The Short Fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald E-Book

F.Scott Fitzgerald

• Herausgeber: Classicus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories are a window into the Jazz Age—a time of dazzling excess, ambition, and longing. While he is best known for The Great Gatsby, his short fiction reveals the full depth of his talent, capturing the fragile beauty of youth, the illusions of wealth, and the quiet tragedies beneath the glamour. The Short Fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald presents a masterful selection of his finest stories, each brimming with wit, lyrical prose, and an unflinching look at human nature.
     This collection includes The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the unforgettable tale of a man who ages in reverse, and The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, a biting satire of untold wealth and its hidden costs. In Bernice Bobs Her Hair and The Ice Palace, Fitzgerald explores the shifting social landscape of the 1920s, while Winter Dreams foreshadows the themes of lost love and disillusionment that would later define The Great Gatsby. The piercing psychological depth of Absolution and The Rich Boy offers a stark contrast to the lighthearted charm of The Camel’s Back and Porcelain and Pink, showcasing Fitzgerald’s versatility as a storyteller.
     Beyond these well-known classics, the collection also features hidden gems such as May Day, a powerful portrait of postwar alienation, and The Lees of Happiness, a heartbreaking meditation on fate and endurance. The romantic allure of Love in the Night and Jacob’s Ladder is balanced by the sharp humor of He Thinks He’s Wonderful and The Freshest Boy, proving Fitzgerald’s ability to capture both the idealism and cynicism of his era. Every story in this volume offers a glimpse into the struggles of characters chasing dreams that always seem just out of reach.
     The Short Fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald is a testament to one of America’s greatest literary voices. Whether set in glittering ballrooms or quiet corners of disappointment, Fitzgerald’s stories are filled with timeless beauty and insight. This Classicus edition is an essential addition to the library of any reader who cherishes elegant prose, compelling storytelling, and an unfiltered look at the triumphs and failures of the human heart.

Leseprobe

The Short Fiction of

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Published by Classicus 2025

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Table of Contents

Tarquin of Cheapside

I

II

III

Porcelain and Pink

Head and Shoulders

I

II

III

IV

V

Benediction

I

II

III

V

VI

VII

Dalyrimple Goes Wrong

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

Mr. Icky

The Camel’s Back

I

II

III

IV

V

Bernice Bobs Her Hair

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

The Ice Palace

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

The Offshore Pirate

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

The Cut-Glass Bowl

I

II

III

IV

The Four Fists

I

II

III

IV

May Day

I

II

III

IV

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

The Jelly-Bean

I

II

III

IV

The Lees of Happiness

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

Jemina, the Mountain Girl

A Wild Thing

A Mountain Feud

The Birth of Love

A Mountain Battle

“As One.”

“O Russet Witch!”

I

II

III

IV

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

Winter Dreams

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

Hot and Cold Blood

I

II

III

IV

Gretchen’s Forty Winks

I

II

III

Absolution

I

II

III

IV

V

“The Sensible Thing”

I

II

III

The Baby Party

Dice, Brassknuckles & Guitar

Love in the Night

I

II

III

IV

V

The Adjuster

I

II

III

IV

V

The Rich Boy

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les

I

II

III

IV

V

Jacob’s Ladder

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

A Short Trip Home

I

II

III

The Bowl

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

Magnetism

I

II

III

IV

The Scandal Detectives

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

A Night at the Fair

The Freshest Boy

I

II

III

IV

V

He Thinks He’s Wonderful

I

II

III

IV

Tarquin of Cheapside

I

Running footsteps⁠—light, soft-soled shoes made of curious leathery cloth brought from Ceylon setting the pace; thick flowing boots, two pairs, dark blue and gilt, reflecting the moonlight in blunt gleams and splotches, following a stone’s throw behind.

Soft Shoes flashes through a patch of moonlight, then darts into a blind labyrinth of alleys and becomes only an intermittent scuffle ahead somewhere in the enfolding darkness. In go Flowing Boots, with short swords lurching and long plumes awry, finding a breath to curse God and the black lanes of London.

Soft Shoes leaps a shadowy gate and crackles through a hedgerow. Flowing Boots leap the gate and crackles through the hedgerow⁠—and there, startlingly, is the watch ahead⁠—two murderous pikemen of ferocious cast of mouth acquired in Holland and the Spanish marches.

But there is no cry for help. The pursued does not fall panting at the feet of the watch, clutching a purse; neither do the pursuers raise a hue and cry. Soft Shoes goes by in a rush of swift air. The watch curse and hesitate, glance after the fugitive, and then spread their pikes grimly across the road and wait for Flowing Boots. Darkness, like a great hand, cuts off the even flow the moon.

The hand moves off the moon whose pale caress finds again the eaves and lintels, and the watch, wounded and tumbled in the dust. Up the street one of Flowing Boots leaves a black trail of spots until he binds himself, clumsily as he runs, with fine lace caught from his throat.

It was no affair for the watch: Satan was at large tonight and Satan seemed to be he who appeared dimly in front, heel over gate, knee over fence. Moreover, the adversary was obviously travelling near home or at least in that section of London consecrated to his coarser whims, for the street narrowed like a road in a picture and the houses bent over further and further, cooping in natural ambushes suitable for murder and its histrionic sister, sudden death.

Down long and sinuous lanes twisted the hunted and the harriers, always in and out of the moon in a perpetual queen’s move over a checkerboard of glints and patches. Ahead, the quarry, minus his leather jerkin now and half blinded by drips of sweat, had taken to scanning his ground desperately on both sides. As a result he suddenly slowed short, and retracing his steps a bit scooted up an alley so dark that it seemed that here sun and moon had been in eclipse since the last glacier slipped roaring over the earth. Two hundred yards down he stopped and crammed himself into a niche in the wall where he huddled and panted silently, a grotesque god without bulk or outline in the gloom.

Flowing Boots, two pairs, drew near, came up, went by, halted twenty yards beyond him, and spoke in deep-lunged, scanty whispers:

“I was attune to that scuffle; it stopped.”

“Within twenty paces.”

“He’s hid.”

“Stay together now and we’ll cut him up.”

The voice faded into a low crunch of a boot, nor did Soft Shoes wait to hear more⁠—he sprang in three leaps across the alley, where he bounded up, flapped for a moment on the top of the wall like a huge bird, and disappeared, gulped down by the hungry night at a mouthful.

II

“He read at wine, he read in bed,He read aloud, had he the breath,His every thought was with the dead,And so he read himself to death.”

Any visitor to the old James the First graveyard near Peat’s Hill may spell out this bit of doggerel, undoubtedly one of the worst recorded of an Elizabethan, on the tomb of Wessel Caster.

This death of his, says the antiquary, occurred when he was thirty-seven, but as this story is concerned with the night of a certain chase through darkness, we find him still alive, still reading. His eyes were somewhat dim, his stomach somewhat obvious⁠—he was a mis-built man and indolent⁠—oh, Heavens! But an era is an era, and in the reign of Elizabeth, by the grace of Luther, Queen of England, no man could help but catch the spirit of enthusiasm. Every loft in Cheapside published its Magnum Folium (or magazine)⁠—of its new blank verse; the Cheapside Players would produce anything on sight as long as it “got away from those reactionary miracle plays,” and the English Bible had run through seven “very large” printings in as many months.

So Wessel Caxter (who in his youth had gone to sea) was now a reader of all on which he could lay his hands⁠—he read manuscripts in holy friendship; he dined rotten poets; he loitered about the shops where the Magna Folia were printed, and he listened tolerantly while the young playwrights wrangled and bickered among themselves, and behind each other’s backs made bitter and malicious charges of plagiarism or anything else they could think of.

Tonight he had a book, a piece of work which, though inordinately versed, contained, he thought, some rather excellent political satire. The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser lay before him under the tremulous candlelight. He had ploughed through a canto; he was beginning another:

The Legend of Britomartis or of Chastity

It falls me here to write of Chastity.The fayrest vertue, far above the rest.⁠ ⁠…

A sudden rush of feet on the stairs, a rusty swing-open of the thin door, and a man thrust himself into the room, a man without a jerkin, panting, sobbing, on the verge of collapse.

“Wessel,” words choked him, “stick me away somewhere, love of Our Lady!”

Caxter rose, carefully closing his book, and bolted the door in some concern.

“I’m pursued,” cried out Soft Shoes. “I vow there’s two short-witted blades trying to make me into mincemeat and near succeeding. They saw me hop the back wall!”

“It would need,” said Wessel, looking at him curiously, “several battalions armed with blunderbusses, and two or three Armadas, to keep you reasonably secure from the revenges of the world.”

Soft Shoes smiled with satisfaction. His sobbing gasps were giving way to quick, precise breathing; his hunted air had faded to a faintly perturbed irony.

“I feel little surprise,” continued Wessel.

“They were two such dreary apes.”

“Making a total of three.”

“Only two unless you stick me away. Man, man, come alive, they’ll be on the stairs in a spark’s age.”

Wessel took a dismantled pikestaff from the corner, and raising it to the high ceiling, dislodged a rough trapdoor opening into a garret above.

“There’s no ladder.”

He moved a bench under the trap, upon which Soft Shoes mounted, crouched, hesitated, crouched again, and then leaped amazingly upward. He caught at the edge of the aperture and swung back and forth, for a moment, shifting his hold; finally doubled up and disappeared into the darkness above. There was a scurry, a migration of rats, as the trapdoor was replaced;⁠ ⁠… silence.

Wessel returned to his reading-table, opened to the Legend of Britomartis or of Chastity⁠—and waited. Almost a minute later there was a scramble on the stairs and an intolerable hammering at the door. Wessel sighed and, picking up his candle, rose.

“Who’s there?”

“Open the door!”

“Who’s there?”

An aching blow frightened the frail wood, splintered it around the edge. Wessel opened it a scarce three inches, and held the candle high. His was to play the timorous, the super-respectable citizen, disgracefully disturbed.

“One small hour of the night for rest. Is that too much to ask from every brawler and⁠—”

“Quiet, gossip! Have you seen a perspiring fellow?”

The shadows of two gallants fell in immense wavering outlines over the narrow stairs; by the light Wessel scrutinized them closely. Gentlemen, they were, hastily but richly dressed⁠—one of them wounded severely in the hand, both radiating a sort of furious horror. Waving aside Wessel’s ready miscomprehension, they pushed by him into the room and with their swords went through the business of poking carefully into all suspected dark spots in the room, further extending their search to Wessel’s bedchamber.

“Is he hid here?” demanded the wounded man fiercely.

“Is who here?”

“Any man but you.”

“Only two others that I know of.”

For a second Wessel feared that he had been too damned funny, for the gallants made as though to prick him through.

“I heard a man on the stairs,” he said hastily, “full five minutes ago, it was. He most certainly failed to come up.”

He went on to explain his absorption in The Faerie Queene but, for the moment at least, his visitors, like the great saints, were anesthetic to culture.

“What’s been done?” inquired Wessel.

“Violence!” said the man with the wounded hand. Wessel noticed that his eyes were quite wild. “My own sister. Oh, Christ in heaven, give us this man!”

Wessel winced.

“Who is the man?”

“God’s word! We know not even that. What’s that trap up there?” he added suddenly.

“It’s nailed down. It’s not been used for years.” He thought of the pole in the corner and quailed in his belly, but the utter despair of the two men dulled their astuteness.

“It would take a ladder for anyone not a tumbler,” said the wounded man listlessly.

His companion broke into hysterical laughter.

“A tumbler. Oh, a tumbler. Oh⁠—”

Wessel stared at them in wonder.

“That appeals to my most tragic humor,” cried the man, “that no one⁠—oh, no one⁠—could get up there but a tumbler.”

The gallant with the wounded hand snapped his good fingers impatiently.

“We must go next door⁠—and then on⁠—”

Helplessly they went as two walking under a dark and storm-swept sky.

Wessel closed and bolted the door and stood a moment by it, frowning in pity.

A low-breathed “Ha!” made him look up. Soft Shoes had already raised the trap and was looking down into the room, his rather elfish face squeezed into a grimace, half of distaste, half of sardonic amusement.

“They take off their heads with their helmets,” he remarked in a whisper, “but as for you and me, Wessel, we are two cunning men.”

“Now you be cursed,” cried Wessel vehemently. “I knew you for a dog, but when I hear even the half of a tale like this, I know you for such a dirty cur that I am minded to club your skull.”

Soft Shoes stared at him, blinking.

“At all events,” he replied finally, “I find dignity impossible in this position.”

With this he let his body through the trap, hung for an instant, and dropped the seven feet to the floor.

“There was a rat considered my ear with the air of a gourmet,” he continued, dusting his hands on his breeches. “I told him in the rat’s peculiar idiom that I was deadly poison, so he took himself off.”

“Let’s hear of this night’s lechery!” insisted Wessel angrily.

Soft Shoes touched his thumb to his nose and wiggled the fingers derisively at Wessel.

“Street gamin!” muttered Wessel.

“Have you any paper?” demanded Soft Shoes irrelevantly, and then rudely added, “or can you write?”

“Why should I give you paper?”

“You wanted to hear of the night’s entertainment. So you shall, an you give me pen, ink, a sheaf of paper, and a room to myself.”

Wessel hesitated.

“Get out!” he said finally.

“As you will. Yet you have missed a most intriguing story.”

Wessel wavered⁠—he was soft as taffy, that man⁠—gave in. Soft Shoes went into the adjoining room with the begrudged writing materials and precisely closed the door. Wessel grunted and returned to The Faerie Queene; so silence came once more upon the house.

III

Three o’clock went into four. The room paled, the dark outside was shot through with damp and chill, and Wessel, cupping his brain in his hands, bent low over his table, tracing through the pattern of knights and fairies and the harrowing distresses of many girls. There were dragons chortling along the narrow street outside; when the sleepy armorer’s boy began his work at half-past five the heavy clink and clank of plate and linked mail swelled to the echo of a marching cavalcade.

A fog shut down at the first flare of dawn, and the room was grayish yellow at six when Wessel tiptoed to his cupboard bedchamber and pulled open the door. His guest turned on him a face pale as parchment in which two distraught eyes burned like great red letters. He had drawn a chair close to Wessel’s prie-dieu which he was using as a desk; and on it was an amazing stack of closely written pages. With a long sigh Wessel withdrew and returned to his siren, calling himself fool for not claiming his bed here at dawn.

The clump of boots outside, the croaking of old beldames from attic to attic, the dull murmur of morning, unnerved him, and, dozing, he slumped in his chair, his brain, overladen with sound and color, working intolerably over the imagery that stacked it. In this restless dream of his he was one of a thousand groaning bodies crushed near the sun, a helpless bridge for the strong-eyed Apollo. The dream tore at him, scraped along his mind like a ragged knife. When a hot hand touched his shoulder, he awoke with what was nearly a scream to find the fog thick in the room and his guest, a gray ghost of misty stuff, beside him with a pile of paper in his hand.

“It should be a most intriguing tale, I believe, though it requires some going over. May I ask you to lock it away, and in God’s name let me sleep?”

He waited for no answer, but thrust the pile at Wessel, and literally poured himself like stuff from a suddenly inverted bottle upon a couch in the corner; slept, with his breathing regular, but his brow wrinkled in a curious and somewhat uncanny manner.

Wessel yawned sleepily and, glancing at the scrawled, uncertain first page, he began reading aloud very softly:

The Rape of Lucrece

“From the besieged Ardea all in post,Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,Lust-breathing Tarquin leaves the Roman host⁠—”

Porcelain and Pink

A room in the downstairs of a summer cottage. High around the wall runs an art frieze of a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and a ship on a crimson ocean, a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and a ship on a crimson ocean, a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and so on. In one place on the frieze there is an overlapping⁠—here we have half a fisherman with half a pile of nets at his foot, crowded damply against half a ship on half a crimson ocean. The frieze is not in the plot, but frankly it fascinates me. I could continue indefinitely, but I am distracted by one of the two objects in the room⁠—a blue porcelain bathtub. It has character, this bathtub. It is not one of the new racing bodies, but is small with a high tonneau and looks as if it were going to jump; discouraged, however, by the shortness of its legs, it has submitted to its environment and to its coat of sky-blue paint. But it grumpily refuses to allow any patron completely to stretch his legs⁠—which brings us neatly to the second object in the room:

It is a girl⁠—clearly an appendage to the bathtub, only her head and throat⁠—beautiful girls have throats instead of necks⁠—and a suggestion of shoulder appearing above the side. For the first ten minutes of the play the audience is engrossed in wondering if she really is playing the game fairly and hasn’t any clothes on or whether it is being cheated and she is dressed.

The girl’s name is Julie Marvis. From the proud way she sits up in the bathtub we deduce that she is not very tall and that she carries herself well. When she smiles, her upper lip rolls a little and reminds you of an Easter Bunny. She is within whispering distance of twenty years old.

One thing more⁠—above and to the right of the bathtub is a window. It is narrow and has a wide sill; it lets in much sunshine, but effectually prevents anyone who looks in from seeing the bathtub. You begin to suspect the plot?

We open, conventionally enough, with a song, but, as the startled gasp of the audience quite drowns out the first half, we will give only the last of it:

JulieIn an airy sophrano⁠—enthusiastico.

When Caesar did the ChicagoHe was a graceful child,Those sacred chickensJust raised the dickensThe Vestal Virgins went wild.Whenever the Nervii got nervyHe gave them an awful razzThey shook in their shoesWith the Consular bluesThe Imperial Roman Jazz

During the wild applause that follows Julie modestly moves her arms and makes waves on the surface of the water⁠—at least we suppose she does. Then the door on the left opens and Lois Marvis enters, dressed but carrying garments and towels. Lois is a year older than Julie and is nearly her double in face and voice, but in her clothes and expression are the marks of the conservative. Yes, you’ve guessed it. Mistaken identity is the old rusty pivot upon which the plot turns.

Lois:Starting. Oh, ’scuse me. I didn’t know you were here.

Julie:Oh, hello. I’m giving a little concert⁠—

Lois:Interrupting. Why didn’t you lock the door?

Julie:Didn’t I?

Lois:Of course you didn’t. Do you think I just walked through it?

Julie:I thought you picked the lock, dearest.

Lois:You’re so careless.

Julie:No. I’m happy as a garbageman’s dog and I’m giving a little concert.

Lois:Severely. Grow up!

Julie:Waving a pink arm around the room. The walls reflect the sound, you see. That’s why there’s something very beautiful about singing in a bathtub. It gives an effect of surpassing loveliness. Can I render you a selection?

Lois:I wish you’d hurry out of the tub.

Julie:Shaking her head thoughtfully. Can’t be hurried. This is my kingdom at present, Godliness.

Lois:Why the mellow name?

Julie:Because you’re next to Cleanliness. Don’t throw anything please!

Lois:How long will you be?

Julie:After some consideration. Not less than fifteen nor more than twenty-five minutes.

Lois:As a favor to me will you make it ten?

Julie:Reminiscing. Oh, Godliness, do you remember a day in the chill of last January when one Julie, famous for her Easter-rabbit smile, was going out and there was scarcely any hot water and young Julie had just filled the tub for her own little self when the wicked sister came and did bathe herself therein, forcing the young Julie to perform her ablutions with cold cream⁠—which is expensive and a darn lot of troubles?

Lois:Impatiently. Then you won’t hurry?

Julie:Why should I?

Lois:I’ve got a date.

Julie:Here at the house?

Lois:None of your business.

Julie shrugs the visible tips of her shoulders and stirs the water into ripples.

Julie:So be it.

Lois:Oh, for Heaven’s sake, yes! I have a date here, at the house⁠—in a way.

Julie:In a way?

Lois:He isn’t coming in. He’s calling for me and we’re walking.

Julie:Raising her eyebrows. Oh, the plot clears. It’s that literary Mr. Calkins. I thought you promised mother you wouldn’t invite him in.

Lois:Desperately. She’s so idiotic. She detests him because he’s just got a divorce. Of course she’s had more experience than I have, but⁠—

Julie:Wisely. Don’t let her kid you! Experience is the biggest gold brick in the world. All older people have it for sale.

Lois:I like him. We talk literature.

Julie:Oh, so that’s why I’ve noticed all these weighty books around the house lately.

Lois:He lends them to me.

Julie:Well, you’ve got to play his game. When in Rome do as the Romans would like to do. But I’m through with books. I’m all educated.

Lois:You’re very inconsistent⁠—last summer you read every day.

Julie:If I were consistent I’d still be living on warm milk out of a bottle.

Lois:Yes, and probably my bottle. But I like Mr. Calkins.

Julie:I never met him.

Lois:Well, will you hurry up?

Julie:Yes. After a pause. I wait till the water gets tepid and then I let in more hot.

Lois:Sarcastically. How interesting!

Julie:’Member when we used to play “soapo”?

Lois:Yes⁠—and ten years old. I’m really quite surprised that you don’t play it still.

Julie:I do. I’m going to in a minute.

Lois:Silly game.

Julie:Warmly. No, it isn’t. It’s good for the nerves. I’ll bet you’ve forgotten how to play it.

Lois:Defiantly. No, I haven’t. You⁠—you get the tub all full of soapsuds and then you get up on the edge and slide down.

Julie:Shaking her head scornfully. Huh! That’s only part of it. You’ve got to slide down without touching your hand or feet⁠—

Lois:Impatiently. Oh, Lord! What do I care? I wish we’d either stop coming here in the summer or else get a house with two bathtubs.

Julie:You can buy yourself a little tin one, or use the hose⁠—

Lois:Oh, shut up!

Julie:Irrelevantly. Leave the towel.

Lois:What?

Julie:Leave the towel when you go.

Lois:This towel?

Julie:Sweetly. Yes, I forgot my towel.

Lois:Looking around for the first time. Why, you idiot! You haven’t even a kimono.

Julie:Also looking around. Why, so I haven’t.

Lois:Suspicion growing on her. How did you get here?

Julie:Laughing. I guess I⁠—I guess I whisked here. You know⁠—a white form whisking down the stairs and⁠—

Lois:Scandalized. Why, you little wretch. Haven’t you any pride or self-respect?

Julie:Lots of both. I think that proves it. I looked very well. I really am rather cute in my natural state.

Lois:Well, you⁠—

Julie:Thinking aloud. I wish people didn’t wear any clothes. I guess I ought to have been a pagan or a native or something.

Lois:You’re a⁠—

Julie:I dreamt last night that one Sunday in church a small boy brought in a magnet that attracted cloth. He attracted the clothes right off of everybody; put them in an awful state; people were crying and shrieking and carrying on as if they’d just discovered their skins for the first time. Only I didn’t care. So I just laughed. I had to pass the collection plate because nobody else would.

Lois:Who has turned a deaf ear to this speech. Do you mean to tell me that if I hadn’t come you’d have run back to your room⁠—un⁠—unclothed?

Julie:Au naturel is so much nicer.

Lois:Suppose there had been someone in the living-room.

Julie:There never has been yet.

Lois:Yet! Good grief! How long⁠—

Julie:Besides, I usually have a towel.

Lois:Completely overcome. Golly! You ought to be spanked. I hope you get caught. I hope there’s a dozen ministers in the living-room when you come out⁠—and their wives, and their daughters.

Julie:There wouldn’t be room for them in the living-room, answered Clean Kate of the Laundry District.

Lois:All right. You’ve made your own⁠—bathtub; you can lie in it.

Lois starts determinedly for the door.

Julie:In alarm. Hey! Hey! I don’t care about the k’mono, but I want the towel. I can’t dry myself on a piece of soap and a wet washrag.

Lois:Obstinately. I won’t humor such a creature. You’ll have to dry yourself the best way you can. You can roll on the floor like the animals do that don’t wear any clothes.

Julie:Complacent again. All right. Get out!

Lois:Haughtily. Huh!

Julie turns on the cold water and with her finger directs a parabolic stream at Lois. Lois retires quickly, slamming the door after her. Julie laughs and turns off the water.

Julie:Singing.When the Arrow-collar man, Meets the D’jer-kiss girl, On the smokeless Sante Fé, Her Pebeco smile, Her Lucile style, De dum da-de-dum one day⁠—

She changes to a whistle and leans forward to turn on the taps, but is startled by three loud banging noises in the pipes. Silence for a moment⁠—then she puts her mouth down near the spigot as if it were a telephone.

Julie:Hello! . Are you a plumber? No answer. Are you the water department? One loud, hollow bang. What do you want? No answer. I believe you’re a ghost. Are you? No answer. Well, then, stop banging. She reaches out and turns on the warm tap. No water flows. Again she puts her mouth down close to the spigot. If you’re the plumber that’s a mean trick. Turn it on for a fellow. Two loud, hollow bangs. Don’t argue! I want water⁠—water! Water!

A young man’s head appears in the window⁠—a head decorated with a slim mustache and sympathetic eyes. These last stare, and though they can see nothing but many fishermen with nets and much crimson ocean, they decide him to speak.

The Young Man:Someone fainted?

Julie:Starting up, all ears immediately. Jumping cats!

The Young Man:Helpfully. Water’s no good for fits.

Julie:Fits! Who said anything about fits!

The Young Man:You said something about a cat jumping.

Julie:Decidedly. I did not!

The Young Man:Well, we can talk it over later, Are you ready to go out? Or do you still feel that if you go with me just now everybody will gossip?

Julie:Smiling. Gossip! Would they? It’d be more than gossip⁠—it’d be a regular scandal.

The Young Man:Here, you’re going it a little strong. Your family might be somewhat disgruntled⁠—but to the pure all things are suggestive. No one else would even give it a thought, except a few old women. Come on.

Julie:You don’t know what you ask.

The Young Man:Do you imagine we’d have a crowd following us?

Julie:A crowd? There’d be a special, all-steel, buffet train leaving New York hourly.

The Young Man:Say, are you housecleaning?

Julie:Why?

The Young Man:I see all the pictures are off the walls.

Julie:Why, we never have pictures in this room.

The Young Man:Odd, I never heard of a room without pictures or tapestry or panelling or something.

Julie:There’s not even any furniture in here.

The Young Man:What a strange house!

Julie:It depend on the angle you see it from.

The Young Man:Sentimentally. It’s so nice talking to you like this⁠—when you’re merely a voice. I’m rather glad I can’t see you.

JulieGratefully. So am I.

The Young Man:What color are you wearing?

Julie:After a critical survey of her shoulders. Why, I guess it’s a sort of pinkish white.

The Young Man:Is it becoming to you?

Julie:Very. It’s⁠—it’s old. I’ve had it for a long while.

The Young Man:I thought you hated old clothes.

Julie:I do but this was a birthday present and I sort of have to wear it.

The Young Man:Pinkish-white. Well I’ll bet it’s divine. Is it in style?

Julie:Quite. It’s very simple, standard model.

The Young Man:What a voice you have! How it echoes! Sometimes I shut my eyes and seem to see you in a far desert island calling for me. And I plunge toward you through the surf, hearing you call as you stand there, water stretching on both sides of you⁠—

The soap slips from the side of the tub and splashes in. The young man blinks.

Young ManWhat was that? Did I dream it?

Julie:Yes. You’re⁠—you’re very poetic, aren’t you?

The Young Man:Dreamily. No. I do prose. I do verse only when I am stirred.

Julie:Murmuring. Stirred by a spoon⁠—

The Young Man:I have always loved poetry. I can remember to this day the first poem I ever learned by heart. It was “Evangeline.”

Julie:That’s a fib.

The Young Man:Did I say “Evangeline”? I meant “The Skeleton in Armor.”

Julie:I’m a lowbrow. But I can remember my first poem. It had one verse:

Parker and Davis, Sittin’ on a fence, Tryne to make a dollar, Outa fifteen cents.

The Young Man:Eagerly. Are you growing fond of literature?

Julie:If it’s not too ancient or complicated or depressing. Same way with people. I usually like ’em not too ancient or complicated or depressing.

The Young Man:Of course I’ve read enormously. You told me last night that you were very fond of Walter Scott.

Julie:Considering. Scott? Let’s see. Yes, I’ve read Ivanhoe and The Last of the Mohicans.

The Young Man:That’s by Cooper.

Julie:Angrily. Ivanhoe is? You’re crazy! I guess I know. I read it.

The Young Man:“The Last of the Mohicans” is by Cooper.

Julie:What do I care! I like O. Henry. I don’t see how he ever wrote those stories. Most of them he wrote in prison. “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” he made up in prison.

The Young Man:Biting his lip. Literature⁠—literature! How much it has meant to me!

Julie:Well, as Gaby Deslys said to Mr. Bergson, with my looks and your brains there’s nothing we couldn’t do.

The Young Man:Laughing. You certainly are hard to keep up with. One day you’re awfully pleasant and the next you’re in a mood. If I didn’t understand your temperament so well⁠—

Julie:Impatiently. Oh, you’re one of these amateur character-readers, are you? Size people up in five minutes and then look wise whenever they’re mentioned. I hate that sort of thing.

The Young Man:I don’t boast of sizing you up. You’re most mysterious, I’ll admit.

Julie:There’s only two mysterious people in history.

The Young Man:Who are they?

Julie:The Man with the Iron Mask and the fella who says “ug uh glug uh glug uh glug” when the line is busy.

The Young Man:You are mysterious. I love you. You’re beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that’s the rarest known combination.

Julie:You’re a historian. Tell me if there are any bathtubs in history. I think they’ve been frightfully neglected.

The Young Man:Bathtubs! Let’s see. Well, Agamemnon was stabbed in his bathtub. And Charlotte Corday stabbed Marat in his bathtub.

Julie:Sighing. Way back there! Nothing new besides the sun, is there? Why only yesterday I picked up a musical-comedy score that must have been at least twenty years old; and there on the cover it said “The Shimmies of Normandy,” but shimmie was spelt the old way, with a “C.”

The Young Man:I loathe these modern dances. Oh, Lois, I wish I could see you. Come to the window.

There is a loud bang in the water-pipe and suddenly the flow starts from the open taps. Julie turns them off quickly.

The Young Man:Puzzled. What on earth was that?

Julie:Ingeniously. I heard something, too.

The Young Man:Sounded like running water.

Julie:Didn’t it? Strange like it. As a matter of fact I was filling the goldfish bowl.

The Young Man:Still puzzled. What was that banging noise?

Julie:One of the fish snapping his golden jaws.

The Young Man:With sudden resolution. Lois, I love you. I am not a mundane man but I am a forger⁠—

Julie:Interested at once. Oh, how fascinating.

The Young Man:—a forger ahead. Lois, I want you.

Julie:Skeptically. Huh! What you really want is for the world to come to attention and stand there till you give “Rest!”

The Young Man:Lois I⁠—Lois I⁠—

He stops as Lois opens the door, comes in, and bangs it behind her. She looks peevishly at Julie and then suddenly catches sight of the young man in the window.

Lois:In horror. Mr. Calkins!

The Young Man:Surprised. Why I thought you said you were wearing pinkish white!

After one despairing stare Lois shrieks, throws up her hands in surrender, and sinks to the floor.

The Young Man:In great alarm. Good Lord! She’s fainted! I’ll be right in.

Julie’s eyes light on the towel which has slipped from Lois’s inert hand.

Julie:In that case I’ll be right out.

She puts her hands on the side of the tub to lift herself out and a murmur, half gasp, half sigh, ripples from the audience.

A Belasco midnight comes quickly down and blots out the stage.

Curtain.

Head and Shoulders

I

In 1915 Horace Tarbox was thirteen years old. In that year he took the examinations for entrance to Princeton University and received the Grade A⁠—excellent⁠—in Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, Xenophon, Homer, Algebra, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry, and Chemistry.

Two years later while George M. Cohan was composing “Over There,” Horace was leading the sophomore class by several lengths and digging out theses on “The Syllogism as an Obsolete Scholastic Form,” and during the battle of Château-Thierry he was sitting at his desk deciding whether or not to wait until his seventeenth birthday before beginning his series of essays on “The Pragmatic Bias of the New Realists.”

After a while some newsboy told him that the war was over, and he was glad, because it meant that Peat Brothers, publishers, would get out their new edition of “Spinoza’s Improvement of the Understanding.” Wars were all very well in their way, made young men self-reliant or something but Horace felt that he could never forgive the President for allowing a brass band to play under his window the night of the false armistice, causing him to leave three important sentences out of his thesis on “German Idealism.”

The next year he went up to Yale to take his degree as Master of Arts.

He was seventeen then, tall and slender, with nearsighted gray eyes and an air of keeping himself utterly detached from the mere words he let drop.

“I never feel as though I’m talking to him,” expostulated Professor Dillinger to a sympathetic colleague. “He makes me feel as though I were talking to his representative. I always expect him to say: ‘Well, I’ll ask myself and find out.’ ”

And then, just as nonchalantly as though Horace Tarbox had been Mr. Beef the butcher or Mr. Hat the haberdasher, life reached in, seized him, handled him, stretched him, and unrolled him like a piece of Irish lace on a Saturday-afternoon bargain-counter.

To move in the literary fashion I should say that this was all because when way back in colonial days the hardy pioneers had come to a bald place in Connecticut and asked of each other, “Now, what shall we build here?” the hardiest one among ’em had answered: “Let’s build a town where theatrical managers can try out musical comedies!” How afterward they founded Yale College there, to try the musical comedies on, is a story everyone knows. At any rate one December, “Home James” opened at the Shubert, and all the students encored Marcia Meadow, who sang a song about the Blundering Blimp in the first act and did a shaky, shivery, celebrated dance in the last.

Marcia was nineteen. She didn’t have wings, but audiences agreed generally that she didn’t need them. She was a blonde by natural pigment, and she wore no paint on the streets at high noon. Outside of that she was no better than most women.

It was Charlie Moon who promised her five thousand Pall Malls if she would pay a call on Horace Tarbox, prodigy extraordinary. Charlie was a senior in Sheffield, and he and Horace were first cousins. They liked and pitied each other.

Horace had been particularly busy that night. The failure of the Frenchman Laurier to appreciate the significance of the new realists was preying on his mind. In fact, his only reaction to a low, clear-cut rap at his study was to make him speculate as to whether any rap would have actual existence without an ear there to hear it. He fancied he was verging more and more toward pragmatism. But at that moment, though he did not know it, he was verging with astounding rapidity toward something quite different.

The rap sounded⁠—three seconds leaked by⁠—the rap sounded.

“Come in,” muttered Horace automatically.

He heard the door open and then close, but, bent over his book in the big armchair before the fire, he did not look up.

“Leave it on the bed in the other room,” he said absently.

“Leave what on the bed in the other room?”

Marcia Meadow had to talk her songs, but her speaking voice was like byplay on a harp.

“The laundry.”

“I can’t.”

Horace stirred impatiently in his chair.

“Why can’t you?”

“Why, because I haven’t got it.”

“Hm!” he replied testily. “Suppose you go back and get it.”

Across the fire from Horace was another easychair. He was accustomed to change to it in the course of an evening by way of exercise and variety. One chair he called Berkeley, the other he called Hume. He suddenly heard a sound as of a rustling, diaphanous form sinking into Hume. He glanced up.

“Well,” said Marcia with the sweet smile she used in Act Two (“Oh, so the Duke liked my dancing!”) “Well, Omar Khayyám, here I am beside you singing in the wilderness.”

Horace stared at her dazedly. The momentary suspicion came to him that she existed there only as a phantom of his imagination. Women didn’t come into men’s rooms and sink into men’s Humes. Women brought laundry and took your seat in the streetcar and married you later on when you were old enough to know fetters.

This woman had clearly materialized out of Hume. The very froth of her brown gauzy dress was art emanation from Hume’s leather arm there! If he looked long enough he would see Hume right through her and then he would be alone again in the room. He passed his fist across his eyes. He really must take up those trapeze exercises again.

“For Pete’s sake, don’t look so critical!” objected the emanation pleasantly. “I feel as if you were going to wish me away with that patent dome of yours. And then there wouldn’t be anything left of me except my shadow in your eyes.”

Horace coughed. Coughing was one of his two gestures. When he talked you forgot he had a body at all. It was like hearing a phonograph record by a singer who had been dead a long time.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want them letters,” whined Marcia melodramatically⁠—“them letters of mine you bought from my grandsire in 1881.”

Horace considered.

“I haven’t got your letters,” he said evenly. “I am only seventeen years old. My father was not born until March 3, 1879. You evidently have me confused with someone else.”

“You’re only seventeen?” repeated March suspiciously.

“Only seventeen.”

“I knew a girl,” said Marcia reminiscently, “who went on the ten-twenty-thirty when she was sixteen. She was so stuck on herself that she could never say ‘sixteen’ without putting the ‘only’ before it. We got to calling her ‘Only Jessie.’ And she’s just where she was when she started⁠—only worse. ‘Only’ is a bad habit, Omar⁠—it sounds like an alibi.”

“My name is not Omar.”

“I know,” agreed Marcia, nodding⁠—“your name’s Horace. I just call you Omar because you remind me of a smoked cigarette.”

“And I haven’t your letters. I doubt if I’ve ever met your grandfather. In fact, I think it very improbable that you yourself were alive in 1881.”

Marcia stared at him in wonder.

“Me⁠—1881? Why sure! I was second-line stuff when the Florodora Sextette was still in the convent. I was the original nurse to Mrs. Sol Smith’s Juliette. Why, Omar, I was a canteen singer during the War of 1812.”

Horace’s mind made a sudden successful leap, and he grinned.

“Did Charlie Moon put you up to this?”

Marcia regarded him inscrutably.

“Who’s Charlie Moon?”

“Small⁠—wide nostrils⁠—big ears.”

She grew several inches and sniffed.

“I’m not in the habit of noticing my friends’ nostrils.”

“Then it was Charlie?”

Marcia bit her lip⁠—and then yawned. “Oh, let’s change the subject, Omar. I’ll pull a snore in this chair in a minute.”

“Yes,” replied Horace gravely, “Hume has often been considered soporific⁠—”

“Who’s your friend⁠—and will he die?”

Then of a sudden Horace Tarbox rose slenderly and began to pace the room with his hands in his pockets. This was his other gesture.

“I don’t care for this,” he said as if he were talking to himself⁠—“at all. Not that I mind your being here⁠—I don’t. You’re quite a pretty little thing, but I don’t like Charlie Moon’s sending you up here. Am I a laboratory experiment on which the janitors as well as the chemists can make experiments? Is my intellectual development humorous in any way? Do I look like the pictures of the little Boston boy in the comic magazines? Has that callow ass, Moon, with his eternal tales about his week in Paris, any right to⁠—”

“No,” interrupted Marcia emphatically. “And you’re a sweet boy. Come here and kiss me.”

Horace stopped quickly in front of her.

“Why do you want me to kiss you?” he asked intently, “Do you just go round kissing people?”

“Why, yes,” admitted Marcia, unruffled. “ ’At’s all life is. Just going round kissing people.”

“Well,” replied Horace emphatically, “I must say your ideas are horribly garbled! In the first place life isn’t just that, and in the second place. I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits. This year I’ve got in the habit of lolling in bed until seven-thirty⁠—”

Marcia nodded understandingly.

“Do you ever have any fun?” she asked.

“What do you mean by fun?”

“See here,” said Marcia sternly, “I like you, Omar, but I wish you’d talk as if you had a line on what you were saying. You sound as if you were gargling a lot of words in your mouth and lost a bet every time you spilled a few. I asked you if you ever had any fun.”

Horace shook his head.

“Later, perhaps,” he answered. “You see I’m a plan. I’m an experiment. I don’t say that I don’t get tired of it sometimes⁠—I do. Yet⁠—oh, I can’t explain! But what you and Charlie Moon call fun wouldn’t be fun to me.”

“Please explain.”

Horace stared at her, started to speak and then, changing his mind, resumed his walk. After an unsuccessful attempt to determine whether or not he was looking at her Marcia smiled at him.

“Please explain.”

Horace turned.

“If I do, will you promise to tell Charlie Moon that I wasn’t in?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Very well, then. Here’s my history: I was a ‘why’ child. I wanted to see the wheels go round. My father was a young economics professor at Princeton. He brought me up on the system of answering every question I asked him to the best of his ability. My response to that gave him the idea of making an experiment in precocity. To aid in the massacre I had ear trouble⁠—seven operations between the age of nine and twelve. Of course this kept me apart from other boys and made me ripe for forcing. Anyway, while my generation was laboring through Uncle Remus I was honestly enjoying Catullus in the original.

“I passed off my college examinations when I was thirteen because I couldn’t help it. My chief associates were professors, and I took a tremendous pride in knowing that I had a fine intelligence, for though I was unusually gifted I was not abnormal in other ways. When I was sixteen I got tired of being a freak; I decided that someone had made a bad mistake. Still as I’d gone that far I concluded to finish it up by taking my degree of Master of Arts. My chief interest in life is the study of modern philosophy. I am a realist of the School of Anton Laurier⁠—with Bergsonian trimmings⁠—and I’ll be eighteen years old in two months. That’s all.”

“Whew!” exclaimed Marcia. “That’s enough! You do a neat job with the parts of speech.”

“Satisfied?”

“No, you haven’t kissed me.”

“It’s not in my programme,” demurred Horace. “Understand that I don’t pretend to be above physical things. They have their place, but⁠—”

“Oh, don’t be so darned reasonable!”

“I can’t help it.”

“I hate these slot-machine people.”

“I assure you I⁠—” began Horace.

“Oh shut up!”

“My own rationality⁠—”

“I didn’t say anything about your nationality. You’re Amuricun, ar’n’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s OK with me. I got a notion I want to see you do something that isn’t in your highbrow programme. I want to see if a what-ch-call-em with Brazilian trimmings⁠—that thing you said you were⁠—can be a little human.”

Horace shook his head again.

“I won’t kiss you.”

“My life is blighted,” muttered Marcia tragically. “I’m a beaten woman. I’ll go through life without ever having a kiss with Brazilian trimmings.” She sighed. “Anyways, Omar, will you come and see my show?”

“What show?”

“I’m a wicked actress from ‘Home James’!”

“Light opera?”

“Yes⁠—at a stretch. One of the characters is a Brazilian rice-planter. That might interest you.”

“I saw ‘The Bohemian Girl’ once,” reflected Horace aloud. “I enjoyed it⁠—to some extent⁠—”

“Then you’ll come?”

“Well, I’m⁠—I’m⁠—”

“Oh, I know⁠—you’ve got to run down to Brazil for the weekend.”

“Not at all. I’d be delighted to come⁠—”

Marcia clapped her hands.

“Goodyforyou! I’ll mail you a ticket⁠—Thursday night?”

“Why, I⁠—”

“Good! Thursday night it is.”

She stood up and walking close to him laid both hands on his shoulders.

“I like you, Omar. I’m sorry I tried to kid you. I thought you’d be sort of frozen, but you’re a nice boy.”

He eyed her sardonically.

“I’m several thousand generations older than you are.”

“You carry your age well.”

They shook hands gravely.

“My name’s Marcia Meadow,” she said emphatically. “ ’Member it⁠—Marcia Meadow. And I won’t tell Charlie Moon you were in.”

An instant later as she was skimming down the last flight of stairs three at a time she heard a voice call over the upper banister: “Oh, say⁠—”

She stopped and looked up⁠—made out a vague form leaning over.

“Oh, say!” called the prodigy again. “Can you hear me?”

“Here’s your connection Omar.”

“I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I consider kissing intrinsically irrational.”

“Impression? Why, you didn’t even give me the kiss! Never fret⁠—so long.”

Two doors near her opened curiously at the sound of a feminine voice. A tentative cough sounded from above. Gathering her skirts, Marcia dived wildly down the last flight, and was swallowed up in the murky Connecticut air outside.

Upstairs Horace paced the floor of his study. From time to time he glanced toward Berkeley waiting there in suave dark-red reputability, an open book lying suggestively on his cushions. And then he found that his circuit of the floor was bringing him each time nearer to Hume. There was something about Hume that was strangely and inexpressibly different. The diaphanous form still seemed hovering near, and had Horace sat there he would have felt as if he were sitting on a lady’s lap. And though Horace couldn’t have named the quality of difference, there was such a quality⁠—quite intangible to the speculative mind, but real, nevertheless. Hume was radiating something that in all the two hundred years of his influence he had never radiated before.

Hume was radiating attar of roses.

II

On Thursday night Horace Tarbox sat in an aisle seat in the fifth row and witnessed “Home James.” Oddly enough he found that he was enjoying himself. The cynical students near him were annoyed at his audible appreciation of time-honored jokes in the Hammerstein tradition. But Horace was waiting with anxiety for Marcia Meadow singing her song about a Jazz-bound Blundering Blimp. When she did appear, radiant under a floppity flower-faced hat, a warm glow settled over him, and when the song was over he did not join in the storm of applause. He felt somewhat numb.

In the intermission after the second act an usher materialized beside him, demanded to know if he were Mr. Tarbox, and then handed him a note written in a round adolescent band. Horace read it in some confusion, while the usher lingered with withering patience in the aisle.

“Dear Omar: After the show I always grow an awful hunger. If you want to satisfy it for me in the Taft Grill just communicate your answer to the big-timber guide that brought this and oblige.

Your friend,

Marcia Meadow.”

“Tell her,”⁠—he coughed⁠—“tell her that it will be quite all right. I’ll meet her in front of the theatre.”

The big-timber guide smiled arrogantly.

“I giss she meant for you to come roun’ t’ the stage door.”

“Where⁠—where is it?”

“Ou’side. Tunayulef. Down ee alley.”

“What?”

“Ou’side. Turn to y’ left! Down ee alley!”

The arrogant person withdrew. A freshman behind Horace snickered.

Then half an hour later, sitting in the Taft Grill opposite the hair that was yellow by natural pigment, the prodigy was saying an odd thing.

“Do you have to do that dance in the last act?” he was asking earnestly⁠—“I mean, would they dismiss you if you refused to do it?”

Marcia grinned.

“It’s fun to do it. I like to do it.”

And then Horace came out with a faux pas.

“I should think you’d detest it,” he remarked succinctly. “The people behind me were making remarks about your bosom.”

Marcia blushed fiery red.

“I can’t help that,” she said quickly. “The dance to me is only a sort of acrobatic stunt. Lord, it’s hard enough to do! I rub liniment into my shoulders for an hour every night.”

“Do you have⁠—fun while you’re on the stage?”

“Uh-huh⁠—sure! I got in the habit of having people look at me, Omar, and I like it.”

“Hm!” Horace sank into a brownish study.

“How’s the Brazilian trimmings?”

“Hm!” repeated Horace, and then after a pause: “Where does the play go from here?”

“New York.”

“For how long?”

“All depends. Winter⁠—maybe.”

“Oh!”

“Coming up to lay eyes on me, Omar, or aren’t you int’rested? Not as nice here, is it, as it was up in your room? I wish we was there now.”

“I feel idiotic in this place,” confessed Horace, looking round him nervously.

“Too bad! We got along pretty well.”

At this he looked suddenly so melancholy that she changed her tone, and reaching over patted his hand.

“Ever take an actress out to supper before?”

“No,” said Horace miserably, “and I never will again. I don’t know why I came tonight. Here under all these lights and with all these people laughing and chattering I feel completely out of my sphere. I don’t know what to talk to you about.”

“We’ll talk about me. We talked about you last time.”

“Very well.”

“Well, my name really is Meadow, but my first name isn’t Marcia⁠—it’s Veronica. I’m nineteen. Question⁠—how did the girl make her leap to the footlights? Answer⁠—she was born in Passaic, New Jersey, and up to a year ago she got the right to breathe by pushing Nabiscoes in Marcel’s tearoom in Trenton. She started going with a guy named Robbins, a singer in the Trent House cabaret, and he got her to try a song and dance with him one evening. In a month we were filling the supper-room every night. Then we went to New York with meet-my-friend letters thick as a pile of napkins.

“In two days we landed a job at Divinerries’, and I learned to shimmy from a kid at the Palais Royal. We stayed at Divinerries’ six months until one night Peter Boyce Wendell, the columnist, ate his milk-toast there. Next morning a poem about Marvellous Marcia came out in his newspaper, and within two days I had three vaudeville offers and a chance at the Midnight Frolic. I wrote Wendell a thank-you letter, and he printed it in his column⁠—said that the style was like Carlyle’s, only more rugged and that I ought to quit dancing and do North American literature. This got me a coupla more vaudeville offers and a chance as an ingénue in a regular show. I took it⁠—and here I am, Omar.”

When she finished they sat for a moment in silence she draping the last skeins of a Welsh rabbit on her fork and waiting for him to speak.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said suddenly.

Marcia’s eyes hardened.

“What’s the idea? Am I making you sick?”

“No, but I don’t like it here. I don’t like to be sitting here with you.”

Without another word Marcia signalled for the waiter.

“What’s the check?” she demanded briskly “My part⁠—the rabbit and the ginger ale.”

Horace watched blankly as the waiter figured it.

“See here,” he began, “I intended to pay for yours too. You’re my guest.”

With a half-sigh Marcia rose from the table and walked from the room. Horace, his face a document in bewilderment, laid a bill down and followed her out, up the stairs and into the lobby. He overtook her in front of the elevator and they faced each other.

“See here,” he repeated, “You’re my guest. Have I said something to offend you?”

After an instant of wonder Marcia’s eyes softened.

“You’re a rude fella!” she said slowly. “Don’t you know you’re rude?”

“I can’t help it,” said Horace with a directness she found quite disarming. “You know I like you.”

“You said you didn’t like being with me.”

“I didn’t like it.”

“Why not?” Fire blazed suddenly from the gray forests of his eyes.

“Because I didn’t. I’ve formed the habit of liking you. I’ve been thinking of nothing much else for two days.”

“Well, if you⁠—”

“Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “I’ve got something to say. It’s this: in six weeks I’ll be eighteen years old. When I’m eighteen years old I’m coming up to New York to see you. Is there some place in New York where we can go and not have a lot of people in the room?”

“Sure!” smiled Marcia. “You can come up to my ’partment. Sleep on the couch if you want to.”

“I can’t sleep on couches,” he said shortly. “But I want to talk to you.”

“Why, sure,” repeated Marcia, “in my ’partment.”

In his excitement Horace put his hands in his pockets.

“All right⁠—just so I can see you alone. I want to talk to you as we talked up in my room.”

“Honey boy,” cried Marcia, laughing, “is it that you want to kiss me?”

“Yes,” Horace almost shouted. “I’ll kiss you if you want me to.”

The elevator man was looking at them reproachfully. Marcia edged toward the grated door.

“I’ll drop you a postcard,” she said.

Horace’s eyes were quite wild.

“Send me a postcard! I’ll come up any time after January first. I’ll be eighteen then.”

And as she stepped into the elevator he coughed enigmatically, yet with a vague challenge, at the calling, and walked quickly away.

III

He was there again. She saw him when she took her first glance at the restless Manhattan audience⁠—down in the front row with his head bent a bit forward and his gray eyes fixed on her. And she knew that to him they were alone together in a world where the high-rouged row of ballet faces and the massed whines of the violins were as imperceivable as powder on a marble Venus. An instinctive defiance rose within her.

“Silly boy!” she said to herself hurriedly, and she didn’t take her encore.

“What do they expect for a hundred a week⁠—perpetual motion?” she grumbled to herself in the wings.

“What’s the trouble? Marcia?”

“Guy I don’t like down in front.”

During the last act as she waited for her specialty she had an odd attack of stage fright. She had never sent Horace the promised postcard. Last night she had pretended not to see him⁠—had hurried from the theatre immediately after her dance to pass a sleepless night in her apartment, thinking⁠—as she had so often in the last month⁠—of his pale, rather intent face, his slim, boyish fore, the merciless, unworldly abstraction that made him charming to her.

And now that he had come she felt vaguely sorry⁠—as though an unwonted responsibility was being forced on her.

“Infant prodigy!” she said aloud.

“What?” demanded the negro comedian standing beside her.

“Nothing⁠—just talking about myself.”

On the stage she felt better. This was her dance⁠—and she always felt that the way she did it wasn’t suggestive any more than to some men every pretty girl is suggestive. She made it a stunt.

“Uptown, downtown, jelly on a spoon,After sundown shiver by the moon.”

He was not watching her now. She saw that clearly. He was looking very deliberately at a castle on the back drop, wearing that expression he had worn in the Taft Grill. A wave of exasperation swept over her⁠—he was criticising her.

“That’s the vibration that thrills me,Funny how affection fi-lls meUptown, downtown⁠—”

Unconquerable revulsion seized her. She was suddenly and horribly conscious of her audience as she had never been since her first appearance. Was that a leer on a pallid face in the front row, a droop of disgust on one young girl’s mouth? These shoulders of hers⁠—these shoulders shaking⁠—were they hers? Were they real? Surely shoulders weren’t made for this!

“Then⁠—you’ll see at a glanceI’ll need some funeral ushers with St. Vitus danceAt the end of the world I’ll⁠—”

The bassoon and two cellos crashed into a final chord. She paused and poised a moment on her toes with every muscle tense, her young face looking out dully at the audience in what one young girl afterward called “such a curious, puzzled look,” and then without bowing rushed from the stage. Into the dressing-room she sped, kicked out of one dress and into another, and caught a taxi outside.