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while ago she had been, and presently would again be, in a higher, rarer air. She was almost painfully refinedā ā€”she wore a last yearā€™s hat covered with violets no more yearningly pretentious and palpably artificial than herself.

Fascinated, Anthony and Gloria watched the girl sit down and radiate the impression that she was only condescendingly present. For me, her eyes said, this is practically a slumming expedition, to be cloaked with belittling laughter and semi-apologetics.

ā€”And the other women passionately poured out the impression that though they were in the crowd they were not of it. This was not the sort of place to which they were accustomed; they had dropped in because it was near by and convenientā ā€”every party in the restaurant poured out that impressionā ā€Šā ā€¦ who knew? They were forever changing class, all of themā ā€”the women often marrying above their opportunities, the men striking suddenly a magnificent opulence: a sufficiently preposterous advertising scheme, a celestialized ice cream cone. Meanwhile, they met here to eat, closing their eyes to the economy displayed in infrequent changings of tablecloths, in the casualness of the cabaret performers, most of all in the colloquial carelessness and familiarity of the waiters. One was sure that these waiters were not impressed by their patrons. One expected that presently they would sit at the tablesā ā€Šā ā€¦

ā€œDo you object to this?ā€ inquired Anthony.

Gloriaā€™s face warmed and for the first time that evening she smiled.

ā€œI love it,ā€ she said frankly. It was impossible to doubt her. Her gray eyes roved here and there, drowsing, idle or alert, on each group, passing to the next with unconcealed enjoyment, and to Anthony were made plain the different values of her profile, the wonderfully alive expressions of her mouth, and the authentic distinction of face and form and manner that made her like a single flower amidst a collection of cheap bric-a-brac. At her happiness, a gorgeous sentiment welled into his eyes, choked him up, set his nerves a-tingle, and filled his throat with husky and vibrant emotion. There was a hush upon the room. The careless violins and saxophones, the shrill rasping complaint of a child near by, the voice of the violet-hatted girl at the next table, all moved slowly out, receded, and fell away like shadowy reflections on the shining floorā ā€”and they two, it seemed to him, were alone and infinitely remote, quiet. Surely the freshness of her cheeks was a gossamer projection from a land of delicate and undiscovered shades; her hand gleaming on the stained tablecloth was a shell from some far and wildly virginal sea.ā ā€Šā ā€¦

Then the illusion snapped like a nest of threads; the room grouped itself around him, voices, faces, movement; the garish shimmer of the lights overhead became real, became portentous; breath began, the slow respiration that she and he took in time with this docile hundred, the rise and fall of bosoms, the eternal meaningless play and interplay and tossing and reiterating of word and phraseā ā€”all these wrenched his senses open to the suffocating pressure of lifeā ā€”and then her voice came at him, cool as the suspended dream he had left behind.

ā€œI belong here,ā€ she murmured, ā€œIā€™m like these people.ā€

For an instant this seemed a sardonic and unnecessary paradox hurled at him across the impassable distances she created about herself. Her entrancement had increasedā ā€”her eyes rested upon a Semitic violinist who swayed his shoulders to the rhythm of the yearā€™s mellowest foxtrot:

ā€œSomethingā ā€”goes
Ring-a-ting-a-ling-a-ling
Right in-your earā ā€”ā€

Again she spoke, from the centre of this pervasive illusion of her own. It amazed him. It was like blasphemy from the mouth of a child.

ā€œIā€™m like they areā ā€”like Japanese lanterns and crape paper, and the music of that orchestra.ā€

ā€œYouā€™re a young idiot!ā€ he insisted wildly. She shook her blond head.

ā€œNo, Iā€™m not. I am like them.ā ā€Šā ā€¦ You ought to see.ā ā€Šā ā€¦ You donā€™t know me.ā€ She hesitated and her eyes came back to him, rested abruptly on his, as though surprised at the last to see him there. ā€œIā€™ve got a streak of what youā€™d call cheapness. I donā€™t know where I get it but itā€™sā ā€”oh, things like this and bright colors and gaudy vulgarity. I seem to belong here. These people could appreciate me and take me for granted, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me Iā€™m this because of this or that because of that.ā€

ā€”Anthony for the moment wanted fiercely to paint her, to set her down now, as she was, as, as with each relentless second she could never be again.

ā€œWhat were you thinking?ā€ she asked.

ā€œJust that Iā€™m not a realist,ā€ he said, and then: ā€œNo, only the romanticist preserves the things worth preserving.ā€

Out of the deep sophistication of Anthony an understanding formed, nothing atavistic or obscure, indeed scarcely physical at all, an understanding remembered from the romancings of many generations of minds that as she talked and caught his eyes and turned her lovely head, she moved him as he had never been moved before. The sheath that held her soul had assumed significanceā ā€”that was all. She was a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and storing itā ā€”then after an eternity pouring it forth in a glance, the fragment of a sentence, to that part of him that cherished all beauty and all illusion.

III The Connoisseur of Kisses

From his undergraduate days as editor of The Harvard Crimson Richard Caramel had desired to write. But as a senior he had picked up the glorified illusion that certain men were set aside for ā€œserviceā€ and, going into the world, were to accomplish a vague yearnful something which would react either in eternal reward or, at the least, in the personal satisfaction of having striven for the greatest good of the greatest number.

This spirit has long rocked the colleges in America. It begins, as a rule, during the immaturities and facile impressions of freshman yearā ā€”sometimes back in preparatory school. Prosperous apostles known for their emotional acting go the

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