hotel, their fingers hooped with opals, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds, and holding green corn on the cob to their sensual lips. A dozen mouths simultaneously opened, pink and pearly traps; there was a snapping of dentals, a gnashing of corn. The diamonds flashed, the emeralds blazed with murky green fire, and the sinister opalescence of the unlucky stone matched the colour of the succulent slaughtered vegetable. Surely no other vegetable but corn could enjoy such a scintillating death at the teeth of those pretty, overdressed matrons and silly maids. Alfred shuddered at the memory. Then he saw something that gave him a start and caused him to whistle, interrogatively. Coming toward him was Mona Milton keeping in tow a blond youth in flannels. Evidently she had spied Alfred first. She made a friendly signal, then turning on her escort, she spoke words that acted as would a magical formula for disappearance. He faded into the crowd and Mona was soon shaking hands with the critic.

"You! What good wind blew you down here"? "You of course, how can you ask"? He spoke in his accustomed cynical strain. She passed it over. Something distracted her. "Did you see Milt recently"? she asked, but she did not look him in the eye. She means Ulick, was Alfred's interior comment. "Why yes", he briskly replied. "Yes, Milt was with us the other night at the Arena." "At the Arena"? she faintly echoed. There was a pause. He proposed that they should walk toward the Inlet. The air is fresher there. He told her that he had felt his feed, hence his unexpected appearance and he politely inquired as to the state of her mother's health. "You see," she said, "Hot Springs proved too enervating for mamma, and I proposed a spell of salt air. We shan't stay longer than a week or two. Poor papa—alone with his metaphysics and his eternal chess at the Century. I don't mean to say that he can't get along without us, vous autres, you men are always more self-centred than the women. You have your clubs, your games, and as a final resort your library. Still, papa must miss mamma. So home we go by the beginning of July——" "And to the most heated time in the season." "Oh, I don't much mind the heat. I read. I play a little. There is the park a block away and...." "And Ulick?" "Ulick? Mr. Invern? What in the world makes you drag in his name?" She was cool, unblushing, but her eyes glowed expressively.

"Come, come, Mona, you can't pull the wool over the eyes of this citizen. I know all about your promenades, your luncheons in darkest Martin's, your park rides and presumable holding hands in three languages. I will be frank with you. I don't approve of the intrigue." "Intrigue!" she cried, visibly moved. He noticed it and continued, rather elated: "Yes, that's what the affair is, Mona, understand me, I don't mean intrigue with vulgar connations. That Master Ulick reserves for his mistress Dora Anonymous. I beg your pardon, Mona, I didn't mean to startle you." She had relinquished his arm, abruptly turned to the rail of the boardwalk and gazed seaward. Alfred was furious with himself. He knew that he shouldn't have so awkwardly blurted out the facts of another man's private peccadilloes, but he couldn't help himself and now he had hurt the one woman in the world that he thoroughly respected. He meditated. Her back didn't invite conversation; worse still, she was humming. That he knew was a storm-warning. A schoolmate of Milt's, he had been a visitor in the family for a decade and more. He threw away his cigarette. Then he grasped Mona's left arm. She did not repulse him. She still hummed a tune, one that he recognized. Carmen's song of defiance. "Mona, I humbly apologize for my imprudence. I didn't mean to give Ulick away, but I hate to see you throw yourself at his feet." She turned; he noted that while her eyes were wet—such lovely, appealing eyes—she was smiling. "You dear stupid old Alfred. With all your clairvoyance, can't you see that I don't care whether Mr. Invern has one or ten mistresses? I'm annoyed only because you venture to scold me because I dare go about with him. Pray, since when are you become the keeper of my conscience? You—of all men? I'll keep company with Ulick—with Mr. Invern as much as I please. Yes, and hold hands with him if I care to." She was amused. "I suppose you will tell Milt." He was confused and murmured: "I've told him already. Don't go away Mona—he took it quite calmly, I assure you." But she was aroused. He had never seen this charming girl with the placid temper in a rage. She stamped her foot crying: "Go away, go away from me at once, and please don't come to our house while Milt is away. I shall refuse to see you." Then she cut into one of the side streets and Alfred found himself in turn looking at the sea and watching with vague eyes the chugging motor-boats. He went over to Atlantic Avenue, to the "Extra-Dry Café" and drank whisky cocktails.

That same evening, undaunted, he called at the St. Charles and asked for Mrs. Milton. She received him with her accustomed undemonstrative cordiality; she possessed to an unusual degree the tact of omission. Mona on her return—long after the dinner-hour—hinted that Alfred and she had indulged in an absurd quarrel. But she did not divulge the cause. Alfred is always Alfred, she explained and went upstairs to change her walking attire for evening clothes. From the corner of her eye she saw him talking to her mother. She had her youthful cavalier of the afternoon at her side and, as if to show Alfred that there was more than one man on the globe besides Ulick, she flirted and gossiped to such effect that the young man lost his head and squeezed her hand, blushing as he did so. She did not move for she saw that Alfred had witnessed the scene. He nodded in her direction, lifting ironical eyebrows. That decided her. She beckoned to him much to the disgust of her infatuated companion. She again waved her magic wand of dismissal. He evaporated into thin air; he was hardly more substantial himself. "Come here Alfred if mamma will spare you. I have something to tell you." Her mother, pleased to see that the best friend of her beloved son was to be taken again into the good graces of her daughter, moved indoors, giving sleepiness as an excuse. "Don't you young people stay up too late. The salt air is very damp. Good night Alfred. I hope to see you in the morning."

II

"Listen, Alfred. Sit down and listen. I don't wish you to think I'm such a ninny as to fancy a young man like Ulick is without his distractions. Only keep your Doras to yourself——" "Which Ulick can't accomplish. He shares her with Paul Godard," eagerly broke in Alfred. "No scandal please," she remonstrated. "His private affairs—the private affairs of the mercurial Paul—I confess I like Paul, he is at least well-bred—do not concern me, but what does interest me is your honest opinion of Ulick Invern's character. As he is your closest friend you are bound in honour to give him a bad black eye for my special benefit. But I shall discount your abuse. So go ahead and get rid of your venom." He was hurt by the flippant manner of this invitation. He didn't mind the imputation, for he prided himself on his sharp tongue and epigrammatic slashing at other people's good names, but like most cynics he feared critical guns trained on his own sensitive self. She laughed all the more. In a cold sullen irritation he spoke his little piece with Ulick as thesis.

"You greatly mistake me Mona if you think I underestimate the splendid qualities of Invern. He is a good friend, a friend in need. Generosity of spirit he abounds in. It is his strong point, also his weakest. He is too receptive. He may write well some day, yet I don't believe the man will go far. Again his procrastination, his receptivity, his money, will all militate against his achieving what he calls artistic success, what I call blithering nonsense. Why, if he had a genuine personality, I mean, of course, an artistic personality, he would not talk so much about evolving one—which he does about a dozen times daily. That's number one. Number two is his weakness concerning your sex." She lifted a deprecating hand. "I shan't bother you with any stories about the way he shoots off his young fireworks. That is only a liberation of his surplus energy. If he didn't pursue the Eternal Feminine, if he didn't go in quest of the elusive girl, he might be drinking or gambling—like myself. Mind you, I don't give him any credit for not indulging in the sports of the average male. He saw too much of dissipation when he was young. The old man drank himself to death, and would have gambled away his wife's fortune if it had not been tied up so securely by her father, Bartlett the banker. No, I don't take any stock in Ulick's negative virtues. If he didn't hate the taste of alcohol and the smell of tobacco, he would be like the rest of us; perhaps worse. I only hope he won't take to booze when he is mature; no hope for him if he does. Late boozers never reform. My chief criticism, my dear Mona, is directed against his instability of character. Ulick is true to any wind that blows. He is an emotional weathercock. Any petticoat that crosses his vision attracts him and the last becomes the Eternal She who must be obeyed. In speaking for your good, Mona, just remember his infatuation for Easter, and now—she is only a year gone and it's out of sight, out of mind with him."

Mona attentively listened. At the casual reference to Easter she asked: "What sort of a girl is this Easter—what's her real name?" "Esther Brandès. No. She isn't a Jewess, though I shouldn't be surprised to learn that her mysterious father—she seldom refers to his existence—was of the tribe. Danish, they say, a countryman of Georg Brandes. What sort? A very good sort, I assure you, altogether apart from her musical and dramatic gifts. Now, there's a woman who will go far, because she possesses what Ulick lacks; singleness of purpose. She only sees artistic success, and she goes straight for it. She will get there with both feet, as the saying is. Esther Brandès in ten years may be treading in the august footsteps of Lilli Lehmann. Who knows! Why did she fight a duel with Mary Garden? you ask. Probably because she saw a chance to get into the cable news. Mary is canny. Esther is cannier. She would fight with Frida Ash if she thought it would bring forth a newspaper paragraph. She knows the ropes. Publicity. Notoriety. Anything scandalous, so that she is not forgotten. That's why I believe she will win out. Ulick—never. He hasn't the staying power. He won't take punishment. He is a dreamer and an egotist. He fondly believes that he is becoming a good American when he is only a deracinated cosmopolitan. His place is Paris, not New York. In the end he will be only a spoiled Parisian."

"He complains that everyone advises him to return to Paris," interjected Mona, who seemed sleepy. "And jolly good advice it is. I'm telling you nothing novel, Mona; your brother Milt has discoursed Ulick, his talents—he has more than one. Did you ever hear him play Chopin?—his personality; a chameleon, I tell you, a charming chameleon, intellectually inconstant, and always to be watched. I hope you haven't fallen too deeply in love with him not to pull out when you understand his real character—or want of it. He is quite capable of passing the night with two or three women if the mood is upon him, and physical circumstances favourable. Pardon me, Mona, if I speak plainly. I am concerned for your welfare, else"——She rose, rubbed her eyes, and held out her hand.

"That's the consecrated phrase, Alfred. The most interesting part of your highly moral discourse was your description of Easter. She intrigues my curiosity. Do you suppose that Ulick will tumble over when she returns"? Alfred was surly. "I dare say. But I'm not his keeper. Good-night, and good-bye, Mona. I go up in the morning. May I run in on your return"? Mona nodded. "You may. Milt will be with us for his annual vacation, and you ought to sleep well tonight after demolishing two reputations." Alfred grunted a farewell.

III

Milt was punctual and the friends ate one; of Madame Felicé's excellent luncheons in a receptive mood. The conversation ranged from food to metaphysics. "Ah, Ulick"! cried Milt, who was unusually expansive, "if you would only make up your mind as to your future." "But I have," asserted Ulick. "I have. I mean to become a good American citizen and write artistic books." "I doubt if you will ever become one or accomplish the other," was the unexpected criticism of this young theological student, who saw life steadily. "The foreign virus is in your blood, Ulick. You are one-half Frenchman, the other half cosmopolitan; both are fatal to true Americanism. You should have remained in Paris——" "Another"! groaned Ulick-"and married some nice girl, any nationality so she would be nice, raise a family and settle down." "What a dear old philistine you are, Milt. Why don't you?" Milt slightly coloured. "Because I've chosen the better part like Mary in the gospel. The highest function permitted man is that of the priest. Many are called, few chosen. I tremble before the responsibility of my vocation. I can only pray in all humility that I shall not be an unworthy servant of the Lord." Ulick suddenly changed the subject by asking: "Milt, what is your first name? I've never heard you called anything but Milt, except when Alfred calls you Mel." Milt solemnly envisaged his questioner. "My first name is a secret. Alfred happens to know because we were at college for years in the same classes. It is a name sacred to me, my mother's idea, yet a name that I fear to use because it excites mirth. "Good heavens! what an awful name it must be. Melodeon or molasses"? "I said sacred, Ulick. Let's drop the question." Milt was so grave that his companion shrugged in despair.

"Why do you think I'll never write artistic books"? he demanded. "It's not the artistic I'm fearing, it's the fact that unless you develop character your books will not even fill the belly with the east wind." "Precisely what Huysmans said. Without personality, no talent in a writer." "Your Huysmans left out morality in his schedule." "What's morality got to do with art?" "Only this," earnestly continued Milt, "it must be at least implicit in every book a man or woman writes, else the book will rot. Don't forget—decayed souls stink. The books of your predilection are such that he who reads must run away, or imperil his soul's salvation. Vanitas! Ulick. I speak without picking amiable words. Yours is a case that demands radical treatment." "Wait a bit. I'm not religious. Your God is too remote for me. From the frosty altitude where he reigns he makes no sign of granting our prayers. Does he even love his grovelling earth-creatures"? Milt was not shocked at these impetuous questions. "Baruch Spinoza has said: 'That whoso loveth God truly, must not expect to be loved by God in return.'" "But Spinoza was a Jew and an atheist. Neither his synagogue nor the Christian Church would have aught of him." "True," answered Milt, "I only quoted him to prove my contention. Finite creatures must love their creator. The act of worship constitutes their salvation." Again Ulick groaned. "What has your religion to do with my projected books"? He was getting impatient at the airs of amateur omniscience assumed by the other. They went to Ulick's chamber.

Milt's eye roved over the books on a dozen shelves. "Ah! Here are your gods. Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Maurice Barrès—how I loathe that metaphysical dandy!—Nietzsche, unfortunate madman, Ibsen, Max Stirner, William Blake, another lunatic—a nice gang of mind-poisoners. With exception of Huysmans they are corrupters of youth. Listen to this——" and he opened on the last page of "À Rebours" 'Take pity, O Lord, on the Christian who doubts, on the sceptic who seeks to believe, on the convict of life, who embarks alone, in the night, beneath a sky no longer lit by the consoling beacons of ancient faith.' For me, that is the saddest sentence in all the music of your prose-men. Great artists? Yes. But guides to damnation. Moral anarchs, their teaching will lead to the anarchy of physical violence. Mark my words. All Europe will suffer sometime from their doctrines. As for your Barrès, while he is no longer the anarch of his Enemy of the Laws and is going in for nationalism nowadays, nevertheless his is a dilettante preciosity whose gift of assimilation is his prime quality. Also to be labelled 'dangerous', though only for the intellectual. He possesses a barren imagination. I grant you he writes supple, harmonious prose, though he is a mere neophyte compared with those charming princes of corruption, Ernest Renan and Anatole France. All your modern heroes, whom you resemble, Ulick, I am sorry to say, derive from that abominable Julien Sorel in Stendhal's Red and Black. The admirable antidote to that criminal, free-man, individualist, is Robert Greslou in Paul Bourget's Disciple. Therein you may see where unbridled indulgence, whether in thought or act, will lead a young man. What are you writing just now, Ulick?" Milt took up some sheets from the desk.

"Oh, this a very bad. What next? 'Ideas and Images of Evil.' That's simply a Baudelairian title, and while that wonderful poet—yes, I won't deny that I have read him with more interest than the atheist Victor Hugo—recognized the existence of evil, of a personal devil, Satan or Lucifer, he didn't fall down and worship him." "How about the Litany of Satan"? interrupted Ulick. "It is to be read in a Manichean sense. It is objective" "And how about Carducci's Hymn to Satan? ('Inno a Satana')

Salute, O Satana O ribellione O forza vindice Della ragione."

"Simply Italianate Baudelaire," cried Milt, and in a rage he exclaimed: "You actually memorize such vile blasphemers. But I'm very sure you can't repeat the Lord's Prayer, the Confiteor, or recite the Litany of our Blessed Virgin." Ulick stood in the middle of the room, his hands clasped, his eyes closed, and recited the prayer, the Confiteor and the Litany, adding in a low voice, "A pure heart pierceth heaven and hell." Milt was overjoyed. He shook Ulick's hand, crying: "You know Thomas à Kempis, too? Come, there is hope for your immortal soul. Oh, Ulick! Why don't you forswear your evil ways of living! Give over your inveterate concupiscence." Ulick answered by quoting: "Tandem ergo discubuimus pueris Alexandrinis...." "Stop, Ulick! How dare you quote that vilest of pagans, Petronius Arbiter, almost in the same breath with the divine à Kempis?" For answer Ulick drew from his pocket a tiny book entitled "The Christian's Pattern, by Thomas à Kempis, edited by John Wesley A. M." bearing the date 1832 and published in New York, by Charles Wells. "My mother's copy," he curtly said. Milt saw a feminine signature in the battered little copy. He was much touched by the image of Ulick's filial piety prompting him to carry about him his mother's favorite prayers—for what else are those meditations of the practically unknown mediaeval monk but sighs of suffering wafted on high by a burning soul! Ulick added: "I read Petronius every day." Milt sketched a gesture of despair. He could make no answer to a man who blew hot and cold in the same breath. À Kempis and Petronius. Ormuzd and Ahriman! Apollo and Marsyas. Lucifer, when he was Prince of the Morning, and Satan Mekatrig. Milt switched the conversation.

"Among the subjects discussed the other night at the Arena you spoke of something your friend Remy de Gourmont told you. You remember? It was to this effect: that mankind, all organic life, is the slave of its reproductive organs; that those ancient cults were justified in worshipping the phallus, and the female sex-principle. Do you know, Ulick, that the teaching of our Church doesn't widely differ from that horrible idea. Sexuality is our master—if we let it rule; from that to the worship of those organs, in a word, devil worship, is only a step. I wonder you haven't noticed the grimly brief distance between the highest type of intellect, if not guided by faith, and the beasts of the field. The most depraved of degenerates sometimes have been men of lofty genius and in their fall they grovelled in filth. Gods become gorillas. De Maupassant on all fours eating his excrements, as did Voltaire; poor Nietzsche, a victim of drugs and like Stendhal slain by syphilis; Baudelaire wallowing in nastiness at his end; Heine, a victim to sexual over-indulgence, dying from tabes dorsalis; Huysmans, punished for his early blasphemies and his self-confessed degeneracies, dies of cancer in the throat; Ibsen gone mad, and the religious degenerate, Tolstoy, too; Oscar Wilde——"

"What a preacher you will make, Milt," enthusiastically exclaimed Ulick. "But while you are dragging in those awful examples, why not adduce the names of abnormally normal genius: Plato, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Montaigne, Napoleon, Beethoven, Thackeray and their specific maladies mental and moral...." Milt shook his head. "I'm only thinking of you, Ulick." "Thanks for the compliment. Nice company you put me in. No wonder you recommend a course of conjugal calisthenics...." He laughed aloud. "No joke, my boy. You don't drink or smoke. Good. But you are living in a bog of slimy voluptuousness. As Odo of Cluny has written of man's connection with woman: 'Quomodo ipsum stercoris saccum amplecti desideramus,' and for this 'sack of dung'—don't wince, those monks had the unpleasant habit of calling things by their right names—for this vain, skin-deep beauty, harboring all manners of impurities, you are risking your hopes of heaven"! "How unfair you fanatics are! Why throw muck at the very source of life! We are conceived in corruption, in sin, according to the Church. But how could the Church get souls were it not for this same fornication, despised and berated? Don't speak of sanctification by the sacraments. Fornication is fornication, and were it not for the 'sin' we wouldn't be sitting here. That's what I can't understand; the divorce of theory and practice. Don't start in Milt, let me finish first. Havelock Ellis writes: 'When we find it assumed that there are things good to do and not good to justify we may strongly suspect that we have come across a mental muddle.' And that's gospel truth. Hypocrisy rules the world. In fact, life without hypocrisy is unthinkable. They are inseparable. My friend Jules de Gaultier's philosophy is sound. Bovarysme, or the desire of man to appear other than he is. The eternal illusion. The divine humbuggery." "Hypocrisy is, as you say, necessary to screen certain unpleasant realities, Ulick. It is a pia fraus; painted veils! painted lies. People who will persist in crudely naming unmentionable matters usually end in jail or in the lunatic asylum. Back to 'our mutton'. Why don't you marry? Believe me, the humdrum life of a bourgeois will give you the proper atmosphere for your studies. Think of your Flaubert and his labourious life, with its colourless background. He urged the young writer to be ascetic in his life, that he could be all the more violent in his art. Vance Thompson's advice is sound: Artists should marry women with the feather-bed temperament. Why are you looking like that at me, Ulick?" Ulick only smiled, but there was a covert sneer in the smile that caused Milt to blush.

"Honestly, entre-nous, Milt, you know more than a specialist in psychopathy. Now tell me, I'll keep it secret, how do you contrive to stay clear of the petticoats? It's a personal question, but I dare put it because you are so frank with me as to my own soul-hygiene. You are such an old soul-sniffer!" Milt didn't hesitate. "I pray. Prayer, naught else. Lead us not into temptation. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. All the talk of psychologists about transposing the nervous fluid to the brain would be mere wind, were it not for prayer. Faith moves mountains. Volition is born of humility and prayer. That's my secret, and it's the secret of every priest. But just to show you, Ulick, that we do not necessarily violate the laws of nature, let me quote two phrases which I copied in my note book concerning sex. In his 'L'Egoisme, base de toute Société' Felix Le Dantec makes rather astonishing statements, and what's more, proves their validity. The first is this: 'lacte sexual n'est pas un phénomène vital,' in a word, this act so often sung of by the poets, this act which assures the continuity of life, is a drama in which the living are not the chief actors; the spermatazoa and the ova are. The second proposition is: 'Les éléments sexuels sont morts.' Neither one can live by itself. Nature, prompted by the divine design brings them together in the inexpressible act, an act that even the lowest of humans always seeks the darkness to consummate. Which is a salutary hypocrisy." Ulick calmly took a book down and remarked: "Here is Le Dantec himself. But you don't quote what he says of the 'gamète' the unfecundated sexual cells, poisoning a man swifter than does absinthe. In a word, Milt, the sexes separated are unnatural, and joined, whether in wedlock or concubinage—bedlock is the ultimate outcome—they are natural, healthy. Waldstein, Ekler and other biologists have proved that the sperma of the male actually enters into the veinal circulation of the woman. 'Bone of my bone'! You, because you lead a so-called pure life, are continually haunted by impure images."

Milt demurred, then said rather maliciously: "Ulick, who is this Dora that you and Paul Godard share so happily? Modern polyandry"? "Who told you about her"? rudely demanded Ulick, visibly annoyed. "Little birds fly up the state even to our college. Alfred, if it will relieve you to know, was my informant." "I thought so," muttered Ulick. "Another busybody. I don't mind telling you that the psychology of Dora is as simple as a single-cell structure. She is of the genus prostitute, a superior prostitute. As false as your Hell, and as pretty as a June rose. Wouldn't you like to meet her, Milt?" "Don't talk rot, lad. Now there is another person I should like to speak of—Miss Brandès. What about her? Are you still smitten?" Ulick shook his head. "Where did you get that notion? Alfred, I suppose. Guess again. Isn't the old Adam stirring in you, Milt? Easter is a very seductive girl." This time Ulick scored a bull's eye. His bolt made a palpable hit. From crimson Milt turned ghastly white. Irritably he took up his hat, strode to the door, but halted, controlled himself, and returned to Ulick. Putting a hand on his shoulder and peering into the young's man's eyes, he said, and in affectionate tones:

"Don't worry about my condition, Ulick. God, I pray, will give me strength to fight carnal temptation. Those subtle sophists, your daily intellectual pabulum, deny the potency of prayer, yet it is one of the certitudes of our otherwise miserable existence. Once you cast on the vast current of prayer your harassed soul you are at peace with man and God. No adversity can pierce the cuirass of your soul. But Ulick—my dear Ulick Invern, I can't leave you without speaking to you of something that is very dear and near to me...." (He knows all, thought Ulick, tightly holding the back of a chair) "and that is my sister Mona. Are you behaving honourably towards her, Ulick? If not, if you are indulging in one of your numerous masculine caprices, for God's sake remember that she is my sister, the only daughter of her mother and father, who adore the girl. She is read in the 'modernity' you admire, too deeply for her spiritual repose. She is a sceptic. I am a convert. My parents are easy-going, though my mother is naturally pious. But their religion is invertebrate. Without dogma a religion is like a body without skeleton. It can't stand. It won't endure. So Mona leads too free a life. Now, Ulick, I conjure you by your friendship, don't poison that girl's mind, don't tempt her young heart." Milt's manner was cordial, even tender. He loved his friend, but he loved his sister more than a thousand friends. Ulick was moved. "I swear Milt. I am afraid I already care too much. I'd better go back to Paris, after all." Milt took his hand. "If you love Mona, why not tell her so? She has a beautiful soul. Don't torture her any longer. She is very unhappy just now. Write her frankly, confessing your faults. She knows. She will forgive, I'm sure."

"She knows," too, cried Ulick. "Who told her? Alfred again? I think Master Alfred is riding for a fall, as far as I'm concerned ... he is due for a good hiding." "Now, don't judge too hastily, Ulick. Remember that Alfred has been a close friend of my family for years. Naturally he is interested in Mona, and doesn't wish harm to come to her." "That's why Mona went away without telling me, without saying good-bye, without writing," pondered Ulick. "That's why," answered the brother, guessing the reason of his embarrassment. "Write Mona, Ulick. Play fairly with her. I can't speak plainer. Give up your loose living. You are intended for better things. You are gifted, independent, young, above all, young. I don't advise marriage—not immediately. But don't let happiness slip through your fingers. It may offer itself but once, and you are very careless. A woman's heart contains treasures of affection. Don't waste them; cynicism is worse than corrosive-sublimate. It poisons, kills your higher brain-centres. Pardon my brotherly solicitude, Ulick. I'm a bore, but right is sometimes on the side of the stupid, and victory doesn't always perch on the banners of the intellectually elect. Write Mona, Ulick, and may God bless you." He was gone, his kind face happy with the idea of having accomplished good, before Ulick could gather his wits. The ending of this afternoon seance had been a great shock to the young man. Nor had his not particularly sensitive conscience escaped troubling. He was a Roman Catholic. He was what the world has agreed to call a gentleman; the inward monitor, out of those multiple egos, reproved him for his manner of living, for his behaviour to that sweet, if not precisely, innocent, young woman. A virgin? Yes. How long would she remain one in his corrupting company? This question he quickly buried. What a lot of psychologic palaver over a girl, he mused. Perhaps Milt wished to marry his sister to a good parti. Dismissing this mean suggestion, he posed the naked question: "Shall or shan't I write to Mona? And if I do write, where shall I send the letter? And what shall I say to her? Go to confession, get down on my marrow-bones and say 'mea culpa'? No, decided Ulick, as he sat down to his desk, I'll send her a fairy-tale instead of a history of my wicked life." Ulick took up his pen and began to write.

IV

From her attic of dreams, from her Tower of Ebony and spleen, Mona Milton in one of her rare morose moments, saw unrolled beneath her a double line of light. Tall poles, bearing twy-electric lamps, either side of the nocturnal Avenue, and casting patches of metalic blue upon the glistening pave—veritable-fragments of shivering luminosity; saw the interminable stretch of humid asphalt, stippled by notes of dull crimson, the exigent lanterns of citizen-contractors. Occasional trolley-cars, projecting vivid shafts of canary color into the mist, traversed with vertiginous speed and hollow thunder the dreary roadway. It was midnight. On both sides of the street were buttresses of granite; at unrhythmic intervals gloomy apartment houses reared to the clouds their oblong ugliness magnetically attracting the vagrom winds which tease, agitate and buffet unfortunate people afoot in this melancholy canyon of marble, steel and speed. A belated bug-like motor-car, its antennæ vibrating with fire tremulously slipped through the casual pools of shadowed cross-lights; swam and hummed so softly that it might have been taken for a timorous amphibian, a monster neither boat nor machine. To the faded nerves of Mona, aloft in her cage, this undulating blur of blue and grey and frosty white, these ebon silhouettes of hushed brassy palaces, and the shimmering wet night, did but evoke the exasperating tableau of a petrified Venice. A Venice overtaken by a drought eternal. Venice ærial, with cliff-dwellers in lieu of harmonious gondolas; a Venice of tarnished twilights, in which canals were transposed to the key of stone; across which trailed and dripped superficial rain from dusk and implacable skies; rain, upright and scowling. And the soul of the poetic Mona posed ironically its acid pessimism in the presence of this salty, chill and cruel city; a Venice of receded seas, a spun-steel Venice, sans hope, sans faith, sans vision.

Mona held in her hand a book of musical sketches by an author unknown to her. It was entitled Melomaniacs. It had been given to her by Ulick Invern. But her attention had strayed from its pages to the spectacle of the night. She was not happy. Nor was she unhappy. A sense of emptiness oppressed her, the futility of matters mundane, love included, oppressed her consciousness. If she could but pin her faith to something tangible, concrete, make a definite act of affirmation before the veil of life, behind which was hidden the accomplices of her destiny. Know thyself! is wisdom, but if you are sick unto death with yourself and its petty, insistent claims upon your volitions, then forget thyself! might be a sounder motto. Mona had not the temperament dynamic; nor yet was she lymphatic. In the company of Ulick she had let herself go, as will some women in the more masterful grip of the male, without relinquishing the captaincy of her inner citadel. And now she had mentally dismissed her lover, realizing in a sudden illumination that his instability, as unstable as an anchor that drags, would be a bar to their happiness. She had tartly contradicted Alfred when he laboriously hauled out, as if from a secret place, the chief defects in Ulick's character. Yet, she recognized the justice of the impeachment. Ulick was too fond of his pleasures, and girls were no doubt the stencil of his cardinal sin. Impotent to change his volatile nature—volatile, at least, where women were concerned—she had resolved on hearing of the Dora episode to break their friendship. She felt the wrench, especially this evening. She had returned from the seashore promising herself that she would be strong. Instead, she felt uneasy, full of barren desire, giddiness in her head and a sort of green-sickness in her stomach. She recognized the symptoms, as would any full-blooded girl of normal instincts; she also recognized the necessity of suppressing certain emotions. So she resumed reading The Rim of Finer Issues. She didn't like it as far as she had gone. The writer, evidently unformed, floundered between Henry James and the new French symbolists; psychological analysis was intermingled with symbolical prose, the admixture proving rather confusing to her tormented spirit. She longed for clarity. Still she continued to read in a cursory manner.... Then her attention was caught by a subtitle: Frustrate. No doubt the prose-poem threatened by the heroine with the iron-colored eyes, or was it rust-colored hair? She read on and with increasing interest this rhapsody of the sex-cells.

"O the misty plaint of the Unconceived! O crystal incuriousness of the monad! The faint swarming toward the light and the rending of the sphere of hope, frustrate, inutile. I am the seed called Life. I am he, I am she. We walk, swim, totter and blend. Throughout the ages I dwelt in the vast basin of time. I am called by Fate into the Now. On pulsing terraces, under a noon blood-red, I dreamed of the mighty confluence. About me were my kinsfolk. Full of dumb pain we pleasured our centuries with anticipation; we watched as we gamed away the hours. From Asiatic plateaux we swept to Nilotic slime. We roamed primeval forests, arboreally sublime, or sported with the Behemoth as we listened to the serpents' sinuous irony. We chattered with the sacred apes or mouthed at the moon; and in the Long Ago wore the carapace and danced forthright figures on coprolitic sands; sands stretching into the bosom of earth, sands woven of windy reaches, hemming the sun.... We lay in Egyptian granaries with the grains of corn, and saw them fructify under the smile of the sphinx; we buzzed in the ambient atmosphere, gaudy dragon-flies, or as whirling motes in full cry chased by humming-birds. Then from some cold crag we launched with wings of firebreathing pestilence and fell fathoms under sea to war with lizard-fish and narwhal, for us the supreme surrender, the joy of the expected.... With cynical glance we saw the Buddha give way to Christ. Protoplasmically we noted the birth of planets and the confusion of creation. We saw hornéd monsters become gentle ruminants and heard from the tree-tops the scream of the pterodactyl dwindle to child's laughter. We heard, we saw, we felt, we knew. Yet we hoped on. Every monad has its day.... One by one the inchoate billions disintegrated as they floated into formal life. And we watched and waited. Our evolution had been the latest, until heartsick with longing many of my brethren wished for annihilation.... Save one I was at last alone. The time of my fruition was not far. O for the moment when I should realize my dreams!... I saw my companion swept away, swept down to the vistas of life, the thunderous surge of passion singing in her ears. O that my time would come! After vague alarms I was summoned.... My hour had struck. Eternity was behind me, eternity loomed ahead, implacable, furrowed by the scars of Time. I heard the voice of my foreordained mate in the Cosmos. I tarried not as I ran the race. Moments were priceless; a second meant aeons; and then leaping into the light—Alas! I was too late.... Of what use now my travail, my countless preparations? O Chance! O Fate! I am become one of the silent multitude of the Frustrate...."

That's an ambitious attempt to compress the evolutionary processes into a page, she reflected. On the shelf devoted to her beloved Frenchmen she took down A Rebours and read what Huysmans wrote of the poem in prose of Mallarmé's in particular ... "the adjective placed in such an ingenious and definite way that it ... would open up such perspectives that the reader would dream whole weeks together on its meaning at once precise and multiple, affirm the present, reconstruct the past, divine the future of the characters revealed by the light of the unique epithet ... a spiritual collaboration by consent between ten superior persons scattered through the universe...." "I confess I'm not one of the ten," said Mona aloud, for she often wedded her interior dialogue to the exterior. "I should die of mental starvation on such a condensed literary diet; it may be poetic, but it is too peptonic, and my soul can't be fed with prose pemmican. Yet Frustrate is a strange panorama of sex and evolution. 'Every monad has its day.' True, I wonder if this orchestra of cells that I call 'Moi' will ever have its day? The time of my fruition is afar. Who is the Siegfried that will release this Brunnhilde from her bed of fire? That's a question which every girl puts to herself in a thousand different forms. I should like to be married. I love children. There is no other adequate method to lure them into this chilly life but the mating of men and women. Really, Mona, does the man matter much? Eugenics, a fine word for an impossible thing! I like Ulick. He wouldn't make me happy, I know. But what's the difference if I can hold his baby and mine to my breast? Nothing else counts. I'm in a nice depressed mood tonight. I musn't forget to take a pill. It's usually the liver, and calomel is the last resource of the virtuously bilious. Oh! dear, I wonder what he is doing now? With that horrid woman? Not that I care. Why should I? Ulick is nothing to me. Young men must observe the laws of hygiene or else be ill, so he says. I believe him. What about women? Are they so differently constructed? Saints? I don't believe it. If we were frank, we should tell the whole truth—women are much more amorous than men, although the emotion with us is more massive, yet more diffused. There! I've told my mirror the truth. Polichinelle's secret. Because of our excessive temperament we have been put behind bars for ages. Heavens! Every household is a harem with one lawful wife; the concubines live elsewhere. Some day women will go on a sex-strike. Then the men will crawl. If it's right for the men to go philandering, why isn't it right for the women? I wonder what Milt would say if he could peep into my brain at this moment? Horrified he would surely be. That Dora! Alfred Stone says she is very pretty. Pooh! I know what his 'pretty' means. A lascivious kitten. But she serves the purpose. I don't mind the physical facts; men have strong stomachs, but how can a superior young man like Ulick stand the vulgarity, the stupidity of such a girl! Maybe she isn't stupid or vulgar. That singer, Esther Brandès is a law unto herself; no doubt has a regular flock of lovers ... artistic women are privileged ... I wish I was an artistic woman. I've never had a real affair. If these monads of mine are to have their day it's high time they began. Only to think of it, I was once spoony over Alfred. I can't endure his presence now. They say we always return to our first loves. What nonsense. We usually turn down a side street when we see an old beau approaching. I know I do. I wonder whether Ulick really was in earnest about our dream-children? Our monads must have been mighty lively when we held hands at the Casino and at Martin's. What were their names, those children? Shamus, Tenth Earl, or is it Marquis of Thingamajig somewhere in Ireland? Shamus and——? Wasn't there a horse or a mare in the dream? Yes, yes, I have it, Brunnhilde's white horse, or was it one of the white horses of 'Rosmersholm'? No, it wasn't Ibsen at all, it was Wagner. Grane! Aha! That's it. Grane and Shamus. What darlings they must be, and their mother who conceived and bore them never saw them except in her dreams. But they are more real than flesh and blood children. Our dream children. I'm beginning to think I love Ulick.... Oh! he is a dear. I'd better go to bed or I'll end a lunatic. When a woman ceases to be mistress of herself she is likely to become the mistress of a man. Dreams. Heigho! Now for my bed of tormenting fire not on Brunnhilde's fire-begirt rock, but between my sheets. But the fire is there just the same ... the fire ... the lovely, teasing fire that brings dreams ... and Ulick ... and our dream-children, Shamus and Grane ... Shamus...."