Vol. LXXXVIII No. 5

The
Yale Literary Magazine

Conducted by the
Students of Yale University.

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Cantabunt Soboles, unanimique Patres.”

February, 1923.

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THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE

Contents

FEBRUARY, 1923

The Yale Literary Magazine

EDITORS

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Leader

We appear to have been surrounded in these weeks by a polemic atmosphere. Tremendous controversies have proved and disproved the validity of Christianity, the inability of the Faculty and Corporation to make great men from Yale undergraduates, and whether we should be made to go to Chapel on Sundays and to recitations on other days. Editorials, communications, and private discussions continue to feed the maw of this wholesale argumentative machinery, and to the casual observer, a spirit of radicalism hovers above the campus, clouding or illuminating it as the individual chooses to suppose.

There is no place here to discuss the beneficial effect of controversy upon thought. Nor is there any need for pointing out the possibility of reform arising from the conviction which thought brings. It is the controversy itself which is interesting, especially in an institution where experience and tradition form the basis of the laws and customs. Controversy at Yale must mean an offensive begun by young minds upon what time has taught their controlling elders. And consequently, as is being seen, it takes a ton of controversy to germinate a pound of “reform”.

But young minds are impulsively active. They are impatient, and the distant hope of a change in a present state of affairs holds in itself a vast attraction. The philosophy of “all things must change”, applied to conditions as well as to matter, extends a sweet and optimistic prospect to youth. And it is to this natural tendency, as well as to any deep-rooted sincerity concerning evils, that much of our controversy may be attributed. And when a beginning has been made, a flaming question raised, there are the additional attractions of being given an opportunity to turn clever phrases, to appear in the public eye, to champion or rend in a spirit of battle. The argumentative machinery clanks frantically, and the sound and rhythm of it beats a false sincerity into the minds of the controversialists, a kind of belief founded more upon emotional than mental activity; more upon desire than knowledge.

A controversy may be said to be worth while to us only when it involves more thought than impulse. A questionaire has recently been sent broadcast through the University which is quite definite in its spirit of controversy, but which falls for no definiteness of thought. Rather, it requires the impulsive reply, the mere “yes” or “no” form. Do we (yes or no) think Sunday Chapel should be abolished? Are we (yes or no) in favor of unlimited cuts from recitations for those whose stand is above 70 per cent.? Although there is certainly no chance to turn phrases here, the philosophy of change readily asserts itself. It is so easy and delightful to change things with a slight swift affirmation or negation. Those who write “yes” to the suggestion of unlimited cuts may be the identical persons who have been complaining that certain professors require all cuts, even within the present limited range, to be made up. Nor do those hasty souls pause to consider that continuous attendance would be inevitably required under the new system through a more severe grading and a greater emphasis upon examinations. But it is so easy and delightful to write “yes”, whereas to reply in the negative would indicate a desire for the boring continuation of existing conditions!

Then, says the non-University man, what is the advantage of a system of education which stimulates emotional rather than rational opinion? The answer is simply we learn through disappointments, and through a later realization of our childlike wistfulness for new things. This latter begins often as early as our Senior year, in which we realize other things as well, including our transience as undergraduates and our lack of time for conducting many of the new states of affairs which we advocate so heartily, such as complete student government. There is too much extra-curriculum activity already in our lives here to allow us to be administrators as well. Also, in Senior year, we tend to acquire more or less veneration for the force of experience and for the opinions of older minds than our own. The greatest lesson of life is dawning upon us,—that the truest form of living is one which is built upon simplicity, fundamentals, and a direction of our actions by old example.

University life, operating upon our intelligent spirit, is the emerging from the sensationalism of thought and action craved by youth, into the more simple contemplative nature of maturity. In our Freshman and Sophomore years we seek diversion almost wholly in gaudy forms. Then,—too soon, it seems—we find that we were wrong, that it is the life of the Quadrangle, the relationship of friends, the contact with the internal rather than with the external shows, which are the vital and permanent attractions. The fire-brand element is prone to vanish.

Whether all this may be considered too conservative in the present day and place; whether, in itself, it is a turning of phrases, or invites controversy by attacking controversy, is extraneous. Whether it may be thought to neglect too much the good influence of controversy upon right thinking, is another and fairer question. One thing it seeks to inculcate: a realization of the component parts of undergraduate controversy, a useful knowledge of the natural emotional forces involved which veil clarity; so that truth may be found more fully than in the replies to questionaires and in the disputes revolving about destructive editorials.

WINFIELD SHIRAS.

Five Sonnets

1

Now lift the burden of your pagan hair,

And shame the sun; now stretch your eager hands,

And with your lily-fingers fasten bands

About me. I am Prometheus, and so dare.

Your eyes are vultures and my heart their fare,

But you are something no one understands,

You are the spirit of the falling sands,

You are the color that is lost in prayer.

I am Prometheus, but your dreams conceive

New subtle desolations for desire,

Holding aloft the gold unbroken bowl.

What wisdom of black art can so deceive?

For though it is the guerdon of my soul,

I cannot reach to steal that Titan fire.

2

Let the Hippolytuses make their prayers

To altars of cold death, and let them take

The dead results their clear libations make,

Or with bowed head climb up the golden stairs.

The glory of their dying is all theirs

Who have found fire only about the stake,—

It is a pity we should try to break

The perfect symmetry of their despairs.

But we who are the children of our birth

Loving the clay we are, and are to be,

Find more sufficient life wherein we spawn,

And eat and drink, mere creatures of the earth,

And so endure with less fragility

The sun and starlight of the lonely dawn.

3

I cannot watch this dawn with humble eyes,

Feel the wind on my forehead, and not feel

My genius and my destiny reveal

Themselves unto the surge of that surmise,

Nor with a humdrum and dust-worn surprise

Can I unveil the λόγος you conceal,

Or praise the Potter or the Potter’s wheel

For having made the beautiful that dies.

It is with a new light I find my way,

But you have given that; it is your light.

And if I walked in darkness as of old,

I should not blame the Gods, nor shall I say

That they have changed into this day the night,

Or fashioned of my crown of thorns this gold.

4

Could I foresee the Truth gleaming ahead

Out of our common reach, but in my own,

I should not go unto that perilous throne

To lose myself among the famous dead.

For in the glory where a martyr’s bled

Lurks a renunciation of the known,—

His wine is salty, and his bread a stone....

Mine is a sparkling wine, mine sweetened bread.

I care not for a deathless imagery

With you a living image by my side,

Nor for a visioned truth with you the true.

I need no Godhood save the gift of pride

To make my idol my idolatry,

And me insatiate of only you.

5

A moment hold that pose for my applause:

My heart’s an artist; it would paint its fill.

Let you the model be the test of skill

Whether or not your eye or mine’s the cause.

No need this moment for artistic laws;

Lost in the poem is the prosaic will—,

My art is lost in you. And do you kill

The picture moving so?—A moment pause.

So goes the brush on canvas, so the rhyme,

And so mortality. What do we fear

If there be only a moment, so that lives?

The aeon passes, and no dream regives

Its passion repetition in our time.

Pause for a moment. There is beauty here.

MAXWELL E. FOSTER.

Girl Friends

On the bench at the piano, playing

Very close together,

Fingers touching one another lightly—

Light as any feather—

Sat they, smiling to each other brightly

What their hearts were saying.

One would turn the sheets of music over

Gently, for the other,

As a kind and sympathetic sister

Helps a younger brother;

Till at last she bent and swiftly kissed her

As one would a lover.

NORMAN R. JAFFRAY.

Under the Arch I Passed

Under the arch I passed

Out of a blasphemous world

Into the quiet of years

And of old lives departed.

Under the arch I passed

Out of life’s traffic and din

Into the playground of youth

And of ghostly tradition.

Under the arch I passed

Out of a turmoil of gain

Into the light of the truth

And of days past recalling.

MORRIS TYLER.

A Benediction

What if the storm to-night

Drive us on unknown shore?

What if the morning light

Never shall bless us more?

Need we to fear or care

What is our given share?

Dawn will bring skies of blue,

And calm will the waters be—

Long as I live for you,

And long as you live for me.

WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR.

Sonnet

Free have I wandered over all earth’s lands

Where paths are windy roads; on stately ships

I sought my dreams where the Pacific dips

And swells and breaks its heart out on the sands.

I found a love of small boats and the sky

With low swung stars, the friendly tropic rain

And ebbing tides in haste to flood again,

A love of Beauty that may not pass by.

I want not joys of many towered halls,

Of proud cathedrals or the seats of kings,

But only stillness to enshadow me

In places where the world to silence falls

Wondering at the loveliness of things

Like sun and starshine on the hills and sea.

J. CROSBY BROWN, JR.

Georgiana

If Helen Trumbull had lived in the 19th, instead of in the 20th century, there would have been no turmoil in her life and little romance. But being a child of the Victorian era, rigorously instructed in the puritanism of old Connecticut, and taught to accept without question the old moral axioms of her forefathers, she was confronted, at the very outset of her career, with the conflict between her moral heritage, and the desire to cultivate her active mind. Of course, at the age of ten or twelve, no such conflict existed. What the Bible said about lying, and loving God and your neighbor seemed adequate to cover any of life’s emergencies. Marriage was taken for granted: it was a straight-forward compact with God. There was nothing to be concealed in the marriage relationship. Father and mother were just two people.

These things are all familiar to the modern reader. He has heard about them. Indeed, most readers have themselves sprung from some such atmosphere, and know, to their sorrow, how the 19th century prepared one for life. But Helen, like most of us, thought herself the exception rather than the rule. When she came home, after commencement exercises in her twelfth year, bearing the “best scholarship” cup, and a prize for a theme about the life of Christ, she experienced, for the first time, that feeling of confidence in her own mental prowess, which was to accompany her through life. Henceforth, the pleasure of exercising her mind was among the greatest of all pleasures. Henceforth, she could not be content with accepting everything on faith. And, perhaps, at this point we may place the beginning of a conflict in her nature which she never quite succeeded in solving.

Of course the difficulty grew slowly and imperceptibly. She was confirmed in the Episcopal Church. She took her vows with the utmost solemnity, her whole nature responding passionately to the mystery of her religion. After confirmation there was a deep sense of responsibility toward God, as well as an appeal, derived from the beauty of the Christian conception, which aroused a strain of poetry in her. And these things were only intensified as she grew to understand the prerogatives and the subtleties of womanhood. At school she was respected for her brilliance and conscientiousness, and loved for her dark eyes and hair, her slim figure, and the frank, open-hearted way she had of talking to people. She was not a “leader”, because her intense religious faith made her a trifle “different”. Yet the girls felt that they could always go to her when assistance of any kind was needed. And the boys who fell in love with her eyes were always treated in the kindest, most sympathetic way. They did not know how much it thrilled her to have a crowd of them to “manage”, nor how many hours she had spent scheming for secret and complicated flirtations.

However, “the truth will out”, and it soon became whispered that Helen was a “flirt”—although “just in fun”. Indeed, the game held a dual fascination for her, because it not only satisfied her love of emotional excitement and mystery, but also supplied a field of activity into which her mind could overflow. Neither her teachers nor her parents recognized this. They smiled, in a reminiscent way, and rejected the thought that Helen was learning to play with fire.

When she was sixteen, she played once too often, with a boy named Harry McMichael, who was a freshman football hero at Harvard. His vigorous personality, and the almost savage way he took her hand, after she had tempted him for several days “in fun”, quite swept her away, so that her puritanism seemed all afloat in a flood of emotions. She had never thought of this contingency. Heretofore, she had been mistress, not only of her lovers, but of herself also. Yet this time the dams seemed to break. And she found herself leading Harry on, quite delicately—unsatisfied until he had kissed her. She even made him do it more than once, although, as it appeared to him, reluctantly.

After this episode her conscience roused itself from a New England slumber, and asserted the old principles, even to the verge of extreme asceticism. But there was no longer the old mystery lurking in life; and, coincidently, there was no longer the old fascination in the communion service. She wrote Harry a letter saying that they had done wrong; they must never do it again. But she could not really believe this—what was there wrong about it, anyway? At the time, it was beautiful. And there ought to be nothing left for regret save perhaps the memory of that beauty. It seemed to her extremely narrow to eliminate this kind of relationship from life entirely—to sit back and wait for a stupid old husband. She read a good deal of Shelley, and managed, against all odds, to skim through a book by Havelock Ellis. Reason, she said, ought to dominate life—reason and beauty. So she smoked a cigarette and experienced a wild, imaginative thrill—a thrill which only ended in the old pangs of conscience which seemed to curse her in every new venture.

A more trying experience arrived a year later, when she met John Emerson, from Williams, flirted with him in her usual manner, and was for a second time overcome by her emotions. In this case, however, she had been even more the aggressor than in the former, and poor John, who had himself a puritan ancestry and a dim belief in the ways of God, could do nothing but respond to her clever insinuations. Four or five times they met, during the summer. Each time, it seemed to Helen that a new world had been opened up before her. Each time, the old world receded a step, though tearing with it part of her heart. Yet John announced one night, passionately, that he loved her and wanted to marry her. She was overwhelmed. She had not thought of love—like that. She did not love John. She wept.

Here at last common sense came to perform a function which religion seemed powerless to perform. John held her tightly and stroked her dark hair, but she writhed inwardly. A kind of agony petrified her. This was her work—her damnable thoughtlessness. She had made him love.

Of course it all ended in a tragedy, and she had to send John away, definitely. The old religion was sought as a refuge from strife. It afforded immeasurable comfort. God seemed clothed in His truest light—that of the forgiver—the comforter. Her heart could not worship Him enough, and her lips could not satisfy all that she had to say in prayer. True, she never gave up her flirtations. They seemed to be an indispensable outlet to her nature. But experience had taught her the boundary lines which lie between men and women. This, and a refreshed enthusiasm for the church guided her life successfully for the ensuing six or seven years.

She was twenty-four when she met Roger Lockwood. It was at a fancy dress ball in Hartford, to which she had come a trifle reluctantly, since the prospect of a repetition of familiarly identical scenes did not stimulate her imagination. However, once having arrived, she found herself enjoying the gayly colored dresses and the jazz music. She quite lost herself in the crowd of faces before her. As in her coming-out year, she allowed her consciousness of self to be swept away, and, urged on by the music, confronted one partner after another with a rapid-fire of conversation and glances from her eyes. She seemed almost to dominate the room at times—especially to-night—although she could have given no very definite reason for it. Perhaps it was merely that her ever active nature was seeking some new and more thrilling experience.

Roger, on the other hand, was not participating to any great extent in the dancing. He was something of a ludicrous figure—calm, passive, tall, and dressed as a young Southern gentleman of the thirties, in brown plaid trousers, high collar, and black bow tie. He wandered listlessly from one corner of the room to another, keeping his eyes upon the figures of the dancers, but rarely cutting in. He seemed to be searching for something intangible—so intangible that he did not know what it was. He could merely contemplate the faces around him, and follow the rhythm of the music in an imaginative way. Roger was a visitor at Hartford. He was up there seeking merely for diversion. He wanted to divert his mind from the constantly recurrant thoughts of his fiancée, who had gone with her family to Europe for the winter.

Stolidly he “looked over” the girls as they went past. He was surprised to find so many of them really beautiful. There was one in particular who was dressed in the costume of the harem,—scarlet with spangles,—and whose fair, almost childish, face suggested moonlight and a kind of misplaced romance. Her light hair hung prettily over her forehead. She talked with her partners in an intimate way. He was introduced to her. But he could proceed no more than a few steps before some one cut in; and although he repeated this process several times, he found at last more satisfaction in gazing at her from a distance and experiencing a tantalizing feeling in the unattainableness of her beauty. After all, it did not matter much since he was engaged to a girl fully as beautiful. Besides, there were plenty of others to dance with. And presently he became aware of a slim, dark-haired figure, in a gipsy costume, which often swept by him. He looked more closely at the face; and once he caught the mischievous, half-serious glance of her eyes.

“Who is that?” he asked his friend, standing beside him.

“Who?”

“That girl in a gipsy dress.”

“That’s Helen Trumbull. Want to meet her?”

“Yes.”

His friend dragged him by the arm into the midst of the dancers. Roger could not help thinking how ridiculous his brown plaid trousers must appear.

“Mr. Lockwood—Mr. Trumbull.”

They danced. Roger experienced a slight thrill in the way she held him. Her touch was very delicate. But she kept her hand perhaps a trifle too far toward the back of her neck.

“Here I am at last,” he said. “I have been looking for you all evening.”

“How tragic, to be kept in such agony of suspense for three hours!”

She said it so quickly that he was put on his mettle. “Has it only been three hours? It seemed like six!”

She laughed. “May I ask why you delayed so long?”

“I was stuck.”

“Oh, too bad. With whom?”

“With Dorothy Hollingshead.” He referred to the girl in the scarlet harem costume.

“Oh, really! How exceptional! I suppose you are still stuck.”

“No,” he replied; “I’m free at last.”

They looked at each other and laughed. But Roger thought, “Hell, this is platitudinous”; and felt that there was more to be found in her personality than these rather strained mental gymnastics. “Let’s sit out,” he suggested on the spur of the moment.

“Already? Why I hardly know you!”

“You might get to know me better.”

“Would it be worth while?” she looked up at him, on the verge of laughter. He nodded solemnly. And presently she stopped dancing and led him by the arm out of the room.

“This,” she said, as she sat down in a large gilt-edged arm-chair, “is the most unconventional thing I have ever done.”

“Really? You must be something of a model of excellence.”

“Oh, do you think I could be? I should like to be.”

He wondered how seriously to take this remark.

“Oh,” said she, “you’re a skeptic. You don’t believe any woman is a model of excellence.”

“I have never found one.”

She turned away prettily.

“Well,” said Roger, “it isn’t a question of models; it’s a question of more or less.”

“And where would you put me—more or less?”

He hesitated, seeking for a clever twist to give the words.

“Oh there! You see! I have made a wrong impression.”

“I was going to say more. But sometimes my first impressions are wrong.”

“And I suppose you would like to have them wrong?”

How cleverly she had touched upon a forbidden subject!

“Yes,” he said, “I would.”

They both laughed then, for it seemed that they had already attained a kind of intimacy. He was aware that her charms emanated not only from the way she spoke these, but also from the whole expression of her face and her body, which was tantalizing—a vague innuendo. He compared her, not unfavorably, to Georgiana, his absent fiancée. But then he cursed himself for a fool. Georgiana and he had grown up together.

They returned to the dance, chatting easily, arm in arm. But when supper came, which was an informal affair, he found himself leading her into a secluded corner of the room, where they settled themselves into their chairs, and sipped coffee luxuriously.

“I think you’re a fast worker,” she said, right in the middle of a silence.

He smiled. “I was about to say the same thing of you.”

“Oh, but it wouldn’t be true—of a girl.”

“No?”

“No.”

The finality of her voice would have been convincing, had it not been for the expression of her mouth. But it was easy, from this point, to branch off into a more serious discussion about the relative functions of girls and boys. In order to ascertain her reaction, he ventured the theory that a woman was always justified in her flirtations; that the beauty of the moment, in love, was all that really counted; and that an engagement was really not binding if either party should lose interest. She disagreed with this, and said:

“I think an engagement is sacred. Flirting—well, that’s the food of life, you know. But it’s one of my principles never—”

She paused, fearing that she was becoming a trifle too frank with this comparative stranger.

“Well, go on. Never—”

“No, I don’t know you well enough to tell you.”

He laughed. “Well, it’s quite obvious what you were going to say.”

She bit her lip and colored, with a flush of anger.

“I suppose you think me a fool,” she said.

“I don’t. I admire you. I think an engagement is sacred—of course. But what I meant was that often men are carried away—in a moment—by a look or a gesture—by anything. And I can’t exactly blame them for it. I can’t see how a man is expected to live up to his ideal, in a case like that.”

“No.” She seemed to ponder the question carefully. “But don’t you see, it’s the woman’s fault—when men are carried away?”

They looked at each other, then, each recognizing the potentialities of their own situation. The look was intense. It sent a flush across Helen’s cheek.

“Perhaps you are engaged. How little I know about you! Are you?”

He hesitated. “No,” he said at length. What did it matter?—this one evening!

“Ah then,” she replied, “the sky’s the limit.”

“No; the stars!”

They both laughed and proceeded with their coffee. Somehow the conversation turned upon religion. They grew more and more serious. He respected her beliefs, although he did not hold them himself.

“There was only once in my life,” she said, alluding vaguely to the past, “when I didn’t believe. But I was growing up at the time. I was fascinated by Byron’s character and used to picture him as an ideal lover. Then I read some of Mathew Arnold. Have you ever read him.”

“Yes—long ago—at college.”

She smiled. “Long ago?”

“Well, four or five years ago—I don’t remember exactly.”

“Oh, you must read him again. He will give you a new point of view.”

“Did he give you that—that theory about engagements?”

“No.”

“Where did you get that?”

“Oh—why—from myself, I guess. It’s common sense, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Isn’t that the way morals are made—from common sense? Don’t your principles, as you call them, come mostly from your own common sense, rather than from your religion?”

She hesitated. “Well, put it this way: I think out my principles, and religion gives me the strength to live up to them. There now—that’s almost like Mathew Arnold.”

There was quite a long silence.

“My, but we’ve gotten serious,” she said at last, and looked at him, as though to see if he were playing with her. But it was evident that he was not.

Presently they returned again to the dance.

Roger decided to prolong his visit to Hartford, and in the course of the next few days he saw her several times. She did not live very far out of town. For her part, Helen found herself dangerously fascinated by him. Whenever she was with him, she was led to suggest things “in fun”—things which would actually be quite contrary to her puritanical principles. And he always seemed to respond, up to the very limit, although he had not so much as tried to take her hand. She reflected that she had never flirted quite so violently with any man, without having him spoil the excitement by an attempt to leave the realms of the intellectual, and burst into the physical. Roger almost satisfied her highest ideal.

She asked Mary Waterworth about him one night, and Mary told her that he was engaged. Mary even showed her a picture of Georgiana, which Helen gazed at for a long time. Georgiana had light hair and large eyes, which were probably brown, and almost classic features. She was very lovely, Helen thought. The expression of her face seemed to say, “I understand Roger. I belong to Roger. There is more to bind us together than a night’s flirtation. There is the whole past.” Helen was jealous in spite of herself. The picture, which was mounted in a large silver frame, and which gazed out at the world innocently enough, fascinated her. She could with difficulty remove her eyes from it.

“What are you looking at?” asked Mary.

“Nothing—I—I thought the face seemed familiar.”

Why, why had Roger lied to her? What could be his motive in telling her that he was not engaged? It seemed altogether despicable of him—after her direct question.

The awful thought came to her that he had been playing with her. She had always feared this—that some man would see through her superficialities, and play with her. She drew a mental picture of Roger’s calm, ironical smile, and his conceit in his own success. Oh!

That night they were to drive out to the country, to a barn dance. Roger arrived in his roadster at the appointed hour. Helen stepped into the car frigidly, not deigning to take his extended hand. She was going to punish him—punish him—for leading her on as he had. But no sooner had the car started than he made her laugh at some foolish joke; and half of the frost was thawed. Then, too, he was sitting very close to her. And he had that damnably attractive look in his eyes. She decided to defer the punishment—for a number of “reasons”. It would spoil the whole evening—their last evening, since John was bound for New York the next day. There would be so much fun for both of them—to go ahead—to-night—just as they had been going. Finally—and this decided her—by holding her knowledge of his engagement secretly in the back of her mind, she would be able to inflict a subtler and much more severe punishment upon him when he was not expecting it. She would be in the position of an opportunist, with hidden weapons ready for the emergencies. So she sat back comfortably in the seat beside him, and talked in the most fascinatingly intimate way that she knew.

They stopped at the top of a long hill, and he swung the car to the side of the road, so that they could see far out across the moonlit Connecticut valley.

“We’re out of gas,” he said with a smile, “and besides, I want to look at the view.”

Helen rather liked the way he said it, since the engine was still turning over healthily. Still, she hesitated. As he reached for the switches and turned out the lights, she knew, deep in her nature, that she could not control this situation. They had better drive on. But then, there was the thrill of excitement, of the new experience. Again she found “reasons”. Why, it would be all right. John was in love with Georgiana. There was no danger. He was a sane, honest man. He desired, like herself, merely the thrill of the moment. Men who are engaged are safe. Yet even as this thought flashed into her mind, she felt his hand upon hers, and his arm around her shoulders. For a moment the picture of Georgiana flashed before her eyes. She saw, again, Georgiana’s beautiful hair and her supreme expression. Then it was that she gave herself up to Roger entirely, for the vision of the other girl made him seem even more intensely romantic.

Her principles! Where were they now? After Roger had started up the car again, the whole past seemed to cry out to her that she had been unworthy of herself.

“Roger,” she said, holding his arm, “we ought not to have done that?”

“Why not?”

“Because—you—I know you are engaged.”

He turned upon her, a little fiercely. “How did you know that?”

“Some one told me.”

“Well, what if I am?” he said. “I suppose you think me insincere—and a beast.”

“No, I was thinking of myself. I knew you were engaged. I ought not to have allowed you to go ahead.”

“Hell,” he said, “it isn’t your fault. It’s Georgie’s fault. I didn’t want her to go abroad. I told her that I couldn’t stand it. But she laughed, not being able to understand a man’s point of view. She laughed and said that if I really loved her, it would be easy. But it isn’t easy, and I do love her.”

“Have you loved her—long?”

“All my life. We were brought up together. I can’t remember any girls at all, without having the impression of Georgie mixed up with them somehow.”

“And you have done—this—before?”