CHAPTER VIII

1

The room that Lewis entered was crowded and noisy. Everything seemed to give off sound ... the smoke floating densely overhead, the men's glistening shirt fronts, like so many instruments for percussion. Standing in the doorway, too bewildered by the lights to see clearly, Lewis tried at first to pick out a familiar voice. Someone was rapping on the piano and shouting: "Ladies and gentlemen, a duet ... a duet, ladies and gentlemen," and Lewis tried to follow the rest of it for a while, holding to a special thread in the crazy pattern of noise. Soon that was too much effort. He shut his eyes and listened to the voices. They fused at some far-off point into one chord, and he could hear that chord always on the verge of dissolving; yet endlessly dragging on, swelling and diminishing endlessly--as if someone who had fallen asleep were directing it, with slow senseless motions of the baton. He had almost gone to sleep listening to it, when the sound of feet scuffling nearby roused him. He opened his eyes and saw Poldy struggling to free himself from his friends. His face was wet with perspiration, he kept flapping his elbows backward and turning from one to the other, pleading with them in the high-pitched hysterical voice of a child who is ready to cry. "Listen, Jel, I just want to ask him. What harm can it be if I ask him? Jel, will it hurt you if I ask him?"

"But Poldy! That's the eighth person you'll be asking tonight."

Poldy looked at him in alarm. "I don't remember," he muttered. He stopped struggling and stood quietly between them, frowning at the floor. After a while Jel nodded to his friend, and they released him. "Go on, then," Jel said and pushed him gently forward. "Ask."

Poldy walked unsteadily. At one time he almost toppled forward. He blushed then and looked back quickly at his friends. When he was close to Lewis he put his arm on his shoulder, and peered into his face with troubled eyes.

"What time is it, Lewis?" he whispered.

"Ten minutes to nine, I think."

Poldy nodded and looked off into the distance, wrapped in profound calculations. At length he roused himself and turned to Lewis. "Thank you ... thank you..." he said briskly, and walked away. Lewis wanted to speak to him further, but Poldy was gone too quickly. He turned inquiringly to Poldy's friend.

"Oh, don't mind him," Jel said cheerfully. "He's just a little upset. Thinks he's made a great discovery. He says it takes longer for an hour to pass than it used to. Claims he's the only one who notices it, but he says soon everyone will feel it. Now _you_ haven't noticed it, have you?" Jel looked suspiciously at Lewis. "No, of course not..." he laughed nervously. "Poldy's so clever, you know, I thought there might be something in it. But say ... suppose it did take longer for an hour to pass ... can't see how it would, but suppose it did ... it wouldn't matter anyway, now would it?"

"Why wouldn't it matter?"

"Oh, we could get all the clocks to working faster ... or slower. Say, which is it? Would they have to go faster or slower? Oh, hell! It's an awfully mixed up business, and poor Poldy thinks he's got it all figured out. Just look at him..."

Poldy was standing alone in the center of the room. He had opened his coat and hooked his right thumb into his vest pocket. In his left hand he held a watch, and stared at it with a harassed expression. And as Lewis watched, the feeling came over him that all the people in the room were behaving with strange detachment ... each one, like Poldy staring at the watch, wrapped in a special insanity of talking or laughing or walking about or staring ... and when they seemed to be aware of each other it was only incidental to their madness. And now he heard an ominous undercurrent of speed in the voices, a quickening up to a hysterical tempo. "Ladies and gentlemen, a duet..." The man at the piano rapped away with greater frenzy, his voice climbed to a high whining note. "A duet, ladies and gentlemen, listen to the duet." He stopped and snatched a large napkin from the table, fixed it on his head like a nurse's peaked cap, and continued shouting. Nobody listened, and the man's face grew red, he glared angrily at everyone near him. In one corner of the room Lustbader was performing tricks with a handkerchief cocked over his fist. Somebody tried to snatch the handkerchief away, and others lifted the tails of his coat to see whether he had anything hidden there. The magician's face contorted with rage. He stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket and turned on the offenders. "So! You don't believe me!" he shouted. "Look! I will undress before you." He took off his coat and collar, and was about to undo his belt, when one of the men snatched a scarf from the piano, and wrapped it over Lustbader's shoulders, and led him away, his face simpering with elaborate modesty. At the piano two musicians were improvising a duet. They banged out a series of wild arpeggios, paused and leaned toward each other with maudlin ecstasy, then fell furiously on the keys again. Now and then they embraced, and with wracking sobs congratulated each other on the state of harmony existing between them. One of them had a round flat face with spectacles attached, and while he played his face seemed to float over the music, buoyed up by its two circles of glass. Near-by was a group of artists arguing excitedly and drawing imaginary pictures in the air. A fat man stood by, his hands on his hips, looking earnestly at that portion of the air which they had chosen as their canvas, as if the pictures all remained there in one crazy design. But one of the painters, waving his arm too freely, upset the victrola that was painfully and asthmatically unwinding a symphony on the edge of the piano. It fell to the floor and the record broke. The red-faced man with the napkin on his head stooped and picked up a small segment of the symphony, looked at it curiously and then slipped it into his pocket. From time to time as he rapped on the piano he took the piece out and consulted it, as if it was his watch. But nobody noticed this either.

But now Lewis distinguished Bannerman's voice cutting its way through the others with its peculiar nasal resonance. "You can't escape..." it was saying angrily, "you can't escape." He went in the direction of the voice, and saw that Bannerman, slightly drunk and balancing himself perilously on a sofa, was holding forth to a large audience. The orator kept glancing about incessantly while he spoke, trying to catch the eye of everyone in his audience, so that his features ... small and finely chiseled, and mounted on a liberal map of flesh ... looked more like a traveling exhibition of a face, than an actual part of him. There was also a faint air of sniffing about Bannerman's face ... it may have been the way he kept glancing about, or perhaps the peculiar modeling of his nostrils that was more apparent as he stood on the sofa elevated above the others ... the nostrils not sufficiently raised from the upper lip, slanting back too precipitously. Lewis hovered on the outskirts of the group, trying to listen. There were others there whom he knew ... Clandon, who had the habit of listening to every argument with an intent and ghoulish expression, until the moment when he could snap up an opinion and bottle it and label it. And Levine was there, his head bent forward in an attitude of listening, unconscious that Lewis was present and watching him.

"No, there's no escape," Bannerman repeated, raising his voice and looking around self-consciously. "Go through all the frenzies of experiment that you please, ladies and gentlemen. I tell you, you won't escape the female nude. Haven't I seen them ... the bunch of mad artists jumping through all the isms, like a pack of clowns going through the hoops. And what was the end? The damned bitch just stood around, waiting until they could stop and look at her."

"Cubism! Cubism!" he cried, after a moment's pause. "Even that can't shake her. Ever notice how the cubist canvases break out into violins and vases? Regular eruptions of them. And why? Because a violin is one of the instruments that happens to approximate the female figure. It has the hips..." he glared around, waiting for the laughter to subside. "And a vase ... well, look!" He took pencil and paper from his pocket, and holding it up for all to see, sketched a typical cubistic design on it. This he rapidly converted into a group of plump nudes languidly conversing.

"There you are! There you are!" he shouted, flourishing the drawing. "Shut one eye and you have what they call the breaking up of objects into planes. Shut the other, and you see what's really itching them. An evasion ... pure and simple. Everything new in art is an evasion ... trying to evade the nude. But take my word for it," he bent down and tapped Levine solemnly on the chest ... "take my word for it, Levine, it won't work."

Levine removed the finger gingerly. "A rather old obsession ... the female figure," he said drily.

"Oh, Lord..." someone whispered ecstatically, "did you see Lustbader shutting one eye and then the other?"

"And once an artist has realized _that_," Bannerman finished grandly, "then everything else is superfluous."

"Clothes..." they suggested.

"Why, of course," the speaker continued with belligerent agreement. "Now clothes!" he said impressively, and then stopped and began to search through his pockets with an expression of great anxiety. Having brought forth several objects that seemed to surprise him by their presence in his pockets, he at length extracted four golden thumb tacks. These he put into his mouth, withdrawing them as they were needed to tack his paper on the wall. "Now clothes," he resumed, when the drawing was successfully hung, "are a big hoax. Started by the pretty women, because they couldn't compete with the ugly ones in the nude."

"Really, now!" the tall girl who was reclining on the couch turned and looked up at him with mock surprise. "Do you know," she said, addressing the audience, "Banney's an awful strain on me..."

"Ladies and gentlemen, listen to the duet!..." the voice rose in a frenzy of appeal.

"Fancy having to be jealous of the ugly women," the girl continued in an indistinct sleepy voice. "There are so many more of them." Her hair was too closely cropped, only a little yellow crest of it rising unexpectedly from the top of her head; and her face was too prognathic, shaped as if she might begin whistling any moment. Bannerman looked down at her thoughtfully, and then turned his mildly glaring eye once more on his audience. "I'll take an ugly woman for my model any day," he challenged. "Beauty doesn't belong ... makes the body insipid."

"But say, Bannerman," a curly-headed fellow on the outskirts of the group spoke in a high excited voice. "What the devil has all this got to do with saving the world? That's what we're after, you know."

"Everything, Twinem, everything," Clandon assured him. "Didn't you hear? 'We can't save the world until we understand the naked--which, of course, means female--body.' Now stand by, everyone, and Bannerman will show us how to do it."

The numbers around Bannerman increased, and others in the room glanced curiously in his direction. Lustbader, who had seated himself at the chess board rose, and scouted around for a while to see what was happening. "Oh, it's nothing," he reported disgustedly to his partner. "Bannerman's helping them to understand the naked body or something like that."

"Drunk, probably..."

"Go on, Bannerman, continue," Clandon urged. But as soon as the lecture began again he seemed to cease listening, waiting for the moment when with practiced sleight-of-hand he could pounce on an argument and label it. Levine only locked his hands in back and smiled to himself. Uttering a prodigious "Now!" and clearing his throat professionally, Bannerman began once more. But happening at the same moment to come too near the edge of the sofa, he pitched forward. His body stiffened as they caught him, and he was rotated up again into place with the rigidity of a statue. "Now the first thing to remember," he continued, looking down at them and frowning severely, "is that you fellows know nothing about it ... you fellows with your prurient snooping around museums and peeking into the studios. You can't understand the human body, I say, until you're steeped in nudity ... steeped in it, mind you. And not the picayune nudity you see in the pictures. You have to see collective nakedness ... many women sitting around together unconscious of their bodies, so that the poses they take are ancient and instinctive..."

"Ancient and instinctive ... that's pretty good."

"Yes," Bannerman retorted, "flesh takes its own poses, like stone and wood."

"Well, continue, anyway."

"Yes, go on, Bannerman."

"Stone and wood..." Bannerman repeated, and then stopped with a look of extreme alarm. "Levine!" he bent down to him and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Where were we at? No ... no ... never mind. I remember now." He lapsed into a contemplation of space, and then finished sententiously. "Then, and only then, ladies and gentlemen, do you feel the reality of nakedness, so much so, in fact, that nakedness no longer exists for you!"

"Hm ... the reality of nakedness. I like that."

"Well, is _that_ all?"

"Ladies and gentlemen, listen to the duet."

"How was it? How was it?" Lustbader called, and receiving no answer he came trotting from his chess game and looked excitedly from one to the other. Seeing that the lecture was in danger of ending he started to applaud for more, a presumption which Bannerman quickly ended by an imperious motion of his hand. "And then ... then," he began fluently, and once more found himself looking around confusedly. "Say, where were we at, Levine?" But here the tall girl on the sofa rose with a look of disgust, and Bannerman danced three involuntary steps. "Levine," he said pitifully, "hold my hand. And then, ladies and gentlemen, you feel a power of fertility ... the same as you feel in the woods on a damp day..."

"I do _not_," Clandon said sternly.

Bannerman looked at him reproachfully, and continued with added dignity. "But you never think of stamens and pistils when you're walking in the woods, do you? Because, of course, we know there is plant intercourse. Now plant intercourse," he mused ... "queer thing. And in the same manner, so to speak, you feel that men have nothing to do with this fertility. It's a different thing, older than sex ... and then..."

But his audience was growing restive, and Clandon leaped up on the sofa to prevent a dispersal. "One minute, please," he signalled. "We're at the power of fertility now. Has everyone got that? Very well, then, continue."

"Oh, there's nothing to continue," Bannerman finished sulkily. "They don't want to listen, anyway. But my last point was that then you understand the livingness of flesh, and then you can't kill anything, because..."

"Ah! Just as I thought," Clandon interrupted triumphantly. "It all comes down to the sanctity of human life. Just as I thought."

"Say, Bannerman, that's jolly." It was the curly-headed young man called Twinem. "You know, it's always fascinated me, this idea of saving the world, because there are so many ways of doing it. No end to them, really. This one's great. Naked women hanging around all the time, so that we feel the what-do-you-call-it? ... sanctity of human life. Awfully ingenious, don't you think?"

Laughter greeted his outburst, and Bannerman stepped down with a final and completely-balanced dignity.

"Well ... amuse yourselves," he muttered.

"Bannerman's right! Absolutely!" It was Lustbader calling from the chess table, as he set up the pieces with rapid plump fingers. "Haven't I thought of it myself?" He gave the lecturer a consoling wink. "Haven't I thought of it though!"

He rose and planted himself in the center of the room, his face flushed and ecstatic. "All the women ... all the women," he began. "No ... that won't do. Watch me. _I'll_ make a beginning." He made a rapid survey of the room, then rubbed his Punchinello nose meditatively. Finally he turned and stared at one corner, at Marah who was half-reclining in a large chair, and listlessly watching the proceedings. He advanced to her on tiptoes, pedalling the air with his fingers. And this stealthy advance caused a sudden silence in the room, everybody turned to watch it. Marah did not move, but observed him with wide and curious eyes, her whole attitude suggesting infinite curiosity for his touch. He came close to her and tried to lift his hands to her face, but unable to bring himself to it, he wheeled himself round in a temper. "Can't we do without that music?" he snapped, turning his red face to the musicians. The music stopped abruptly, and for the moment there was a complete hush, during which Lustbader walked unsteadily back to the chess table, and began to set up the pieces again. Levine, who had been watching Marah intently, turned away with a faint suggestion of contempt in the shrug of his shoulders.

"Bannerman," he said loudly, "that confirms my theory."

"Really ... how?" Bannerman's round face flushed with pleasure.

"Every human being ... every human being," Levine began emphatically.

"Yes, yes, go on..."

"Has a favorite form of intoxication. Let me congratulate you on the extremely original form of yours."

"I don't understand."

"Well, you don't have to. The trouble with you, Bannerman, is that you're such a confounded sensualist. And you think everyone can remain on that high plane of sensuality on which you generally exist. But that's asking a little too much. The average person isn't equal to it. Besides, that's just where the big mistake lies ... in this idea of the sanctity of life. Civilization is a nightmare of safety because of it."

"Oh, come, Levine, don't be fantastic again."

Levine looked at Clandon with innocent eyes. He shook the invisible drop of water from his thumb and forefinger before speaking. "Anthropology," he continued, "teaches us that a condition of such abnormal safety as we suffer from now, never before existed. We know, for instance, that primitive man had innumerable chances for calamity ... at least while geology was a going concern. Mountains and rivers, glaciers and even continents, cavorting around like kittens. And that's what we need nowadays, that's what we miss ... the sense of extreme terror, which is really the most profound and religious of human emotions. When primitive man had to pick up his household goods and keep running, always just a few strides ahead of the glaciers, looking back at the green wall of ice, and feeling the chill on his--"

Clandon burst into uproarious laughter. "Lord! What a tableau!" Hearing it, Lustbader came to the surface again from the depths of his chess game. "Where ... where's the tableau?" he inquired eagerly.

"Oh, very well, then, he didn't run in front of the glacier. It is, as you say, only a tableau. However," Levine continued more seriously, "we may safely posit a more liberal distribution of catastrophe in primitive times, and it is, as I said, the whole trouble. Civilization is a nightmare of safety."

"Say, Levine, how about the Day of Judgment?" Twinem asked earnestly. "That'll be an awful time, won't it?"

"The Day of Judgment," Levine repeated thoughtfully. "No, too far off. Besides, only an article of faith. Not sound geology."

Twinem looked crestfallen. "I never hit it right," he said.

"No, come to think of it, Twinem, there is something to that. We may safely say that the Day of Judgment supplied a great deal of the necessary emotion of fear in the Middle Ages. Yes, come to think of it, it was very efficient in satisfying that nostalgia for terror, as we might call it. Only nowadays we're too practical for it, we know too much. We can't, I'm afraid, get much of a thrill from brooding over the Day of Judgment."

"Lack the imagination, don't we..."

"Right, Twinem."

"Need something active ... real. War, I should say."

"Twinem, you're a genius." At this verdict, Jel embraced his friend and they marched fraternally towards the refreshments. Poldy tried to follow them, but something stopped him on the way. And now, for the first time, it seemed that a quality of silence came into the voices, they slackened their rhythm. Two girls were conversing across the room by means of signals, and the quick weaving of their fingers seemed to make an area of silence around them. Lustbader devoted himself to his game, and his spongy little hand suspended over the board looked like a mute held there to dull the vibrations in the air. But this lasted for only a little while. Without warning Lustbader jumped up from his chair, upsetting the board with his violence.

"I have it ... I have it!" he shouted. He picked up a queen that had fallen to the floor, blew a speck of dirt from it, and began to polish it with his sleeve. "Any war that begins can be ended in fifteen days ... fifteen days at the most. Everybody's been looking for a way to do it, but nobody ever thought of this."

"Well?"

"All the soldiers ... _all_ the soldiers," he said impressively, "should be made to strangle each other to death."

"And then what...?" Clandon asked.

"Why in fifteen days, fifteen at the most," he sputtered, "it would be over. They can't strangle each other forever, can they? They'd get tired. Killing should be work, hard work."

Nobody seemed impressed, and somewhat forlornly Lustbader turned away. But seeing Poldy standing near him, he took him aside and continued to develop his idea more confidentially. "Why, where I was in the country this summer," he said rapidly, "there were three pigs, and the farmer's boy used to say: 'You'll never _kill_ that one ... she's too hard to kill.' And that's how it is. Now in fifteen days..."

Poldy had been following the motions of Lustbader's hands as if they were new and fascinating toys. As soon as it was over he began to cough, putting his hands to his mouth and looking around stealthily. It had started as a forced artificial cough, but in a few seconds his face was red, tears streamed from his eyes and his throat kept trembling convulsively each time he tried to stop. The others stood by helplessly, while Poldy backed into a chair, always holding his hands to his mouth with the dainty gesture of a bunny.

"Stop it!" Levine commanded. He caught Poldy's wrists, and drew his hands away from his mouth. The coughing stopped, and while they were still standing around Poldy, awkward and self-conscious, they were startled by the noise of a deafening explosion. It began with a tearing sound, as of bricks bursting apart, and ended in a series of long detonations. It seemed to come from the heart of the city, and the room trembled with the impact of it. Transfixed with terror, they stood and glanced at each other, and nobody dared to move until it was over. Then with a concerted movement, they rushed to the windows and looked out. In subdued voices at first, but later growing more secure and controversial, they gave their conjectures. There were two theories ... one, that it was only the ordinary dynamiting in the course of erecting a building; and the other that one of the skyscrapers had collapsed.

"But steel..." someone said. "Steel buildings don't collapse."

"Ah ... how do you know? They haven't been up long enough for anyone to know."

They were silent for a while, considering this and noting the paleness still on their faces.

"The framework of steel buildings," a low and thoughtful voice was heard to observe, "is said by some authorities to be undergoing a hidden but certain process of rotting away."

"That," Clandon said sententiously, "seems to me stupid."

"How..."

"Why, it just seems inconceivably stupid to me that we should be putting up buildings that were doomed."

"Why, yes," Twinem said eagerly, "we can't imagine our engineers doing anything so stupid."

"Or a whole civilization, for that matter," somebody added. "Why, our whole civilization is founded on steel, and one can't imagine our being wrong about it."

"On the contrary," Levine cut in, commanding silence by the seriousness of his voice, "it seems to me that every civilization must have in it the seeds of its own dissolution. It seems to me that at the heart of every civilization there must be some colossal stupidity. It must be there, or there would be no guarantee that the civilization was to end."

"And is that important?"

"For it to end? Yes."

"Why ... can you tell us why, perhaps?" Clandon said angrily.

Levine shrugged his shoulders and turned away from him. "Study the history of Greece or Rome, and it will prove what obvious stupidities these civilizations harbored within themselves. Perhaps this faith of ours in the eternity of steel, this frantic erecting of buildings that are rotting away within, is the stupidity that we are furnishing for the future to marvel at."

"That is," Clandon corrected, "_if_ they are rotting away."

Levine did not answer, and they were silent, lingering uncertainly near the window or looking uneasily into the street. In this silence they heard a voice speaking for the first time that evening, coming in meditatively though somewhat late, like a clock that strikes pompously after the hour.

"Bannerman's right now..." the voice said. "I know what he means." The words were slightly muffled by the process of mastication. They looked into the other room, and saw a short gray-headed man standing alone at the table, plying the sandwiches and drinks. It had been a systematic and lengthy procedure, to judge by the extensive ruins of food around him, and not even the sound of the explosion had interrupted it. The speaker was eating now with a profound expression, his round gray eyes always looking at the next object to be attacked, thus keeping up an uninterrupted campaign.

"Sintz, my child, eating again?" Clandon wagged his finger playfully. He was usually called Sintz because nobody could remember his real name, except that it was very long and contained that syllable somewhere; and "my child" was added because his rosy little mouth and clear gray eyes made him look like a little boy burgeoning out into his first rotundity.

"Yes, Bannerman's right," Sintz repeated, and wiped away the crumbs that trickled down his chin. "I know what he means. Now when I was a boy we were starving most of the time. But there were some crusts of bread so old and so moused-at that we had to throw them away. And I remember that every time I threw one of those old crusts away it hurt me ... here..." he applied his wine-glass to his heart. "I couldn't kill anything, either. No, not even to wipe a roach off the wall, though God knows we had enough of them. Now why have I lost that feeling? Often I ask myself: how did it happen?"

He stopped and looked around, like a confused little boy who realizes that an ominous silence has fallen on his elders. Clandon winked to the others and stepped over to the table.

"Couldn't throw a crust of bread away, you say..."

Sintz nodded.

"Well, Sintz my child, what do you call that?" He pointed severely to the remains of food.

"Yes, what?" Sintz repeated cordially, and looked at the table.

"Phew! Look how much you've eaten. You contemptible little--breadbox!" Clandon lunged forward as if to tickle his stomach, but Sintz caught his arm and held on to it tightly.

"Yes, what do you call that? Look ... just look at that ... A fine exhibition ... to eat like a garbage can. I eat and eat. Whenever I see food, I eat. But that's not the worst of it. If it were only that I wouldn't be so worried. You don't know what I'm capable of." He whipped himself round to the others. "Yes, you don't know what I'm capable of," he continued solemnly. "My mother had a little white dog once called Pierrot. And one day she comes into my room and folds her hands and says, 'Pierrot is dead.' Do you know what I did? I burst out laughing. She just sat there and looked at me. Now was it right to laugh?" he asked sadly.

A solitary chuckle exploded from Clandon, and Sintz fixed him with a long puzzled stare. "Well, I can see why you laugh," he said slowly. "You don't know what I used to be. That's the whole trouble."

He was silent, munching his sandwich and regarding them thoughtfully. But in the midst of it he darted towards Clandon, caught at his lapel, and lifted his face to him imploringly. "Listen, Clandon, I'll prove it to you. Only tell me what you want me to do, set me any task and I'll do it here before all these people. Anything you say, to show you what I'm capable of..."

Clandon screwed up his eyes and tightened his lips, tasting beforehand the special flavor of the cruelty he would choose. After long thought he shook himself loose from Sintz with an angry gesture. "Hang it all, Sintz," he said irritably, "I can't think of a thing. I believe you all right, if that's what you want. But damned if I can think of any way of being specially cruel."

"Look here, Sintz..." it was Twinem, speaking with paternal good-nature. "I think we could arrange it. I've been awfully curious ever since I can remember to know how it feels to have drops of water falling on your forehead at long intervals. Heard about it once in a book when I was little, as a pet form of torture somewheres in the East ... China, I guess. And then I got a few boys to try it on me, only they didn't have the patience to do more than a few drops, and did them too quick. I even put my head under the faucet, once when it was dripping a little, to see how long I could stand it. But the water stopped altogether, and I couldn't regulate it again. Now, if you're willing..."

Sintz regarded him fearfully, like a child that is a little suspicious of the new game.

"Would you, now? That's right. Clandon, old boy, dive into the medicine chest and get an eyedropper or ear syringe or some suitable instrument."

Twinem placed a chair in the center of the room, tucked a large napkin under his chin, sat down and shut his eyes. The others gathered round as if they were about to witness an operation. But Clandon signalled them away and took charge of it. He looked at Sintz critically, and announced, "He needs gloves." Someone furnished a pair of gloves that were too big for him and drooped at the finger-ends, giving an appearance as if all his fingers had been broken at the tips. Sintz looked at his hands in alarm. He flourished them about and when he saw that this caused everyone to laugh he gave a few extra flourishes, folded his short arms in front of him, and looked at Clandon defiantly. "He needs a mask," Clandon said. Lustbader produced his handkerchief, and tied it tightly over Sintz's nose and mouth.

"You have to turn him around and see which way he faces when he's through."

"He ought to have an apron."

"Right. We'll turn him."

"Why?" Sintz's voice was muffled and alarmed behind the handkerchief.

"Never mind why," Clandon answered. "It's always done." He raised Sintz's gloved hands in an attitude of astonishment and whirled him around. But in the midst of his gyration Sintz caught at Clandon's arm, and they almost fell together with the effort to steady themselves. "Sure this isn't a trick on me?" Sintz asked in a terrified whisper. The handkerchief began to vibrate over his mouth as if a tiny white muscle were set in motion there. "Take it off, Clandon," he pleaded. "I can't breathe."

Again Clandon put his head on one side and regarded him critically. "Twinem, I've an idea," he announced solemnly. "The water must be hot."

"Oh, I say, Clandon, that's ridiculous." Twinem raised his head and opened his eyes. "You're not going to heat the water specially, are you?"

"Why not?"

"Because it's ridiculous ... heating water specially..."

"Why is it ridiculous?"

Twinem removed the napkin and rose angrily. "It's absurd, that's all. Besides, I never heard that the water was hot."

"That may be," Levine said. "But then consider, Twinem. A man devoted his whole lifetime to being killed, in those times. But no one would think of wasting time that way nowadays. We've just got to hurry it a little."

"Oh, all right then, go ahead. Only it's carrying things a little too far." He sat down sullenly and put his head back, whistling up at the ceiling until they were ready.

Sintz took the eye-dropper with trembling hands. He brushed the curls back from Twinem's white forehead and stared at it, as if it had turned into a strange object.

"How can I do it when his eyes quiver that way?" he burst out at length. "Make him stop moving his eyes that way."

"Now, Sintz, I'll count three..."

The little white muscle over Sintz's mouth began to vibrate frantically. He flashed an imploring look at Clandon, poised the eye-dropper over Twinem's forehead, and ended by dusting it lightly with the loose finger-tips of his left hand.

"One." Clandon scored it off by raising his forefinger.

"It makes me nervous ... his eyes quivering that way."

"Two."

"I'll do it, the minute he stops screwing up his eyes that way."

Clandon wagged two fingers in the air, and was about to declaim the last number, when Sintz turned to him. "Do you know what..." he said quietly, as if it had just occurred to him. "I can't do it. I can't do it ... that's all." He put the eye-dropper away and took off the handkerchief and gloves. His forehead was wet with perspiration, and he fumbled nervously for his handkerchief. "Lustbader, can I use yours?" he asked humbly.

"It's a damned messy business," Twinem announced, sitting up with a disgusted grimace. There was water trickling down from his forehead and he wiped it hastily with the back of his hand. "Takes too long anyway. Thank God, we kill people much quicker."

"We do ... we do!" Lustbader hugged himself gleefully. "I said that was the trouble. Now in fifteen days ... fifteen days at the most, if everything is done by strangling. That's the only condition I make ... all killing to be done by strangling. Oh Lord, how simple." He picked up the chess board and waltzed around with it, while the pianist accompanied him with a furious scherzo. "Stop it!" Lustbader commanded breathlessly from the midst of his whirling. "How can I keep up with that?"

But here the man who had been rapping on the piano raised his voice in a final effort. "Ladies and gentlemen, a quartet. Clear the floor for the quartet."

* * * * * * *

The players were old and German-looking. They played with curious indifference, looking as if they were half asleep over their instruments. Only the second violinist looked up alertly each time that a new instrument came in. He had a sharp archaic profile, the full eye almost completely visible in profile; and the sculptured down-turning mouth that gave a slight sourness to his expression. Whenever one of the instruments was due to make its entrance he would look at the player watchfully, almost suspiciously, until the new motif was merged with the others. While the others plied their strings in enchanted detachment, he seemed to have a secret joy in the playing from his foreknowledge of the moves, from being part of the intricate mechanism of the music.

For the first time since he had entered the room Lewis was able to look around him and to take stock of his confused impressions. He realized that he had been avoiding Poldy, that there was something offensive to him in the green pallor of Poldy's face, and that he felt in some way degraded by Poldy's presence. He remembered too that several times in the course of the evening Levine had fixed his eyes on him with grave thoughtfulness. Now he was conscious of a painful buzzing in his head, and though he felt unnaturally hot, his forehead was damp and cold when he touched it. He tried to listen to the music, but he was too weary to follow it as melody and rhythm. He was only vaguely aware of its turnings, of the weaving in and out of musical patterns ... he had the feeling of watching dancers from a great distance, seeing faintly the joining and parting in a long and tireless dance. But there were times when he seemed not to hear at all, when he found himself staring at the players until they took on the appearance of a quaint instrument working with a symmetry of arms.

But now, on the high note of its long obbligato, the cello came to an abrupt stop, and the rest of the music spilled over suddenly into silence, little odds and ends of sound tumbling after it.

"What's the trouble?" the man at the piano asked impatiently. "You were doing fine."

"No, I can't play with him any more," the cellist began, rising wrathfully and pointing his bow at the second violinist.

The second violinist looked at him in consternation. "Why, what have I done? Roth, you're crazy."

"You look at me as though you were afraid I didn't know it was my turn. It's humiliating."

"I ... _I_ look at you..."

The cellist loosened his bow and shook the hairs violently. "No, I won't worry you any more," he said bitterly. "Get some one you can trust." He picked up his instrument and stalked out of the room.

"Isn't that too bad," the man at the piano said sadly. "I thought they were doing so nicely."

But now there was a commotion at the door, and they saw Poldy trying to get out, Jel struggling with him and trying to save his cigarette at the same time. At last he had Poldy pinned to the wall. With his free hand he signalled for help.

"Damned fool!" he said. "Now he wants to run down on the street. He says the first person he meets..."

Poldy nodded. "Yes, the first person I meet," he repeated solemnly.

"What about it ... what about it?" Levine put his hands on Poldy's shoulders and spoke with hypnotic rapidity.

"The first person he meets will save him, he says."

"Can I go?" Poldy looked at Levine, his lips trembling.

"Yes, go," Levine said gently.

"Where's my hat, Jel?"

"_I_ don't know ... How should I know where you put it?"

"I need my hat."

"Well, where is it?"

Poldy turned to Levine. "I need my hat," he whispered.

They found one that was too small for him, that perched absurdly on his head. Lustbader burst out laughing. "O God ... O God, that's clever," he gasped. "The first person he meets--will be a woman."

They heard the door close and a silence fell on them. Some stood awkwardly at the door, others ran to the window.

"Well, what do you see?" Levine snapped.

"Wait ... wait," Lustbader called gleefully. "I made a bet with Jel that the first person he meets will be a woman. Sure enough ... sure enough! He's passing up the men. God! but that was clever."

"Where's he going?"

"Heading for the park, now."

"No, he's standing still."

"He'll be run over."

"Going to pieces that way ... I always thought Poldy had more--" Jel stopped with a low horrified whistle. "Well, if that wasn't a close one!"

"Look! Look!" Lustbader flung his arms out ecstatically. "He's going up to a woman ... he's talking to her. Hell! But that was clever. 'The first person I meet...' What a game!"

"That was my hat," someone said thoughtfully.

"No, she's walking away. Wouldn't have him. Now what is he waiting for."

"A peculiarly Biblical obsession," Levine observed drily. "To take the first person one meets as a sort of godhead. Business of Jephtha's daughter."

"But you know, I think there's something in it." Bannerman settled himself in an easy chair and lit his cigarette with luxuriant slowness. "It came over me, once. A hot evening, I remember, when I was sitting in my studio and seeing all the people passing my window, and somehow I began to feel sorry for them. And it came over me with overpowering strength that I should rush out and follow the first person I met, and be content to serve that person all the time. I don't know what it was. A sort of desire to love all the people in the world by--"

"Wallowing in one," Levine finished.

"Wallowing?"

"Yes. You're such a subtle nature, Bannerman, that you have to wallow in the coarseness of other people ... or rather in their ordinary-ness. Besides, you wouldn't choose an ordinary person at all."

"Ah ... but that's where you're wrong. The whole secret of the feeling lies in that ... that I'd follow the most ordinary person. One who--"

"Picks his teeth?"

Bannerman frowned, nettled. "Well, why not? Picks his teeth or his--"

Levine laughed heartily. "Oh, _that_. Just as I thought. So that's your idea of an ordinary person."

"Why not? Why not?" Lustbader called from the window. "Suppose he picked any part of his body..."

"Now tell me, Bannerman. Is Lustbader an ordinary person?"

"Well, now ... yes. I've seen him pick his nose."

"Again just as I thought! No, Bannerman, you don't know what an ordinary person is. A person's being ordinary you consider a great curiosity, and you ask for a visible sign of it ... a token. It's a prurient interest, peculiar to people of your kind ... withdrawn, oblique natures--"

Sintz's bright round eyes had been looking from one to the other. "Now _I_ once followed a man on the street," he observed importantly.

"There you are!" Bannerman triumphed.

"No, wait ... not so fast. Now, Sintz, tell us ... why did you follow him?"

"He picked up a cigarette butt from the street," Sintz began reminiscently, in the manner of a very important witness, "and put it in his pocket, and I followed him."

"But I object," Bannerman said. "The cigarette butt means nothing."

"Did you see him smoke it?"

"Did I!" Sintz slapped his thigh. "What did I follow him for?"

"Exactly," Levine nodded. "The first thing you know, Bannerman, that very ordinary person you were following would have to commit murder or suicide or incest, or you'd lose interest in him. Smoke the cigarette butt, so to speak. Yes, even if his being ordinary consisted merely in sporting a pimple on his face, you'd have to get thrills of horror every time you looked at it. Now isn't that true?"

"The most average person ... the most average..." Bannerman repeated weakly.

"Ah ... again ... the most average. Take it from me, Bannerman, your real wish, that you're not aware of, is to patronize some form of abnormality. And if your person isn't abnormal, you console yourself by saying he's at least the most average. But then, being most average is a form of abnormality in itself."

Bannerman yawned and looked towards the window.

"How's Poldy?" he asked. "Damn him, why doesn't he come back? We can't wait here forever."

"Oh, he'll come back," Lustbader said disgustedly. "Couldn't decide which was the first person he met."

Lustbader turned away from the window, and after a moment's profound thought, he took out his handkerchief and tied it over his eyes. They watched, expecting a trick.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, mimicking Poldy's voice. "The first person I meet ... the first person I meet, I shall..."

He advanced slowly as he had done before, walking on tiptoes and pedalling the air with his fingers. First he made for the wall, but there he turned abruptly and pedalled himself to the corner where Marah was sitting. He stood before her, and after looking down at her with his blindfolded eyes, he lifted his hands to her face and felt it with stiff, heavy movements of his palm. She did not move or close her eyes, her features were frozen in an expression of curiosity about which there was something more abandoned than desire. And at last, baffled by her immobility, Lustbader tore the handkerchief from his eyes and wheeled himself around, and walked heavily back to the chess table. His face was red and he avoided looking at anyone.

"Well, I think I'll be going," Bannerman said. He signalled to the tall girl reclining on the couch, and she rose and followed him out of the room. Jel and Twinem marched about in a loose but affectionate embrace, looking for Poldy's hat. The man who had to wear it found that it was too big for him, and he walked out scowling, nothing visible of his face but the indignant nostrils and compressed lips. Sintz slipped away, looking unhappy and forlorn. When they thought he had gone he reappeared in the doorway and said timidly, "Coming, Clandon?" Soon there were only a few people in the room, and the chairs were visible in their various attitudes ... some close to each other for private dialogue, some in groups, or some off by themselves, looking like the negative of a picture.

And now Levine went over to Marah, and bent down to her and spoke in a low voice. "Why did you let him?" he asked earnestly. "Why did you let him, Marah? Weren't you afraid?"

She looked up at him a long time before answering. "And if I wanted that ... if I wanted to be afraid?" In the slow smile that curved her lips there was a suggestion of triumph and challenge.

"_I_ know what she wants to be afraid of," Lustbader called loudly from his game of chess. He was playing with himself this time, trying to keep his left hand directly opposite him so that it might move like a separate entity.

Levine's voice rang with unhappy reproach. "But Lustbader ... Lustbader..."

"Why not?" she countered lazily.

"Then that counts me out?" He looked at her with a stupid protracted smile.

Marah nodded.

"You're afraid, perhaps, that you will forget yourself again? Perhaps I have become too desirable, and because of your pact..."

But she rose and stretched herself, an angry muscular stretching of her arms, hands clenched. "I don't know..." she said with sudden petulance. "I only wish I could be happy. The only thing I know is that I am not happy."

"But you were happy that time with me, Marah," he urged in a low voice. "You said you were."

She stood uncertainly before him, her gray eyes searching his face with an expression in which there was both hope and weariness. "No," she said sharply, "I don't think it's true."

In the confused moment that followed, Levine tried to speak, tried to lift his hand and touch her. But he finished by clapping his palm and fist together, with the gesture of having concluded an important transaction. "So be it," he said, bowing ceremoniously. "It only confirms my theory..." his face, raised to look at her while his body was still bowing, seemed dwarf-like and malicious ... "that all women insist on remaining virgin. When they lose the gross virginity of the body, they find themselves a new way to be inviolate. I think," he added, standing erect and looking directly at her, "that you will continue to remain unhappy. Well, I wish you joy of him."

But when he had reached the door she ran to him swiftly, and laid her hand on his arm. "Are you going?" she asked in a low incredulous voice, her lips suddenly tremulous.

"I think, Marah, I had better go," he said gently. "It's really..." he hesitated, looking away from her with a twisted smile ... "it's really no use. I knew it wasn't, from the beginning."

Simultaneously with Levine's shutting the door, Lustbader set up a clicking motion of the tongue and surveyed the game more intently.

* * * * * * *

For a long time Poldy remained sitting in the park. A woman came and sat down next to him, and when he did not speak she turned and peered curiously into his face. "Is that the dipper?" she asked, pointing up at the sky, and bursting into a laugh at her own question. But Poldy looked in the direction of her finger without speaking.

Meanwhile Lewis Orling and Levine walked through the deserted streets. Lustbader and Marah went home together. Marah was crying softly to herself, and Lustbader glanced at her unhappily, wondering what he could do.