BY EFELYN SCOTT 
 
 PRECIPITATIONS 
 
 THE NARROW HOUSE 
 
 NARCISSUS 
 
 THE GOLDEN DOOR (In Preparation) 
 
NARCISSUS 
 
 EVELYN SCOTT 
 
 . 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY 
 
 THE OUINN & BODEN COMPANY 
 
 RAHWAY, N. J 
 
"Nought loves another as itself, 
 Nor venerates another so, 
 Nor is it possible to thought 
 A greater than itself to know." 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE, 
 
 983968 
 
NARCISSUS 
 
PART I 
 
 AT three o'clock in the afternoon Julia pat on 
 her hat. Her dressing table with its triple 
 mirror stood in an alcove. It was a very fine severe 
 little table. It was Julia's vanity to be very fine 
 and dainty in her toilet. Here was no powder box, 
 but lotions and expensive scents. When she sat 
 before the glass she enjoyed the defiant delicacy 
 which she saw in the lines of her lifted head, and 
 there was a thrill which she could not analyze in the 
 sight of her long white hands lying useless in her 
 lap. They madt her in love with herself. 
 
 Her hat was of bright brown straw and when she 
 slipped on her fur coat she was pleased with the 
 luxurious incongruity of the effect. 
 
 Nellie, the old Negro servant, was away, and 
 Julia's step-children, May and Bobby, were at 
 school. As Julia descended the stairway to the 
 lower hall, her silk dress, brushing the carpet, made 
 a cool hissing sound in the quiet passageway. 
 
 She opened the front door softly and passed into 
 
 3 
 
4 NARCISSUS 
 
 the long street which appeared sad and deserted in 
 the spring sunshine. Under the cold trees, that were 
 budding here and there, were small blurred shad- 
 ows. In the tall yellow apartment house across the 
 way windows were open and white curtains shook 
 ''mysteriously against the light. Above a cornice 
 smoke from a hidden chimney rushed in opaque 
 volumes to dissolve against the cold glow of the re- 
 * mote sky. 
 
 Julia walked along, feeling as though she were the 
 one point in which the big silent city in the chill 
 wind grew conscious of itself. It was only when 
 she reached Dudley Allen's doorstep that her mood 
 changed, and she felt that when she went in she 
 would be robbed of her new glorious indifference 
 about her life. 
 
 She rang the bell above the small brass plate, and 
 when the white door had opened and she was mount- 
 ing the soft green-carpeted stairs up the long cor- 
 ridor, it seemed to her that she was going back into 
 herself. 
 
 In the passage before Dudley's rooms he came to 
 meet her as he had done before. His hard eyes as 
 they looked at her had a sort of bloom of triumph. 
 
 "I was sure you'd come." He grasped both her 
 
NARCISSUS 5 
 
 hands and drew her through the tall doorway. 
 "Dear!" 
 
 "I suppose you were." She smiled at him with a 
 clear look, knowing that in his discomfort before her 
 he was condemning himself. 
 
 "Won't you kiss me?" They were in his studio. 
 He pouted his lips under his mustache. His eyes 
 shone with uneasy brilliance. 
 
 She kissed him. She understood that the simpler 
 she was in her abandon the more disconcerted he 
 became. 
 
 When she had taken off her hat and laid it upon 
 his drawing-board, he held her against him and 
 caressed her hair. Because he was afraid of his own 
 silence, he kept repeating, "Dear! My dear!" 
 
 "Aren't we lovers, Julia?" he insisted at last, 
 childishly. He was embarrassed and wanted to 
 make a joke of his own mood, but she saw that he 
 was trembling. His mouth smiled. His eyes were 
 clouded and watchful with resentment. 
 
 "How deeply are we lovers, Dudley?" She leaned 
 her cheek against his breast. She did not wish to 
 look at him. Suddenly she was terrified that a 
 lover was able to give her nothing of what other 
 women received. 
 
6 NARCISSUS 
 
 "You love me. Look at me, Julia. Say you love 
 me." 
 
 Her lids fluttered, but she kept her eyes fixed upon 
 his small plump hand, white through its black down. 
 The hand was all at once a pitiful trembling thing 
 which belonged to neither of them. It had a poor 
 detached involuntary life. 
 
 Because of the hand she felt sorry for him, and 
 she said, warmly and abruptly, "I love you." Her 
 eyes, when they met his, were filled with tears. Yet 
 she knew the love she gave him was not the thing 
 for which he asked. 
 
 He was suspicious. His hands fell away from 
 her. "Was I mistaken yesterday?" His voice 
 sounded bitter and tired. 
 
 She was pained and her fear of losing him made 
 her ardent. "No, Dudley! No!" Her face flushed, 
 and her eyes, lifted to his, were dim with emotion. 
 
 "Did you understand what I hoped how much 
 I hoped for when I asked you to come here to-day, 
 Julia?" 
 
 "Yes," she said. All the time she felt that she 
 loved him because they were both suffering and in a 
 kind of danger from each other which he was unable 
 to see. She loved him because she was the only 
 
NARCISSUS 7 
 
 person who could protect him from herself. She 
 was oppressed by her accurate awareness of him: of 
 his hot flushed face close to hers, the shape of his 
 nose, the pores of his skin, the beard in his cheeks, 
 the irregular contour of his head matted with dark 
 curls, his ears that she thought ugly with the tufts of 
 hair that grew above their lobes, his neck which 
 was short and white and a little thick, and his hands, 
 hairy and at the same time womanish. Already she 
 knew him so intimately that it gave her a sense of 
 guilt toward him. Her recognition of him was so 
 cruel, and he seemed unmindful of it. 
 
 When she had reassured him that she loved him, 
 he drew her down beside him on the couch with the 
 black and gold cover. He wanted to make tea for 
 her and to show her some drawings that had been 
 sent to him for his judgment. 
 
 She knew that while he talked he was on his 
 guard before her. It seemed ugly to her that they 
 were afraid of each other. 
 
 The drawings, by an unknown artist, were very 
 delicate, indicated by a few lines on what ap- 
 peared to her a vast page. It humiliated her to rec- 
 ognize that she did not understand the things he 
 was interested in. To admit, even inwardly, that 
 
8 NARCISSUS 
 
 something fine was beyond her awoke in her an arro- 
 gance of self -contempt. I'm only fit for one need, 
 she said to herself. Then, aloud, "They are very 
 subtle and wonderful, Dudley. Much too fine, I 
 think, for me to appreciate. I really don't want 
 any tea." And she gazed at him hatefully as though 
 he had hurt her. 
 
 Feeling herself so much less than he, even in this 
 one thing, made her hard again. She stretched her 
 hands up to him. "Kiss me ! " The frankness and 
 kindness were gone out of her eyes. 
 
 He was startled by the ugly unexpected look, and 
 his own eyes grew sensual and moist as he sank be- 
 side her on his knees. 
 
 She drew his head against her breast and between 
 her palms she could feel his pulses, heavy and la- 
 bored Each found at the moment something loath- 
 some in caressing the other; but it was only when 
 they despised each other that their emotions were 
 completely released. 
 
 IT was growing dusk. The cold pale day outside 
 became suddenly hectic with color. Through 
 the windows at the back of the room Julia could see 
 the black roof of the factory across the courtyard 
 
NARCISSUS 9 
 
 and the shell-pink stain that came into the sky above 
 it. The heavy masses of buildings were glowing 
 shadows. The room was filled with pearl-colored 
 reflections. 
 
 Dudley watched her as she lifted her hair in a 
 long coil and pinned it against her head. 
 
 She glanced at his small highly colored face with 
 its little mustache above the full smiling lips. Again 
 she was ashamed of seeing him so plainly. She 
 wished that she were exalted out of so definite a 
 physical perception of him. 
 
 "Julia. Julia." He repeated her name rumin- 
 atively. "You did come to care for me. What do 
 you feel, Julia? What has this made you feel?" 
 He could not bear the sense of her separateness 
 from him. He was obsessed by curiosity about her 
 and a lustful desire to outrage her mental integrity. 
 He could not bear the feeling that the body which 
 had possessed him so completely yet belonged to 
 itself. His eyes, intimate without tenderness, smiled 
 with a guilty look into hers. 
 
 She gazed at him as if she wanted to escape. For 
 a moment she wished that they could have disap- 
 peared from each other's lives in the instant which 
 culminated their embrace. Their talk made her feel 
 
io NARCISSUS 
 
 herself grotesque. "I don't know," she said. "How 
 can I say? I don't know." 
 
 Though he would not admit it to himself, her air 
 of timidity and bewilderment pleased him. "How 
 many lovers have you had, Julia?" 
 
 She thought, He only asked that to hurt me. She 
 could not answer him. She smiled. Her lips quiv- 
 ered. She looked at her hands. 
 
 She saw him only as something which contributed 
 to her experience of herself. She had her experience 
 of him before she gave herself to him. What hap- 
 pened between them happened to her alone. 
 
 "What do you feel? Tell me? How deeply do 
 you love me, Julia?" He knew that he was making 
 her resentful toward him, but it was only when 
 women felt nothing at all in regard to him that he 
 found it hard to bear. He grasped her hands and 
 held them. 
 
 "Of course I love you deeply." Her voice trem- 
 bled. She turned her head aside. 
 
 "What do you feel about your husband, Julia?" 
 
 In spite of the pressure of his hands she felt Dud- 
 ley far away, dissolving from her. 
 
 When she did not answer him at once he was 
 
NARCISSUS ii 
 
 afraid again and began to kiss her. "You love me. 
 You love me very much." 
 
 "Oh, you know I love you," Julia said. She 
 wanted to cry out and to go away. He hurt her too 
 much. Everything about him hurt her. She had a 
 drunken sense of his disregard of her. She could no 
 longer comprehend why she had come there and 
 given herself to him. It was terrible to discover that 
 one did irrevocable things for no articulate reason. 
 She was less interested in Dudley now than in this 
 new and terrible astonishment about herself. She 
 could not believe that she had taken a lover out of 
 boredom and discontent with herself, so she was 
 forced to a mystical conviction of the inevitability 
 of her act. 
 
 "I must leave you, Dudley. I can't bear to go. I 
 love you. I love you." She kept reiterating, I love 
 you, and felt that she was trying to convince herself 
 against an uncertainty. 
 
 He regarded her curiously with the same uneasi- 
 ness. "I may be going away soon, Julia. The 
 French painter I told you about the friend I had 
 when I was in Paris. He's through with America 
 now and wants me to go to Japan with him. Do you 
 
12 NARCISSUS 
 
 want me to go? I can't bear to be away from you." 
 "Go. Of course you must go." She felt hysteri- 
 cal. She took up her hat. 
 
 He could not endure the cold reserved look that 
 came over her face. "Julia." Hating her, he put 
 his arms about her, and when her body suddenly re- 
 laxed he resented its unexpected pliancy. 
 
 I don't know her, he repeated to himself with a 
 kind of despair against her. 
 
 JULIA unlocked the front door and stepped into 
 the still hall. A neat mirror was set in the wall 
 of the white-paneled vestibule. Here she saw her- 
 self reflected dimly. Everything about her was rich- 
 colored in the afterglow that came golden through 
 the long glass in the niches on either side of the en- 
 trance. The polished floor was like a pool. Julia 
 felt that she had never seen her house before and 
 this was a moment which would never come again. 
 When she went into the dining room she found 
 the table laid, and the knives and forks on the vague 
 white cloth were rich with the purplish luster of the 
 twilight. The white plates looked secret with reflec- 
 tions. Beyond the table, through the French win- 
 dows, she could see the darkness that was in the 
 
NARCISSUS 13 
 
 back yard close to the earth, but above the high wall 
 at the end was the brilliant empty sky. The base of 
 the elm tree was in the shadow. The top, with its 
 new buds, glistened stiffly. 
 
 She passed into the clean narrow kitchen. She 
 had planned white sinks and cupboards when she 
 and her husband, Laurence Farley, were direct- 
 ing the renovation of the place. Julia loved the an- 
 nihilating quality of whiteness. 
 
 Old Nellie, standing before the stove, glanced im- 
 passively at her mistress. 
 
 "Dinner time, Nellie?" Julia wondered what was 
 in the old woman's mind, what made her so strong in 
 her reticence that everything about her seemed 
 carved from her own will. The long strong arms 
 moved stiffly in the black sleeves. The ungainly 
 hands moved heavily and surely. 
 
 "Reckon 'tis, Miss Julia." Nellie mumbled with 
 her cracked purplish lips. When she smiled her 
 brown face remained cold. She wore a wig of 
 straight black hair, but baldish patches of gray wool 
 showed under the edges against the rich dry color 
 of her neck. Her shoulders were rounded as if by 
 the weight of her arms. Her breasts fell forward. 
 When she moved, her spine remained rigid above 
 
14 NARCISSUS 
 
 the sunken hips of a thin old savage woman. Her 
 buttocks dragged. She was bent with strength. 
 
 Julia was all at once afraid of her servant. "I 
 must find my children." She moved toward the 
 door, smiling over her shoulder. Nellie's reserve 
 seemed to demand a recognition. Julia wanted to 
 get away from it. 
 
 She went on to her sitting room. The door was 
 ajar. Fifteen-year-old May was there with her boy 
 friend, Paul. As Julia entered Paul rose clumsily 
 and May leaned forward in her chair. 
 
 Paul, irritated by the sight of Julia's radiance, 
 was gloomy. He was aware of May, young and 
 awkward, a part of his own youth. May's presence 
 exposed a part of him and made him feel cowed 
 and soiled. 
 
 "Paul's still talking about Bernard Shaw, Aunt 
 Julia." May was glad "Aunt" Julia had come. 
 When May was alone with Paul he expected things 
 of her that she could not give. He would not allow 
 her to be close to him. He required that she pass a 
 test of mental understanding. She liked him best 
 when others were present. Then she could warm 
 herself timidly and secretly in a knowledge of him 
 that she could never utter. 
 
NARCISSUS 15 
 
 Julia laughed affectionately. "Aren't you weary 
 of such serious subjects, Paul?" She felt that she 
 saw the two from some distance inside herself. She 
 saw herself, beautiful and remote before Paul, and 
 him loving her. They loved the same thing. It 
 filled her with tenderness. He's a child! She felt 
 guilty in her recognition of his youth. 
 
 "Is that a serious subject?" Paul was wary. Be- 
 ing serious always made one ridiculous. Without 
 waiting for her reply, he said, "I'm boring May with 
 my company. I must go." As he glanced toward 
 Julia his eyes had the sad malicious look of a 
 monkey's. A little color passed over his pale nar- 
 row face with its expression of precocious childish- 
 ness. 
 
 Julia's long arms reached up to her hat. Paul's 
 gaze made her feel her body beautiful and strong, 
 but her heart felt utterly lost in wickedness. I'm 
 Dudley Allen's mistress, she said to herself. She 
 had expected the reassurance of pain in her sense of 
 sin; but the meaning of what she had done was so 
 utterly vacant that it frightened her. "Why not 
 have dinner with us? I want to hear more of your 
 discussion." 
 
 Paul resented everything about her, her strong- 
 
16 NARCISSUS 
 
 ness and poise and the impression she gave him of 
 having passed from something in which he was still 
 held. He moved his shoulders grotesquely. "Oh, 
 Shaw's too facile. He's only a bag of tricks." He 
 could not bear to be with May any longer. She's a 
 silly little girl. "Good-night." He went out quickly. 
 She's laughing at me! She's trying to make me rude. 
 They heard the front door slam. 
 
 Paul's accusing air had given Julia a feeling of 
 self-condemnation. She could not look at May at 
 once. 
 
 "I am stupid with Paul," May said. "I don't see 
 why he likes to talk to me. He's so grown-up and 
 intellectual and I never know what to say to him." 
 She smiled unhappily. Her thin little hands moved 
 awkwardly in her lap. She wanted Aunt Julia to 
 like her. 
 
 Julia found in May's eagerness an inference of 
 reproach, and was kind with an effort. "Nonsense, 
 May. Paul finds you a very interesting little com- 
 panion. He enjoys talking to you very much." 
 
 May's mouth quivered. Her eyes were soft and 
 appeared dark in her small pale face. "But he's 
 eighteen," she said. 
 
 There were slow footsteps, ponderous on the 
 
NARCISSUS 17 
 
 stairs. Julia knew that Laurence had come. Her 
 heart beats quickened almost happily. She wanted 
 to experience the reproach of his face. Without 
 naming what she waited for, as a saint looks for- 
 ward to his crucifixion, she looked forward to the 
 moment when he should condemn her. 
 
 Laurence stood in the doorway. "Well, Julie, 
 girl, how are you to-night?" His brows contracted 
 momentarily when he noticed May. "How are you, 
 May?" But his gaze returned to Julia and he 
 smiled at her steadily. His lips were harsh and at 
 the same time sweet. 
 
 "You're tired, dear. Come sit by our fire." Julia 
 could not meet his eyes. She watched his heavy 
 slouched shoulders and observed the loose bulge of 
 his coat as he sank deeply in the high-backed chair 
 which she offered him. His hands were wonderful. 
 Small white hesitating hands. She remembered 
 Dudley's hands passing over her, repulsive to her, 
 hungry hands with a kind of lascivious innocence 
 that hurt. 
 
 Dudley's bright secretive eyes seemed close to 
 her, between her and her husband, giving out a 
 harsh warmth that suffocated her. She identified 
 
i8 NARCISSUS 
 
 herself so with her imaginings that it was as if she 
 had become invisible to Laurence. 
 
 "Yes. I've had an interesting day at the labora- 
 tory. Even the commercial side of science has its 
 diversions." 
 
 On the hearth the delicate drifting ash took a lilac 
 tinge from some fallen bits of stick in which a crim- 
 son glow trembled like a diffused respiration. The 
 room was strange with firelight. Bronze flames 
 burst suddenly from the logs in torrents of rushing 
 silk. 
 
 Laurence began to tell about the experiment in 
 anaphylaxis which he had been making in the lab- 
 oratory that he had charge of at a medical manufac- 
 turing establishment. He put the tips of his fingers 
 together while his elbows rested on the arms of his 
 chair. His heavy distinguished face was brown-red 
 from the fire. The gray hair on his temples was ani- 
 mate as with a life unrelated to him. In his ungainly 
 repose there was a dignity of acceptance which Julia 
 recognized, though she could not state it. 
 
 Julia felt annihilated by his trust. When he 
 talked on, unaware of her secret misery, it was as 
 though he had willed her out of being. She and her 
 pain had ceased to be. 
 
NARCISSUS 19 
 
 She had a vision of herself in Dudley's arms. 
 That person in Dudley's arms was alive. She was 
 conscious of herself and Laurence as a double dead- 
 ness on either side of the living unrelated vision. 
 Then it passed and there was nothing but Laurie's 
 dead voice. 
 
 AFTER dinner, while Julia was hearing Bobby's 
 lessons downstairs, Laurence went up to her 
 sitting room to rest and wait for her. He sat down 
 by the Adams desk. The glow from the blue pottery 
 lamp with its orange shade shone along his thick 
 gray-sprinkled hair and lighted one side of his 
 strongly lined face, his deep-set eyes with their 
 crinkled lids, his large well-shaped nose with its 
 bitter nostrils, and his rather small mouth with its 
 hard-sweet expression. 
 
 When he heard Julia's step he lifted his head and 
 glanced expectantly toward the door. 
 
 Julia's hair was in a loose knot against her neck. 
 She was dressed in a long plain smock of a curious 
 green. Laurence wondered what genius had taught 
 her to select her clothes. While his first wife was 
 alive he despised the mere vainness of dress, but 
 since marrying Julia he had come to feel that clothes 
 
20 NARCISSUS 
 
 provided the art of individualization. It was mar- 
 velous that a woman who had previously expended 
 most of her industry as a laboratory assistant had 
 lost none of the knack of enhancing her feminine 
 attributes. 
 
 " Bobby has the most indefatigable determination 
 to have his own way. He hasn't any respect for our 
 educational system. I felt he simply must finish 
 his history before he succumbed to the charms of 
 Jack Wilson's new motor cycle." 
 
 Laurence found in her voice a peculiar emotional 
 timbre which never failed to stir him, and when she 
 sat down near him he was caught as always by the 
 helplessness of her large hands lying in her lap. 
 
 "I don't fancy his playing with motor cycles." 
 
 They were silent a moment. 
 
 " Julie?" He smiled apologetically. He noticed 
 that her eyes evaded him and it made him unhappy. 
 "Not much company for you. I'm a typical Ameri- 
 can man of business engrossed in my profession. 
 Wasn't it to-night that you were going to that meet- 
 ing on Foreign Relief?" 
 
 "You've discouraged my philanthropies," Julia 
 said. "Besides, they won't miss me." She lowered 
 her gaze, and made a wry deprecating mouth. 
 
NARCISSUS 21 
 
 He felt that she was shutting him out from some- 
 thing from her cold youth. He had not intended 
 to discourage her enthusiasms, but it would have re- 
 lieved him to enfold her in the warmth of his inertia. 
 He said inwardly that he must keep himself until 
 she needed him. He wondered if he were merely 
 jealous of her youngness which went on beyond him 
 discovering itself. 
 
 There was a pastel on the desk beside him. "I 
 see Allen has done another portrait of you." 
 
 Julia flushed as she turned to him. In her open 
 look he found something concealed. He was 
 ashamed of his thought. He stared at his own hands 
 and hated their sensitiveness. 
 
 "I can't pretend to see myself in it. It looks gro- 
 tesque to us with our Victorian conceptions of art, 
 doesn't it?" She smiled, gazing at him with a 
 harassed but eager air of demand. 
 
 He did not wish to see her eyes that asked to be 
 defended against themselves. He stared at the pic- 
 ture a moment in silence. It irritated him to feel 
 that the artist had observed something in Julia 
 which was hidden from her husband. When he 
 finally glanced with hard amused eyes at her, he 
 felt himself weak. "My mentality is not equal to 
 
22 NARCISSUS 
 
 an appreciation of your friend's stuff. I'm hope- 
 lessly bourgeois, Julia." He would not admit his 
 hardening against each of Julia's interests as they 
 came to her. He put his pain with the transience 
 of her youth and condescended to her so that he 
 need not take note of himself. "Did you arrange 
 for the lecture courses at the settlement house?" he 
 asked. He missed her former feverish engrossment 
 in the projected lecture series and wanted to bring 
 her back to it. 
 
 Julia made a pathetic grimace. "You've laughed 
 at me so, Laurie. I realize all that was absurd 
 terribly futile." 
 
 "Did I? I thought I agreed with you that it was 
 a fine thing to inoculate the struggling masses with 
 the culture bug." He could not control his sar- 
 casms, though he uttered them lightly. He wanted 
 her to be as tired as he was to rest with him. 
 There was sweat on his wrists as he took his pipe 
 from his pocket and pushed some tobacco into the 
 dry charred bowl. When he laughed at her the 
 pupils of his gray eyes were small and sharp and de- 
 fensive, as though they had been pricked by his 
 pain. Beautiful, he thought. She doesn't need me. 
 
NARCISSUS 23 
 
 "I have a very middle-aged feeling about the welfare 
 of humanity." 
 
 She came over and knelt by his side. "Am I too 
 ridiculous? Can't you take me seriously, Laurie?" 
 She wondered why it was that when he looked at her 
 she always found suffering in his face. He held him- 
 self away from what she wanted to give. She wanted 
 an abandon in which she would be glorified. She im- 
 agined eyes finding her wonderful. She smiled at 
 him, her sweet humorless smile. 
 
 Laurence stroked her hair. "I take you too seri- 
 ously," he said. "I sometimes feel that a husband 
 is a very casual affair to you modern women." 
 
 She was tender to his ignorance of her and vain of 
 her secret terror of herself. Watching him, she 
 thought of the day when his youngest child died 
 and he had allowed her to see his suffering. Because 
 she had never wished to hurt him she resented it 
 that he had never again been helpless before her. 
 She wondered if he had been strong like this to his 
 other wife, or if he gave more of his suffering to the 
 dead than to the living. Suffering filled Julia with 
 tenderness, so she could not think herself cruel. 
 "Dear!" She kissed him gently, maternally, and 
 climbed to her feet. 
 
24 NARCISSUS 
 
 He saw her reproachful eyes. Youth ; so free with 
 itself. Rapacious for emotion. He felt bitterly his 
 necessity more final than hers. " Where's my last 
 Journal of American Science?" He dismissed her 
 intensity. Lifting his thick brows, he took out 
 spectacles and put them on. He watched her over 
 the rims. 
 
 She handed him his paper. He was a child to 
 her. Her secret sense of sin made her strong and 
 superior. She wanted to be gentle. She did not 
 know why the sense of wrongdoing made her so con- 
 fident of herself. While he read the journal she 
 seated herself on the opposite side of the fireplace 
 with her embroidery. When he lowered the paper 
 for an instant and she had a glimpse of his oldish 
 oblivious face, she loved its unawareness and tears 
 came to her eyes again. 
 
 ON Saturday morning Julia attended the meet- 
 ing of a club in which the problems of busi- 
 ness women were reviewed. The members gathered 
 in a hotel auditorium where musicales were some- 
 times given. The long windows of the room opened 
 above an alleyway and its gold rococo gloom was re- 
 lieved of the obscure sunshine by electric lights. The 
 
NARCISSUS 25 
 
 women sat in little groups here and there, only half 
 filling the place, and the murmur of voices went on 
 indistinguishably until the president, Mrs. Hurst, a 
 pale self-confident little woman with a whimsical 
 smile, stepped to the platform, below the garlanded 
 reliefs of Beethoven and Mozart, and struck her 
 gavel on the desk. Then an unfinished silence crept 
 over the scattered assemblage. A stout intellectual- 
 looking Jewess came forward ponderously, adjusted 
 her nose glasses, and read the minutes of the previ- 
 ous meeting, while those before her listened with 
 forced attention, or frankly considered the interest- 
 ing design of green and black embroidery which or- 
 namented her dark blue dress. 
 
 But once the subjects of the day were under dis- 
 cussion the concentration of the audience was nat- 
 ural and intense. Then the president, with demure 
 severity, rapped with her gavel and reminded too 
 ardent debaters that they were out of order. 
 
 Julia could not resist the sense of importance that 
 it gave her to state her serious opinion upon certain 
 problems which affected her sex. When she rose to 
 express herself her exposition was so succinct that 
 she was invited to the platform where what she said 
 could be better appreciated. 
 
26 NARCISSUS 
 
 The repetition of her speech was uncomfortably 
 self-conscious. Her cheeks grew faintly pink. 
 There were several women in the audience whom 
 she disliked, and when she talked in this manner 
 she felt that she was beating them down with her 
 righteousness. She observed in the faces of many 
 a virtuous and deliberate stupidity that was a part 
 of their determination not to understand her. 
 
 Her speech intoxicated her a little. When she 
 stepped to the floor amidst small volleys of applause, 
 the room about her grew slightly dim. For an hour 
 the discussion went on, back and forth, one woman 
 rising and the next interrupting her statement. 
 After Julia herself had spoken, nothing further 
 seemed to her of consequence. The other women 
 were hopelessly verbose, or, if they argued against 
 her, ridiculously unseeing. Their past applause 
 rang irritatingly in her mind. She recalled Dudley 
 Allen's contempt for this feeble utilitarian consid- 
 eration of eternal things. She was proud of compre- 
 hending the unmorality the moral cynicism of 
 art. She felt that her broad capacity for under- 
 standing men like Dudley Allen liberated her from 
 the narrow ethical confines of the lives that sur- 
 
NARCISSUS 27 
 
 rounded her, which took their color from social 
 usage. 
 
 Yet she resented Dudley's attitude toward her 
 slight attempts at self-expression. It reminded her 
 of Laurence's protective air when she first took a 
 position under him at the laboratory. It was part 
 of the conspiracy against her attempt at achieving 
 significance beyond the limits of her personal 
 problem. It hurt her as much as it pleased her when 
 either Dudley or her husband complimented her 
 dress or commented on the grace of her hands when 
 she was pouring tea. Her feeling was the same when 
 she thought of having a child. She wanted the child 
 in everything but the sense of accepting the inevit- 
 able in maternity. She sometimes imagined that if 
 she could bear a child that was hers alone she could 
 be glad of it. In order to avoid being stifled by a 
 conviction of inferiority, she was constantly demand- 
 ing some assurance of dependence on her from those 
 she was associated with. 
 
 SINCE childhood Dudley Allen had looked to 
 himself to achieve greatness. He had been a 
 pretty child, but effeminate, undersized, and not 
 
28 NARCISSUS 
 
 noted for cleverness. His father was a Unitarian 
 minister in a New England town; his mother, an 
 ambitious woman absorbed in the pursuit of culture. 
 Her esthetic conceptions were of an intellectual or- 
 der, but she sang in the choir of her husband's 
 church and thought of herself as frustrated in the 
 expression of a naturally artistic temperament. 
 
 Dudley remembered her with vexation. She had 
 been ambitious for him, and he had resented her 
 efforts to use him for vicarious self-fulfilment. She 
 had him taught to play the violin and developed his 
 taste for music. It was chiefly in contradiction to 
 her suggestions that he early interested himself in 
 paint. Now he played the violin occasionally, but 
 never in public. 
 
 His father was a man repressed and made severe 
 by his sense of justice. As a child Dudley knew that 
 this parent was ashamed of his son's physical weak- 
 ness and emotional explosiveness. His father wanted 
 him to be a lawyer. His mother wished him to be- 
 come a man of letters or a musician of distinction. 
 
 Dudley was reared in the sterile atmosphere of a 
 religion which confined itself to ethical adherences. 
 However, he absorbed Biblical lore and adapted it 
 to his more poetic needs. His father's contempt 
 
NARCISSUS 29 
 
 pained him, but in no wise diminished the boy's 
 vaguely acquired conviction that he was himself one 
 of the chosen few. Dudley identified himself with 
 the singers of Israel who spoke with God. As he 
 was unable to cope with bullying playmates of his 
 own age, his exalted isolation was his defense. 
 
 When he was twelve years old his mother dis- 
 covered a journal in which he had set down some of 
 his intimacies with the Creator. She admonished 
 him for his absurdities and burned the book. The in- 
 cident helped to develop his resistance to the opin- 
 ions of those who would destroy his consoling 
 fancies. He noted precociously symptoms of his 
 mother's weaknesses. 
 
 By the time he was sent away to college he had 
 developed his secret defense, and his timidity was 
 no longer so apparent. His progress through his 
 courses, while erratic, was in part brilliant. When 
 he returned home after his first absence his father 
 showed some pride in the visit. 
 
 At eighteen Dudley had evolved a philosophy 
 which permitted him to look upon himself as a 
 prophet. Praise irritated him as much as blame. 
 When people made him angry he retorted to them 
 with waspish sarcasms. When he was alone he 
 
3 o NARCISSUS 
 
 worked himself into transports of despair which 
 made him happy. He thought of himself as the 
 peculiar interpreter of universal life. He liked to 
 go out in the woods and fields alone, and under the 
 trees to take his clothes off and roll in the grass. 
 He was recklessly generous on occasion, in defiance 
 of habits of penuriousness. He felt most kindly 
 toward Negroes, day laborers, and other people 
 whose social status was inferior to his own. Yet 
 among his own kind he exacted every recognition 
 of social superiority. 
 
 After vexatious arguments with his father, he 
 went to Paris to continue the study of painting. His 
 technical facility surprised every one. His conver- 
 sations were facile and worldly, he was impeccable 
 in his dress, while he thought of a trilogy in spirit 
 which embraced David in Israel, Spinoza, and him- 
 self. His greatest fear in life was the fear of ridi- 
 cule. The physical cowardice which had oppressed 
 his childhood remained with him, and his escape 
 from it was still through his religious belief in his 
 inward significance. Men of the crasser type de- 
 spised him utterly, and he confuted them with sting- 
 ing cleverness. A few who were artists were at- 
 tracted by the rich, almost feminine quality of his 
 
NARCISSUS 31 
 
 emotions. He found these men, rather than the 
 women he knew, were the dominant figures in his 
 life. 
 
 He was in terror of all women with whom he 
 could not establish himself on planes of physical in- 
 timacy. But after he had arrived at such a state 
 with them, they interested him very little. Their 
 attraction for him was curious, rarely compelling. 
 In all of his affairs his condition was complicated 
 by his fear of relinquishing any influence he had 
 once been able to assert. 
 
 When he returned to America after two years 
 abroad he felt stronger by the intellectual distances 
 which separated him from his former life. If he 
 had not rebelled against the tone of condescension 
 in which his fellow artists referred to his youthful 
 success, he might have been contented with the 
 humbler friends who were waiting to lionize him. He 
 continued to cultivate an aloofness which sustained 
 his pride as much against inferior compliments as, 
 in the past, it had protected him from jibes. 
 
 He could not console himself with the praises of 
 most of the women he met, for he always fancied 
 that they were attempting to flatter him into en- 
 tanglements. When he encountered Julia, however, 
 
32 NARCISSUS 
 
 the mixture of egoism and humility which he sensed 
 in her discontent intrigued his vanity. He saw that 
 she was isolated and unhappy, and he longed for an 
 admiration which his discrimination would not con- 
 demn. In her he anticipated a disciple of whom he 
 need not be ashamed; but until she should be sexu- 
 ally disarmed he was frightened of her. 
 
 MAY and Paul were in the park, by the side of 
 the lake. The water was caught in meshes 
 of hot rays as in a web. In the sky, above the trees, 
 the light, drawn inward from the vague horizon, 
 glowed in a fathomless spot where the sun was sink- 
 ing. The grass was uncut in the field about them 
 and the little seeded tops floated in a red-lilac mist 
 above the greer stems. 
 
 "I don't like your Aunt Julia, May!" 
 May's mouth half smiled, uneasy. "Why not?" 
 They sat down on a hillock and Paul began to 
 tear up grass blades as if he wanted to hurt them. 
 When he thought of Julia it made him feel sorry for 
 himself, and he hated her. "She's so darn compla- 
 cent and shallow." 
 
 "Why, Paul, Aunt Julia's always doing things 
 for people. She's been awfully good to you. After 
 
NARCISSUS 33 
 
 the way she helped you with your exams I shouldn't 
 think you'd talk like that." May gazed at him with 
 wide soft eyes of reproach. 
 
 He picked at the grass. "Oh, I'm joking. I sup- 
 pose she felt very virtuous when she helped me." 
 
 "But she does lots, Paul. She's always interested 
 in some chanty work." 
 
 "Pish! Charity! What does a woman like that 
 know about life!" 
 
 May was timidly silent. 
 
 "Some of these days I'm going to cut loose from 
 everything all these smug conventions." 
 
 "But where'll you go, Paul? I thought you 
 wanted to study medicine." 
 
 "Well, I'd rather give up that than stand this at- 
 mosphere. Oh ; hell! What's the use!" 
 
 She liked it when he said hell. It made her feel 
 intimate with a strange thing. Afraid. "But what 
 do you want to do, Paul?" 
 
 Looking away from her, he did not answer. It 
 soothed him to be superior to May, but he knew 
 enough to be ashamed of such consolation. Too 
 easy. *A kid like that! "It don't matter. I've got 
 to get away. I don't fit into the sort of life your 
 Aunt Julia stands for. What's there here for me 
 
34 NARCISSUS 
 
 anyway!" He added, "Of course you're too young 
 to bother with my troubles." He stared stubbornly 
 at the twinkling tree tops across the lake. 
 
 May was crushed by this accusation of youth. 
 "You used to say you wanted to stay here and help 
 radicals. Some day there'll be a revolution : Her 
 humility would not permit her to continue. 
 
 Paul was irritated by this reminder of his incon- 
 sistency. Still he felt guilty and wanted to be kind. 
 "Pshaw ! A lot of chance for revolution in America 
 now. You must have been listening to your Aunt 
 Julia talk parlor socialism, child." 
 
 May was feebly indignant in defense. "You 
 didn't think so when you used to read Karl Marx. 
 You know you didn't!" 
 
 The thin immature quality of her voice wounded 
 him. He wanted to be separate from it. He was 
 aggrieved because all the world seemed to come to 
 conclusions ahead of him. He wanted to think 
 something no one had ever thought before. Now 
 he had an unadmitted fear that what Julia had said 
 had diminished his interest in the struggles of the 
 working class. "I know a fellow who cut loose 
 from home a couple of months ago and shipped as a 
 steward on a White Star boat. His sister got a let- 
 
NARCISSUS 35 
 
 ter from him saying that when he got over he was 
 fired, but he found another bunk right away in a 
 sailing vessel. He's going to West Africa. You re- 
 member that kid that came and visited the 
 Hursts?" 
 
 "Yes, but I don't see any reason for you to throw 
 up everything you've always planned." 
 
 Paul rubbed his chin. Beard. Of course it was 
 childish to talk about "seeing life". He didn't take 
 pride in such absurdities as that. "What are you 
 going to do with yourself, May?" He was gentle 
 but light. 
 
 "Me?" She smiled with a startled air. She felt 
 helpless when people asked her about herself. Of 
 course she understood he wasn't serious. "I suppose 
 I'm going to college where Aunt Julia went and 
 then oh, I don't know, Paul! I'm not clever like 
 Aunt Julia. You know she put herself through, and 
 then earned her own living for a long time." Her 
 small face flushed. 
 
 As she turned a little he watched the thick pale 
 braid of her hair swing between her shoulders. 
 "Yes, I know. Aunt Julia thinks the fact that she 
 once worked deserves special recognition." His sar- 
 casm was laborious. He knew that he was saying 
 
36 NARCISSUS 
 
 too much. He leaned forward and twitched May's 
 plait. "Why don't you do your hair up? You want 
 to look grown-up." 
 
 She laughed. She was grateful when he teased 
 her. That meant it didn't matter what she an- 
 swered. "I don't want to look grown-up." 
 
 "Aunt Julia doesn't want any grown-up step- 
 daughters around." Something had him, he thought. 
 It was irresistible. 
 
 "Paul!" A catch of surprise and rebuke in her 
 soft tone. "I don't know what's got into you lately. 
 I think it's horrid always suggesting Aunt Julia 
 has some mean motive in everything she does! She's 
 one of the loveliest people on earth! She's too good 
 for you. You just don't understand her and you're 
 jealous." 
 
 Paul was amused. "Jealous, am I!" He would 
 not show the child his vexation with her. All at 
 once he was disconcerted to realize that he had be- 
 come very depressed. He pitied himself. He 
 watched May's legs as she stretched them stiffly be- 
 fore her, thin little legs. Her high shoes were 
 loosely laced and the tops bulged away from her 
 ankles. Sweet. He reached and took her hand. 
 Cold little hand! May, too embarrassed to take 
 
NARCISSUS 37 
 
 notice of his gesture, let him hold it. He thought 
 she was sweet. He might like to kiss her maybe. 
 Not now. He could not bear to be as young as she 
 was. While he held her hand it came over him that 
 there was something dark and sickly in himself. 
 He was vain that she could not understand it. Rot- 
 ten. She's a kid. He tried not to recognize his 
 pride in finding himself impure. He was fed up with 
 everything. Hell! 
 
 As the sun disappeared the world grew suddenly 
 bright, and long red rays striped the tree trunks and 
 the grass, endless rays reaching softly out of the 
 gorgeous welter in the western sky. The water 
 twinkled fixedly. The green grass was like mist over 
 the fields. 
 
 Paul became abruptly agitated. "Better go home, 
 hadn't we?" 
 
 May glanced at him furtively. His eyes made 
 her unhappy. "I suppose we had." 
 
 They got up awkwardly. When they were stand- 
 ing he let her hand drop as if it had been nothing. 
 She walked before him, a little girl in a short dress 
 with a soft braid of hair hanging under a red cap. 
 
 "You don't look fifteen, May." 
 
 "Don't I?" 
 
3 8 NARCISSUS 
 
 He tried to catch up with her. He wondered 
 what he was afraid of. Her voice had a smothered 
 sound, almost like a sob. She did not look back. 
 
 It was nearly night now. The sky without the 
 sun was a dark burning blue. A strange cloud 
 floated white above the black trees. 
 
 Paul was suddenly happy and excited. When I 
 get home Uncle Alph that old fool. Aunt Susie. 
 They were married. What did that ever mean! 
 Purification by fire is all that's good enough for 
 people like that. A sin to get married at all. If I 
 thought people's bodies were like that! Paul won- 
 dered to himself if he were mad. It hurt to think 
 through things. People went on living in their 
 filthy world. Thick stockings were ugly. May's 
 legs. Thin little legs in ugly stockings. Why 
 doesn't she shine her shoes ! Little rag picker ! "Did 
 you know that you were an untidy person, May?" 
 he called. As she looked back over her shoulder he 
 could feel her smile. Her vague face stared pale at 
 him down the path. The moon was floating out 
 from the trees, pale moon like a face. Thin light 
 stole silver along the branches high up. Little 
 moon, said Paul to himself, staring at May's face 
 and smiling. He felt ill, foolishly, pleasantly ill. 
 
NARCISSUS 39 
 
 When he came up with her it was as if he were his 
 own shadow walking beside her. "Little moon, I 
 love you." He talked under his breath. He scarcely 
 wanted her to hear his absurdity. Then he placed 
 his arm around her. Her cold sweet thinness was 
 like the shadow of the moon, thin and still on the 
 topmost branch of the strange tree. Her small 
 breast swelled against his hand and he could feel 
 her heart beat. "Oh, May!" He kissed her. He 
 kissed the silence between them. "Gee, kid!" he 
 said. 
 
 "Paul, dear." 
 
 They walked along together, happy; but less 
 happy as they neared the hedge that cut them off 
 from the street and the glow from an arc lamp be- 
 gan to fall across the grass. 
 
 When they stood under the light the absurdity 
 had gone from Paul. He wondered what had 
 happened to him back there in the darkness. He 
 had taken his arm from her waist and now he 
 pressed her hands, afraid that she would observe 
 the change in him. "Good night, May, child." 
 
 May was tremulous and bewildered. "Good night, 
 Paul." She tried laboriously to fit her tone to his 
 brotherly kindliness. 
 
40 NARCISSUS 
 
 MRS. HURST sat with Julia at tea in Julia's 
 upstairs room. The late sun stretched tired 
 rays across the soft blue carpet. The yellow cur- 
 tains glowed before the open windows, and, flutter- 
 ing apart, showed the thick foliage of the trees that 
 screened the houses opposite. The atmosphere in- 
 tensified the very immobility of the furniture. There 
 was a voluptuous finality in the liquid repose of light 
 on the polished floor and the glint of a glass vase, 
 where needle rays of brightness were transfixed 
 among the stems of flowers. 
 
 Julia poured tea from a flat vermilion pot. The 
 tea stood clear and dark in the black cups. Over 
 the two women hung a moist bitter odor, the bruised 
 sweetness of withering roses. The afternoon smells 
 of dampened dust and new-cut grass blew in from 
 the street. 
 
 Mrs. Hurst took her cup in her small, slightly un- 
 steady hand, and sipped. The veins were growing 
 large and hard and showed through the delicately 
 withered skin on which there were tiny brown spots 
 like stains. She wore a wedding ring rubbed thin. 
 "My dear, you still have that wonderful old Negress 
 who used to be your maid? How do you manage to 
 
NARCISSUS 41 
 
 keep her? I'm always struggling with some fresh 
 domestic problem." Mrs. Hurst smiled and with 
 her free hand settled her trim glasses on her neat 
 nose. Her sweet little face, turned toward Julia, 
 showed a determined insistence on negative happi- 
 ness. "I think we have a great deal more to strug- 
 gle with than our grandmothers did. We haven't 
 only our homes to look after, but our social respon- 
 sibilities are so great." Mrs. Hurst was beautifully 
 and simply dressed in gray, and the soft outline of 
 her hat, with its tilt of roses at the back, gave an air 
 of gallantry to her faded features, which were those 
 of a sophisticated little girl the face of a woman 
 of forty-six whose sex life has passed away without 
 her knowing it. 
 
 "I'm afraid I've become a renegade as far as my 
 social responsibilities are concerned. I feel myself 
 so inadequate to any real accomplishment, Mrs. 
 Hurst." Julia smiled guardedly and resentfully. 
 Something in her wanted to destroy the delicate ag- 
 gressive repose of the woman opposite, and felt help- 
 less before it. 
 
 "Ah, you mustn't feel that, my dear. All of us 
 feel it at times, but I do believe that it depends on 
 
42 NARCISSUS 
 
 us women more than on our men folk, perhaps, to 
 allay the unrest of our day. Changing conditions of 
 labor have taken the homes away from so many. I 
 think we should carry the spirit of the home out into 
 the world." Mrs. Hurst made a plaintive little 
 moue of faded sauciness. As men were obliterated 
 from her personal interests, she reverted to a child's 
 demure coquetry in pleading her cause with her own 
 sex. 
 
 "I can't look upon myself as the person for such 
 a mission," Julia said. Her eyes and lips were cold 
 as she stared pleasantly at her visitor. Julia felt a 
 sudden sharp vanity in the thought of the sin against 
 society which initiated her into another life. She 
 was confused by her pride in adultery, and sought 
 for an exalted ethical term which would justify her 
 sense of glorying in her act. Dudley his hands 
 upon me. I couldn't be free. Eagles. The ethics 
 of eagles. Julia knew that she was absurd. She 
 was humiliated and defiant. She was aware of her 
 body under her clothes as apart from her, and as 
 though it were the only thing in the world that 
 lived. It was terrible to feel her body lost from her. 
 She fancied this was what people meant by the sense 
 
NARCISSUS 43 
 
 of nakedness. When Dudley kissed her on the lips 
 there was no nakedness, for she and her body had 
 the same existence. She despised Mrs. Hurst, who 
 separated her from her body. "You know I haven't 
 a real genius for setting the world right." 
 
 Mrs. Hurst was gentle and severe. "We can't 
 afford to lose you! I shall ask your delightful hus- 
 band to influence you. As for genius I imagine 
 each of us has his own definition of that. We all 
 think you showed something very much like genius 
 in your conduct of the college campaign fund last 
 winter. You should hear Charles expatiate on your 
 cleverness as a business woman. We are practical 
 people, Julia Farley, and we do need money. It is 
 the golden key which opens the door for most of our 
 ideals, I'm afraid." 
 
 Julia frowned slightly and tried to control her 
 irritation. "Why can't Mr. Hurst undertake some 
 of the financial problems? He would reduce my 
 poor little efforts to such insignificance." 
 
 "But there you are, my dear! Charles lives in a 
 man's world. He doesn't understand these things. 
 Women are the conscience of the race." Mrs. Hurst 
 smiled again and in her small mouth showed even 
 rows of artificial teeth. 
 
44 NARCISSUS 
 
 WHEN Julia woke in the night beside Laurence 
 she perceived her body lying there naked and 
 apart, and hands moving over it horrible and secret 
 hands. In the daytime in the street the body walked 
 with her outside her clothes. With strange men her 
 consciousness of that horrible impersonal flesh that 
 was hers, though she knew nothing of it though 
 it belonged to the whole world was most acute. 
 
 THE curtains moved and the spots of light on 
 the floor opened and closed like eyes. A fly 
 had crept inside the screens and made a singing 
 noise against the window. A vase of flowers was on 
 the table, and the shadow of a blossom, rigid and 
 delicate, fell in the bar of sunshine that bleached the 
 polished wood. There was pale sunshine on the 
 chess board at which May and Paul were playing. 
 Light took the color from the close-cropped hair at 
 the nape of Paul's neck, and, when May glanced up 
 at him, filled her eyes with brilliant vacancy so that 
 she looked strange. 
 
 May bent forward again, her mouth loose in 
 wonder. 
 
 Paul made a stupid move. 
 
 "Ah! You've lost him!" Aunt Julia said. 
 
NARCISSUS 45 
 
 He did not answer her, but his shoulders took a 
 resentful curve. He felt as if the veins in his tem- 
 ples were bursting, pouring floods of darkness before 
 his eyes. He wished he might be rid of her, always 
 there in the room beside him and May. He pushed 
 forward another piece. 
 
 Aunt Julia came and stood beside him. She 
 leaned down. She leaned down and laid her hand on 
 his arm. "If only you hadn't lost that knight !" 
 
 The sound of her voice made everything dark 
 again. He resented her more than he had ever re- 
 sented anything on earth. 
 
 "Let me move for you once, Paul, child." 
 
 "But that won't be fair, Aunt Julia!" May 
 watched them with a sudden brightening and dim- 
 ming of the eyes. She was startled by the look of 
 Aunt Julia's faintly flushed face so close to Paul's. 
 What makes him look like that! 
 
 "I'll play for you, dear, too," Aunt Julia said. 
 She was sorry for herself because her loneliness 
 made her want even the children. She was tender 
 of them. They could not understand her. She 
 would not admit to herself that Paul's response to 
 her presence thrilled and strengthened her. She 
 wanted to be kind to the poor awkward boy. May 
 
46 NARCISSUS 
 
 was such a baby. "Will you let me move your pawn 
 there, May?" 
 
 May nodded. She was restive. She wanted to 
 move for herself. When she resumed the game her 
 eyes became wide and engrossed. "Check! Check!" 
 She came out of her delight. She was clapping the 
 palms of her thin hands and they made a muffled 
 sound. They fell apart abruptly. Once more Aunt 
 Julia was leaning close to Paul. 
 
 "You finished me all right, May." 
 
 May wondered if Paul were angry with her. 
 What made his eyes so hard! 
 
 Julia was ashamed before May. That spineless 
 little girl! Julia wanted to leave them both. May 
 and the boy hurt her. Her body was so alive that 
 her awareness of herself was very small. She was 
 sure of her existence only through this humiliating 
 certainty of other being. Their youth seemed dis- 
 gusting to her and she wanted to leave them with it. 
 She smiled at them constrainedly. The two figures 
 swam before her. "Good-by, Paul. I must leave 
 you children and attend to some humdrum duties 
 below stairs." 
 
 "Good-by," Paul said. He could not look at her. 
 She went out. The stir of her dress died away. He 
 
NARCISSUS 47 
 
 feared to hear it go and to be alone with something 
 in himself. "I'm sick of chess, May. I must be go- 
 ing too." He rose. 
 
 "Must you?" May got up. 
 
 Paul went to the table and took his cap. He won- 
 dered why she was so still, why he could not bring 
 himself to see her. When he turned around she was 
 watching him with her silly timid air. It repelled 
 him that she smiled so much for nothing at all. His 
 eyes were blank with distrust of her. Why does she 
 smile like that! She made him cruel. He hated 
 her for making him cruel. He wanted to be cruel. 
 "You seem pretty glad to get rid of me!" 
 
 "Why, Paul!" May flashed a glance at him. She 
 stared at the floor, and she was dying in the obscure 
 impression of moonlight on trees near a park gate. 
 
 Paul came up to her and, with the surreptitious 
 movement of a sulky child, pressed a hard kiss 
 against her mouth. 
 
 Before she could respond to him he ran out, 
 through the hall and down the stairs and into the 
 street. He was terrified lest he should see Julia be- 
 fore he could leave the house. Anything but May! 
 He didn't want May. Aunt Julia always coming 
 close to him, touching him, laying her hand on his. 
 
48 NARCISSUS 
 
 He felt trapped in his loathing of her. Why was it 
 he could never forget her! 
 
 It was growing dusk. On either side of the in- 
 finite street the houses were vague. The trees were 
 like plumes of shadow waving above him. The stars 
 in the sky, that yet glowed with the passing of the 
 sun, were burning dust. He tried to think that he 
 was mad. Beyond him under a street lamp he saw 
 a dimly illumined figure big buttocks wagging be- 
 fore* him under a thin calico skirt. And the Negress 
 passed out of sight. 
 
 By the time he reached home he was sick of him- 
 self, thoroughly dejected, perceiving the vileness of 
 his own mind. He crept up the back stairs unseen, 
 and in his small room lay face downward on his bed. 
 He thought he ought to kill himself to keep from 
 thinking things like that. Uncle Alph and his Aunt 
 down in the dining room. He began to sob. God, 
 all the rottenness in the world! If I did that it 
 would be outright in the daytime. I wouldn't 
 be ashamed. Naked bodies moved before him in a 
 long line. They were ugly because he wanted to 
 keep them out. Aunt Julia was there and even May. 
 He would not see them, but they were ugly. Their 
 ugliness was the horror that enveloped him. He 
 
NARCISSUS 49 
 
 knew their ugliness because it became a part of him 
 without his having seen it. 
 
 There was something beautiful at last. It was 
 nakedness that belonged to no one. Nakedness 
 without a face. It took him. He was asleep. There 
 were breasts in the darkness. He was afraid. He 
 could not wake up. He was fear and he was afraid 
 of himself. He was against naked breasts that held 
 him, that he could not see. 
 
 MAY tip-toed down the dark stairs, her small 
 hand sliding along the cold mysterious rail. 
 When she reached the lower hall she saw the door 
 of the study open and Father sitting there with 
 Bobby who was studying and very intent on the 
 book he held upon his knees. There was a green 
 lamp on the desk and a moth bumping against the 
 shade and shattering its wings. The light, falling on 
 Father's back, made the strands of hair twinkle on 
 his drooped head, and his shoulders looked dusty in 
 the black coat he wore. The study windows were 
 open. Beyond Father was the dark yard. A square 
 of the sky was like green silk. The moon, laid on 
 it softly, was breathing light like a sea thing, glow- 
 ing and dying. 
 
50 NARCISSUS 
 
 When May had reassured herself of this un- 
 changed world she tip-toed up to her room. She 
 wanted to undress quickly so that she could be in 
 bed and forget everything but Paul's unexpected 
 kiss and the new cruel feel of his lips. Now that 
 she was alone she wanted to forget about being 
 ashamed. She had a curious, almost frightening, in- 
 timacy with her own sensations. She wanted to go 
 on thinking of herself forever and ever. 
 
 DUDLEY'S intuitions were capable of sensing 
 what might be called the psychological es- 
 sences of those about him. He never became aware 
 of the elusive value of a personality without wishing 
 to absorb it into himself so that it became a part of 
 his own experience. He could not bear to lose his 
 sense of identity with those from whom he had com- 
 pelled such contacts. For this reason, though he de- 
 spised his parents, he maintained toward them the 
 attitude of a dutiful son. 
 
 It was the same with all the friends of other days. 
 When he was attracted by some one Dudley initiated 
 him into a devastating intimacy. The person, for a 
 time, would yield to a flattering tyranny, but, in the 
 end, would rebel against the inequality of possession. 
 
NARCISSUS 51 
 
 Dudley refuted all intellectual justifications of pro- 
 test, and attributed the failure of his friendships to 
 the emotional inadequacies of his disciples. 
 
 When women abandoned their sexual defenses to 
 him, however, he found nothing left to achieve. 
 They held a view of their relationships which made 
 the subtler kinds of personal pride unnecessary to 
 them. If they had received in life any spiritual dis- 
 figurements, they were only too ready to expose 
 these where it would buy them a little pity through 
 which they might insinuate themselves into another 
 soul. Their spiritual instincts were as promiscuous 
 as the physical expressions of embryo life. It was 
 only as regarded their bodies that they showed any- 
 thing like reserve. Even here it was more a matter 
 of vanity than anything else, for in surrendering 
 themselves in the flesh the thing they seemed most 
 to fear was that once they were revealed they would 
 not be sufficiently admired. It was irritating to feel 
 that when they abandoned everything to a man they 
 but attained to a subtler possession. 
 
 Not long before meeting Julia, Dudley passed 
 through an experience in which he narrowly avoided 
 matrimony. The girl had appeared to be peculiarly 
 submissive to his influence; but at a time when his 
 
52 NARCISSUS 
 
 complacency had allowed him to feel most tender of 
 her she had evaded him. If she had been less pre- 
 cipitate he would have married her. He was thank- 
 ful for the circumstance which had saved him, and 
 when he corresponded with her he called her "my 
 dear sister," or "my very dear friend". Now that she 
 had abandoned him he was more generous toward 
 her than he had ever been. He knew that one could 
 give one's self in an impersonal gesture. But it was 
 very tricky to take from others. He wrote her that 
 he must learn to function alone, that it was the 
 artist's life. She could never explain to herself why 
 it was that she resented so deeply his condemnation 
 of his own weakness and his reiteration of his need 
 of the isolation and suffering which would clarify his 
 inner vision. 
 
 Dudley hinted to all the women he met that Art 
 was his mistress and that he could not permit him- 
 self to approach them seriously without subjecting 
 them to the injustice of this rivalry. The physical 
 terrors of his childhood had aggravated his caution. 
 His inward distress was terrible when he was obliged 
 to reconcile his resistance to the world outside him 
 with the ideal of the great artist which commanded 
 him to abandon himself to all that came. His desire, 
 
NARCISSUS 53 
 
 even as regarded material things, was to hoard 
 everything that contributed to the erection of a bar- 
 rier between him and the ruthless struggle of men. 
 He longed for commercial success, and he displayed 
 an ostentatious indifference to the salableness of his 
 work. He had a physical attachment for his pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 He hated gatherings of all sorts unless they were 
 of friends who would respond to all he had to say 
 and whom he might insidiously dominate. Yet he 
 had encountered Julia first at the home of Mrs. 
 Hurst, whose bourgeois pretensions to esthetic in- 
 terest he despised. These heterogeneous assemblies 
 gave him the cold impression of a mob. Anything 
 which affected him and at the same time evaded him 
 was unadmittedly alarming. He had not appeared 
 at his best that night until he was able to lead Julia 
 aside and talk to her alone. Then he became sud- 
 denly at ease. There was a slightly bitter humility 
 about her confessions of ignorance that made him 
 feel her potentially appreciative in a genuine sense. 
 
 Strangely enough the frankness of her self-depre- 
 ciation disarmed him. He felt that he must search 
 for a hidden pretension that would show her weak 
 and allow him an approach. Wherever she displayed 
 
54 NARCISSUS 
 
 symptoms of confidence he confronted her with her 
 dependence on illusion. He told himself that all 
 that one individual owed another was the means to 
 truth. Believing in the dignity of self-responsi- 
 bility, he could not assume the burden of Julia's 
 discouragement. He imagined her unhappy. If 
 he helped her to see herself he was aiding her to 
 attain the only ultimate values in life. 
 
 After he and Julia became lovers he was troubled 
 not a little by the necessity for concealment, for he 
 had told her so frequently that her relation to 
 Laurence had been falsified by the accumulation of 
 reserves. 
 
 DUDLEY had said so often that he considered 
 Laurence a repressed and misunderstood man 
 that Julia, with an antagonism which she did not 
 confess to herself, asked her lover to dine at her 
 home. Meeting Dudley as Laurence's wife again 
 put her on the offensive regarding everything that 
 concerned her house and the usual circumstances of 
 her existence. She had never taken such care in 
 composing a meal as she did for this occasion, and 
 she spent half an hour arranging the flowers in a 
 low bowl on the table. 
 
NARCISSUS 55 
 
 When Dudley came he greeted Laurence with pe- 
 culiar eagerness. Julia found it hard to forgive her 
 lover for making himself ridiculous. 
 
 During dinner the guest led the talk which was 
 exclusively between the two men. He insisted on 
 discussing bacteriological subjects with Laurence. 
 Laurence deferred politely to Dudley's ignorance. 
 
 The large room in which they sat was lighted by 
 the candles at either end of the long table. The 
 glow, like a bright shadow, was reflected in the dark 
 woodwork and against the obscure walls. Through 
 the tall open windows the wind brought the warm 
 night in with a soft rush of blackness. Then the pale 
 candle flames flattened into fans and the wax slipped 
 with a hiss into the burnished holders. 
 
 Laurence was humped in his chair as usual, so 
 that the rough collar of his coat rose up behind 
 against his neck. Most of the time as he talked he 
 stared straight before him; but occasionally he 
 glanced with his small pained eyes into Dudley's en- 
 grossed and persistent face. 
 
 Julia saw with unusual clearness everything that 
 Laurence said and did. She was possessively aware 
 of his gestures, and when he spoke easily and flu- 
 ently of his work she had a proprietary satisfaction 
 
56 NARCISSUS 
 
 in it, and was full of animosity toward Dudley's 
 questioning. 
 
 She felt betrayed by Dudley, who approached 
 Laurence by ignoring her mediumship. She could 
 not bear the admission of Dudley's power to exclude 
 her. They could only live in each other. She gave 
 him life in her, but he obliterated her from him- 
 self, and so condemned her to a sort of death. And 
 while she was dead he gave Laurence her life. She 
 was dead and alone with her body that was so alive. 
 She felt her breasts swelling loathsomely under her 
 crisp green muslin dress, and her long hidden legs 
 stretched horribly from the darkness of her hips. 
 Her live body possessed her stupidly. If only he 
 would take it from her! If only with one glance he 
 would admit her to himself! 
 
 As they passed from the dining room Julia 
 touched Laurence despairingly. He saw her wor- 
 ried smile. "You're warm, dear/' she said. And 
 she added, "I wonder how our children fared up- 
 stairs, eating alone in state." She wanted to compel 
 Laurence into the atmosphere of domestic intimacies 
 where her guest had no part. 
 
 "I wonder." He returned her smile abstractedly 
 
NARCISSUS 57 
 
 and spoke to Dudley again. "You know Weissman 
 of Berlin " 
 
 Julia looked unconsciously tragic and bit her lip. 
 "Have you been able to arrange for your exhibition, 
 Dudley?" she interrupted demandingly. Her voice 
 was sharp. 
 
 "Why, no " Dudley glanced at her with pleas- 
 ant interrogation. "You were saying about Weiss- 
 man?" He was nai've like a child unconscious of 
 rudeness. 
 
 When they came to the staircase Laurence went 
 on ahead because of the light. Dudley took Julia's 
 arm, bare to the elbow. She shuddered away from 
 him. She was observing his strut, the way he 
 walked, his weight bearing on his heels. When the 
 glow from the upper hall fell on them she saw his 
 short arms held stiffly at his sides, the black down 
 clinging on his wrists and the backs of his hands, the 
 twinkle of his crisp reddish mustache that appeared 
 artificially imposed on his small, almost womanish, 
 face, and the thick black curls, soft and a little oily, 
 that clung about his ill-formed head. She disliked 
 even the careful carelessness of his dress. 
 
 But her loathing of him was after all only horror 
 
58 NARCISSUS 
 
 of herself. If he had given her a look of acceptance 
 .she would have become one with him. Then it would 
 have been impossible to see him so separately. She 
 wanted to explain the horror to him. If he had 
 known her thoughts he could not have endured them, 
 and he would have saved them both. 
 
 But he was separate and satisfied in himself. 
 "Julia/ 7 he said in a low voice, "Laurence Farley is a 
 remarkable person. There is something in the dig- 
 nity of his reserve that puts us to shame. My God, 
 what a tragedy he is! He interests me tremendously. 
 I'm grateful to you for letting me know him." 
 
 Julia felt hateful that he presumed to tell her this. 
 She had always spoken gratefully of Laurence. She 
 had much pride in her pain in never finding excuses 
 for herself. 
 
 "He isn't sophisticated in our sense," Dudley said, 
 "but he makes me feel that there is something 
 puerile and immature in both of us." 
 
 Julia said, in a hard voice, "I don't think I have 
 ever failed in appreciation of Laurence." Sud- 
 denly she realized that both these men were strangers 
 to her, that she loved and wanted only herself. Her 
 despair was so complete that it relieved her, and she 
 could scarcely hold back the tears. 
 
NARCISSUS 59 
 
 DUDLEY wanted to despise Laurence. There 
 was something in the personality of Julia's 
 husband which defied contempt. If Laurence had 
 displayed any crass desire for recognition Dudley 
 would have passed him by with relief; but the artist 
 wished to force all sensitive natures to admit that 
 their secrets could not be hidden. 
 
 Laurence's regard for Julia was full of the con- 
 descension of maturity. He gave to her where it 
 was impossible for him to take. Dudley had always 
 despised her a little, and now the fact that her hus- 
 band excluded her from his suffering was testimony 
 of her inadequacy. Without admitting it to himself, 
 Dudley was beginning to resist being associated 
 with her. He reflected that it was grotesque to 
 dream of finding understanding in such a struggling 
 and incomplete nature. Julia was possessive. The 
 heroic woman must rise above this instinct. 
 
 Her breasts were a little old, her body thin. He 
 remembered the angularity of her hips, the too long 
 line of her back. He saw her eyes uplifted to his 
 with that pained, withheld look which annoyed him 
 so much. Her skin was very white, but a little 
 coarse. When she put her arms about him her hair, 
 all disarranged, fell wild and heavy about her 
 
60 NARCISSUS 
 
 strained throat. He did not wish to admit that he 
 had discovered his mistress to be less beautiful than, 
 in the beginning, he had imagined her. He revolted 
 against these obvious judgments of the senses. It 
 was unpleasant to recall her so distinctly. He pitied 
 her mental incompleteness which made it impossible 
 to give her the purer values which he wanted to 
 share with her. 
 
 Dudley congratulated himself on a curiously sen- 
 sitive understanding of what Laurence had endured. 
 To escape the unpleasant vision of Julia's body and 
 the dumb gaze which fatigued him so much he con- 
 centrated all his reflections on his magnanimous sym- 
 pathy for the man. 
 
 He felt that face to face with Julia he would never 
 be able to explain to her what he perceived in regard 
 to her husband, so he wrote her a letter about it. 
 "Laurence Farley is our equal, Julia," he wrote. 
 "We owe it to ourselves to treat him as such. Now 
 that I have had the opportunity to observe and ap- 
 preciate his rare qualities I know that the relation 
 between you and me will never fulfil its deep promise 
 while this lie exists between you and him. The 
 truth will be hard, but he is big enough to bear it. 
 He is a man who has suffered from the American en- 
 
NARCISSUS 61 
 
 vironment, and has been warped and drawn away 
 from his true self. If his scientific erudition had 
 been fostered in an atmosphere which loved learning 
 for its own sake, he would have been able to ex- 
 press himself. He has the ripe nature of a savant. 
 I feel that meeting with you both has a rare mean- 
 ing for me. We must all suffer in this thing. Per- 
 haps he most, except that I must suffer alone. You 
 and he are close in spite of everything you are 
 close. Closer perhaps than even you and I have 
 been. But I must learn, Julia. I am struggling yet. 
 I have farther to go than he has, in spite of my su- 
 perior knowledge of certain things, of worlds of 
 which he has never become cognizant. I have not 
 yet learned as he has to rise above myself. In my 
 slow way I shall do so. I shall learn, Julia, and you 
 shall help me you two people. I want him to be 
 my friend. I respect him. I love you both. Oh, 
 Julia, how deeply, deeply I have loved you." 
 
 When Dudley had dispatched this letter he found 
 himself liberated from many obscure depressions 
 that had been hampering his spirit. The important 
 thing in Julia's life was her relation to Laurence. 
 He, Dudley, would accept the fact that he was only 
 an incident in her struggle to achieve herself. 
 
62 NARCISSUS 
 
 Yet he was disconcerted by the premonition that 
 her interpretation of what he had done would not 
 be his. He was in furtive terror of being made 
 ridiculous. 
 
 THROUGH the tall, open windows of the dining 
 room, Julia, seated with some mending, could 
 see the dull line of the roofs in the next street, and 
 the dreary sky shadowed with soiled milky-looking 
 clouds. The grass in the back yard was a bright 
 dead green. It had grown tall. Flurries of moist 
 acrid wind swept across it, and it bent all at once 
 with a long, undulant motion that was like voluptu- 
 ous despair. The table cloth rose heavily and fell in 
 a spent gesture against the legs under it. Julia's 
 black muslin dress beat gently about her ankles. 
 
 Then the wind passed. The grass blades were 
 fixed and still. In the silent room the ticking of a 
 small clock on a secretaire sounded labored and 
 blatant. The odor of the cake that Nellie was bak- 
 ing filled the warm air. 
 
 Julia heard the postman's whistle and Nellie's 
 heavy step in the hall. Julia thought of Nellie, of 
 the old woman's sureness and silence a lean old 
 savage woman of many lovers. In all the years that 
 
NARCISSUS 63 
 
 the old Negress had been there she had never showed 
 the need of a confidant. Her children had aban- 
 doned her and she had no tie with any human crea- 
 ture save the old man whom she supported who came 
 sometimes to do odd chores. 
 
 Julia wondered what had poisoned the white race 
 and given it the need of sanction from some outside 
 source. She wanted a justification of herself, but 
 did not know from what quarter she should de- 
 mand it. 
 
 Nellie entered with a letter and Julia, recognizing 
 the handwriting at once, left it on the table without 
 opening it. As long as the letter lay on the table 
 unknown she controlled its contents. 
 
 She turned her back to it and watched the 
 branches of the elm tree, which were stirring again, 
 heavily and ceaselessly, against the fence. Her 
 needle pricked her finger and a rust-colored stain 
 spread in the bit of lace which she was mending. 
 The sun burst through the clouds and the room was 
 filled with the shadowless glare, and with moist in- 
 tense heat. 
 
 Julia suddenly took up the letter and tore it open 
 with a nervous jerk. She dropped her needle. 
 
64 NARCISSUS 
 
 Where it fell on the polished floor it made a tinkling 
 sound like a falling splinter of glass. 
 
 She did not question or analyze Dudley's state- 
 ment of his mood. All she knew was that he was 
 flinging her away from him into herself. There was 
 something composed and final about the letter. 
 When she reread it, it overcame her with helpless- 
 ness. The lie she had lived in had burdened her, 
 and she could not justify her resentment of the sug- 
 gestion that she tell the truth. 
 
 LATER in the day Dudley called Julia on the 
 telephone. He wanted to arrange a meeting 
 with her. He refused to admit to himself that the 
 strained note he observed in her voice caused him 
 uneasiness. He had to prove to himself his complete 
 conviction of the righteousness of what he demanded 
 of her. He suggested a walk in the park, and Julia 
 experienced a resentful pang of exultance because 
 she imagined that he was not strong enough to have 
 her come to his rooms. She contemplated, as a 
 means of defiance, taking him too much at his word. 
 
 TT THITE clouds filled with gray-brown stains 
 
 V V flowed over the hidden sky. Here and 
 
 there the clouds broke and the aperture dilated until 
 
NARCISSUS 65 
 
 it disclosed the deep angry blue behind it. In the 
 center of the park the lake, cold and lustrous like 
 congealing oil, swelled heavily in the wind, but now 
 and again lapsed with the weight of a profound in- 
 ertia. The trees, with tossing limbs, had the same 
 oppressed and resisting look as they swung toward 
 the water above their dying reflections. 
 
 Julia, seated on a bench away from the path, 
 waited for Dudley to come. When she saw him far 
 off all of her rose against him. She could not hate 
 him enough. She subsided into herself like the cold 
 lustrous water drawn toward its own depths. She 
 felt bitter and shriveled by desperation. She was 
 unhappy because she could not, at this moment, love 
 herself. 
 
 Dudley was disconcerted by his own excitement 
 as he approached her. There was something spiritu- 
 ally gauche in the exaggerated simplicity of his man- 
 ner. He knew that his affectionate smile was an at- 
 tempt to disarm her, and that his combative and 
 questioning eyes showed his uneasiness. It was 
 hard for him to forgive her when she made him feel 
 absurd like this. A guilty sensation overpowered 
 him. He considered the emotion unwarranted, at- 
 tributed it to her suggestion, and held it against her 
 
66 NARCISSUS 
 
 as a grudge. At this instant he could allow her no 
 equality so he made himself feel kind. "Dear!" 
 He took her cold fingers in his moist plump hand. 
 Their unresponsiveness pained him. He dropped 
 them and went on smiling at her interrogatively. "I 
 had to talk to you," he said at last. His voice was 
 subdued. His smile disappeared. He recognized 
 that he was depressed and wounded. 
 
 Julia wanted to ask him what he expected her to 
 do with her life after she had told Laurence every- 
 thing, and it was no longer possible for them to live 
 in the same house. She had greeted Dudley. Now 
 her mouth took a sarcastic twist and she found her- 
 self unable to speak. She stared straight at the 
 lake, which was beginning to twinkle with cold lights 
 under the gray luminous sky. She shivered when 
 Dudley seated himself beside her. 
 
 Before he could tell her what was in him, he had 
 to harden himself. "Fm suffering deeply, Julia. 
 You are suffering. I see it. It is only the little per- 
 son who doesn't suffer. Why do you resent me? 
 Life is always making patterns. It has thrown us 
 three you and me, and your husband into a de- 
 sign a relationship to each other. No matter what 
 happens we ought to be glad. We may come to 
 
NARCISSUS 67 
 
 mean terrific things to each other, Julia all three 
 of us. This is a new experience. We mustn't be 
 afraid of it." When he noted her set profile he felt 
 querulous toward her, but he controlled himself and 
 tried to take her hand again. If she had protested 
 in argument he might have talked to her about the 
 strong soul's right to truth, and made clearer to him- 
 self what, in the darkness of his own spirit, he had 
 to confess was still a little vague. 
 
 Julia glanced at him. Her gaze was steady and 
 bewildered. "Of course I owe it to Laurence. I 
 want to talk to Laurence. I would have done this 
 of my own free will. I loathe the lie I've been liv- 
 ing!" She spoke coldly and vehemently. Tears 
 came into her eyes and she averted her face. 
 
 Dudley was silent a moment. He twisted his 
 mustache and one of his small bright eyes squinted 
 nervously. He could not bear the pride of her mouth. 
 At the moment all pride seemed ugly to him. It 
 was impossible to call further attention to his pain 
 in the contemplation of renouncing her while she 
 continued to maintain, almost vindictively, it ap- 
 peared, her readiness to abandon herself to him. 
 
 "I can't put what I feel into words, Julia, but 
 it is something very beautiful and deep. Come, 
 
68 NARCISSUS 
 
 sister, you're not angry with me?" Again he took 
 her stiff hand in his. She was humiliating him and 
 he would not forget it. 
 
 Julia wished that she could hurt him in a way 
 which would make it impossible for him to talk 
 to her so kindly. She did not understand why the 
 recognition of his absurdity made her suffer so much. 
 
 Dudley had been floundering inwardly through 
 the attempt to avoid facing the ridiculous. Watch- 
 ing the harsh bitter line of her lips, he noticed the 
 pulse that swelled and fluttered in her throat. The 
 sight of her pain, for which he was responsible, made 
 him feel all at once very sure and complete. He 
 accepted no burden from it, for he told himself it 
 was a part of her awakening to detached and perfect 
 understanding. He was grateful to himself that he 
 had an ideal notion of what she might be that held 
 him cruelly and steadily against all that she was. 
 He felt voluptuously intimate with her emotions. 
 He could not hurt her enough. He tried to shut 
 out the recollection of her beautiful gaunt body 
 in its almost tragic nakedness. "I don't expect you 
 to understand me completely yet, Julia. One's 
 vision is so warped and tortured by one's desire. 
 All our terminology of good and bad we use in such 
 
NARCISSUS 69 
 
 a limited personal sense. We have to get away 
 from that before we can even begin to function 
 spiritually to be spiritually at rest. I feel that 
 there are clouds between us, Julia, but behind them 
 is the great sun of your understanding. I believe 
 in that. Say something to me!" 
 
 Julia withdrew her hand. "What can I say to 
 you? I am in the habit of viewing problems very 
 concretely. Let me go. I must go." She stood 
 up, smiling at him desperately. 
 
 He wanted to destroy the smile behind which she 
 was trying to hide, and to explain to her that the 
 torture he caused her was the price of his very 
 nearness. It had been almost a pleasure for him 
 to feel her hand twitch with repugnance. It was 
 sad that she comprehended so little of his nature. 
 Yet he was sensible of the helplessness of hatred. 
 Knowing that she hated him, for the first time he 
 ceased to fear her and could give himself to un- 
 calculated reactions toward her. He thought that 
 if she were to remain his mistress in a conventional 
 relation he could not love her like this. The artist 
 was, after all, he told himself, like the priest, the 
 mediator between the life of mankind and its mys- 
 tical source. 
 
70 NARCISSUS 
 
 But Julia moved away without looking at him. 
 He watched her pass along the edge of the lake, 
 where threads of light as fine as hairs were drawn 
 hot and trembling across the colorless water. 
 
 Dudley continued to feel embarrassment in his 
 own soul, for he could not clearly explain to him- 
 self the impulses which were governing his acts. 
 He decided that only through his art would he 
 be able to justify all that he was when, at the 
 moment of giving Julia back to herself, he was 
 conscious of possessing her most intensely. He was 
 at his ease only in the midst of powerful abstrac- 
 tions. There was something elephantine about his 
 nature that prevented him from being simple or 
 casual in his moods. If he ever indulged in ex- 
 pressions that were light or commonplace he was 
 suspicious of his own appearance. He was startled 
 sometimes when he had to admit the maliciousness 
 of his reactions toward the smaller souls around him. 
 If he laughed in a gay group his laughter sounded 
 awkward and strained. Perhaps it was because of 
 his small effeminate stature that he felt it necessary 
 to hurt people before he could command their re- 
 spect. 
 At this moment the conviction of his power filled 
 
NARCISSUS 71 
 
 him with an intoxication of gentleness. He felt that 
 he enveloped Laurence and Julia as if in the same 
 embrace. That he was beginning to have a peculiar 
 affection for Laurence proved to him the significance 
 of his own unique spirit, Realizing completely that 
 neither Julia nor her husband could approach his 
 understanding, he loved them for their inferiority. 
 As he walked along the path toward the blank glare 
 where the sun was setting among black branches, 
 he noticed a terrier puppy rolling in the polished 
 grass, and had for it something of the same emotion. 
 He loved everything in relation to which he found 
 himself in a position of advantage. Approaching 
 thus he believed he could preserve a philosophic 
 detachment while perceiving what Spinoza called 
 "the objective essence of things." 
 
PART II 
 
 MAY went to see her Grandmother Farley. 
 May dreaded the visit. When she arrived 
 there she sat in the dining room, smiling and lis- 
 tening to her grandmother's talk, and feeling small 
 and mindless as she had felt as a child. In the old 
 Farley home May was always like that, like some- 
 thing asleep possessed by itself in a shining un- 
 broken dream. She wanted to get back to Aunt 
 Julia, who took her life out of her and showed it 
 to her so that she knew the shape of its thoughts. 
 Old Mrs. Farley gave May cookies from the 
 cake box, and Grandpapa Farley, who did not go to 
 his office any longer, took his granddaughter into 
 the back yard and showed her his vegetable garden. 
 He was kindly too, but, when this tall stooping 
 elderly man with his handsome white head looked 
 with vague eyes at her, she fancied that he also was 
 asleep and could not see her. She was a little 
 frightened of her silly thoughts about him. Aunt 
 Julia could have told her what she wanted to say. 
 
 73 
 
74 NARCISSUS 
 
 "And how is your father?" Grandmama Farley 
 asked in a dry voice. "We can't expect him to 
 come to see us very often. His wife is so busy with 
 clubs and movements she has no time for us and 
 I suppose he can't leave her." 
 
 May was cautious and timid in the presence of 
 her grandmother. There was something obscure 
 and remote about the old woman's engrossed ^ce, 
 her squinting eyes that gazed at one as from an 
 infinitely projected distance, her puckered lips with 
 their self-righteous twist. May smiled helplessly, 
 not knowing how to reply. 
 
 "I suppose Mrs. Julia is bringing you up to have 
 the wider interests she talks about when she is 
 here. You want to vote, I suppose, don't you?" 
 Mrs. Farley squinted a smile. Her humor had an 
 acrid flavor. 
 
 May giggled apologetically. "I don't think I care 
 much about voting, Grandmother. I don't think 
 Aunt Julia is trying to make me like anything in 
 particular." 
 
 "I'm making bread. Your grandfather has to 
 have his bread just right," Mrs. Farley said. She 
 went into the kitchen. 
 
 May hesitated, then followed her. 
 
NARCISSUS 75 
 
 The clean room was full of sunlight. Mrs. Far- 
 ley took down the bread pans and began to work 
 the stiff dough on a floured board. Her knotted 
 fingers sank tremulously into the bulging white stuff. 
 The dough made a snapping noise when she turned 
 it and patted it. "I suppose it would be a waste 
 of time for you to learn to make bread, May." 
 
 Behind the old lady the stove was dazzling black 
 with its brilliant nickel ornaments. The tin flour 
 sifter on the table beside her was filled with fiery 
 reflections. The stiff white muslin curtains before 
 the open windows made lisping, scraping noises as 
 the wind folded them over and brushed them along 
 the lifted panes. Mrs. Farley glanced from time 
 to time at May, and, with dim hostility, noted the 
 slight angular little figure seated so ill-at-ease on 
 the rush-bottomed chair, the darkened eyes with 
 their chronic expression of melancholy and elation, 
 the heavy braid of flaxen hair that hung with a curi- 
 ous soft weight between the small stooping shoul- 
 ders. Mrs. Farley found May's continual smile, 
 her sweet relaxed lips and the large uneven white 
 teeth that showed between, peculiarly irritating. 
 "You want another cake, eh?" she flung out at last 
 with an amused resigned air. Going back into the 
 
76 NARCISSUS 
 
 dining room, she brought a cake and presented it 
 as though she were feeding a hungry puppy. 
 
 May, trying to be grateful, munched the cake un- 
 comfortably. She pulled feebly at the hem of her 
 skirt. Her grandmother made her ashamed of her 
 legs. 
 
 Grandpapa Farley came up the walk and halted 
 in the back doorway, bareheaded in the warm sun- 
 shine. He was in his shirt sleeves. Beads of per- 
 spiration stood on his high blank brow which might 
 have been called noble. His big hands, smeared with 
 the earth of the garden, hung in a helpless manner 
 at his sides. He smiled uncomfortably at May. 
 "Shall we send your step-mother some lettuce?" 
 
 May rose and walked out to where he waited. 
 His expression had grown suddenly ruminant, and, 
 as he stared away from her over the back fence, 
 his eyes were cloudy and unseeing. "Well, May, I 
 can't say she's done her duty by your grandmother, 
 but she's a fine woman fine handsome woman. 
 Laurie was lucky to get her. She'll be able to do 
 a lot for him." He sighed as though he were re- 
 linquishing a vision, and, glancing once more at 
 May, became kindly aware of her again. 
 
 May had hoped that Aunt Alice would not come 
 
NARCISSUS 77 
 
 downstairs, but there she was behind them. Grand- 
 papa Farley was uncomfortable if Alice came into 
 a room when outsiders were present. He saw her 
 now, and, with a guilty smile, told May he would 
 go to gather his little present. He shambled down 
 the walk. The sunshine made his bald head lus- 
 trous. There was a glinting fringe of white hair at 
 its base. 
 
 "So it's you, May, is it? How are you? Does 
 Madame Julia think you are safe with us now?" 
 There was queer hostile pleasure in Aunt Alice's 
 fat face. 
 
 May's mouth bent with its usual smiling accept- 
 ance, but she could not keep the solemn arrested 
 look of wonder from her eyes. People said Aunt 
 Alice was odd. There was nothing so strange in 
 what Aunt Alice said. It was more in something 
 she didn't say but seemed always to have meant. 
 "I'm well." May squeezed her fingers nervously 
 together. 
 
 Aunt Alice laid her hand on her niece's head and 
 tilted it back. May shivered a little and her eyelids 
 trembled against the light. "Suppose you're living 
 the larger life? Imbibing the fine flavor of con- 
 temporary culture, are you?" 
 
78 NARCISSUS 
 
 May giggled evasively and wagged her head un- 
 der the heavy hand. 
 
 "Your step-mother can't stand this congenial at- 
 mosphere so she sends you. She's strong for the 
 true, the beautiful, and the good. Developing your 
 father's character. Teaching him to flower, is she?" 
 
 May grew bewildered and rather sick. When she 
 opened her eyes she caught such a cruel secret ex- 
 pression in Aunt Alice's face. Why does Aunt Alice 
 always hate me? She moved her head from Aunt 
 Alice's hand and gazed at the burnt grass rocking in 
 the sunshine. She tried to be happy and amused. 
 
 "Can't look at her, eh?" Aunt Alice said sud- 
 denly. "Don't wonder, May. Ugly old bitch. Did 
 you ever hear of the power and the glory without 
 end?" 
 
 There were tears trembling on May's lashes. She 
 gave Aunt Alice a quick stare and laughed. 
 
 Aunt Alice was examining her cautiously. 
 "You're something of a milksop, May. Keep on 
 being a milksop. The Lord loveth a cheerful giver. 
 But your legs are too thin. You'll never attain to 
 joy without end with those legs." 
 
 May did not want to understand what this meant. 
 
NARCISSUS 79 
 
 Something inside her was trembling and lacerated. 
 She stared directly at Aunt Alice now, determined 
 not to see her clearly. She could not bear to do so. 
 
 And Aunt Alice's face was calm and kind, re- 
 signed and humorous, her eyes as steady as May's. 
 "Your old aunt is an eccentric creature, May." 
 
 "I don't think so," May said with confused well- 
 meaning. 
 
 Grandpapa Farley was calling from the garden. 
 May was glad to run away to him. 
 
 IT was a long way home almost to the other end 
 of town. May felt the distance interminable. 
 
 When she reached the house she rushed upstairs 
 to Aunt Julia's room. Aunt Julia was sitting there 
 doing nothing at all. She glanced up with a tired, 
 distracted air as May came in. May smiled ecstati- 
 cally, rushed over to Aunt Julia, threw her arms 
 about her, and in a moment was weeping with her 
 head in Aunt Julia's lap. 
 
 Julia's fingers moved through May's soft hair that 
 was so thick and beautiful. She pitied herself that 
 May was so young. May's youth seemed loathsome 
 and repugnant to her. Because of her loathing, she 
 
80 NARCISSUS 
 
 made her voice more gentle. "What's the matter, 
 sweet? Did something unpleasant happen at your 
 grandmother's house?" 
 
 "N-no, nothing. Only I wanted to get away from 
 there. I'm so glad to be here!" 
 
 Aunt Julia's fingers moved stiffly through May's 
 hair. Why should I dislike this child! Oh, I'm 
 dying of loneliness! Julia felt that she could love 
 no one and that she deserved endless commiseration 
 for her lovelessness. "Don't cry, darling!" Aunt 
 Julia's voice was harsh. "I should never have let 
 you go there. I know how depressing it is. Your 
 Aunt Alice is such a pathetic person, isn't she? I 
 know. I know. She isn't precisely mad, but so 
 dreadfully unhappy. Such a morbid, isolated life." 
 
 "She makes. me so so I don't know! Was she 
 always like that? I used to be afraid of her when 
 I was small." 
 
 "Perhaps so. I don't know, dear. Some man 
 she was in love with, they say. We won't think 
 about her. When I first married your father I 
 tried to get her interested in some of the things I 
 was doing at the time, but she imagines that every 
 one dislikes her. Now don't cry any more, May, 
 child. You mustn't let your poor father see how 
 
NARCISSUS 81 
 
 your visit has upset you. He never wants us to go 
 there, but I think we ought. Old Mr. Farley is such 
 a kind old man and your grandmother was so good 
 to the little baby that died. Your father has often 
 told me about it. He is grateful to her for it, I'm 
 sure, though she never understood him and when 
 he was there with you children he was very miser- 
 able. That's one reason I wanted him to move so 
 far away. I hate for him to have that atmosphere 
 about him. It makes him think of your poor little 
 mother, too. You know she was only a girl when 
 she died. Not much more of a woman than you 
 are, May. I don't think she understood your father 
 very well either, but he loved her very much. It was 
 such a pity she died. Seemed so useless." Julia, 
 was pained by her own kind words. The malice 
 in her heart hurt her. She felt that if people were 
 compassionate they could find the apology for her 
 emotion which she was not able to discover. 
 
 May was gazing up solemnly with tear smudges 
 on her face. Aunt Julia's beautiful long hand 
 pushed the damp locks away from the girl's high 
 pearl-smooth forehead. "Oh, Aunt Julia, I love' 
 you! I love you! I love you!" 
 
 "I'm glad, dear." Aunt Julia looked consciously 
 
82 NARCISSUS 
 
 sad and stared at the carpet. Her fingers continued 
 their half-mechanical caress. 
 
 Suddenly May sprang to her feet, clapped her 
 palms together, and began to pirouette. Then she 
 ran to Aunt Julia and kissed her again. "I'm so 
 happy!" In herself she was still recalling Paul's 
 kisses, and in them escaping the old terror that had 
 possessed her again in her grandmother's house. 
 
 Julia, convicted of her own brutality, regarded 
 May pityingly. 
 
 /T^HE last semester was over. Paul, carrying his 
 JL books under his arm, slouched out of the High 
 School yard, his cap pulled over his face. 
 
 Hell! Those kids! What if he had flunked 
 in several things! He had just left a group who 
 were betting on next year's football eleven. Next 
 year by mid-season it would be a college or a busi- 
 ness school for him. When he talked to those boys 
 he tried to joke as they did about life and "smut". 
 He was only really interested in what they said 
 when they talked "smut". Then he looked at them 
 curiously and wanted to be like them. 
 
 Like them! Good Lord! They were donkeys. 
 Even the ones who sailed beyond him in their classes. 
 
NARCISSUS 83 
 
 He wanted them to know what he was that his 
 views were outrageous. But there was Felix, a short 
 brown little monkey, a Russian Jew with excited 
 far-seeing eyes, who enjoyed debating. He said 
 Paul's vision was warped by his personal problem. 
 Paul tried to make Felix talk about women. Felix 
 blushed slightly, while his eyes, bright and remote, 
 remained fixed unwaveringly on Paul's face. Felix 
 said he respected women as the mothers of the race. 
 He thought the boys at school had cheap ideas about 
 sexual laxity. That he never was so utterly strong 
 and possessed of himself as when he put women 
 out of his mind. Then he could give his whole soul 
 to humanity. 
 
 Paul blushed, yet sneered. Felix! Women! 
 That brat! "Is your father a tailor or an under- 
 taker, Felix?" Afterward it hurt Paul to remember 
 the wrong idea of himself which he had been at 
 such pains to impart. It would be nice to belong 
 somewhere! 
 
 Away from the deserted schoolhouse, Paul strolled 
 into the park. Against the gleaming afternoon sky 
 that was a dim milky blue, the trees were shivering. 
 He watched whirling oak leaves that looked black 
 on the high branches. Stretched on the grass tops, 
 
84 NARCISSUS 
 
 silver spider threads twitched with reflections. The 
 bright grass, bending, seemed to rush before him 
 like a blown cloud. Deep blots of shadow were 
 on the lake, where, here and there, taut strands of 
 light sparkled and broke through the shaken sur- 
 face. 
 
 May's step-mother. He kept trying to push that 
 woman away, crowding up to him with her sancti- 
 monious face. He wanted to do violence to some- 
 thing. He hated himself. 
 
 When he sat down on the grass and closed his 
 eyes he thought again of going away. Already he 
 could feel himself inwardly small, like a speck in 
 distance. The harshly coruscated sea made a boil- 
 ing sound on the stern of the ship. Beyond the blue- 
 black strip of water that made his eyes ache there 
 was a long thin beach with tiny houses on it. He 
 could hear the dry rustle of leaves and cocoanut 
 fronds. There was rain in the air and huge masses 
 of plum-colored cloud made a strange darkness far 
 off over the aching earth. A man in a red shirt 
 ran along the shore, following, waving something. 
 Then all in a moment it had become night and there 
 was nothing but the hiss of the sea in the quietness. 
 The glow from a lamp made a yellow stain on the 
 
NARCISSUS 85 
 
 mist and showed a half -naked sailor asleep on his 
 side with his head thrown back. 
 
 When Paul saw things like this he was never 
 certain where the vision came from. He wondered 
 if he had made it himself, or if it were only some- 
 thing he had read about. The sharpness of his 
 dream pleased and frightened him. 
 
 He slung his books to one side and buried his 
 face in his hands. He was miserably conscious of 
 his big grotesque body which he wanted to forget. 
 Saving the world. Karl Marx. Men that go down 
 to the sea in ships. Shipped away from here. 
 Shipped as a sailor. He shook himself without lift- 
 ing his face. He did not want to hate May, so 
 he hated Aunt Julia instead. 
 
 White moon blown across his face. It was there 
 when he glanced up. It floated down through the 
 park trees. Why was it when he thought of May 
 he saw beautiful full breasts like moons in flower! 
 They floated before him like lilies. They were in 
 him like the vision of the ship. 
 
 A brown barefooted girl walked toward a hilltop, 
 a water jar poised on her head. The sky into which 
 she went was like a dove's wing. Sunset already. 
 And the girl with the water jar kept mounting and 
 
86 NARCISSUS 
 
 going down, down, down into him, into darkness. 
 He could hear the quiet grass parting against her 
 feet. He could hear her going into the moon, into 
 darkness, into the vacant sky beyond the trees. 
 
 He took his hands away from his face and gath- 
 ered up his books. 
 
 I must instinctively feel something rotten about 
 that step-mother of May's or I wouldn't have this 
 unreasoning antagonism. The brown girl passed 
 out of sight on the imaginary meadow. He stared 
 at an overturned park bench, and at the lake water 
 that made a stabbing spot of emptiness in the glow- 
 ing twilight among the trees. 
 
 JULIA'S depression continued during the evening 
 meal and Laurence noticed her silence. In the 
 hallway, as they went up to her sitting room after 
 dinner, he surprised her by slipping his arm about 
 her shoulders. 
 
 Julia glanced toward him swiftly. Her mouth 
 was strained. She smiled and lowered her lids. 
 
 "Being married to me isn't a thrilling experi- 
 ence, Julia." 
 
 Julia tried to answer him, bit her lips, and said, 
 "Dear!" in a choked voice. 
 
NARCISSUS 87 
 
 He held her against him uneasily as they walked. 
 Julia wished he would not touch her as if he were 
 afraid. 
 
 When they mounted the stairs they found her 
 room dark. Laurence released her and she went 
 ahead of him to find the light. The moon made 
 a long blue shadow that lay alive on the floor. The 
 bright windows of the houses opposite seemed to 
 flicker with the moving branches of the trees that 
 came between. The night air of the city flowed 
 cold into the room and had a dead smell. They 
 heard the horn of a motor car and children were 
 laughing in the street. Julia was shivering, fum- 
 bling for the electric lamp. 
 
 Laurence, though he barely saw the outline of 
 her figure, was suddenly aware of something con- 
 fused and ominous in her delay. "What's the mat- 
 ter, Julia? Do you need my help?" His tone was 
 very casual but gentle. He startled himself. She's 
 unhappy. I need to be kind. He had been rest- 
 less, feeling something between them. She must 
 come to me. He had a quick sense of relief and 
 tenderness. 
 
 The light rushed out and bathed the indistinct 
 walls. The carpet was bleached with it. There 
 
88 NARCISSUS 
 
 was a circle of radiance low about the desk where 
 the lamp stood. Julia had not answered. Her 
 shoulders, turned to him, resisted him. Her head 
 was bent forward, away. She was moving some 
 papers under a book. Her bare hand and arm ap- 
 peared startlingly alive, saffron-colored in the glow, 
 trembling out of the dim blackness of her sleeve. 
 There were blanched reflections in the lighted folds 
 of her silk skirt. 
 
 Laurence was all at once afraid, as if he had 
 never seen her before. "Julia!" He moved a step 
 toward her. 
 
 She turned to him, her hands behind her, palms 
 downward on the desk against which she braced 
 herself. Her face was old. Her eyes, staring at 
 him, seemed blind. 
 
 Laurence frowned while his lips twitched in a 
 queer smile. He tried to speak, but could not. 
 Without knowing why, he wanted to keep her from 
 speaking. 
 
 She buried her face in her hands. "I have some- 
 thing horrible to tell you, Laurence." 
 
 Her voice, unexpectedly calm, disconcerted him. 
 Neither had she intended to speak like that. She 
 wanted her emotions to release her. She wanted to 
 
NARCISSUS 89 
 
 be confused. The clearness of the instant terrified 
 her. 
 
 Laurence could not ask her what it was. Some- 
 thing hurt him at that moment more than she could 
 ever hurt him afterward. He wanted the silence, 
 unendurable as it was, to go on forever. 
 
 Silence. 
 
 He came to her and took her hands from her 
 eyes. It was hard for him to touch her. Her lids 
 closed. She turned her head aside. 
 
 "What's the matter, Julia? What's happened? 
 Have I done anything to hurt you? Tell me." 
 
 He seemed to her so far away that she felt it 
 useless to answer him. Everything that had hap- 
 pened was deep inside her. Neither Laurence nor 
 Dudley had any relation to it. She knew herself 
 too deeply. It was the unknown self from which 
 gods were made. There was nothing to turn to. 
 There was nothing more to know. She watched 
 Laurence now and felt a foolish smile on her lips. 
 Her hard, concentrated gaze noted nothing about 
 him. "I've behaved disgustingly, Laurence." 
 
 Laurence watched her. He let his hands fall 
 away. He wanted never to know what she was 
 going to say. His eyes were on the soft hair against 
 
90 NARCISSUS 
 
 her cheek. He had the impulse to kiss her there. 
 He hated her already for the pain of what she was 
 taking away from him. Some helpless thing in him 
 wanted her and she was killing it cruelly and sense- 
 lessly. It was monstrous to take her soft hair and 
 her cheek away from him. 
 
 "I've deceived you, Laurence. I've been carry- 
 ing on an intrigue without telling you." Her brows 
 were painfully drawn above her blind hard gaze. 
 Her smile suggested a sneer at its own agony. "I've 
 had a lover." 
 
 Laurence flushed slowly and regarded her with 
 a dim stare of suffering and dislike. He could not 
 conquer the impression that her manner was vic- 
 torious. He felt that he must ask who her lover 
 was. He thought that she was degrading him when 
 she made him ask it. "Yes?" His voice sounded 
 excited, yet calm, almost elated. The voice came 
 from a strange mouth. 
 
 "Dudley Allen," Julia said, and kept the same un- 
 happy, irrational smile. 
 
 "How long did this go on before you made up 
 your mind to tell me? I can forgive you everything 
 but that, Julia. Why didn't you tell me? You're 
 a free agent. I have nothing to say about your ac- 
 
NARCISSUS 91 
 
 tions, but I don't think you had any right to lie 
 to me, Julia." He tried to keep his mind on the 
 point of justice. He was utterly vanquished and 
 weak. To touch her! To be near to her! He 
 felt her putting things between them so that he could 
 never touch her. His mouth was sweet. His suf- 
 fused eyes had an expression of stupidity and an- 
 guish. 
 
 Julia, observing him, all at once relaxed, and, 
 with a bewildered air, began to weep, hiding her 
 face again. He envied the sobs which shook her 
 with relief. She sank into a chair. 
 
 "Don't, Julia. You mustn't do this, Julia. 
 Don't!" He came up to her, and, with an effort, 
 touched her drooped head. The contact was grate- 
 ful to him. Her warm shuddering body reassured 
 him against the dark they were in. They were both 
 in the same darkness. He wanted to know her in 
 it where her bright empty words had pierced and 
 gone. 
 
 "How can you bear to touch me?" Julia said. 
 She demanded nothing. Helpless and waiting, she 
 was clinging to him. Her legs were warm and weak 
 and tired. She was glad of the chair, and only in 
 
92 NARCISSUS 
 
 terror that Laurence might go. "Don't leave me, 
 Laurence! Please don't leave me!" 
 
 "I won't leave you, Julia." For a moment he 
 pitied her, but suddenly he knew how much outside 
 her he was. She was taking no account of him 
 at all. He needed to resist her as if she were some 
 awful weight. He was so tired. She was crushing 
 him. He wanted to live. He wanted to be away 
 from her. "I want to go not far out somewhere. 
 I want to be alone for a while. I have to think 
 things out." 
 
 "I know, Laurence! You can't bear me! I've 
 killed what you had for me!" 
 
 He was annoyed by her unthinking phrases, and 
 that she showed no knowledge of the new emotion 
 which pain had created in him. It was hard to 
 leave her in distress, but he felt that he must go 
 to save himself. 
 
 He left the room quietly, and went downstairs 
 and into his study. The house was still, perhaps 
 empty, but he closed the door after him and locked 
 it. He was afraid of his own room with its un- 
 familiar walls. 
 
 He sat down awkwardly in the darkness, aware 
 of his own movements as of the gestures of some one 
 
NARCISSUS 93 
 
 else. He conceived a peculiar disgust for the short 
 heavy man who was humped soddenly in the arm- 
 chair. He disliked the man's clothes, expensive 
 ill-fitting clothes draping a massive body. Most of 
 all he hated the man's small delicate hands, ridic- 
 ulous below his big sleeves. 
 
 Laurence, out of his own fatigue, had abandoned 
 the moral idea, and he pleased himself now with 
 the bitter lenience of his judgment. He had known 
 for a long time that Julia was dissatisfied and had 
 even sensed the pathos in her passing enthusiasms 
 with their glamour of profundity. He had seen her 
 young and lovely, futile except to him, and, when 
 he had pitied her passion for the sublime, it had 
 only added a paternal quality to his feeling for her, 
 so that he loved her more inwardly and quietly. 
 His unshaken pessimism regarding life had made 
 him more and more gentle of her when he saw that 
 she yet clung to the things which, for him, had 
 failed. He perceived now that his very disbelief 
 had been the symbol of a too complete faith which 
 she had made grotesque. If he had been able to 
 condemn her, the moral justification would have 
 afforded him an emotional outlet. He was helpless 
 with a hurt that was his alone. 
 
94 NARCISSUS 
 
 Who was he, he said ironically to himself, that 
 he should refuse the lie with which humanity sustains 
 itself. 
 
 DUDLEY wrote Julia that he was grieved that 
 she excluded him from her confidence. He 
 was suffering deeply and he wanted to be a friend 
 to both her and Laurence. He had not anticipated 
 anything like her silence. 
 
 When his vanity was wounded he made a fetish 
 of his isolation. He told himself that he had no 
 place in the superficiality of modern life. He took a 
 train away from the city and walked along the beach 
 under the hot gray sky beneath clouds like glaring 
 water. He wanted to avoid his artist friends. He 
 wished to imagine that they could never under- 
 stand him. He was acute in his perception of their 
 weaknesses and was always defending himself in- 
 wardly against discovering their defects in himself. 
 
 He tired himself out and, taking off his coat, sat 
 down on some driftwood to rest. His black hair 
 clung in sweated curls to his flushed forehead. The 
 pine boughs above him rocked secretly against the 
 glowing blindness of the clouds. The bunches of 
 needles, lustrous on the tips of the branches, were 
 
NARCISSUS 95 
 
 like black stars. The sea was a moving hill going 
 up against the horizon. It made a slow heavy sound. 
 The small waves sidled along the shore, opened their 
 fluted edges a little, fan-wise, then flattened them- 
 selves and sank away with lisping noises. 
 
 Dudley was more and more depressed by the con- 
 stant terrible fear of having made himself ludi- 
 crous. He said to himself that neither Julia nor 
 her husband would understand him, and he must 
 suffer the miscomprehension of his motives which 
 would inevitably result from their lesser experience. 
 The most disconcerting thing was the sudden retro- 
 spective vividness of his physical intimacy with 
 Julia. She seemed to have become a part of all 
 the abhorrent elements that were commonplace in 
 his past, elements against which his romantic con- 
 ception of his destiny led him to rebel. 
 
 His full lips pouted despairingly beneath his neat 
 mustache shining in the glare, and there was an 
 aggrieved expression in his small sparkling eyes. 
 His plump, pretty body made him unhappy. He 
 tried to exclude it. It was terrible for him to realize 
 ugliness or physical deficiency of any sort. He 
 never associated this with his weak childhood and 
 the semi-invalidism which he but vaguely remem- 
 
96 NARCISSUS 
 
 bered. He had begun so early to detach his ex- 
 periences from those of other beings, that it never 
 occurred to him. Yet if he came in contact with 
 disease in another creature it left him mentally ill. 
 He never made any attempt to analyze the violence 
 of his reaction against the sight of sickness. At 
 any rate, his theory was of a Golden Age and a 
 primitive man who had fallen through admitting 
 weakness into his psychical life. 
 
 Dudley did not explain the fact to himself, but 
 he knew that his dignity survived only in his capac- 
 ity for pain of the spirit. When he was in agony 
 of mind he never really doubted that his condition 
 was a superior one, the travail in which the great 
 soul gave birth to its perfection. At twenty-seven 
 his hair was turning gray and there were lines of 
 exhaustion and disillusionment about his eyes and' 
 mouth. He demanded so much of himself that it 
 allowed him no spiritual quiet. 
 
 To avoid recognizing the platitudinous details of 
 his love affairs he submitted himself to mystical tor- 
 tures. He wanted to leave each incident of his ex- 
 istence finished and perfect as he passed through 
 it. As much as he craved admiration, he needed 
 gentleness, but he could not ask for it. 
 
NARCISSUS 97 
 
 He remained on the beach until nightfall. He 
 could not discover in himself enough grief to re- 
 lease him from the cold misery and absurdity of 
 everyday human affairs. 
 
 BETWEEN Julia and Laurence, the reflex of 
 their emotional fatigue expressed itself in a 
 mutual inertia. Except that Laurence showed his 
 desire to be alone by moving his bed into a small 
 isolated room at the back of the house, nothing in 
 the order of existence was changed. 
 
 Before the children, Julia spoke to him gently, 
 almost pathetically, and only now and then dared 
 look at his face. He tried to avoid her guilty and 
 demanding gaze. If she caught his eyes he would 
 glance quickly and defensively away with a con- 
 traction of his features that he could not control. 
 
 School was over. "You and the children might 
 go for a month on the beach," Laurence said. 
 
 And Julia said, "Yes." But she did not make 
 any definite plans. She was waiting for something 
 which she had never named to herself. 
 
 When she was away from him in her room she 
 went over and over the succession of events, and 
 wondered if she should leave the house to go out 
 
98 NARCISSUS 
 
 and earn her living, since she had betrayed Laur- 
 ence's confidence and no longer deserved anything 
 at his hands. She sustained the ideas of conscience 
 to the point of applying for employment with the 
 City Board of Health, and, some weeks after, a 
 position was given her. But it seemed an irrelevant 
 incident which resolved nothing. 
 
 If Laurence had imposed difficulties on her she 
 would have justified herself in facing them. What 
 seemed most horrible now was that everything was 
 in suspense, and she was cheated of the emotional 
 cleansing which relieved her in a crisis even where 
 there were ominous consequences to follow. 
 
 Laurence made a constant effort to escape the 
 atmosphere of anticipation which her manner cre- 
 ated. When he was not with her he fancied he saw 
 everything clearly. She had always been searching 
 for something apart from him and she had found 
 it. He decided that it was the clearness and finality 
 of his vision of her and of himself that left him un- 
 able to create a future. Laurence thought, in lan- 
 guage different from Julia's, that a man comes to 
 the end of his life when he knows himself entirely. 
 Emotion can only build on the vagueness of ex- 
 pectation. His complete awareness of the causes 
 
NARCISSUS 99 
 
 of his state allowed him no resentments. He im- 
 agined that he could no longer feel anything toward 
 Julia. He was conscious of the broken thing in 
 himself. He could not feel himself going on. 
 There was nothing but annihilating space around 
 him. He reflected that Julia could intoxicate her- 
 self with death, and that he had no such autoerotic 
 sense. 
 
 ONE evening, after an early dinner, May and 
 Bobby ran out, bent on their own affairs, and 
 left Julia and Laurence in the dining room alone. 
 Without looking at Julia, Laurence rose. She rec- 
 ognized, beneath his quiet manner, the furtive haste 
 with which she had become so painfully familiar. 
 
 She touched his coat. "Laurence?" She picked 
 up some embroidery which lay on a chair near the 
 table and began to thrust the needle, which had 
 lain on it, in and out of the coarse-woven brown 
 cloth. She stared down at her trembling fingers 
 at the long third finger where the thimble should be. 
 
 Laurence waited without speaking. When she 
 touched him like that he could scarcely bear it. 
 Her long hands and her aching, drooping shoulders 
 were a part of him. Even the sound of her voice 
 
ioo NARCISSUS 
 
 was something that she dragged out of him that 
 he found it hard to endure. He kept his head bent 
 away from her. His mouth contorted. Frowning, 
 he passed his fingers slowly across his face and cov- 
 ered his lips. 
 
 "Dudley Allen and I have separated. Everything 
 between us seems to have been a mistake. I didn't 
 know whether I had made you understand that." 
 Her voice was weak, almost whispering. As she 
 watched her needle she pricked herself and a drop 
 of blood welled, slowly crimson, from the hand that 
 held the cloth. She went on pushing the needle 
 jerkily through some yellow cotton flowers. The late 
 sunshine was pale in the room. Nellie was singing 
 in the kitchen. 
 
 Laurence saw the blood spread on the embroid- 
 ery and make a stain. He was all at once insanely 
 amused. What she was saying seemed an absurd 
 revelation of their distance from each other. She 
 never considered him as distinct from herself. He 
 found it ludicrous. 
 
 His finger tips moved along the edge of the table. 
 He picked up a dish and set it down. In his heart 
 he knew that Dudley was her only lover, but he 
 was jealous of his right to suspect that it was 
 
NARCISSUS ioa 
 
 otherwise. It made him cruel toward her when he 
 realized how seldom it occurred to her that he might 
 disbelieve what she said. "That is your affair 
 between you and him, Julia. I'm not interested 
 in it." 
 
 She watched him helplessly. "Laurence, why 
 is it always like this?" 
 
 He saw her hands shaking. He wanted them to 
 shake. All grew dim before his eyes. He turned 
 quickly from her and walked out of the room. He 
 could not hurt her. It was terrible not to be able 
 to hurt her. He fancied that he hated her more 
 because he was so unable to revenge himself for 
 her manner of ignoring him. 
 
 He went on through the hall into the street. He 
 knew that Julia was robbing him of the detachment 
 in which he had taken refuge from earlier suffer- 
 ing. He no longer possessed himself. Not even his 
 own pain belonged to him. 
 
 He's cast her off so she comes to me. He did 
 not think so, but he wanted to indulge himself in 
 this belief. He had hitherto controlled a loathing 
 for Dudley which was unreasoning. Now he re- 
 sented Dudley for Julia's sake and could despise 
 her through this very resentment. 
 
:o2 NARCISSUS 
 
 Julia's isolation was pathetic, yet Laurence had 
 only to recall the physical nature of his emotion 
 when they were together to know that he could 
 not express his pity for her. He tried to force 
 all intimate sense of her out of his mind. When 
 he actually considered himself rid of her he was 
 conscious of being bright and blank like a mirror 
 from which the reflections are withdrawn, and there 
 was a crazy stirring of laughter through the empti- 
 ness in him. 
 
 He passed along the neat sidewalks, his head 
 bowed. His air of abstraction was ostentatious. 
 He wanted to enjoy uninterruptedly the relaxation 
 of self-loathing. There were deep, violet-red shad- 
 ows on the newly-washed asphalt street. The tree- 
 tops were still and glistening against the line of 
 faintly gilded roofs. The grass blades on the or- 
 dered lawns were green glass along which the quiet 
 light trickled. Well-dressed children played under 
 the eyes of nurse maids. A limousine was drawn 
 up in the shrubbery that surrounded a Georgian 
 portico. Laurence decided that he was relieved by 
 the failure which separated him from the preten- 
 sions of success. 
 
 He recalled the unhappiness of his first marriage, 
 
NARCISSUS 103 
 
 and the depression he had experienced with his 
 baby's death. It pleased him that he seemed 
 doomed to fail in every relationship. 
 
 Alice and I are strangely alike after all. He took 
 a grandiose satisfaction in the delayed admittance 
 that he and Alice were alike. Wondering if Julia 
 would ultimately leave him, he told himself that 
 he was the one who ought to go away to save 
 Bobby from the contamination of such bitterness. 
 
 Of May he somehow did not wish to think. 
 
 WHEN Dudley communicated with Julia over 
 the telephone her manner was strained and 
 resentful, and when he wrote her notes she replied 
 to him with a reserve that showed her antagonism. 
 His curiosity concerning her and Laurence was be- 
 coming painful. He guessed that she was in spiritual 
 turmoil and he could not bear to be excluded from 
 the consequences of a situation which he himself 
 had brought about. If he could imagine himself 
 dictating the course of her life, and of her hus- 
 band's, it would not be so hard to forego that 
 physical pleasure in her which had made him re- 
 sentful of her, as of all other women. At the same 
 time he fought off relinquishing any of himself to 
 
J04 NARCISSUS 
 
 her necessities. She needed to grow. She did not 
 belong in her bourgeois environment but she must 
 escape it alone. He told himself that later she 
 would thank him that he had been strong for both 
 of them. 
 
 Dudley was utterly miserable in his exclusion. 
 He needed to appear noble in his own eyes, and 
 to assert his superiority with all those with whom 
 he came in contact. And this in a world which he 
 knew had become too sophisticated to believe any 
 longer in the sincerity of the noble gesture. In 
 a letter to Julia he said, "Spiritually, I too am not 
 well. My life is not yet right. I can no longer 
 avoid the conviction that I should live alone. I 
 am meant to have friends, but not to live with any 
 of them. And against this hold the numberless ways 
 in which my life is linked with the lives of others. 
 I am in conflict and here goes much of the energy 
 which should pour into my projected and incom- 
 pleted works. 
 
 "I find that in several countries of Europe there 
 are conscious groups of men who feel that I am 
 doing an important work, and that there is sig- 
 nificance in my life and thought. Is that not 
 
NARCISSUS 105 
 
 strange? Is it so, or is it a freak of the pathos of 
 distance? 
 
 "If I could only resolve this endless conflict 
 within myself! This rending and spilling of myself 
 in the battle of my wills to be alone and to live 
 as others do: to be out of the world, and to be 
 normally in it! It is a classic conflict, but no less 
 mortal for that." 
 
 After he had sent the letter he was uncomfortable 
 because he had written only of himself, but he dared 
 not consider Julia's attitude. She must accept his 
 own definition of himself and his acts. 
 
 DUDLEY was ashamed of the strength of his 
 interest in the Parleys. When he was most 
 in love with Julia he did not admit to his friends 
 that she had any part in his life. Now he was de- 
 termined to initiate her and Laurence into his en- 
 vironment. As a protest against their misunder- 
 standing, he must force them to live through his 
 experiences. Dudley even decided that when Julia 
 became a part of his world it would do no harm 
 if it became known that she had been his mistress. 
 Before he let her go he wished the world to see 
 
106 NARCISSUS 
 
 her with some ineradicable mark of himself upon 
 her. She must accept his permanent significance 
 in her life without wanting to be paid for it by some 
 symbol of sexual possession. He insisted on a meet- 
 ing with her. They saw each other again in the 
 park. 
 
 The park on this damp day looked vast and aban- 
 doned. The tall buildings, visible beyond the trees, 
 were far off, strange with mist, as if in another 
 world. A few drops of rain fell occasionally on the 
 heavy surface of the lake and the water flickered 
 like gray light. The grass and the bushes around 
 were vividly still. 
 
 Dudley walked about nervously waiting for Julia 
 to come. He would admit no fault in his view of 
 her and he could not explain his uneasiness. At 
 a recent exhibition his pictures had been unfavor- 
 ably criticized. He decided that he had not yet 
 accepted the inevitableness of a life of isolation. 
 
 When he saw Julia coming along the path his 
 eyes filled with tears. It was cruel that a woman 
 to whom he had opened his heart had closed her- 
 self against him in enmity. He loved her as he 
 loved everything which had been a part of himself. 
 She was yet a part of him, though she refused to 
 
NARCISSUS 107 
 
 understand it. She wounded him unmercifully. 
 When she halted before him and looked at him 
 he tried to forgive her. He fought back too much 
 consciousness of his small undignified body. "Julia! 
 Aren't you glad to see me?" 
 
 She allowed him to press her hand. They went 
 on together, side by side. Dudley was afraid of 
 her cold face. It made him the more determined 
 to be generous to her and rise above what she was 
 feeling. Psychically he wanted to touch her with 
 himself. There was a kind of pagan chastity in her 
 reserved suffering. Such a thing he had never been 
 able to achieve and he could not bear it in others. 
 "How does your husband feel about what you have 
 told him, Julia?" His voice shook. 
 
 Julia said, "I think he's too big for both of us. 
 He understands things that neither of us know." 
 
 Dudley would not allow himself to be jealous. 
 He knew that he must embrace Laurence's experi- 
 ence in order to rise above it. "If he had the nar- 
 row outlook of the average man of his class he 
 would condemn us both. Does he condemn me?" 
 
 "I'm sure he condemns neither of us in the sense 
 you mean." 
 
 "I want to see him and talk to him," Dudley said. 
 
io8 NARCISSUS 
 
 "I want to be the friend of both of you, Julia, in 
 a deep true sense. Will he meet me? Will he talk 
 to me?" 
 
 With a curious shock of astonishment Julia found 
 herself ignored again. "I don't know. Yes, I think 
 he'll talk to you." Her white throat strained so that 
 it was corded with tension. She bit her lips. 
 
 Dudley observed this and became elated. He 
 told himself that sympathy drew him to her, and 
 he wanted to kiss her. But he withheld the kiss. 
 He could not accept the burden of Julia's deficien- 
 cies. If he made a friend of Laurence Farley it 
 would frustrate her in her undeveloped impulses. 
 Dudley tried to admire himself for being strong 
 enough to resist her for the sake of something she 
 did not comprehend and might never appreciate. 
 
 He placed his hand on her arm. "Julia, how 
 do you feel now about him about you and me?" 
 When she met his eyes, she noted in them the old 
 expression of impersonal intimacy which ignored 
 all of her but what he wanted for himself. He 
 could endure everything but her reserve. He knew 
 that she despised him for not allowing her to suffer 
 alone. He had to risk that. It was preferable to 
 being excluded from a life which had belonged to 
 
NARCISSUS 109 
 
 him entirely. He could not bear to return the pri- 
 vacy of emotion to any one who had appeared to 
 him in spiritual nakedness. 
 
 Julia shivered under his touch. "Why do you 
 oblige me to go through the humiliation of telling 
 you things about myself that you already see?" 
 
 "You do love me a little ; Julia?" 
 
 Julia would not look at him. "You know I love 
 you." 
 
 He was disconcerted for the moment, resenting 
 the mysterious implication of obligation which he 
 always found in such words. "Sister. Julia. In 
 the environment where I met you, I never expected 
 to meet a woman who had your deep reality. We 
 must all go through terrible things to come to a 
 true understanding of ourselves in the universe. I 
 have been through just what you are passing through 
 now, Julia. Let me be your friend and your hus- 
 band's friend as no one else has ever been?" 
 
 Julia clasped her hands and pressed the palms 
 together. "Of course you are my friend." She won- 
 dered if her feeling of amusement were insane. 
 
 Dudley was unhappy with himself but her visible 
 misery stimulated him in a way he dared not ex- 
 plain. 
 
i io NARCISSUS 
 
 /TT^HE windows of Dudley's studio were open 
 JL against the hot purplish night. Large, fixed 
 stars shuddered above the factory roofs and the 
 confusion of tenements. The still room seemed 
 a vortex for the distant noises of the street. A fire 
 gong clanged alarmingly. Some one whistled. 
 Somewhere feet were shuffling and the rhythm of 
 a bass viol marked jazz time with the savage monot- 
 ony of a tom-tom's beat. There was a sinister har- 
 mony in the discordant blending of sound. 
 
 Dudley, when he opened his door to Laurence, 
 was relieved by a sudden sense of intimate affection 
 for the man before him. 
 
 Laurence said, "I lost my way. Have I dis- 
 turbed you by coming so late?" He held out his 
 hand with a slight air of reluctance. 
 
 Dudley was pained and rebuffed by the pleasant 
 casual manner of his guest. He would have held 
 Laurence's hand but that Laurence withdrew it. 
 "I had nothing to do but wait for you," Dudley 
 said. He took Laurence's hat and stick and drew 
 forward a chair. 
 
 Laurence seated himself with strained ease, and 
 scrutinized a half-finished picture that leaned on 
 the mantel shelf opposite. "I've been reading some 
 
NARCISSUS in 
 
 references to your work lately." As he glanced 
 away from the study, his mouth twitched slightly 
 and his hard smiling eyes were full of an instinctive 
 defiance. 
 
 Dudley's inquisitive imagination was fired by the 
 recognition of the secret voluptuous relationship 
 between them. He held Laurence's gaze with a pas- 
 sionate expression of understanding which to Laur- 
 ence was peculiarly offensive and disturbing. "In- 
 spired idiocy," Dudley said. "I hope you won't 
 judge me by the banal standards which govern my 
 other critics." His light tone, as usual, was awk- 
 wardly assumed. 
 
 "My unfailing refuge." Laurence reached in his 
 pocket and took out his pipe. Dudley observed the 
 tension of Laurence's hands that were too steady. 
 
 A pause. 
 
 Laurence said, "Well your pictures are interest- 
 ing. I like them. I won't subject you to my bro- 
 midic attempts at analysis. My appreciation of art 
 is limited by my training. I'm too factual in my 
 approach to follow the ebullitions of the modern 
 consciousness." He glanced about the room again. 
 
 Dudley was disappointed in him, and unhappy 
 in the way a child may be. It wounded him, that 
 
ii2 NARCISSUS 
 
 Laurence, like Julia, persisted in excluding him by 
 means of a false pride. "It is a great deal to me 
 that you are ready to be my friend. Julia told 
 me." Dudley's eyes were oppressively gentle. 
 
 Laurence did not reply at once. He looked about 
 the room. His glance was bright with uneasiness. 
 He pressed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. His 
 knuckles were white. This visit was an ordeal which 
 the bitterness of his pride had forced him to accept. 
 He wondered what he must do to prevent talk of 
 Julia which he could not endure. 
 
 "It seems to me it would have been very absurd 
 if I had refused to be your friend." He made his 
 gaze steady as he turned to watch Dudley. 
 
 Dudley's negligee shirt was open over his chest 
 which was beaded with sweat. His face was flushed 
 and his hair clung darkly to his moist temples. His 
 lips pouted slightly beneath his small glistening 
 mustache. The expression of his eyes suggested a 
 domineering desire for openness. He felt that al- 
 ready through Julia's body he knew Laurence's life. 
 The same virginal pagan quality of pride that had 
 to be overcome in Julia was in Laurence too. Dud- 
 ley wanted to perpetrate an outrage of compassion 
 upon it. "I realized before Julia told me that there 
 
NARCISSUS 113 
 
 was a side to you altogether different from the one 
 you show to the world." 
 
 Without knowing how to put an end to his humili- 
 ation, Laurence said, "I suppose there is in all of 
 us. You artists have a peculiar advantage in being 
 able to express yourselves." He put a light to his 
 pipe, blew the smoke out, and stared at the ceiling. 
 Whenever Dudley mentioned Julia's name Laurence 
 wanted to repudiate the significance which it held 
 in common for Dudley and himself. Rather than 
 be included here, he preferred to think of Dudley 
 and Julia together and himself as separate. 
 
 Dudley was wrapt in the conviction of a dark, 
 almost fleshly, knowledge of Laurence, and his de- 
 termination to love was as ruthless as any hatred. 
 He never had the intimate experience of a person- 
 ality without wanting, in a sense, to defile it by 
 drawing it utterly to himself. He smiled apologeti- 
 cally. "We should never refuse any experience." 
 
 Laurence felt as if he were a woman whose body 
 was being taken. He sucked at his dry pipe which 
 was extinguished. "Perhaps it is my limitation 
 which makes it impossible for me to receive every- 
 thing so unquestioningly." 
 
 "But you do accept things." 
 
ii4 NARCISSUS 
 
 "Not emotionally. Not in the way you mean." 
 Dudley realized that Julia had gone from him. 
 His sense of loss was not merely in the loss of physi- 
 cal domination. Laurence was as precious as Julia 
 had been. What was needed was a spiritual pos- 
 session. Dudley's method of self-enlargement was 
 through the absorption of others, but he had a the- 
 ory of equality. His tyrannous impulses rarely per- 
 sisted when equality was disproven. Without ad- 
 mitting it himself, he wanted to reduce his peers 
 through his understanding of them. Then, too, on 
 this occasion, his superior comprehension of Laur- 
 ence might be proof to himself of Julia's inadequacy. 
 Laurence felt nothing but blind proud protest 
 against invasion, and, when Dudley attempted to 
 discuss their mutual interests, was furtive and adroit 
 in defense. 
 
 MAY told Paul that she believed Aunt Julia 
 was unhappy. He had to confess to himself 
 that he disapproved of Aunt Julia too much to keep 
 away from her. He wanted to go to the house 
 where she was. But he had forgotten her work with 
 the Board of Health, and arrived on an afternoon 
 when she was not at home. 
 
NARCISSUS 115 
 
 May took him to Aunt Julia's sitting room. He 
 loathed the place. He disliked May when he saw 
 her in it. And when he disliked May it made him 
 despair. He thought that he had never in his life 
 been so depressed. 
 
 "Aunt Julia's things are so lovely I'm always 
 afraid of spoiling them." May sat down on the 
 couch among the batik pillows and made a place 
 for him beside her. Her face was blanched by the 
 bright colors. Her short skirts drew up and showed 
 her thin legs above her untidy shoes. 
 
 Paul seated himself at the other end and rested 
 his head uncomfortably against the wall. "I sup- 
 pose your Aunt Julia calls all these gew-gaws art." 
 Whenever he tried to be superior some external 
 force of evil seemed to frustrate his effort. 
 
 "Now, Paul, they're lovely!" 
 
 "I wonder how Aunt Julia relates this fol-de-rol 
 to her soulful interest in the working class." 
 
 "But some of it's only tie dye, Paul. She did 
 it herself out of an old dress." 
 
 Paul was baffled, but he preserved the sneer on 
 his lips. Humming under his breath, he tilted his 
 head back and stared at the ceiling. 
 
 "I hope you've decided not to go 'way, Paul, like 
 
n6 NARCISSUS 
 
 you told me last time. If you go away without tell- 
 ing them your uncle and aunt you're only eight- 
 een it will hurt them so." She could not look at 
 him, for her eyes were full of tears. 
 
 Paul knew that she was suffering. Silly little 
 thing! He went on humming, but interrupted him- 
 self to say, "Nothing but their vanity has ever been 
 hurt by anything IVe done. They want me to go 
 on and study medicine or law. What for? I don't 
 care what becomes of me." 
 
 May bit her lips and twisted her fingers together. 
 When Paul talked recklessly she knew that it was 
 wicked because it hurt so much. It made her un- 
 happy to be told that one needed to explain what 
 one felt. She could not understand the thing that 
 was good if it did not make one glad. It never 
 occurred to her to try to justify herself before some 
 obscure principle. Yet others had convinced her of 
 her lack and she was in a continual state of apology 
 toward them because so much was beyond her. She 
 loved Aunt Julia. She wanted Paul to love her. 
 
 May wondered if Paul despised her because she 
 never resented it when he kissed her. But the sus- 
 picion of his contempt, while it confused her, did 
 
NARCISSUS 117 
 
 no more than emphasize her conviction of helpless- 
 ness. 
 
 Suddenly Paul ceased humming. He leaned to- 
 ward her and took her hand. She pretended not 
 to notice, but she was happy. Her fingers in his 
 grew cold and covered with sweat. "I think you're 
 unkind to them, Paul." Her voice shook. There 
 was a waiting feeling in her when he touched her. 
 
 She made him sick of himself. Silly little thing! 
 He dropped her hand as if he had forgotten it. He 
 was hunched forward now with his knees crossed. 
 He watched the floor where, in the bright afternoon 
 light, dark patches were moving. There was a 
 curious evil expression in his furtive eyes. His 
 hair was rumpled in a colorless thatch across his 
 head. His mouth was babyish. "That reminds me 
 of a story " Paul began. He paused a moment 
 with a flickering sneer on his lips. Aunt Julia, damn 
 her! All of him was against May. In spite of 
 his ugly look, his rumpled hair and childish mouth 
 were disarming. 
 
 May was uncomfortable. She did not understand 
 why he hesitated. "Go on." 
 
 He glanced at her and was irritated by the air of 
 
ii8 NARCISSUS 
 
 uneasiness which came to her whenever she was un- 
 certain. Why couldn't she laugh! Aunt Julia's 
 brat! He wanted to punish her. She saw his un- 
 even blush of defiance. 
 
 He began to speak quickly. "Oh, a story about 
 a woman and a monkey." He went on. His eyes 
 were wicked and amused. When he had finished 
 he whistled and gazed at the ceiling again. 
 
 May did not understand the story, but she felt 
 that he told it to embarrass her and make her sad. 
 
 There was silence when he had done, until, with 
 white face and strained lips, he resumed his whis- 
 tling. In his irritation with her he wanted to cry. 
 "Why don't you laugh?" he asked finally. 
 
 May blushed. Her lashes were still wet, her lips 
 tremulous. She stuttered, "I I can't." 
 
 He jumped to his feet and jerked up the cap he 
 had thrown aside. "Good-by." 
 
 "Why, Paul, what's the matter? You're not go- 
 ing? What for?" He was halfway to the door be- 
 fore May recovered herself and stood up. 
 
 "I was going to meet a fellow this afternoon. I'll 
 let you pursue your juvenile way undented." He 
 hesitated, sneering, not seeing her. 
 
 May could not speak at once. "Please don't go." 
 
NARCISSUS 119 
 
 When at last he glanced at her there was mist 
 in his eyes. "Why not?" He saw that she was 
 smiling as if across the fear that was in her look. 
 He resented her fear and he loved her for it. Oh, 
 little May! He loved her. 
 
 "Because because! You were angry with me 
 when I didn't laugh." She accused him. Why did 
 he watch her so intently yet unseeingly? She felt 
 his look as something which drew her inward, into 
 herself, too deep. 
 
 "I'm not angry with you, May. Honestly, I'm 
 not." In a dream he came near her: her thin small 
 figure, her pointed face, her bright blank eyes, fright- 
 ened and sweet. He came near her pale thick hair 
 where it was caught away from her temples. As 
 she turned to him he could see the end of her braid 
 swinging below her waist. He was aware of her 
 legs, with the straight calves that showed below 
 her skirt, and of her breasts pointed separately 
 through her sailor blouse. Everything that he saw 
 was a part of something that was killing him. That 
 was why he did not love her. She was too young. 
 Because of this he hated her. She was like himself. 
 He had to hate her. To save himself from the sense 
 
T20 NARCISSUS 
 
 of dying and being utterly lost, he had to hate her. 
 Though it was Aunt Julia's fault. He knew that. 
 
 All those books! He had tormented himself 
 trying to understand them. Two years ago he 
 hid under the mattress the picture of the fat 
 woman. Childish. He abhorred the picture of 
 the naked woman as he abhorred his Aunt with 
 her filthy priggishness. He remembered that long 
 ago when he asked her something he wanted to 
 know she called him a dirty little boy. Poor kid! 
 He was sorry for himself. It was all a part of 
 Julia and the world and something that was killing 
 him because there was no truth or beauty in life. 
 They went on smiling in their ugliness, torturing the 
 beautiful things and making them ugly like them- 
 selves. He would kill himself. He did not belong 
 in this ugly cruel world. 
 
 White little May, white like a moon. Like snow 
 and silence under the trees. Snow and silence and 
 rest forever and ever. Forever and ever. Rest! 
 Rest! 
 
 May let him touch her. For a moment she was 
 happy in a bright blank eternal happiness that was 
 an instant only. Then she was cold and alone and 
 afraid of him: of his face so hot and close, the 
 
NARCISSUS 121 
 
 queer look in his eyes, and of his hands that she 
 could not stop. 
 
 "Oh, Paul," she kept saying, half sobbing. 
 "Please, Paul! Don't. Oh, don't, don't! Please, 
 Paul, don't!" 
 
 When he drew her down beside him and they 
 rested together on the couch she felt the hot nap 
 of the cloth cover, stiff against her cheek. It seemed 
 to her that the afternoon light was terrible in the still 
 room. Bobby had a new canary bird and Aunt Julia 
 had hung the cage inside the window. The bird 
 hopped from the perch to the cage floor, from the 
 floor to the perch, and the thud of its descent was 
 monotonously reiterated. Occasionally seeds fell in 
 a series of ticks against the polished wainscot. Be- 
 yond Paul's head, May looked into the pane above 
 the bird cage, and the glass was like a melted sun. 
 On either side of the glowing transparent squares, 
 the yellow curtains were slack. May fancied that 
 Bobby was on the stairs and that she could hear 
 old Nellie moving about in the kitchen below. 
 
 The heat in the room made May cold. Paul's 
 hot face against her cheek burnt like ice. She was 
 dead already, shriveled in the cold heat. She pushed 
 at him feebly. She could scarcely hear her own 
 
122 NARCISSUS 
 
 words that told him to stop. They were just a low 
 buzzing from her cold dead lips. Paul was making 
 her aware of herself, of her body that she did not 
 know, that now she could never forget. 
 
 He was crying. It astonished her that he was 
 crying, but she felt nothing except a cold burning 
 sensation that came from the warmth of his tears 
 slipping across her face. She was surprised that he 
 cried so silently. Now he lay still against her with 
 his face in her hair. His stillness was too deep. She 
 could not bear it. Her body was cramped and stiff. 
 She felt his heart beating against her like an echo of 
 her own, and above it she heard the clicking of the 
 traveling clock on Aunt Julia's desk, and the creaks 
 of the woodwork on the stairway and in the hall. 
 
 If somebody came she would lie there forever. 
 She was dead. She wanted to think she was dead. 
 
 But nobody came. 
 
 She shut her eyes again, and after what seemed 
 a long time she knew that Paul was getting up and 
 going away from her. She closed her eyes tighter 
 so that she might not see him. 
 
 When he tip-toed across the room he made the 
 floor shake. May's shut eyes with the sun on them 
 were sightless flaming lead under her lids. She 
 
NARCISSUS 123 
 
 turned a little and hid her face in a pillow, won- 
 dering where Paul was, waiting for him to go so 
 that she could bear it. All at once she knew that 
 he had come out of somewhere and was standing 
 beside her in the light looking down. 
 
 He leaned over and whispered, "Get up, May! 
 Somebody 'ull come in and find you lying there ! " 
 
 His voice was frightened. She wondered why he 
 was afraid. It made her sick with his fright. He 
 added, "I love you." 
 
 When he said, "I love you," she was, without ex- 
 plaining it to herself, ashamed for him. She did not 
 answer. She was conscious of his stealthiness. It 
 oppressed her. She would not let him see her face. 
 When the floor shook again she knew he was going 
 out. She waited to hear his footsteps on the stairs 
 and the slam of the front door. Then she pushed 
 herself to her elbow and glanced about. In her new 
 body she was strange with herself. She stood up 
 and smoothed her rumpled dress quickly and 
 guiltily. Then she ran out of the room and upstairs 
 to her own garret. 
 
 When the door was locked she threw herself on 
 the bed on her face. The darkness of the pillow 
 was cool to her eyes and to her whole soul. She 
 
124 NARCISSUS 
 
 wanted her throbbing body to lie still in the cool 
 dark. She felt that she was ugly and terrible in her 
 disgrace. She wanted to ask Paul to forgive her be- 
 cause she had behaved as she had. Sobbing into the 
 bedclothes, she kept murmuring to herself, "I love 
 him! I love him! Oh, I love him!" 
 
 TO defend his vanity, Paul thought of himself 
 as outcast and desperate. He wanted to in- 
 vite the sense of tragedy in himself. He felt numb 
 and despoiled. In the intensity of his misery earlier 
 in the day there had been, after all, a kind of prom- 
 ise. Now May had gone away from him as if she 
 were dead. The thought of Aunt Julia gave him 
 only dull repugnance. He hoped doggedly that no 
 one had known about it when he was with May. Be- 
 yond that he could not care. 
 
 When he reached home he went up to his room 
 and, though it was yet afternoon, he fell asleep sod- 
 denly without a dream. Before, his fatigue had been 
 sharp and hungry. Now he was only tired of his 
 own emptiness and stupidity. 
 
 At the dinner hour he was called downstairs. 
 Blaming his aunt and uncle for his own fears, he en- 
 tered the dining room with a hang-dog air. His 
 
NARCISSUS 125 
 
 food was tasteless. There seemed nothing to think 
 about until his uncle glanced at him. Guilt per- 
 meated Paul. He was hot and angry. 
 
 After the meal he went upstairs and hid himself 
 in the dark. He wondered if any of the beautiful 
 things he had dreamed about existed. Everywhere 
 was inflated dullness. He dwelt on this until he as- 
 tonished himself by finding a faint pleasure in his 
 reflections. He decided that the stars he saw 
 through the window were burning nettles, and that 
 they pricked his glance when he looked at them. 
 Suddenly there was something substantial and satis- 
 fying in his very self-contempt. He decided that 
 he was no better than Julia, and that he detested her 
 and himself for the same reason. It was peculiarly 
 soothing to perceive his own courage in self-condem- 
 nation. In despising himself he unclothed himself 
 and he was with her in spiritual nakedness, which 
 somehow took on a fleshly image so that he dared 
 not think of it too clearly. 
 
 LAURENCE forced himself to be alone with 
 Julia. He went into her sitting room casually 
 and took up a book, but when he was seated he did 
 not read. His elbow rested on the arm of the chair 
 
126 NARCISSUS 
 
 and he held his head to one side with his brow laid 
 against his palm. 
 
 It was Sunday. Dry hot air blew into the room 
 from the almost deserted street. Now and then the 
 window curtains swelled slightly with the breeze. 
 The canary's cage hung in the light near the ceiling. 
 The sunshine slipped in wavering lines across the 
 gilded bars. The bird tapped with its beak on the 
 sides of the cage which oscillated with its quick mo- 
 tions. Sometimes it flew to its swing that moved 
 with a jerk, and a shower of seeds rattled lightly 
 against the sill below. 
 
 Julia had drawn a chair up to her desk and spread 
 before her the materials for letter writing. The pen 
 lay idle in her relaxed fingers. Laurence tried to be 
 unaware that she was watching him. "Laurence." 
 
 He stirred a little. It was hard to look at her. 
 "Yes?" His smile was cold and uneasy. He was 
 not ready to talk with her about himself. 
 
 Julia rose and came toward him. He glanced 
 away. 
 
 When she stood by him she placed her hand on 
 his. He made an effort not to withdraw his fingers. 
 When he lifted his face to her his expression was 
 
NARCISSUS 127 
 
 kind and obscure. He seemed to draw a veil across 
 himself. 
 
 "I can't bear it, Laurence!" She knelt down be- 
 side him. She wanted him to hurt her against his 
 will. If she could rouse him against her she could 
 endure it. 
 
 Laurence cleared his throat. He knew that he 
 cringed when she touched his sleeve. He thought 
 her voice sounded rich and strong with pain. 
 Women were like that. "Can't bear what?" He 
 realized that his subterfuge was absurd, but he 
 smiled at her again. 
 
 She did not answer. Her eyes were steady with 
 reproach. Her throat swelled with repressed sobs. 
 "Why can't we be frank about things, Laurence? 
 We can't go on like this always. I know I have no 
 right here. I ought to go away! I know I ought. 
 Somehow I haven't the courage." 
 
 He moved his arm away and stared out of the 
 window. The smile went from his eyes. His gaze 
 was vacant and fixed. "I don't ask you to go, Julia." 
 His face twitched. His whole body showed his 
 breaking resistance. Yet she knew that he would not 
 relent. 
 
128 NARCISSUS 
 
 "But you don't ask me to stay. It is painful to 
 you to have me here, Laurence." 
 
 For a moment he compressed his lips without an- 
 swering her. "I think you must decide everything 
 for yourself. Your life is your own. You have 
 told me that one of my mistakes in the past was in 
 condescending to you and attempting to impose my 
 own negative views upon you." 
 
 "But, Laurence, how can I decide a thing like 
 this as if it were unrelated to you? If you would 
 only talk to me! If you didn't consider everything 
 that happens between us as if it were irrevocable!" 
 
 Laurence's expression softened. He turned his 
 head so that she could not see his eyes. "I react 
 slowly, Julia. I can't arrive at a set of difficult con- 
 clusions and then upset them in a moment." He sat 
 stiffly, looking straight before him. 
 
 Julia got up and began to walk about, pressing 
 the fingers of one hand about the knuckles of the 
 other. "It's killing me!" she said. Ci lt's killing 
 me!" 
 
 Laurence suffered. He stood up like an old man. 
 "In a few weeks the children are going off to school. 
 Don't you think it would be better for their sakes if 
 we waited until then to untangle our affairs?" 
 
NARCISSUS 129 
 
 Julia came to him again. She saw that his eyes 
 swam in a dull moist light. Self-reproach made her 
 giddy. In condemning herself she was almost happy. 
 She observed how, involuntarily, he drew away from 
 her. "I won't touch you, Laurence." She was aware 
 of the injustice and cruelty of what she said. No 
 suffering but her own seemed of any consequence 
 to her. 
 
 "You have no right to say that, Julia." 
 
 "I know it. Kiss me, Laurence. Say that you 
 forgive me." 
 
 "How can I? What is there to forgive?" He 
 kissed her. His lips were hard with repugnance. 
 She welcomed the bitterness that was in his kiss. He 
 said, "I have to think of myself, Julia." 
 
 She did not know how to reply. He went out of 
 the room, not looking at her again. 
 
 She felt naked and outrageous. She wanted to 
 fling away what she thought he did not treasure. 
 When the pulse pounded in her wrists and temples 
 she fancied that her horror could not burst free 
 from itself. 
 
 Her sick mind found pleasure in destroying its 
 own illusions. It seemed absurd that, having re- 
 jected so many gods, she had made a god of herself. 
 
130 NARCISSUS 
 
 When her reflections became most bitter she grew 
 calm and exalted. Her blood ran light. Having de- 
 stroyed her world, her disbelief somehow survived 
 as if on an eminence. 
 
 However, her emotions rejected their own finality. 
 She felt that she had to go -on somewhere outside 
 herself. 
 
 MAY waited in vain for Paul to come back. 
 She convinced herself that she was not good. 
 When she believed in her own humility she was not 
 afraid to admit that she wanted to see him. She was 
 unhappy now with her own body. As soon as she 
 saw her little breasts uncovered she felt frightened 
 and ashamed and wanted to hide herself. When 
 she was alone in her room she cried miserably, but 
 as soon as her tears ceased to flow she lay on her bed 
 in an empty waiting happiness, thinking of Paul. 
 She recalled all that related to him since she had 
 first known him. It gave her a beautiful happy 
 sense of want to remember him so distinctly. How- 
 ever, when her thoughts arrived at the memory of 
 the last thing that had occurred between them she 
 imagined that she wished him to kill her so that she 
 need no longer be ashamed. 
 
NARCISSUS 131 
 
 I want to be dead! I want to be dead! She said 
 this over and over into her pillow. Her beautiful 
 pale braid of hair was in disorder. Her thin legs 
 protruded from her wrinkled skirts. She lifted her 
 small tear-smudged face with her eyes tight shut. 
 
 May wanted to tell Aunt Julia, but dared not. 
 She knew Aunt Julia was sad, though she did not 
 know why. Aunt Julia, however, resisted confi- 
 dences. When she came in from work and found 
 May waiting for her in the hall or on the stairs 
 Aunt Julia made herself look tired and kind. "Well, 
 May, dear, how are you? You seem to be a very 
 bored young lady these days. Your father is think- 
 ing of sending you away to school when Bobby goes. 
 How would you like that?" And she smiled in a 
 perfunctory far-away fashion. 
 
 May saw that Aunt Julia was in another world 
 and did not want her. "I don't care. Whatever 
 you and Papa decide. I'm an awful ninny and 
 should be terribly homesick." 
 
 "That would be good for you. You must learn 
 to be self-reliant." Without glancing behind her, 
 Aunt Julia passed quickly up the stairs and disap- 
 peared into her room. The door shut. 
 
 To May it was as if Aunt Julia knew everything 
 
132 NARCISSUS 
 
 already and put her aside because of what she had 
 done. She was dead and corroded with shame. 
 Lonely, she wandered out into the back yard. The 
 sky, in the late sunshine, was covered with a pale 
 haze like faint blue dust. A shining wind blew 
 May's hair about her face and swirled the long stems 
 of uncut grass. The seeded tops were like brown- 
 violet feathers. Beyond the roofs and fences the 
 horizon towered, vast and cold looking. 
 
 May wanted it to be night so that she could hide 
 herself. She knew Nellie was in the kitchen door- 
 way watching her. She wanted to avoid the eyes 
 of the old woman. Paul could not love her while 
 she was despised. 
 
 White clothes on a line were stretched between 
 the windows of the apartment houses that overhung 
 the alley. The bleached garments, soaked with blue 
 shadow, made a thick flapping sound as the wind 
 jerked them about. When the sun sank the grass 
 was an ache of green in the empty twilight. May 
 thought it was like a painful dream coming out of 
 the earth. She was afraid of the fixity of the white 
 sky that stared at her like a madness. She knew 
 herself small and ugly when she wanted to feel beau- 
 
NARCISSUS 133 
 
 tiful. If she were only like Aunt Julia she would 
 not be ashamed. 
 
 It grew dark. She loved the dark. There was a 
 black glow through the branches of the elm tree 
 against the fence. The large stars, unfolding like 
 flowers, were warm and strange. In the enormous 
 evening only a little shiver of self -awareness was 
 left to her. She tried to imagine that, because she 
 was ugly and impure, Paul had already killed her. 
 The strangeness and exaltation she felt came to her 
 because she was dead. She loved him for destroy- 
 ing her. 
 
 DUDLEY gave up the attempt to take Laurence 
 into his life. Dudley had insisted on seeing 
 the Parleys several times, but the result of these 
 meetings was always disappointing. What he con- 
 sidered their small hard pride erected about them 
 a wall of impenetrable reserves. He pitied them 
 in their conventionality. They regard me, he 
 thought, as a wrecker of homes, and the fact that I 
 have been Julia's lover prevents them from recog- 
 nizing me in any other guise. 
 
 He felt that he was learning a lesson. He must 
 
134 NARCISSUS 
 
 avoid destructive intimacies. If he gave, even to 
 small souls, he had to give everything. In order to 
 save himself for his art he must learn to refuse. He 
 was in terror of love, in terror of his own necessities, 
 and afraid of meeting acquaintances who, with the 
 brutality of casual minds, could shake his confidence 
 in himself by uncomprehending statements regard- 
 ing his work. 
 
 He grew morbid, shut himself up in his studio, 
 and refused to admit any validity in the art of paint- 
 ers of his own generation. He persuaded himself 
 that he was the successor of El Greco and that since 
 El Greco no painter had done anything which could 
 be considered of significance to the human race. 
 He would not even admit that Cezanne (whom he 
 had formerly admired) was a man of the first order. 
 He was a painter, to be sure, but Dudley could ally 
 himself only with those whose gifts were pro- 
 phetic. 
 
 His imaginings about himself assumed such 
 grandiose proportions that he scarcely dared to be- 
 lieve in them. To avoid any responsibility for his 
 conception of himself he was persuaded that there 
 was a taint of madness in him. Rather than awaken 
 from a dream and find everything a delusion, he 
 
NARCISSUS 135 
 
 would take his own life. He lay all day in his room 
 and kept the blinds drawn, and was tortured with 
 pessimistic thoughts, until, by the very blankness of 
 his misery, he was able to overcome the critical con- 
 clusions of his intelligence. He did not eat enough 
 and his health began to suffer. His absorption in 
 death drew him to concrete visions of what would 
 follow his suicide. He was unable to close his eyes 
 without confronting the vision of his own putrid 
 disintegrating flesh. In his body he found infinite 
 pathos. As much as he wanted to escape his physi- 
 cal self, it was sickening to think of leaving it to 
 the indignities of burial at the hands of its enemies. 
 
 The idea of suicide, haunting him persistently, 
 aroused a resistant spirit in him. He exaggerated 
 the envies of his contemporaries. He fancied that 
 they feared him far more than they actually did and 
 were longing for his annihilation. He decided that 
 something occult which originated outside him was 
 impelling him toward self-destruction. In refusing 
 to kill himself he was combating evil suggestions 
 rather than succumbing to his own repugnance to 
 suffering and ugliness. 
 
 While he was in this frame of mind some one sent 
 bim a German paper that was the organ of an ob- 
 
136 NARCISSUS 
 
 scure artistic group. In this journal, insignificantly 
 printed, was a flattering reference to Dudley. He 
 was called one of the leaders of a new movement in 
 America. He read the article twice and was ashamed 
 of the elation it afforded him. He could not admit 
 his deep satisfaction in such a remote triumph. 
 With a sense of release, he indulged to the full the 
 vindictiveness of his emotions toward his own coun- 
 trymen those who were fond of dismissing him 
 as merely one of the younger painters of misguided 
 promise. 
 
 However, the praise from men as unrecognized as 
 himself encouraged his defiance to such a point 
 that he resumed work on a canvas which he had 
 thrown aside. His own efforts intoxicated him. He 
 refused to doubt himself. Life once more had the 
 inevitability of sleep. He knew that he was living 
 in a dream and only asked that he should not be 
 disturbed. 
 
 He needed to run away from the suggestion of 
 familiar things. He decided to go abroad again and 
 wrote to borrow money of his father. Dudley made 
 up his mind to avoid Paris where, as he expressed 
 it, the professional artist was rampant. He wanted 
 to visit the birthplace of a Huguenot ancestor who 
 
NARCISSUS 137 
 
 had suffered martyrdom for his religion. It stimu- 
 lated him to think of himself as the last of a line 
 whose representatives had, from time to time, been 
 crucified for their beliefs. 
 
 TWO endless streams of people moved, parti- 
 colored, in opposite directions along the nar- 
 row street. The high stone buildings were tinged 
 with the red of the low sunshine. Hundreds of win- 
 dows, far up, catching the glare, twinkled with the 
 harsh fixity of gorgon's eyes. Beyond everything 
 floated the pale brilliant September sky overcast 
 by the broad rays which stretched upward from the 
 invisible sun. 
 
 Julia, returning from the laboratory, hesitated at 
 a crowded corner and found Dudley beside her. 
 
 "This is pleasant, Julia. Fve been wanting to 
 see you and Laurence Farley. Fm sailing for Eu- 
 rope next week, and I should have been very much 
 disappointed if I had been obliged to go off without 
 meeting you again." He tried to speak easily while 
 he looked at her with an expression of reproach. 
 Julia smiled and held out her hand. There was a 
 defensive light in her eyes which he interpreted as 
 a symptom of dislike. He wanted to convince 
 
i 3 8 NARCISSUS 
 
 himself that every one, even she, was completely 
 alienated from him. All that fed his pain strength- 
 ened his vacillating egotism. 
 
 Julia noted the familiar details of his appear- 
 ance: his short arms in the sleeves of a perfectly fit- 
 ting coat; the plump hairy white hand which 
 reached to hers a trifle unsteadily; his short well- 
 made little body that he held absurdly erect; the 
 wide felt hat that he tried to wear carelessly, which, 
 in consequence, was slightly to one side on the back 
 of his head and showed his dark curls; the child- 
 ishly fresh color which glowed through the beard in 
 his carefully shaven cheeks; his small full mouth 
 that sulked in repose but when he smiled displayed 
 exaggeratedly all of his little even teeth; his prettily 
 modeled, womanish nose; the silky reddish mustache 
 on his short lip; and his soft, ingratiating, long- 
 lashed eyes. Everything in his appearance disarmed 
 her resentment of him. Yet she knew that if she ex- 
 pressed anything of her state of mind he would take 
 advantage of her vulnerability. She was prepared 
 to see his gaze harden toward her and his demeanor, 
 puerile now, become ruthless and commanding. She 
 could not analyze the thing in herself that made her 
 so helpless before him. She was able, she thought, 
 
NARCISSUS 139 
 
 to observe him coldly. She withdrew her hand from 
 his and said, "So you are going away again? I am 
 glad for your sake. I know how America must irk 
 you. Even from my viewpoint I can see that it is 
 the last country for an artist." At the same mo- 
 ment her heart contracted and she told herself that 
 there was something false and monstrous in Dudley 
 which suppressed her natural impulse to be frank 
 in stating what she felt for him. 
 
 Dudley walked beside her. She wants me to go 
 away! He insisted on believing this. To know 
 that she continued to suffer, however, comforted 
 him as much now as it had in the past. He sensed 
 that she had, in some remote way, remained subject 
 to him. Because of this she was dear. When he 
 remembered that, but for this accidental meeting, 
 he would not have communicated his departure to 
 her he was momentarily panic-stricken. He no 
 longer wished to detach himself from her. 
 
 "Tell me about your work. What are you doing 
 now?" 
 
 He took her arm. "I can't talk about my work, 
 Julia. Something goes out of me that ought to go 
 into the work when I talk about it too much. That's 
 my struggle my fight. It's terrifying at times. I 
 
140 NARCISSUS 
 
 know all the hounds are baying at my heels. When 
 I go abroad this time I am going to avoid Paris. I 
 know dozens of cities. Paris is the only one which is 
 a work of art. That's why I am going to keep 
 away. I am through with the finality of that kind 
 of art. I am going abroad to feel how much of an 
 American I am. That's why I hate it so. It's in 
 me a part of me. I can't escape it. I must ex- 
 press it. That is my salvation in belonging to 
 America." It was almost irresistible to tell her 
 some of the conclusions he had arrived at to com- 
 fort himself, but he knew that Julia never ap- 
 proached a subject from a cosmic angle. She made 
 him feel small and unhappy and full of a home- 
 sickness for understanding. In her very crudity 
 she was the life he had to face. "I want to talk to 
 you about yourself, Julia. There are clouds of mis- 
 understanding between us. We mustn't leave things 
 like this." He pressed her arm against his side. 
 
 She was ashamed before a stout woman who was 
 passing who showed, by the expression of dull at- 
 tention in her eyes, that she had overheard his re- 
 mark. In this atmosphere of public intimacy Julia 
 felt grotesque. "I can't talk about myself, Dudley. 
 
NARCISSUS 141 
 
 Don't ask me. You've put me out of your life. Why 
 should you be interested?" 
 
 He was conscious of the stiffening of her body as 
 she walked beside him and observed the forced im- 
 mobility of her face. Emerging from the self-loath- 
 ing which was an undercurrent to his vanity, he was 
 grateful to her for allowing him to hurt her. He be- 
 gan to wonder if he were not, at this instant, realiz- 
 ing for the first time the significance of his relation- 
 ship to her not its significance in her life, but its 
 significance in his own. He admitted to himself the 
 cruelty of his feeling for her. He wanted to torture 
 her, to annihilate her even. It pleased him to dis- 
 cover in himself enormous capacities for all things 
 that, to the timid-minded, constitute sin. He must 
 embrace life without moral limitations. "Julia, my 
 dear you must not misunderstand my feeling for 
 you. I want you want you even physically as 
 much as I ever did." His voice shook a little. "It 
 is only because I understand now that I must refuse 
 myself much. I have found just this last month a 
 marvelous spiritual rest which makes living deeply 
 more acceptable." 
 
 Julia had never felt more contemptuous of him. 
 
142 NARCISSUS 
 
 "What I have to say would only convince you of my 
 limitations." 
 
 "Don't be childish, Julia. You don't want to un- 
 derstand me. We can't talk in the street. Come to 
 my studio for half an hour." He could not let her 
 go away from him yet. 
 
 Julia's pride would not allow her to object. 
 
 On the way they passed an acquaintance of Dud- 
 ley's. Dudley could not explain to himself why he 
 was ashamed of being seen with Julia. He wanted 
 to hurry her through the street. 
 
 In the oncoming twilight the brilliant shop fronts 
 were vague with glitter and color. Above the glow- 
 ering tower of an office building a blanched star 
 twinkled among faded clouds. When they reached 
 Dudley's doorstep Julia began to feel morally ill and 
 to wonder why she had come. As Dudley watched 
 her mount the long green-carpeted stairs before him 
 he was suddenly afraid of her. 
 
 They entered the studio. It was almost dark in 
 the big room. The canvas that Dudley was working 
 on stood out conspicuously in the translucent gloom 
 that filtered through the skylight. He crossed 
 the floor and furtively threw an old dressing gown 
 over the painting. 
 
NARCISSUS 143 
 
 Julia found herself unable to speak. When she 
 discerned the lounge she sat down weakly upon it. 
 
 Dudley stumbled over the furniture. He wanted 
 to evade the moment when he must find the lamp. 
 "Take off your wrap, Julia. I can't find matches. 
 I seem to have mislaid everything. I am a 
 graceless host." His own voice sounded strange 
 to him. 
 
 When at last he struck a match, Julia said, 
 "Don't! " and put her hands to her eyes. The flame, 
 which, for an instant, had blindly illumined his face, 
 went out. Dudley could not bring himself to move. 
 The evening sky, dim with color, was visible through 
 the windows behind him, and above the sombre roof 
 of the factory that rose from the courtyard his figure 
 was thrown into relief. Objects over which there 
 seemed to brood a peculiar stillness loomed about 
 the room. 
 
 The tension was intolerable to them both. They 
 were experiencing the same nausea and disgust of 
 their emotions emotions which seemed inevitable 
 for such a moment and so meaningless. Dudley 
 said, "Where are you? I'm afraid of stumbling 
 over you." 
 
 Julia, a hysterical note in her voice, answered, 
 
144 NARCISSUS 
 
 "Here I am, Dudley." She knew that he was com- 
 ing toward her. She wanted to die to escape the 
 thing in herself which would yield to him. But at 
 this instant the light flashed on and everything that 
 she was feeling appeared to her as unjustifiable and 
 ridiculous. 
 
 To Dudley, Julia's body represented all the dark- 
 ness of self-distrust and the coldness of his own 
 worldly mind. He wished that her personality were 
 more bizarre so that he might regard his past acts 
 as mad rather than commonplace. He did not know 
 why he had brought her to the studio and was 
 ashamed to look at her. There was nothing for it 
 but to admit the duality of his nature, and that half 
 of it was weak. He longed to hasten the time of 
 sailing when he would begin completely his life 
 alone in which nothing but the artist in him would 
 be permitted to survive. He said, "Is it too late for 
 me to make you some tea? Let me take your wrap." 
 When he approached her he averted his gaze. 
 
 "I can't stay long, Dudley. It is better that I 
 shouldn't." She wanted to force on him an admis- 
 sion of her defeat. If she could only reproach him 
 by showing him the destruction of her self-respect! 
 Her eyes were purposely open to him. He would 
 
NARCISSUS 145 
 
 not see her. She resented his obliviousness. "You 
 seem to me a master of evasion." 
 
 When he sat down near her, he said, "Let it suf- 
 fice, Julia, that I take the hard things you want to 
 say to me as coming from a human being whom I 
 respect and care for enormously and I still think 
 everything fine possible between us provided you ac- 
 cept in me what I have never doubted in you my 
 absolute good faith, and my absolute desire, to the 
 best of my powers, to be honest and sincere in every 
 moment of our relationship, past and present."- 
 
 Julia gave him a long look which he obliged him- 
 self to meet. Then she got up. "I can't stay, Dud- 
 ley. You won't understand." She turned her head 
 aside. Her voice trembled. "It's painful to me." 
 
 He rose also, helplessly. He wanted to wring a 
 last response from her. It was impossible. Every- 
 thing seemed dark. He would not forgive her for 
 going away. 
 
 Julia took up her wrap from a chair and went out 
 hastily without looking back. 
 
 Dudley felt a swift pang of despair. Not because 
 she was gone, but because her going left him again 
 with the problem of reviving the hallucinations of 
 greatness. It was not easy for him to deceive him- 
 
I 4 6 NARCISSUS 
 
 self. He could do so only in the throes of emo- 
 tions which exhausted him. In moments of un- 
 usual detachment he perceived the faults in himself 
 as apart from the real elements of genius that existed 
 in his work. But he was not strong enough to con- 
 tinue his efforts for the sake of an imperfect loveli- 
 ness. Only in spiritual drunkenness could he con- 
 quer his susceptibility to the nihilistic suggestions 
 of complacent and unimaginative beings. 
 
PART III 
 
 JULIA and Laurence were to dine with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Hurst. Of late Laurence had shown an 
 unusual measure of social punctiliousness. Julia 
 realized that his new determination to see and be 
 with people was a part of his resistance to suffering. 
 She thought bitterly that his regard for the opinions 
 of others was greater than his regard for her. 
 
 Julia put on a thin summer gown, very simply 
 made, a light green sash, and a large black hat. Her 
 misery had pride in itself, but when she looked in 
 the glass she was pleased, and it was difficult to pre- 
 serve the purity of her unhappiness. As she de- 
 scended the stairs at Laurence's side she felt guiltily 
 the trivial effect of her becoming dress. She wanted 
 him to notice her. "I'm afraid we are late." 
 
 His fine eyes, with their sharp far-away expres- 
 sion, rested on her without seeming to take cogniz- 
 ance of her. "I hope not. Mrs. Hurst is a hostess 
 who demands punctuality." He spoke to her as to 
 a child. There was something cruel in his kindness. 
 
 147 
 
148 NARCISSUS 
 
 For fear of exposing himself he refused her equality. 
 
 If he would only love her that is to say, desire 
 her Julia knew that she would be willing to make 
 herself even more abject than she had been, and that 
 it would hurt her less than his considerate oblivious- 
 ness. Laurence had ordered a taxi-cab. The driver 
 waited at the curbstone in the twilight. He turned 
 to open the door for the two as they came out. 
 Julia was avidly, yet resentfully, aware of his sur^ 
 reptitious admiration. She told herself that her sex 
 was so beggared that she accepted without pride its 
 recognition by a strange menial. 
 
 It was a beautiful cool evening. The glass in the 
 taxi-cab was down. The cold stale smell of the 
 city, blowing in their faces, was mingled with the 
 perfume of the fading flowers in the park through 
 which they passed. The trees rose strangely from 
 the long dim drives. Here and there lights, sur- 
 rounded by trembling auras, burst from the foliage. 
 Far off were tall illuminated buildings, and, about 
 them, in the deep sky, the reflection was like a glow- 
 ing silence. The wall of buildings had the appear- 
 ance of retreating continually while the cab ap- 
 proached, as if the huge blank bulks of hotels and 
 
NARCISSUS 149 
 
 apartment houses, withdrawing, held an escaping 
 mystery. 
 
 Laurence scarcely spoke. Julia's sick nerves re- 
 sponded, with a feeling of expectation, to the vague- 
 ness of her surroundings. Her heart, beating terrifi- 
 cally in her breast, seemed to exist apart from her, 
 unaffected by her depression and fatigue. It was 
 too alive. She cried inwardly for mercy from it. 
 
 Mrs. Hurst's home was a narrow, semi-detached 
 house with a brown-stone front and a bow window. 
 From the upper floor it had a view of the park. 
 When Julia and Laurence arrived, a limousine and 
 Mr. Hurst's racer were already drawn up before the 
 place. There were lights in one of the rooms at the 
 right, and, between the heavy hangings that 
 shrouded its windows, one had glimpses of figures. 
 
 Laurence said sneeringly, "Hurst has arrived, 
 hasn't he! Affluent simplicity in a brown-stone 
 front. You are honored that Mrs. Hurst is carrying 
 you to glory with her." 
 
 Julia said, "But they really are quite helpless with 
 their money, Laurence. Mrs. Hurst has a genuine 
 instinct for something better." 
 
 "How ceremonious is this occasion anyway? I 
 
150 NARCISSUS 
 
 don't know whether I am equal to the frame of mind 
 that should accompany evening dress." 
 
 "There will only be one or two people. Mrs. 
 Hurst knows how we dislike formal parties." 
 
 Mr. Hurst, waving the servant back, opened the 
 front door himself. He was a tall, narrow-shoul- 
 dered man with a thin florid face. His pale humor- 
 ous blue eyes had a furtive expression of defense. 
 His mouth was thin and weak. His manner sug- 
 gested a mixture of braggadocio and self-distrust. 
 He dressed very expensively and correctly, but there 
 was that in his air which somehow deprecated the 
 success of his appearance. His sandy hair, growing 
 thin on top, was brushed carefully away from his 
 high hollow temples. The hand he held out, with its 
 carefully manicured nails, was stubby-fingered and 
 shapeless. "Well, well, Farley! How goes it? I've 
 been trying to get hold of you. Want to go for a 
 little fishing trip?" He was confused because he 
 had not spoken to Julia first. "How d'ye do, Mrs. 
 Farley? Think you could spare him for a few 
 days?" Mr. Hurst's greeting of Laurence was a 
 combination of bluff familiarity and resentful re- 
 spect. When he looked at Julia his eyes held hers 
 in bullying admiration. 
 
NARCISSUS 151 
 
 Julia had never been able to say just where his 
 elusive intimacy verged on presumption. Feeling 
 irritated and helpless and sweetly sorry for herself, 
 she lowered her lids. 
 
 "My dear!" Mrs. Hurst kissed Julia. "How 
 sweet you look! How do you do, Mr. Farley? It 
 was nice of you to let Julia persuade you to come 
 to us. We really feel you are showing your confi- 
 dence in us. Julia, dear girl, tells me you have as 
 much of an aversion to parties as Charles and I 
 have. This will be a homely evening. Mr. and 
 Mrs. Wilson are here, and there is a young Hindoo 
 who has been giving some charming talks at the Set- 
 tlement House. He speaks very poor English but 
 he's so interested in America. He's only become 
 acquainted with a few American women. I want 
 him to meet Julia. I think he'll amuse her too." 
 Mrs. Hurst's short little person was draped in a 
 black lace robe embroidered with jet. She squinted 
 when she smiled. Minute creases appeared about 
 her bright eyes. Her expression was gentle and de- 
 ceitful. Her arms, protruding from her sleeve 
 draperies, were thin, and their movements weak. 
 Her wedding ring and one large diamond-encircled 
 turquoise hung loosely on the third finger of her left 
 
152 NARCISSUS 
 
 hand. Her hands were meager and showed that her 
 bones were very small and delicate. About her hol- 
 low throat she wore a black velvet band, and her 
 cheeks, no longer firm, were, nevertheless, child- 
 ishly full above it. Though she said nothing that 
 justified it, one felt in her a sort of affectionate 
 malice toward those with whom she spoke. In her 
 flattering acknowledgment of Julia's appearance 
 there was something insidiously contemptuous. 
 "Come away with me, child, and we'll dispose of that 
 hat. Williams!" She turned to the Negro servant 
 whom Mr. Hurst had intercepted at the door. She 
 nodded toward Mr. Farley. The Negro went for- 
 ward obsequiously. 
 
 "Yes, Williams, take Mr. Farley's hat," Mr. 
 Hurst said. Then, in humorous confidence, sotto 
 voce, "How about a drink, Farley? My wife has 
 that young Hindoo here. This is likely to be a dry 
 intellectual evening. That may suit you, but I have 
 to resort to first aid. Want to talk to you about that 
 fishing trip. Come on to my den with me." 
 
 Shortly after this, Julia, descending the stairs with 
 her hostess, found Laurence and Mr. Hurst in the 
 hall again. Laurence, his lips twisted disagreeably, 
 was listening with polite but irritating quiescence to 
 
NARCISSUS 153 
 
 Mr. Hurst's incessant high-pitched talk. Mr. Hurst, 
 who had been surreptitiously glancing toward the 
 shadowy staircase that hung above his guest's head, 
 was quick to observe the approach of the women. 
 He had always found fault with what he considered 
 to be Julia's coldness, but he admired her tall figure 
 and her fine shoulders. "Hello, hello! Here they 
 are!" 
 
 "Charles!" Mrs. Hurst was whimsically disap- 
 proving. "Why haven't you taken Mr. Farley in to 
 meet our guests? You are an erratic host." 
 
 Mr. Hurst moved forward. "That's all right! 
 That's all right! Farley and I had some strategic 
 confidences. You take him off and show him your 
 Hindoo. I want Mrs. Farley to come out and see 
 my rose garden, out in the court. I'm going to have 
 a few minutes alone with her before you conduct her 
 to the higher spheres and leave me struggling in my 
 natural earthly environment. I won't be robbed of 
 a little tete-&-tete with a pretty woman, just be- 
 cause there's an Oriental gentleman in the house who 
 can tell her all about her astral body. Did you ever 
 see your astral body, Mrs. Farley?" 
 
 "Boo!" Mrs. Hurst waved him off and pushed 
 Julia toward him. "Go on, if she has patience with 
 
154 NARCISSUS 
 
 you. But mind you only keep her there a moment. 
 IVe told Mr. Vakanda she was coming and I'm sure 
 he's already uneasy. Rose garden, indeed! It's 
 quite dark, Charles! Come, Mr. Farley. Put this 
 scarf about you, dear." She took a scarf up and 
 threw it around Julia's shoulders. 
 
 "Ta-ta!" Mr. Hurst came confidently to Julia, 
 and they walked out together across a glass-enclosed 
 veranda that was brilliantly lit. Descending a few 
 steps they were among the roses. "Autumn roses," 
 said Mr. Hurst. The bushes drooped in vague 
 masses about them. Here and there a blossom made 
 a pale spot among the obscure leaves. Where the 
 glow from the veranda stretched along the paths, the 
 grass showed like a blue mist over the earth, and 
 clusters of foliage had a carven look. The dark wall 
 of the next house, in which the lighted windows were 
 like wounds, towered above them. Over it hung the 
 black sky covered with an infinite flashing dust of 
 stars. Julia's face was in shadow, but her hair 
 glistened on the white nape of her neck where the 
 black lace scarf had fallen away. 
 
 Mr. Hurst had made a large sum of money from 
 small beginnings. He would have enjoyed in peace 
 the sense of power it gave him, and the indulgence 
 
NARCISSUS 155 
 
 in fine wines and foods and expensive surroundings 
 for which he lived, but his wife prevented it. He 
 had married her when they were both young and im- 
 pecunious. She had been a school teacher in a mid- 
 western city. She had managed to convince him that 
 in marrying him she conferred an honor upon him, 
 and she succeeded now in making him feel out of 
 place and absurd in the environment which his ef- 
 forts had created, which she, however, turned to her 
 own use. Instead of flaunting his success in boast- 
 ful generosity, according to his inclination, he found 
 himself compelled to deprecate it. He had a secret 
 conviction that he was a man to be reckoned with, 
 but openly, and especially before his wife's friends, 
 he ridiculed himself, perpetrating laborious and 
 repetitious jokes at his own expense, just as she 
 ridiculed him when they were alone. 
 
 Mrs. Hurst was chiefly interested in what she con- 
 sidered culture, and in welfare work, and among her 
 acquaintances referred to her husband affectionately 
 as if he were a child. She had no connection which 
 would give her the entrle to socially exclusive cir- 
 cles, and she was wise enough not to attempt pre- 
 tenses which it would have been impossible for her 
 to sustain. Her husband's friends were mostly self- 
 
156 NARCISSUS 
 
 made and newly rich. She was affable to them but 
 maintained toward them a mild but superior reserve. 
 She expressed tolerantly her contempt of social os- 
 tentation and suggested that among Mr. Hurst's 
 play-fellows she was condescending from her more 
 vital and intellectual pursuits. Men who drank and 
 played golf or poker between the hours of business 
 considered her "brainy," but "a damned nice 
 woman". She was generous to impecunious celebri- 
 ties of whom she had been told to expect success. 
 On one occasion when she and Mr. Hurst were sail- 
 ing for England she was photographed on shipboard 
 in the company of a popular novelist. The picture 
 of the novelist, showing Mrs. Hurst beside him in 
 expensive furs, appeared in a woman's magazine. 
 She had never seen the man since, but she always re- 
 ferred to him as "a charming person". She was fre- 
 quently called upon to conduct "drives" for charity 
 funds. At masquerade balls organized for similar 
 purposes her name appeared with others better 
 known and she could honestly claim acquaintance 
 with women whose frivolous occupations she pro- 
 fessed to despise. She was an assiduous attendant 
 at concerts and the public lectures which were given 
 from time to time by men of letters or exponents of 
 
NARCISSUS 157 
 
 the arts. References to sex annoyed her. The 
 vagueness of her aspirations sometimes led her into 
 fits of depression and discouragement, but she had 
 a small crabbed pride that prevented her from allow- 
 ing any one least of all, perhaps, her husband 
 to see what she felt. She was conscientiously at- 
 tentive to children, but actually bored by them. 
 She seldom thought of her own childhood, and 
 she sentimentalized her past only when she re- 
 flected on her early girlhood and the instinctive 
 longing for withheld refinements which had led her 
 away from a sordid uncultured home into the pro- 
 fession of a teacher. Often her husband irritated 
 her almost uncontrollably, but she never admitted 
 that the moods he aroused in her had any signifi- 
 cance. She was ashamed of him and called the feel- 
 ing by other names. 
 
 Mr. Hurst's frustrated vanity consoled itself 
 somewhat when he was alone before his mirror, for 
 even his wife admitted that he was distinguished 
 looking. He consumed bottle after bottle of a pre- 
 scription which, so a specialist assured him, would 
 make his hair come back. Always gay and affec- 
 tionate and generally liked, he had a secret sensi- 
 tiveness that he himself was but half aware of, and 
 
158 NARCISSUS 
 
 which no one who knew him suspected. He had 
 never abandoned the romantic hope that some day 
 he would meet a woman who would understand him. 
 It was his unacknowledged desire to have his wife's 
 opinion of him repudiated that made him perpetually 
 unfaithful to her. Years ago he had been aston- 
 ished to discover that even the women whom his wife 
 introduced him to, who looked down on his absence 
 of culture, and whose intellectual earnestness really 
 seemed to him grotesque, were quite willing to take 
 him seriously when he made love to them. He was 
 bewildered but elated in perceiving the vulnerability 
 of those he was invited to revere. Once he learned 
 this it awakened something subtle and feminine in 
 his nature and tempted him to unpremeditated cruel- 
 ties. Though his sex entanglements were, as a rule, 
 gross and banal enough, and quickly succeeded one 
 another, he treasured at intervals a plaintive convic- 
 tion that some day he would meet the woman who 
 had, as he expressed it, "the guts to love him". 
 Musing on this, he found in it the excuse for all the 
 unpleasing episodes in which he took part. Out- 
 wardly cynical, he was sentimental to the point of 
 bathos. He had one fear that obsessed him, the fear 
 
NARCISSUS 159 
 
 of growing old, so that the woman, when she met 
 him, might not be able to recognize him. 
 
 He had always been a little afraid of Julia and 
 had a secret desire, on the rare occasions when they 
 met, to hurt her in some way that might force her 
 to concede their equality. He called himself a mix- 
 ture of pig and child and when he met any of his 
 wife's "high-brow" friends he envied them and 
 wanted to trick them into exhibiting something of 
 the pig also. Julia was young and pretty. He 
 sighed and wished her more "human". He had 
 never found her so charming as she seemed to-night. 
 Under the accustomed stimulus of alcohol he re- 
 laxed most easily into a mood of affectionate self- 
 pity. Without being drunk in any perceptible way, 
 he loved himself and he loved every one, and his 
 conviction of human pathos was strong. Julia's 
 tense yet curiously subdued manner showed him 
 that she was no longer oblivious to him. He fancied 
 that there was already between them that sudden 
 rapport which came between him and women who 
 were sexually sensible of his personality. "You 
 aren't angry with me for taking you away like this?" 
 
 Julia said, "How could I be? I wish all social 
 
160 NARCISSUS 
 
 gatherings were in the open. It seems terrible to 
 shut one's self indoors on these beautiful nights." 
 
 Charles Hurst was impelled to talk about himself. 
 He did not know how to begin, and coughed embar- 
 rassedly. He imagined that Julia was ready to hear, 
 and already he was grateful for the regard he an- 
 ticipated. "Don't mind if I light a cigar?" 
 
 "I should like it." 
 
 "Don't smoke cigarettes, do you? Some of the 
 ladies who come here shedding sweetness and light 
 are hard smokers." 
 
 Julia shook her head negatively. "I don't. But 
 you surely can't object, as a principle, to women 
 smoking?" 
 
 "No. I think my objections are chiefly chiefly 
 what my wife what Catherine would call esthetic. 
 I'm not strong on principles of any sort. Don't take 
 myself seriously enough." 
 
 Julia could make out his nonchalant angular pose 
 as he stood looking down at her. As he held a match 
 to his cigar the glow on his face showed his narrow 
 regular features, his humorously ridiculing mouth, 
 and his pale eyes caught in an unconscious expres- 
 sion of fright. 
 
 Julia said, "I'm afraid you take yourself very 
 
NARCISSUS 161 
 
 seriously indeed, or you wouldn't be so perpetually 
 on the defensive." Poor Mr. Hurst! This evening 
 she could not bear to be isolated by conventional re- 
 serves, even with him. It flattered her unhappiness 
 to feel that he was a child. And this evening it 
 seemed to her desperately necessary that she touch 
 something living which would respond involuntarily 
 to the contact. 
 
 Mr. Hurst was disconcerted. He took the cigar 
 out of his mouth and examined the glowing tip which 
 dilated in the dark as he stared at it. Tears had all 
 at once come to his eyes. He wondered if he were 
 drunker than he had imagined. The moment he 
 suspected any one of a serious interest in him it 
 robbed him of his aplomb. "Don't read me too well, 
 Mrs. Farley. You know I'm not really much of a 
 person. Coarse-fibered American type. No inter- 
 ests beyond business and all that. Good poker 
 player. Hell of a good friend when you let him. 
 But commonplace. Damn commonplace. Nothing 
 worth while at all from your point of view." 
 
 They strolled along the path further into the 
 shadows. Julia was astonished by the ill-concealed 
 emotion in Mr. Hurst's humorous voice. His trans- 
 parency momentarily assuaged the tortures of her 
 
162 NARCISSUS 
 
 self-distrust. "How can you say that? My human 
 predilections are not narrowed down to any par- 
 ticular type, I hope." 
 
 "Oh, well, I know you and Catherine miles 
 over my head, all of it. Lectures on the Fourth 
 Dimension. Some girl with adenoids here the other 
 night been studying 'Einstein'. Damned if it had 
 done her any good. Yes, what that gal needed was 
 somebody to hug her." Julia was conscious that he 
 was turning toward her. "Crass outlook, eh?" He 
 laughed apologetically. 
 
 "She probably did," Julia said. They laughed 
 together. 
 
 Mr. Hurst felt all at once unreasoningly depressed. 
 He wanted to touch her as a child wants to touch the 
 person who pleases it. But the sophisticated ele- 
 ment in his nature intervened. He despised his 
 own simplicity. "Do you find yourself getting any- 
 where in the pursuit of the good, the true, and the 
 beautiful? Honestly now, Mrs. Farley. I've had the 
 whole program shoved at me not that Catherine 
 isn't the best of women, bless her little soul. You 
 know the life we tired business men lead pretty much 
 resembles that of the good old steady pack horse 
 that does the work. We dream about green pastures 
 
NARCISSUS 163 
 
 and all that, but never get much closer to it. And 
 when you get to the end of things you begin to won- 
 der if your plodding did anybody any good if any- 
 thing ever did anybody any good. I've got no use 
 for cynicism consider it damn cheap. Wish some 
 time I was a little bit more of a cynic. But I'm 
 lost. Hopelessly lost. I take a highball every now 
 and then because my I think my mind hurts." He 
 halted suddenly and they were looking into each 
 other's vague faces. "This talk getting too damn 
 serious, eh? Something about you to-night that 
 invites a fellow to make a fool of himself." 
 
 "I hope not," Julia said. "I like you for talking 
 frankly." 
 
 "Oh, I'm not too damn frank. We can't afford it 
 in this world of hard knocks. Now to you, now, 
 I'm not saying all that I'd like to, by a jugful." 
 
 "Then you don't make as much of a distinction be- 
 tween me and the crowd as I hoped." 
 
 Charles had let his cigar go out. He kept turn- 
 ing it over and over in his stiff fingers that she could 
 not see. He felt that only when he held a woman 
 in his arms and she was robbed of her conventional 
 defenses could he speak openly to her. With other 
 attractive women he had come quickly to a point 
 
1 64 NARCISSUS 
 
 like this where he wanted to talk of his inner life. 
 He imagined it would give him relief if he could 
 touch Julia's dress and put his head in her lap. The 
 terrible fear of revealing himself before his wife and 
 her friends had stimulated his imagination toward 
 abandon. When he was a child his mother had not 
 loved him. She was a defiant person. She was 
 ashamed of him because he allowed himself to be vic- 
 timized by all the things against which she had fu- 
 tilely rebelled. He had felt himself despised though 
 he had never understood the reason. His mother 
 found continual fault with him and never petted 
 him. One day a girl cousin much older than he had 
 discovered him in a corner crying and had comforted 
 him, and had allowed him to put his head in her lap. 
 As he had never gotten over considering himself 
 from a child's standpoint, his adult visions always 
 culminated in a similar moment of release. When- 
 ever he became sentimental about a woman he im- 
 agined that he would some day put his head in her 
 lap. He had been, in his own mind, so thoroughly 
 convicted of weakness that the development of 
 strength no longer appealed to him as a means of 
 self-fulfilment. He abandoned himself to an incur- 
 able dependence for which he had not as yet found 
 
NARCISSUS 165 
 
 a permanent object. It eased him when he could 
 evoke the maternal in a mistress. "Aren't we all 
 somewhat on the defensive toward each other?" he 
 said after a minute. 
 
 Julia was reminded again of what she thought to 
 be her own tragedy. She felt reckless and wanted 
 some one into whom to pour herself. She imagined 
 herself lost in the dark garden, crushed between the 
 walls and bright windows of the houses. In some 
 indefinable way she identified herself with the mil- 
 lion stars, flashing and remote in the black distance 
 of the sky that showed narrowly above the roofs. 
 "Yes," she said. "And so uselessly. People are so 
 pathetic in their determination not to recognize 
 what they are. If we ever had the courage to stop 
 defending ourselves for a moment But none of 
 us have, I'm afraid." She carried the pity which 
 she had for herself over to him. She had noticed 
 how thin his face was, that the bold gaze with which 
 he looked at her was only an expression of conceal- 
 ment, and that there were strained lines at the cor- 
 ners of his good-tempered mouth. Yes, in the 
 depths of his pale eyes with their conscious glint of 
 humor there was undoubtedly something eager and 
 almost blankly disconcerted. 
 
1 66 NARCISSUS 
 
 Charles could not answer her at once. He threw 
 his cigar aside. His hand trembled a little. I won- 
 der how drunk I am, he said to himself. He decided 
 that he was helpless in the clutch of his own im- 
 pulses. He thought, A damn fool now as always. 
 Have I got this woman sized up wrong? She's a 
 dear. Here goes. Poor little thing! Gosh, I know 
 she can't be happy with that self -engrossed ass she's 
 married to! In his more secret nature he was proud 
 of his own temerity. "Damn it all, Mrs. Farley 
 Julia " He hesitated. "I've queered myself right 
 off by calling you Julia, haven't I?" His laugh 
 was forced and unhappy. He glanced over his 
 shoulder toward the house. 
 
 Julia was alarmed by the unexpected immanence 
 of something she was trying to ignore. She kept re- 
 peating to herself, He's a child! Her thoughts grew 
 more disconnected each instant. She wanted to go 
 away, yet she half knew that she was demanding of 
 Charles the very thing that terrified her. "Of course 
 not. Mrs. Hurst calls me Julia, why shouldn't 
 you?" Her tone was intended to lift their talk to a 
 plane of unsexed naturalness. 
 
 "Yes, by George, why shouldn't I ! She calls you 
 that a good deal as if she were your mother." He 
 
NARCISSUS 167 
 
 paused. "Did you know I'd reached the ripe old 
 age of forty-one?" (He was really forty-two.) 
 
 "It doesn't shock me." 
 
 "Well, I wish it did. I don't like to be taken so 
 damn much for granted." (He wanted to tell her 
 that Catherine was three years older than he, but his 
 sense of fair play withheld him.) "An old man of 
 my age has no right to go around looking for some 
 one to understand him, has he?" 
 
 "Why not? I'm afraid we do that to the end of 
 time, Mr. Hurst." 
 
 "Say, now, honestly, Mrs. Farley Julia I can't 
 lay myself wide open to anybody who insists on 
 calling me Mr. Hurst. I feel as if I were a hundred 
 and seven." He tried to ingratiate himself with his 
 boyishness. 
 
 "I haven't any objection to calling you Charles." 
 (Julia thought uncomfortably of Mrs. Hurst and, 
 remembering her, was embarrassed.) "Don't feel 
 hurt if I'm not able to do it at once. Certain 
 habits of thought are very hard to get rid of." 
 
 "And I suppose you've been in the habit of con- 
 sidering me in the sexless antediluvian class!" 
 
 "You've forgotten that Laurence that my hus- 
 band is as old as you are." 
 
i68 NARCISSUS 
 
 When Julia mentioned her husband, Charles's im- 
 petuosity was dampened. It upset him and made 
 him unhappy. However, he was determined to sus- 
 tain his impulses. "Yes, I had." 
 
 Silence. 
 
 Charles wanted to cry. "You know I appreciate it 
 awfully that you are willing to enter into the holy 
 state of friendship with an obvious creature like 
 myself. Catherine says you're a wonderful woman, 
 and she's a damned good judge of her own kind, 
 that is." 
 
 "I'm afraid she's flattered me. I wish you weren't 
 so humble about our friendship. I am as grateful 
 as you are for anything genuine." 
 
 "Yes, I'm too confounded humble. I know I am. 
 Always was. You know I'm not really lacking in 
 self-respect, Miss Julia." 
 
 "Of course you aren't. You seem to me one of 
 the most self-respecting people I know." 
 
 Charles was silent a long time. He knew that he 
 was being carried away on a familiar current. By 
 God, she means it! he said to himself. He would 
 refuse to regard anything but the present moment. 
 "How does it happen you and I never came together 
 like this before? I'd got into the habit of thinking 
 
NARCISSUS 169 
 
 you were one of these icy Dianas that had an 
 almighty contempt for any one as well rooted in 
 Mother Earth as I am." 
 
 Julia laughed uncomfortably. "That's a mixed 
 metaphor." Then she said seriously, "I want to 
 understand things not to try to escape. It seems 
 to me we must all go back to Mother Earth if we 
 try to do that." She added, "I'm afraid we are mak- 
 ing ourselves delinquent. We mustn't abandon Mrs. 
 Hurst and her guests altogether." 
 
 They turned toward the veranda. They were 
 walking side by side and inadvertently Charles's 
 hand brushed Julia's. He caught her fingers. She 
 made a slight gesture of repulsion which he scarcely 
 observed. Then her hand was relinquished to him. 
 "Confound these social amenities! I thought you 
 were going to be my mother-confessor, Miss Julia." 
 Until he touched her hand he had been conscious of 
 their human separateness and his sensuous im- 
 pulses had been in abeyance. With the feel of her 
 flesh, she became simply the woman he wanted to 
 kiss, the possessor of a beautiful throat, and of mys- 
 terious breasts that compelled him familiarly 
 through the dim folds of her white dress. His 
 acquisitive emotion was savage and childlike. Here 
 
170 NARCISSUS 
 
 was a strange thing which menaced and invited him. 
 He wanted to know it, to tear it apart so that he 
 need no longer be afraid of it. Already he an- 
 nihilated it and loved it for being subject to him. 
 He leaned toward her and when she lifted her face 
 to him he kissed her. He felt the shudder of sur- 
 prise that passed over her. "Julia don't hate me. 
 Child, I'm going to fall in love with you! I know 
 it ! " His voice was smothered in her hair. He kissed 
 her eyes and her mouth again. Trembling, Julia was 
 silent. He wondered recklessly if she despised him, 
 but while he wondered he could not leave her. He 
 felt embittered toward her because she awakened 
 his dormant sensuality and he supposed that women 
 like her were superior to the necessities that left him 
 helpless. 
 
 "Please!" Julia said. When his mouth was 
 pressed against hers she was suffocated by the same 
 thrill of astonishment and despair which she had ex- 
 perienced when she first allowed Dudley Allen to 
 take her. When she was able to speak she said, 
 "Oh, we are so pathetic and absurd both of us! 
 It's so hopelessly meaningless." 
 
 He was excited and elated. In a broken voice, he 
 said, "So you think I am pathetic and absurd? I 
 
NARCISSUS 171 
 
 am, child. I don't care! I don't care!" He 
 thought that she was referring to the general opinion 
 of him. He hardened toward her, while, at the same 
 moment, a wave of physical tenderness enveloped 
 him. Stealthily, he exulted in the capacity he pos- 
 sessed for sexual ruthlessness. He knew she could 
 not suspect it. He would be honest with her only 
 when it became impossible for her to evade him. 
 
 They heard footsteps and turned from each other 
 with a common instinct of defense. Mrs. Hurst was 
 descending the steps from the lighted porch. "I 
 have a bone to pick with that spouse of mine," she 
 called pleasantly when she could see them. Charles 
 had taken out a fresh cigar and was lighting a match. 
 
 "Hello, hello! Am I in trouble again?" Charles 
 fumbled for Julia's hand, and gave it a squeeze, but 
 dropped it as his wife drew near. 
 
 Mrs. Hurst's figure was in silhouette before them. 
 "You'll spoil my dinner party, Charles! Julia, child, 
 I'm afraid you need reprimanding too. You have 
 to be stern with Charles." Her tone was truly vexed, 
 but so frankly so that it was evident she suspected 
 nothing amiss. 
 
 "I'm sorry if I am in disfavor." Julia's voice was 
 cold. In her nihilistic frame of mind she wished 
 
172 NARCISSUS 
 
 that her hostess had discovered the compromising 
 situation. 
 
 Julia's reply was irritating and Mrs. Hurst's dis- 
 pleasure inwardly deepened. She felt stirring in 
 her a chronic distrust and animosity toward other 
 women, but would give no credence to her own emo- 
 tion. "Come, child, don't be ridiculous! I sup- 
 pose I can't blame Charles for trying to steal you 
 from me. I'm sure he wanted to talk to you about 
 himself. It's the one thing he cannot resist." She 
 laughed, a forced pleasant little laugh, and caught 
 Julia's arm in a determined caressing pressure. 
 "Come. We're all going to be good. Mr. Vakanda 
 is waiting to take you in to dinner." Julia followed 
 her toward the house. "Come, Charles!" Mrs. 
 Hurst commanded him abruptly over her shoulder. 
 The manner in which she spoke to him suggested 
 strained tolerance. 
 
 Charles's immediate relief at not having been seen 
 was succeeded by complacency. To deceive his wife 
 was for him to experience a naive sense of triumph. 
 Poor little Kate! He could even be sorry for her. 
 
 Julia more than ever wanted to feel that Lau- 
 rence's refusal of her was forcing upon her a pro- 
 miscuous and degrading attitude toward sex. She 
 
NARCISSUS 173 
 
 said, "I'm sure the fault is mine. I couldn't resist 
 the night and the roses." 
 
 "Now don't try to defend him. The roses were 
 his excuse, not yours." Mrs. Hurst wondered how 
 they had been able to see anything of the roses in 
 such a light. She wished to forget about it. "Mollie 
 Wilson has been telling us how difficult the role of 
 a mother is these days. She says she envies you 
 May with her amenability. Lucy has some of the 
 most startlingly advanced conceptions of what her 
 mother should let her do." 
 
 Charles, walking almost on their heels, interrupted 
 them. "It would be an insult to Ju to Mrs. Farley 
 if I needed an excuse for carrying her off for a 
 minute." He cleared his throat. "Say, Kate, damn 
 it all, will you and she be upset if I call her Julia? 
 I like her as well as you do." 
 
 Again Mrs. Hurst was irritated and inexplicably 
 disturbed. It was Charles not Julia of course. 
 Any woman. He's always like that! "Then I shall 
 expect to begin calling Mr. Farley Laurence," she 
 said acidly. She spoke confidentially to Julia. "He 
 can't resist them, dear any of them. Pretty 
 women. You'll have to put up with his admiration. 
 All my nicest friends do." 
 
174 NARCISSUS 
 
 "The dickens they do!" Charles grumbled jo- 
 cosely. His wife's tone made him nervous. He was 
 suspicious of her. 
 
 When they came up on the lighted veranda a maid 
 passed them, a neat good-looking young woman in 
 black with inquisitive eyes. Julia caught on the 
 servant's face what seemed an expression of inquiry 
 and amusement. Charles, who had often tried to 
 flirt with the girl, glanced at her shamefacedly and 
 immediately lowered his gaze. Damn these women ! 
 Julia, feeling guilty and antagonistic, observed Mrs. 
 Hurst, but found that she appeared as usual, sweet 
 and negatively self-contained, yet suggesting faintly 
 a hidden malice. 
 
 They walked through a long over-furnished hall 
 and entered the drawing room. The men rose: the 
 Hindoo, good-looking but with a softness that would 
 inevitably repel the Anglo-Saxon; Mr. Wilson, stout 
 and jovial, his small eyes twinkling between creases 
 of flesh, the bosom of his shirt bulging over his low- 
 cut vest; Laurence, clumsy in gesture, kind, but 
 almost insulting in his composure. 
 
 During the evening Julia could not bring herself 
 to meet Laurence's regard, nor did she again look 
 directly at Mr. Hurst. Charles, after some initial 
 
NARCISSUS 175 
 
 moments of readjustment when he found it difficult 
 to join in the general talk, recovered himself with 
 peculiar ease. Indeed his later manner showed such 
 pronounced elation that Julia wondered if it were 
 not eliciting some unspoken comment. When he 
 turned toward her she was aware of the furtive dar- 
 ing of his expression, though she refused to make 
 any acknowledgment of it. He laughed a great 
 deal, made boisterous jokes uttered in the falsetto 
 voice he affected when he was inclined to comi- 
 cality, and, when his jests were turned upon himself, 
 chuckled immoderately in appreciation of his own 
 discomfiture. The Hindoo, whose bearing dis- 
 played extraordinary breeding, had opaque eyes full 
 of distrust. His good nature under Charles's jibes 
 was assumed with obvious effort and did not conceal 
 his polite contempt. During dinner and afterward 
 Charles plied every one, and particularly the men, 
 with drink. Mrs. Hurst had always been divided 
 between the attractions of the elegance which de- 
 manded a fine taste in wines and liqueurs, and her 
 moral aversion to alcohol. She never served wines 
 when she and Charles were alone, and to-night she 
 was provoked by his ill-bred insistence that the 
 glasses of her guests be refilled. 
 
176 NARCISSUS 
 
 When the meal was over and the men had returned 
 to the drawing room, Charles seemed to be in a state 
 of fidgets. His face and even his helpless-looking 
 hands were flushed. He walked about continually, 
 and was perpetually smoothing his carefully combed 
 hair over the baldish spot on the top of his head. 
 Mrs. Wilson, who was florid and coarsely good-look- 
 ing, with her iron-gray hair, admired his distin- 
 guished figure in its well-cut clothes. His flattering 
 manner when he talked to her made her feel self- 
 satisfied. Julia, though she had honestly protested 
 to Charles that she did not smoke, indulged in a 
 cigarette. Mrs. Wilson also lit one and expelled the 
 smoke from her pursed mouth in jerky unaccus- 
 tomed puffs. Mrs. Hurst's dislike of tobacco was 
 equal to her repugnance to alcohol. She refused to 
 smoke but was careful to show that her distaste for 
 cigarettes was a personal idiosyncrasy. She made 
 little amused grimaces at the smokers and treated 
 them as if they were irresponsible children. Mrs. 
 Wilson, in talking to Mr. Vakanda, contrived many 
 casual and contemptuous references to her recent 
 experiences in Europe. She was divided between 
 her genuine boredom with European culture and 
 her pride in her acquaintance with it. 
 
NARCISSUS 177 
 
 Charles, observing Julia in this group, appreciated 
 the distinction of her simpler, more aristocratic man- 
 ner; and the clarity and frankness of her statements 
 seemed to him to place her as a being from another 
 world. Damn me, she's a thoroughbred! Makes 
 me ashamed of myself, bless her soul! His emotions 
 were too much for him. He went into his "den," 
 which was across the hall, and poured himself a 
 drink. Fragments of the evening's conversation 
 buzzed in his head. Julia and Mr. Wilson had dis- 
 agreed as to the validity of certain phases of 
 the newer movements in art. Mr. Wilson scoffed 
 blatantly at all of them. Mr. Vakanda was more 
 reserved, but one suspected that he looked upon 
 Westerners as adolescent and treated their art ac- 
 cordingly. Charles, without knowing what he was 
 talking about, had come jestingly to Julia's rescue. 
 When he remembered how often he had joined Mr. 
 Wilson in ribald comment on subjects which she 
 treated as serious, he felt he had been a traitor to 
 her. Damn my soul, I'm hard hit! I never half ap- 
 preciated that girl until to-night! Don't know what 
 the hell's been the matter with me! Overcome by 
 his reflections, he walked to a window and stared 
 out into the quiet dimly lit street. His suddenly 
 
178 NARCISSUS 
 
 aroused sensual longing for Julia returned and made 
 him embarrassed and unhappy. He set his glass 
 down on the window ledge and passed a hand across 
 each eye as if he "were wiping something away. 
 Damn it all, I'm in love with her all right, 
 
 WHEN the time for the Parleys' departure ar- 
 rived Charles was talkative and uneasy. He 
 clapped his hand on Laurence's shoulder. "You're 
 one of the few men who's fit to fish with, Farley. 
 Most of 'em are too damned loud for the fish. We'll 
 fix that little trip up yet. I suspect you of being the 
 philosopher of this bunch anyway." 
 
 "I can furnish the requisite of silence, but I'm 
 afraid it requires some peculiar psychic influence to 
 attract fish. I haven't got it." 
 
 Charles's manner was self-conscious to a degree. 
 He spoke rapidly and unnecessarily lifted his voice. 
 His wife watched him with a cold kind little smile 
 of disgust. She wanted to create the impression that 
 she understood him, but her resentment of him 
 rose chiefly from the fact that he was incomprehen- 
 sible to her. "That's all right. I'll catch the fish. 
 I'll catch the fish. Damned if I haven't enjoyed the 
 evening. Say, Farley, Kate and I are coming over 
 
NARCISSUS 179 
 
 some evening and I'm going to talk to your wife. I 
 believe she's just plain folks even if she can chant 
 Schopenhauer and the rest of those cranks. You 
 know I admire your brains, Miss Julia. By Jove, I 
 do. You can give me some of the line of patter I've 
 missed. Kate, now Kate's got it all at her finger 
 tips, but she's given me up long ago. Have a drink 
 before you go, Farley? No! You know I'm a 
 great admirer of Omar Khayyam's, Miss Julia. The 
 rest of you high-brows seem to have put the kibosh 
 on the old boy. He's the 'fellow that had some 
 bowels of compassion in him. Knew what it was 
 like to want a drink and be dry." Charles smoothed 
 back his hair. His hand was trembling slightly. 
 He looked at Julia now and then but allowed no one 
 else to catch his eyes. 
 
 Laurence, holding his silk hat stiffly in his fingers, 
 moved determinedly toward the front door. His 
 smile was enigmatic but his desire for escape was 
 evident. 
 
 Julia said, "I'll talk to you about Schopenhauer, 
 Mr. Hurst, and convince you that he was very far 
 from a crank." She smiled. 
 
 "Yep? Well, guess I'm jealous of him. I'm will- 
 ing to be taught. This business grind I'm in is con- 
 
i8o NARCISSUS 
 
 verting me into pretty poor company. Not much 
 use for a meditative mind in the stock market. 
 Eh, Farley? The women have got it all over us 
 when it comes to refining life." 
 
 Laurence said, "I imagine I know as little of the 
 stock market as my wife, Hurst." 
 
 "And you must remember I'm a business woman, 
 too." 
 
 "So you are. Working in that confounded labora- 
 tory. Well, I've got no excuse then." 
 
 "Know thyself, Charles!" Mrs. Hurst shook 
 her finger playfully. 
 
 "Yep. Constitutional aversion to knowing my- 
 self knowing anything else. Looks to me as if 
 you "had picked a lemon, Kate." 
 
 "We must really go." Julia held out her hand. 
 
 Mrs. Hurst shook hands with Julia. "So delight- 
 ful to have had you. I'm glad you impressed Mr. 
 Vakanda with the significance of America in the 
 world of art, dear." Mrs. Hurst, at that instant, 
 disliked her guest intensely, but she preserved her 
 smile and her delicate tactful air. Laurence shook 
 hands with her also. His reserve appealed to her. 
 She could be more frankly gracious with him. 
 
NARCISSUS 181 
 
 Charles pressed Julia's fingers lingeringly, in spite 
 of her efforts to withdraw them. He was suddenly 
 depressed and gazed at her with an open almost de- 
 spairingly interrogative expression. "Yep, damn 
 me, Kate's right. You put the Far East in its place, 
 Miss Julia. Did me good to see it." He giggled 
 nervously, but his face immediately grew serious. 
 Seeing her go away into her own strange world de- 
 pleted the confidence he experienced while with her. 
 He was oppressed by the company of his wife, and 
 his pathetic feeling about himself returned. For 
 the moment the hope that Julia would understand 
 him like him and exculpate his deficiencies, even 
 see in him that which was admirable was more 
 poignant than the passing desire to touch and dom- 
 inate her body. There was a helpless unreserve in 
 his eyes. 
 
 Julia could see the tired lines in his face all at 
 once peculiarly emphasized. His lips quivered. She 
 thought he looked old but for some reason all the 
 more childlike. She could not resist his need for 
 her. 
 
 It was with an acute sense of disgust that Lau- 
 rence left the house. 
 
i8a NARCISSUS 
 
 MR. HURST did not communicate with Lau- 
 rence in regard to the fishing trip, but one 
 morning soon after the dinner party Mrs. Hurst 
 called Julia on the telephone and invited her to come 
 ;with Laurence to an all-day picnic in the country. 
 "This is just the sort of thing Charles delights in," 1 
 Mrs. Hurst explained, in her hard pleasant light- 
 timbred voice. Julia heard her polite laugh over 
 the wire. "I shan't blame you if you refuse us. 
 It's really too absurd. We shall probably be con- 
 sumed by mosquitoes." 
 
 "Why, I'm afraid we can't go," Julia said. "Lau- 
 rence is very busy and you know I have my work, 
 too." 
 
 "I suppose you can't get off for a day either of 
 you? Charles is quite determined to see you and 
 your husband again." 
 
 "It wouldn't be possible. It's nice of you. I 
 really would enjoy it but it wouldn't be possible for 
 either of us." 
 
 Again Mrs. Hurst's confidential amusement. 
 "Well, I'm sorry. Though for your own sake I'm 
 glad. Charles has rather a boy's idea of fun. Well 
 don't be surprised if we arrive at your front door 
 some evening in the near future." 
 
NARCISSUS 183 
 
 "I shall be very glad," Julia said. 
 
 On a Monday evening while the Farley family 
 were at an early dinner they heard a laboring motor 
 in the street. Bobby, who could not be restrained 
 when the prospect of diversion was at hand, ran out 
 to see what it was and, on his return, reported that 
 Mr. and Mrs. Hurst were at the front door. 
 
 Laurence laid his napkin wearily aside. "To what 
 do we owe the honor? Have you been to see them 
 since the other night?" 
 
 Julia said she had not. 
 
 When Julia arrived in the hallway Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hurst were already there, having been admitted by 
 Bobby. Julia could not look at Charles's face. 
 With an effort she smiled at his wife. 
 
 Mrs. Hurst, with one of her pleasant, mildly re- 
 ducing grimaces, said, "How are you? You were 
 dining? There! I told you so, Charles!" 
 
 Julia imagined that there was constraint in Mrs. 
 Hurst's manner. Their hands barely touched. 
 
 "How do you do? How do you do, Mrs. Hurst?" 
 Laurence's expression was polite but not agreeable. 
 For some reason he spoke to Charles with more 
 cordiality. 
 
 "How d'ye do, Farley? How d'ye do, Miss Julia! 
 
184 NARCISSUS 
 
 Bless my soul, I'm glad to see you! Kate couldn't 
 keep me away from here. Yes, I confess it. All my 
 fault." He was uneasy as before, and adopted the 
 falsetto tone of his comic moods. He wrung Julia's 
 hand for an instant and looked greedily into her 
 face. But he could not sustain the gaze. He turned 
 to Laurence and began to joke about the speed of 
 his motor car. 
 
 "Please go on to your dinner. I'm really ashamed 
 that I allowed Charles to bring me here now." Mrs. 
 Hurst, smiling, preserved the inconsequential atmos- 
 phere of the group. At the same time she felt a re- 
 pugnance to Julia which she had never experienced 
 until recently. 
 
 Julia, also, disliked the furtive intentness with 
 which Mrs. Hurst, continuing to smile, occasionally 
 scrutinized her. 
 
 "We dine so much later." 
 
 "But we've quite finished unless you will have 
 a cup of coffee with us?" 
 
 "Coffee? What say, coffee?" Charles could not 
 keep from listening to what Julia and his wife were 
 saying, though he was trying, at the same time, to 
 talk to Laurence. Now he interrupted himself. 
 "Shall we have some coffee with them, Kate?" Just 
 
NARCISSUS 185 
 
 then he caught Julia's eyes and a flush spread over 
 his face. "I think we'd better forego the coffee and 
 take these people for a little ride. That's what we 
 came for." He kept on gazing steadily and senti- 
 mentally at Julia who was embarrassed by this too 
 open regard. 
 
 "Shall we? Perhaps we had. Our own dinner 
 hour will come all too soon/' Mrs. Hurst said. 
 
 "Won't you come in here?" Laurence motioned 
 toward an open door. 
 
 Julia was vexed by her own mingled depression 
 and agitation. Frowning and smiling at the same 
 time, she added abstractedly, "Yes. How ridiculous 
 we are standing here in this chilly hall. Please 
 come in here. I will have Nellie make a fire for 
 you." 
 
 "Who wants a fire this time of year!" Charles 
 followed his wife, who entered the half-darkened 
 room with Julia. "Farley, you and Miss Julia get 
 your wraps and we'll wait for you. Don't waste 
 your time making yourself lovely, Miss Julia." 
 
 After Laurence had turned up the lights he and 
 Julia went out. Charles and his wife, who haot 
 seated themselves, waited in silence. Charles 
 stretched out his long legs in checked trousers and 
 
186 NARCISSUS 
 
 crossed them over one another. He stared up at 
 the ceiling and pursed his mouth in a soundless 
 whistle. 
 
 Catherine said, "We can't stay with these people 
 long. You know the Goodes are coming over after 
 dinner." 
 
 Charles started. "What's that?" He sat bolt up- 
 right. "Goodes, eh? No. All right. Plenty of 
 time." He did not relax his posture again, but 
 drummed on the arm of his chair, tapped his feet, 
 and for a few moments half hid his face in the cupped 
 palm of his hand. 
 
 Mrs. Hurst looked bored and tired. Her small 
 sardonic mouth was very precisely set. Her gaze 
 was both humorous and weary. Now and then she 
 glanced at Charles and forced a twinkle to her eyes, 
 while, at the same moment, her features showed her 
 repressed irritation. Mrs. Hurst had suspected, 
 after the previous meeting with the Parleys, that 
 Charles was interested in Julia. Suspicion sharp- 
 ened her observation of him but her policy toward 
 him demanded of her that she be amused by all he 
 did. Otherwise the situation between them might 
 long ago have precipitated a crisis which she, at 
 least, was not ready to face. In a moment of im- 
 
NARCISSUS 187 
 
 petuosity Charles would be capable of heaven- 
 knows-what regrettable and irretrievable resolution. 
 He had so often shown the same kind of frank ad- 
 miration for a pretty woman that she made the best 
 of things by appearing to tolerate, if not to encour- 
 age, his folly. She was certain that his infatuations 
 were so illusory that a little enforced acquaintance 
 with the intimate personalities of her successive ri- 
 vals would dissipate his regard for them. In this, 
 case, too, she had no fear that a woman of Julia's 
 poise and enlightenment would make any serious re- 
 sponse to Charles's naive overtures. If Mrs. Hurst 
 could convince herself that a situation was suffi- 
 ciently grotesque (viewed, of course, from the stand- 
 point of manners) it became unreal to her, and she 
 could no longer believe that such a vague and ridicu- 
 lous cause would produce any effect in actuality. 
 
 Waiting for Laurence and Julia to appear, 
 Charles, even when he was not looking at her, was 
 conscious of his wife's personality. Though he 
 could not analyze the impression, he was, as he had 
 been repeatedly before, disconcerted by the cold un- 
 derstanding which he saw in her small, humorously 
 lined face. He was startled by the boldness of her 
 evasions. All his mental attempts to capture a 
 
i88 NARCISSUS 
 
 grievance were diverted when he considered her de- 
 mure gentleness and good breeding. He had, at the 
 outset, to accept the fact of his inferiority. Now 
 his pale eyes, fixed intermittently in an upward gaze, 
 were startled and perturbed. His mouth twitched. 
 He felt boisterous, and suppressed his laughter, 
 though he did not know whether he should direct it 
 against her or against himself. She was so visually 
 real to him: her withered small hands, the flesh un- 
 der her plump throat flesh that fell away and 
 somehow failed to soften the contour of her little 
 chin. At these moments when she connived, or so 
 it might almost seem, to further his betrayal of her 
 he felt a sentimental affection for her, and decided 
 that it was only because of the physical repulsion 
 which her ageing gave him that he did not love her 
 completely and lead an ideal life. He was sorry for 
 himself and for her too because he could not con- 
 quer his aversion. 
 
 Catherine said, "Julia is particularly handsome 
 to-night." 
 
 Charles, with the blank innocence of a self-con- 
 scious child, glanced at his wife. "You're right. 
 She is. You dare me to fall in love with her, do 
 you? Think when she gets a good dose of me " 
 
NARCISSUS 189 
 
 "Sh-h!" 
 
 Charles eyed the door. "Somebody 'ull hear me? 
 Say, Kate, for a manhandler IVe never seen your 
 equal." He jumped up, walked twice around the 
 room, and stopped, gazing down at Catherine with 
 a vacant deliberate amusement. Each felt the other 
 the victor in some stealthy unconfessed combat. 
 "All the spice goes out of forbidden fruit when your 
 wife hands it to you on a gold platter with her com- 
 pliments. That it?" Charles asked. He was won- 
 dering if his presentment about Julia as the great 
 thing in his life had been an illusion. He would ac- 
 cept his wife's joke recklessly but that did not pre- 
 vent his timidity in regard to himself from return- 
 ing and influencing his acts. 
 
 JULIA sat beside Charles while he drove. Lau- 
 rence and Mrs. Hurst were on the back seat. 
 Julia listened to what Charles said, but half under- 
 standing him. Nothing was real to her but the self 
 from which she wanted to escape, this self which she 
 knew would always deceive her. When the car 
 veered at a corner Charles and she were thrown to- 
 gether so that their shoulders touched. She knew 
 that he leaned toward her to prolong the contact. 
 
190 NARCISSUS 
 
 The warmth of his body gave her no clear conscious- 
 ness of him, and was a sustained reminder of in- 
 scrutable things with which he was not concerned. 
 She despised the humility of his intellect. What at- 
 tracted her was a kind of primitive cruelty which he 
 tried to hide. She wanted to be consumed by his 
 weakness, to be left nothing of herself. His love- 
 making repelled her. She perceived his sentimen- 
 tality toward womankind. All that he said was 
 false because unrelated to his fundamental impulse 
 which was to take without giving anything equiva- 
 lent. She had somehow arrived at the conviction 
 that only the things which hurt her were true. 
 Charles's conception of beauty was childish. But 
 she would not be afraid to abandon herself to the 
 things in him he was ashamed of, which he could 
 not control. When he was conquered, as she was, 
 by the desires his intellect sought to evade, he would 
 be caught in actuality. Neither of them could be 
 deceived. She was impatient with Charles's defer- 
 ence to what he considered her finer feelings. There' 
 she found herself insulted by the shallowness of his 
 respect. 
 
 Charles made the drive as long as he could, though 
 he knew that his wife, with her prospect of guests 
 
NARCISSUS 191 
 
 at home, must be growing impatient. He kept, for 
 the most part, in the park where it was easier to im- 
 agine that he and Julia were alone. In one place a 
 hill cut off the city and dry grass rushed up before 
 them against the cloudy sunset. Then there were 
 masses of trees, green yet in the half darkness. The 
 branches stirred their blackish foliage, and the copse 
 had a breathing look. The last light broke through 
 the shadowy clouds in metallic flames. When the 
 city came into view again Julia thought that the tall 
 houses were like the walls of a garden flowering 
 with stars. 
 
 Every one but Charles was glad when the drive 
 came to an end. 
 
 UNDER her large black hat the strange girl's 
 eyes, deep with a shining emptiness, gazed into 
 Paul's. Paul, glancing at her cautiously, felt that 
 the eyes were filled with a velvet dust into which he 
 sank without finding anything. It was as if he were 
 falling, leaden and meaningless, through them. 
 
 She had a snub nose with coarse wide nostrils. 
 Her mouth was thick-lipped and over red. She was 
 given to abrupt hilarity when she showed her strong 
 teeth in a peculiarly irrelevant laugh. Her voice 
 
192 NARCISSUS 
 
 was hoarse. When she threw back her head her 
 amusement made her broad white throat quiver. 
 Then her prominent breasts shook heavily. Her 
 arms, bare below the elbow, looked as though they 
 were meant to be powerful but had grown useless. 
 Her insolence was stupid, but Paul envied it even 
 though it irritated him that she was so bored with 
 him. They had sat on the same bench in a public 
 square, and after they had fallen into conversation 
 he had asked her to go to dinner with him. Her 
 name was Carrie. She called him "son". She was 
 "out for a good time," she said, but she was 
 "broke". 
 
 Paul invited her to the working men's restaurant 
 where he was going himself. To dramatize his iso- 
 lation from his own group, he wore old clothes, bro- 
 gans, and his school cap. His appearance suggested 
 a mechanic's assistant. He was ashamed of his se- 
 cret desire to admit his disguise to her. His uncle 
 was a corporation lawyer who was becoming promi- 
 nent. Paul had constantly to fight against an in- 
 grained class vanity. Petty bourgeois! Not even 
 snobbishness of the first order! When he had to 
 face it in himself he wanted to die. No use! Hell 
 of a world! Any disillusionment with himself 
 
NARCISSUS 193 
 
 strengthened his bitterness toward those of his own 
 kind. 
 
 TT THEN Paul left Carrie he walked into the 
 VV dark park and seated himself on a bench. 
 The city seemed miles away, sunk in light. There 
 was an iron stillness in the black trunks of the trees 
 that rose about him. Over him the thick foliage 
 hung oppressively in dark arrested clouds. 
 
 Despair. He wanted Carrie to admire him. He 
 saw himself strong and bitter in the possession of 
 all that Carries understand. He wanted to be kind. 
 He was a great man, alone, a little proud of his 
 madness. Child! He wanted to go far away 
 to die. Hate. I can't die! His heart beat loudly 
 and the memory of Carrie was remote again. 
 
 In the hidden street Salvationists were passing. 
 He heard hymn tunes and the beat of drums. 
 
 Dark angel. I want to save men. He thought 
 of the women, strange in their tight dark dresses. 
 He wanted to save them. Emotionalism. Rot. He 
 tried to remember the working class and economic 
 determinism. Facts. They kept things out. There 
 was a dramatic pride in being outcast, in feeling 
 himself definitely against his aunt and Uncle 
 
194 NARCISSUS 
 
 Archie. That kid, May. Dead. He gave himself 
 to a sense of loathing that was gorgeous and abso- 
 lute. His relaxation was drunken like a dream. 
 Once more, when he could not but remember 
 May, he recalled Julia instead. He did not explain 
 to himself why he hated her so. It was as though 
 she had done the world some terrible hurt and his 
 was the arrogance of justice in leaving to her noth- 
 ing of the self she wanted him to believe in. When- 
 ever he saw falseness in women, he felt that he was 
 seeing Julia at last. He wanted his thoughts to 
 destroy her, or at least to leave her utterly beg- 
 gared. He must prove to himself that it was women 
 like Julia, women of the upper classes, that he 
 had to fight. He could no longer bear the recollec- 
 tion of May going before him through the park in 
 her short dress with her hair a silver paleness over 
 her shoulders. Because of Julia, everything 
 wounded him. He conceived a physical image of 
 Julia in her ultimate day of degradation. When 
 he thought of stripping everything away from her, 
 it was to show a physical ugliness to a deceived 
 world. In anticipation he purged his own soul of 
 all that horrified and confused it. Then he saw 
 her body that he had never seen lie before him 
 
NARCISSUS 195 
 
 like a beaten thing with used maternal breasts, and 
 knew that he had destroyed forever the virginal 
 falsehood of her face. No woman who belonged to 
 a man as Julia belonged to Laurence had the right 
 to a face like hers. He despised his aunt, but she 
 was frankly a part of the hideousness of sex and 
 his contempt for her was negative. Toward Julia 
 he was positive, for he felt that when he had proved 
 everything against her he would not be burdened 
 with May. When he imagined Julia lean and hid- 
 eous of body, the sense of intimacy with her made 
 him gentle. He was strong and liberated. 
 
 However, when actuality presented itself, and he 
 realized that if he met her she would be as he had 
 always known her, kind and a little motherly to- 
 ward him, his heart grew sullen, and, again, he was 
 helplessly convicted of his youth. His defiance was 
 so acute that he wanted to write her an obscene 
 letter and tell her of what he had done and the 
 women he knew. But he was trapped, as always, 
 in the fear of appearing ridiculous. 
 
 It was difficult for him to justify his certainty 
 that she was so much in need of the cleansing fire 
 of truth; yet he would not abandon his conviction. 
 When he had not dared to hate her he had been 
 
196 NARCISSUS 
 
 at loss before her. Now his hate permitted his 
 imagination complete and unafraid abandon. He 
 dared to relax in the intimacy of dislike because 
 he fancied that he saw her clearly at last. 
 
 At times his hate grew too heavy for him, and 
 he could have cried for relief in admitting his child- 
 ishness to some one. He was shut into himself by 
 that horrible laugh which surrounded him, which 
 he seemed to hear from all sides. 
 
 IT was a cool afternoon in September. May 
 walked through the park between rows of flower- 
 ing shrubs. Here the grass had died and the petals 
 of fallen blossoms were shriveled ivory on the black 
 loam. Overhead the treetops swung with a rotary 
 motion against the rain-choked heavens. The heat 
 of the clouds gathered in a blank stain of brilliance 
 where the swollen sun half burst from its swathings 
 of mist. The wind ceased for a moment. A clump 
 of still pine tops glinted with a black fire, and be- 
 hind them the sun became a chasm of glowing empti- 
 ness, like a hole in the sky, from which the glare 
 poured itself in a diffusing torrent. 
 
 For a long time May had not dared to walk in 
 the park. When she did go, at last, she told herself 
 
NARCISSUS 197 
 
 that she was sure Paul would not come. She felt 
 herself inwardly lost in still bright emptiness. Cold 
 far-off heat. She was a tiny frozen speck, hardly 
 conscious of itself on the burnt grass, walking to- 
 ward the tall buildings that receded before her. 
 Tall roofs were like iron clouds in the low sky. She 
 wanted to be lost, going farther and farther into 
 emptiness. Now when she said Paul it was no 
 longer Paul she meant. She would have been 
 ashamed before him, tall, looking down at her. 
 Paul was something else, something in which one 
 went out of one's self into infinite distance. Where 
 one went forever, never afraid. Where one ceased 
 to be. 
 
 She passed women and children. A child stum- 
 bled uncertainly toward her, jam on its face, its 
 dress torn. May was conscious of a part of herself 
 left behind that could see the child running to its 
 mother, the white dress brilliant, fluttering victori- 
 ous. She knew how her own hair blew out in sepa- 
 rate strands from the loosened ends of her braid, 
 and how soft separate strands clung drily against 
 her moist brow under her red cap. Going out of 
 herself, it was as if her blood flowed coldly out of 
 her into the cold sunlight, cold and away from her 
 
198 NARCISSUS 
 
 body. She was happy. There were tears in her 
 eyes. She wanted to go on forever saying Paul 
 and not thinking what it meant. 
 
 The sun went out of sight. The wind lifted the 
 pine boughs and they moved as if in terror against 
 the torn clouds. The sound that went through them 
 died away in peace, in the happiness of being lost. 
 May felt as if something of her had gone forever 
 into the wide still sky and the dead shadowless 
 park. She wanted to feel, not to think. When she 
 thought, she was caught in her body as in a net. 
 The separate parts of her were like pains where 
 she thought Aunt Julia would loathe her. 
 
 T T THEN Laurence was apart from Julia and re- 
 V V membered her look of humility that asked 
 for something she dared not state, he experienced 
 an almost sickening pity for her. There was some- 
 thing in her suffering which he identified with his 
 own. Yet he did not feel nearer to her in attributing 
 their unhappiness in common to the futile and in- 
 evitable circumstances of human life. The pain 
 of each of them, he told himself, was in realizing 
 the isolation in which every human ultimately finds 
 himself when he recognizes that his inner life can- 
 
NARCISSUS 199 
 
 not be shared. Laurence somehow exulted in seeing 
 Julia forced to accept a condition of existence which 
 had been plain to him for a long time. His despair 
 was so complete that he imagined himself ready 
 to abandon his defenses before her. But when he 
 was actually in her presence she was only the thing 
 that hurt him, and he was against her in spite of 
 himself. Then her cruelty seemed monstrous, be- 
 cause she appeared to understand so little of what 
 she had done. He knew that he bewildered her by 
 showing no resentment toward Dudley Allen. Laur- 
 ence despised her when she could not see the work- 
 ing of his pride that forced him to be superior 
 to her lover's influence. 
 
 Often he said to himself, I'll go away. I can't 
 bear it! But, while he believed in nothing outside 
 himself, what was there to seek? He visited his 
 parents more frequently. To be with them was 
 a fulfilment of his humiliation. He would end 
 where he was born, as every one else did. 
 
 Though he was certain that everything which 
 developed through initiative was foredoomed to fail- 
 ure, his pride in Bobby increased. He wanted to 
 keep his pessimism from contaminating his son. 
 Bobby knew his power. When he encountered his 
 
200 NARCISSUS 
 
 father coming in from the laboratory alone it was 
 a time to make a demand. "Hello, Dad! Say, 
 Dad, am I too much of a kid to run a motor cycle? 
 Jack Wilson says I can't run his motor cycle because 
 I'm too much of a kid! Say, Dad, I've got some 
 money saved up. Can't I buy me a motor cycle? 
 I can run it. Honest, I can!" He had been play- 
 ing in the street, his face dirty and smeared with 
 sweat, his shirt torn in front, and his collar askew. 
 His look was rapt and self-intent. He had the 
 air of pushing his father aside to reach some nidden 
 determination. 
 
 Laurence was self-conscious when talking to 
 Bobby. He lowered his lids to conceal the too 
 lenient expression of his eyes. "You're not an ex- 
 perienced mechanic, you know. Only have one life 
 to lose. Better wait a while before you risk it." 
 
 Bobby stared with an intentness that obliterated 
 his father's pretense. "Aw, say, Dad, honest, now! 
 I've taken Jack Wilson's machine to pieces. I can 
 run a motor cycle all right. Go on and say I can 
 get it!" 
 
 Laurence glanced up, and his smile was hard 
 and cautious, but when his face was averted his 
 features softened immediately. "We'll see, son. I 
 
NARCISSUS 201 
 
 don't think a brat like you could get a license. 
 Time to talk about it later." He put his hat on a 
 hook and, turning aside, began to mount the 
 stairs. 
 
 Bobby, vexed and excited, gazed after his father, 
 regarding Laurence's hesitation as an annoying but 
 inevitable formula which had to be gone through 
 before one could get what one wanted. "Oh, gol 
 darn it!" he said, and ran out into the street again. 
 He tolerated his father. 
 
 Laurence wished that he had sent May away with 
 Mr. and Mrs. Price, the parents of his first wife. 
 They had recently gone on a trip to Europe. When 
 they had asked to take Bobby with them, Laurence 
 had resented it. 
 
 Julia met Laurence in the upper hall. "Did you 
 tell Bobby to come in and dress for dinner? Isn't 
 he a ragamuffin!" She smiled, imagining that her 
 pleasure in Bobby pleased her husband. 
 
 Laurence smiled also, but coldly. He would have 
 preferred to ignore her relationship to Bobby. It 
 had come over him strongly of late that he must 
 take Bobby away from the home environment. 
 "I'm afraid I encourage him in the spontaneity of 
 bad manners." He walked past her with an agree- 
 
202 NARCISSUS 
 
 able but remote expression that put her away from 
 him. 
 
 Julia experienced a familiar pang which contracted 
 her breast with an almost physical surprise. It was 
 as if a touch had made her guilty. Why, she could 
 not say. He doesn't want me to show an interest 
 in Bobby! She was robbed of another almost her 
 last certainty. 
 
 At dinner she watched the father and son stealth- 
 ily. Their attitude toward each other seemed to 
 confirm her unknown guilt. 
 
 "I've sent off your first quarter's tuition at Mount 
 Harrod, young man. You haven't much time left 
 with us." 
 
 Bobby was secretly resigned but confident in his 
 petulance. "Gee, Dad, I don't want to go to that 
 place!" 
 
 "It's about time you began your initiation in the 
 subtler forms of self-defense," Laurence said sar- 
 donically. 
 
 May, ignored by everybody, sat very straight in 
 her chair and was over dainty with her food, as 
 if timid of her enjoyment of it. Julia, withdrawing 
 all attempt at contact with Laurence and Bobby, 
 could not bear to look at the girl. 
 
NARCISSUS 203 
 
 Laurence was uncomfortably admitting to him- 
 self that, in some subtle way, his desire to have 
 Bobby out of the house was directed by a feeling 
 against Julia. He wondered how much of his mo- 
 tive she had perceived. The sooner he gets away 
 from the hoax of home, the better, Laurence told 
 himself. He tried to exculpate himself by a gen- 
 eralization. It was the false ideal he wanted to de- 
 stroy for Bobby. Julia was a part of the myth, 
 though she had not created it. 
 
 JULIA was wounded without knowing just what 
 her wound was. She said to herself, unex- 
 pectedly, If I had a child! My God, if I had a 
 child! The thought, which had been strange to her 
 for a long time, seemed to illumine all of her being. 
 It was as if something warm and secret were already 
 her own. She was on the point of weeping with 
 terror of her longing for the child that did not exist. 
 It was something she wanted to take away to herself 
 which no one else should know of. She considered 
 how she might get herself with child without any 
 one becoming aware of it. She wanted a child that 
 would be helpless with her, that she could give 
 everything to. 
 
204 NARCISSUS 
 
 But she could not bear the thought of definite 
 responsibilities connected with a child. It was wrong 
 to want a child like that. It was like robbing a 
 thing of its life to want it so completely. It had 
 a right to itself. She felt virtuously bereaved al- 
 ready, as if the child that had never been born had 
 grown to manhood and she had given it up. 
 
 There was no peace except in the abnegation of 
 all positive desire. She invited the peace of help- 
 lessness. When her emotions were formless she 
 felt immense and lost in a waking sleep. The whole 
 world was her own dream. She could feel her physi- 
 cal life fade out of her and imagined that her hair 
 was growing white. 
 
 HURST had not been so happy for 
 a long time. To evoke one of his moods of 
 glowing pathos, he had only to gaze at himself in 
 a mirror and think of Julia. She had committed 
 herself but very little, yet he was mystical in his 
 certainty of their future relationship. When he 
 recalled the way she looked at him as if asking 
 him not to hurt her too much he was confirmed 
 in his belief that she had laid aside the subterfuges 
 of more commonplace and less courageous women. 
 
NARCISSUS 205 
 
 "Damned if I look as young as I did!" He studied 
 his reflection ruefully. He had a hazy perception 
 of his outward defects and regretted them. "Grow- 
 ing old's hell all right! Poor little Kate!" He was 
 ashamed of the comfort of seeming less his age than 
 she. His sense of advantage made him tenderly 
 apologetic. When he was near her he wanted to 
 pet her. "Rum deal women get. Life after forty- 
 five not worth much." He almost wished it possible 
 for her to console herself as he did, but he could 
 not quite bring himself to accept the logic of his 
 imagining. Catherine with a lover! Women not the 
 
 same as we are. Men are a lot of donkeys. 
 
 Pity the girl never had a kid. 
 
 His pale eyes grew grave and retrospective again, 
 and he seated himself on the edge of his bed just 
 as he was, in socks and trousers and undershirt, 
 burying his face in his curiously formless hands. 
 "By God, I love that girl!" He threw his head 
 up and shrugged his shoulders with a shivering mo- 
 tion, as if what he felt were almost too much for 
 him. "She may think I'm a senile idiot and a damn 
 fool all the things Catherine does." He smiled, 
 talking aloud. "But she loves me! She loves me! 
 By God, she loves me! She's got to!" He ended 
 
206 NARCISSUS 
 
 on a playfully emphatic note as though he were 
 disposing of an invisible argumentator. When he 
 went into his bathroom to shave he whistled Mu- 
 setta's Waltz from La Boheme. There was an ex- 
 pression of innocent complacency on his thin good- 
 humored face. For a time he was absorbed in his 
 music and his sense of completeness and well-being. 
 
 Julia Farley. Too good. That Goode family. 
 Bills. Fellow runs a car like Fast. Fast 
 women. I hold her fast. I 
 
 When his jumbled thoughts had proceeded to 
 I-hold-her-fast, something welled up as if from the 
 depths of him, and he was physically blinded by the 
 dim intensity of his emotion. He frowned pain- 
 fully. He began to speak aloud again. "Too much, 
 Charles, my boy. Too old for this kind of thing. 
 Damn! She's too good too lovely " 
 
 There was a knock at the door. Johnson, Mr. 
 Hurst's man, was never allowed in the room while 
 his master was dressing, since Charles was frankly 
 embarrassed by the presence of a valet. 
 
 "Hello! Hello, Johnson." 
 
 "Telephone, sir. Mrs. Hurst wanted me to ask 
 if you'd like to come, or if I was to tell them to 
 call later." 
 
NARCISSUS 207 
 
 Julia! The mad hope that it was Julia. 
 
 "It's Mr. Goode, sir. He says he can't give me 
 the message." 
 
 God, but I'm ridiculous! "Mr. Goode, eh?' r 
 Charles, very abstracted, buttoned on his shirt. 
 "Well, you tell Goode I'll call him later, Johnson." 
 As Johnson, assenting in his delicately servile man- 
 ner, was turning away, Charles beckoned him back. 
 "Eh, Johnson, just between you and me, while the 
 madam isn't looking. Suppose you bring me up 
 just a little, you know Old Scotch. God damn 
 this collar button!" 
 
 Johnson, who was a blond young man with a wise 
 subdued air, smiled a little. Finding it flattered 
 his employers, he had cultivated the sad manner 
 of a professional mourner. "Very good, sir." 
 
 As Johnson disappeared, Charles's ruminations 
 broke forth afresh. " 'Very good, sir!' Damn little 
 son-of-a-gun! He'd do well in a play. Got a fine 
 contempt for the old man, Johnson has. Yep, by 
 God, Catherine has got me on breeding. Servants 
 never bat an eye at her. Might have been born 
 with a gold spoon in her mouth. Well, she's a pink- 
 face and the old boy's a rough-neck. Tra-la-la " 
 He resumed Musetta's Waltz. 
 
208 NARCISSUS 
 
 "That Blanche that damned little hyper-sexed, 
 hyper-sophisticated, hyper-everything By Jove, 
 she'd pinch the gold plate out of a mummy's tooth!" 
 When Charles talked he allowed his voice gradually 
 to mount the scales until it broke on a falsetto 
 note. It was part of the horseplay with which his 
 dramatic sense responded, in self-derision, to the 
 attitude of those about him. Catherine insisted on 
 his occasional attendance at the opera, and Pag- 
 liacci, which he heard first, was his favorite piece. 
 He identified himself with the title part, though it 
 was a little confusing for him to imagine himself 
 a deceived husband. He felt that the author of 
 the libretto had confused the issue. "Blanche, by 
 God, that Blanche ! " He referred to a young woman 
 who took minor parts in cinema plays. He wanted 
 to be rid of her. She was statuesque and theatric, 
 but as his intimacy with her had grown she had re- 
 lapsed into habitual vulgarities which grated on 
 him. Charles revered a lady. Besides, since be- 
 coming interested in Julia he wanted to forget every- 
 thing else. Blanche was realizing that she had 
 destroyed an illusion through which she might have 
 furthered her ambition, and she was growing reck- 
 lessly spiteful and crude. Only the day before 
 
NARCISSUS 209 
 
 Charles had sent her money which she had kept, 
 though she reviled him for sending it. His humility 
 made it impossible for him to condemn any one, 
 except in extreme moments of self-defense. "Poor 
 little girl! By Jove, I wonder if she did love me 
 a little after all!" He shook his head, and smiled 
 with an expression of sentimental weariness. He 
 put Blanche away as incongruous with the thought 
 of Julia which filled him with happiness. 
 
 "Sick o' the whole mess of 'em. That fellow, 
 Goode, making a damn jackass of himself every 
 time a chorus girl winks at him. The whole damn 
 cheap, sporting, booze-fighting lot of nincompoops. 
 Goode's a grandfather and he looks it." 
 
 The door moved softly, there was a light rap, 
 and Johnson re-entered with a tray. Charles laid 
 his hair brushes down. "Looks good to me, John- 
 son." Johnson smiled his sad, half-perceptible smile. 
 "Shall I mix it, sir?" 
 
 "No Johnson. No." With an air of ostenta- 
 tious casualness, Charles poured whisky into a glass 
 and held it up to the light. "Good stuff." Johnson 
 kept his still smile, but did not speak. 
 
 Charles drank with deliberate noisiness. When 
 he set the glass down he drew a deep theatric sigh. 
 
2io NARCISSUS 
 
 His face was solemn. "Better try some, Johnson." 
 The man flushed slightly. "Anything else?" 
 "No, no. Coming downstairs. The madam had 
 her breakfast yet?" 
 
 "I don't know, sir. That is, I think so, sir." 
 Johnson turned away and the door swung sound- 
 lessly across his rigid back. 
 
 Charles gave himself a little more whisky that 
 brought the tears of relaxation to his eyes. He 
 wondered if he were mistaken about Julia. He 
 dared not consider future potentialities too defi- 
 nitely, though he told himself that, whatever came, 
 he was ready for it. Would she ever let him put 
 his head in her lap? He felt good and complacent 
 when he imagined it. The pose it represented was 
 assumed with such sincerity and was so remote from 
 the aspect of him with which his wife was ac- 
 quainted, or even the guise he bore to his sporting 
 friends. It was pleasant to him to recognize this 
 secret and not too obvious self. "Well, Charles, 
 you old rooster, you may have broken most of the 
 commandments, and you can't talk Maeterlinck and 
 Tagore with the old lady, but there's something to 
 you they all miss. The dear!" he added, thinking 
 of Julia. 
 
NARCISSUS 2ii 
 
 IT was Saturday afternoon. The holiday crowd 
 moved in endless double lines along an endless 
 street. As Julia walked with it there was a hill 
 before her and the stream of motor cars floated 
 over the crest against a pale sky hazy with dust. 
 Men stared at her and, feeling naked and unpos- 
 sessed, she demanded their look. 
 
 "Miss Julia!" She glanced up, hearing a car 
 whirr to a standstill beside her. Mr. Hurst was 
 driving a gray racer. He was bareheaded. The 
 wind had disarranged his sleek hair, revealing his 
 baldness. He smoothed back the locks. He gazed 
 at her a little fearfully, but his face was happy 
 and intent. "I've caught you. Going anywhere? 
 Let me take you for a ride?" He saw her eyes, 
 the outline of her breasts, her cloth dress blown 
 against her long legs, her ungloved hands with their 
 beautiful helpless look. "You are tired." Tender 
 of her fatigue, he was grateful to her because she 
 allowed him this tenderness. His heart beat so 
 heavily that he fancied it must be fluttering the 
 breast of his silk shirt. She must think me a fool, 
 dear girl! I love her! He was conscious of being 
 a little mad in his delight, and wanted to lay his 
 faults before her. "How's this? I'm going to run 
 
2i2 NARCISSUS 
 
 away with you take you off to the country." Julia 
 was beside him. The car glided on. 
 
 "I can't be long." Julia stared into his eyes with 
 a calm smile, and tried to be simple and detached. 
 She told herself that she could do nothing for him, 
 but that she wanted him to understand her loneli- 
 ness. 
 
 "Well, we're going to be long ever so long." 
 Her hair is all in a mess clouds about her eyes. 
 Her little feet walking on clouds. Oh, Julia, my 
 darling, I love you! She's not like other women 
 I have known. If she gives herself to a caress it 
 means something to her. "I've been looking for- 
 ward to this longing for it," he said. "You know 
 that ever since that night I kissed you I've thought 
 of almost nothing but you?" 
 
 Julia said, "I'm sorry." 
 
 "Why?" All at once everything confusing was 
 being swept away in the nakedness of the wind they 
 rode against. "Going too fast for you dear?" 
 
 "No. But you mustn't think of me so much." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because Fm not worth it." Hypocrite. She 
 wanted to be beautiful. She had a horrible sense 
 of her own spiritual leanness and ugliness. If he 
 
NARCISSUS 213 
 
 would take me away kiss me anywhere in dark- 
 ness. She wanted to belong to some one so utterly 
 as to make her oblivious of herself. 
 
 They turned a sharp corner. They were in the 
 park now. Pale leaves, yellow against the light, 
 floated, and fell upon them in a shower of silk. 
 "I'm in love with you, Julia." 
 
 "Are you?" 
 
 "Don't ask. You know it. Don't you want me 
 to be?" Goode too good. Hadn't meant to say 
 that yet! 
 
 "I don't know. I'm afraid I'm a disillusioned 
 person. I'm tired watching people try to live 
 through others. It can't be done." 
 
 "I think I could live in you through you if 
 you'd let me, Julia." 
 
 "You don't know me." 
 
 "How can I if you won't let me, Julia?" He 
 drew the car nearly to a standstill. He grasped her 
 fingers with his free hand. "I'm going to kiss you, 
 dear." It was lonely here. She felt his mouth over 
 her face and was ashamed of her distaste for him. 
 "You're unhappy, Julia. Why are you unhappy?" 
 
 She withdrew herself. "I am horribly." 
 
 Charles, hardening, felt relieved, and imagined 
 
214 NARCISSUS 
 
 himself stronger. Farley don't treat her well, he 
 said to himself. In his mind was a furtive expecta- 
 tion, with which was mingled an unadmitted thought 
 of divorce. "Don't be, darling. You make me too 
 happy. It's not fair. Can't I be anything to you 
 even a little?" 
 
 Julia laughed pathetically. "You must be. I'm 
 here." 
 
 "Yes, thank God, you are. And you're not going 
 to be disgusted with me because I'm such an un- 
 pretentious human animal? My taste in music runs 
 about as high as The Old Oaken Bucket, and I sup- 
 pose if I'd been left to myself I'd have canned those 
 Dudley Allen productions you persuaded Catherine 
 to buy, and hung up Breaking The Home Ties in- 
 stead. You know all this new art stuff goes over 
 my head, child. Hate me for it?" 
 
 "Not very much. Perhaps it goes over my head 
 too." 
 
 "Wish it did, but Kate's told me all about you. 
 You're so damned clever." He wanted her, yet, even 
 if she offered herself to him now, he could not touch 
 her. Her little feet. As a matter of fact they 
 weren't small. Little feet just the same. Must 
 be white. White feet. Lovely things walking over 
 
NARCISSUS 215 
 
 his heart. Beautiful things hurt him with their 
 pride. He had felt this before about women. It 
 was always wrong. Afterward only the pain and 
 the longing remained. She's different. Mine. I 
 can't have her. "You won't hate me when " His 
 eyes misted. He gave her a blurred look. His lips 
 were humorous and self -contemptuous. 
 
 "Won't hate you when?" Julia was still motherly. 
 
 It hurt him to speak. His face was flushed. He 
 stared at her fixedly an instant, as if something stood 
 between them. She observed his unsteady mouth, 
 that was weakly unconscious of itself like a des- 
 perate child's. "Am I going to have you, Julia? 
 Are you disgusted with me, child?" 
 
 She would not consider clearly what he meant, 
 but she wanted him to shut Laurence out of her 
 mind. "Yes. I think so." Her voice was unsteady. 
 
 The car went on, they were out of town among 
 suburban roads and vacant lots. Charles drew up 
 again. "Let's get out and walk a bit." 
 
 The dry pinkish grass moved before them like a 
 cloud over the field. It rustled stiffly about their 
 ankles. The low sun was in their eyes. Double 
 lines of gnats rose into the light. They passed an 
 empty house with glaring uncovered windows. 
 
2i6 NARCISSUS 
 
 White feet that hurt. Charles was afraid of her. 
 He imagined her hands touching him. Oh, my 
 dear! He said, "We must find a way to see each 
 other." 
 
 Julia said nothing. He took hold of her arms 
 hesitatingly. "Look at me! " 
 
 She was ashamed for him. When their eyes met, 
 hers filled with tears. She seemed to herself dead, 
 and wanted him to be sorry for her. I can't live. 
 I'm dead already. No use. I'm dead! I'm dead! 
 She wanted to be dead. Something kept alive, tor- 
 turing her. 
 
 "Take your hat off, won't you?" She took her 
 hat off. Clouds. "Now I can look at you." She 
 wondered if she looked ill. She was ashamed for 
 him when he trembled. Her eyes were gentle, and 
 at the same time there was something desperate in 
 them. It seemed to him that she was asking him 
 to hurt her, and he wanted to say, Don't, don't! 
 Her face, that he could not bear to understand, was 
 just a blur of sweetness. He believed that her ten- 
 derness for him was something which must be tried 
 by the grossness of his pleasure in physical contact 
 with her. He thought his pleasure in her body 
 would make her suffer. Afterward he meant to 
 
NARCISSUS 217 
 
 show her how little that was, and that what he was 
 giving her what he was asking of her was really 
 something else. "I want to be your lover, child." 
 It was done. He was conscious of desperation and 
 relief. She's different! My God, she's different!. 
 Blanche. All of them. He pitied himself with 
 them. 
 
 Julia said, "I know it." 
 
 Why does she smile like that? Forgive me. He 
 felt their two bodies, hers and his, pitiful helpless 
 things. His shame was for her too. "Life, child! 
 It's got us," he said. "Now I'll kiss you just once." 
 He gathered her up in his arms. She's trembling 
 too. She loves me! I want to make her happy. 
 He wondered why everything hurt so. She's too 
 fine. 
 
 Julia was cold. Frozen all over. It seemed he 
 would never be done kissing her. She despised him, 
 and enjoyed the bitterness of her gratitude in being 
 loved. When she could speak she said, smiling yet, 
 "We'd better be starting back. It's late. Look at 
 the sun." The meadow was filled with cold light 
 that lay on the grass tops and made them burning 
 and colorless. The sun, as if dissolving, was form- 
 less and brilliant on the horizon. 
 
218 NARCISSUS 
 
 "Have you had enough of me? Do you want to 
 leave me, Julia?" 
 
 "No. It's only that when I left home it was 
 for a little while." 
 
 As they walked back to the car, Charles, holding 
 Julia's hand, pressed it apologetically. "I want to 
 take you to a place I have, Julia a cabin I go to 
 sometimes for fishing trips. We could motor there 
 and picnic for a day. Could you be with me as 
 long as that without becoming more disillusioned?" 
 He tried to joke. His thin face jested, but his pale 
 eyes were anxious. 
 
 Julia said, in a smothered voice, "You mustn't 
 love me too much. You are the one who will be 
 disillusioned." 
 
 He wanted to talk to her about Laurence, but 
 as yet did not dare; so he pressed her hand again. 
 "Darling!" She returned the pressure and was 
 piqued by his abstracted glance. I'm alone, she said 
 to herself. 
 
 ON the following Saturday Julia went with 
 Charles to the cabin he had spoken of. It 
 was on the shore of a small lake, only a few feet 
 removed from the water's edge. It was a still 
 
NARCISSUS 219 
 
 cloudy day, and the lake, choked with sedges, had 
 a heavy look, like a mirror coated with grease. 
 There were pine woods all around that, without un- 
 dergrowth, seemed empty. The still trees were like 
 things walking in a dream. Julia felt them, not 
 moving, going on relentlessly and spurning the 
 earth. It seemed as if everything in the landscape 
 had been forgotten. It was a memory held intact 
 that no one ever recalled. A little group of scrub 
 oaks were turning scarlet. They were like colored 
 shadows. 
 
 Charles drew up his motor car in the half -oblit- 
 erated roadway, and helped Julia to alight. He felt 
 sinful, as he always did when he was about to en- 
 joy anything. He wished that he might beg Julia 
 to condescend to him as to an inferior being. He 
 would be grateful for her contempt which, if it 
 were tempered by affection, would allow him to be 
 himself. 
 
 She went ahead of him, and waited in the dusty 
 portico of the small house while he covered some 
 cushions that might be wet if it rained. When he 
 came toward her his eyes were uncertain. "Here 
 we are. Damn it, Julia, I'm so happy I'm afraid! 
 
220 NARCISSUS 
 
 You aren't going to mind being here?" He carried 
 a picnic basket. 
 
 "Of course not. Why should I have come?" 
 
 He set the basket down. "Hands all grimy. 
 Why should you! God, I don't know. I'm going 
 to love you." He swung her hands in his delight- 
 edly, but there was something stealthy and embar- 
 rassed in his manner. He could not bring himself 
 to kiss her. "At least you're not going to try to 
 make a new man of me!" 
 
 "I know my limitations." 
 
 "You haven't any, darling." 
 
 Julia's mouth was happy, but her eyes were dark 
 and unkind. "It makes one uncomfortable to be 
 thought too well of." She knew that she was about 
 to give herself to him and resented his confidence. 
 He was a crude childlike man. At the same time, 
 she sensed a simplicity in him that was almost 
 noble. Her self-esteem could not endure thinking 
 of a possible debt to him. 
 
 "Shall we go in?" He opened the door and went 
 in ahead of her. The place was crowded with 
 camp beds, piled one on top of the other, and num- 
 bers of more or less dilapidated chairs. There was 
 a thick coating of dust over everything, and films 
 
NARCISSUS 221 
 
 of spider web across the window panes yellowed 
 the light. "Isn't this a disgrace, child? I ought 
 to have had a house-cleaning before we came 
 out." 
 
 "I like work. We'll clean up together." She 
 removed her hat and laid it on a table. Charles 
 took off his coat. He found an old broom, swept 
 up the trash that littered the floor, and began to 
 pull the furniture into place. Julia discovered a 
 torn shirt and used it to clean the window glass. 
 Charles felt the morning was passing grotesquely. 
 I love her. What shall I do! "Jove, I wish we 
 lived here!" he said. When he had laid a fire in 
 the stone chimney, he pulled out one of the camp 
 beds and made a divan with blankets and pillows. 
 "Come sit down here and warm yourself, child." 
 He turned his back to her and began warming his 
 hands. "It's damp in here." 
 
 Julia came to the fire. She did not seat herself. 
 He knew she was beside him. He put off the mo- 
 ment when he must look at her. As he finally 
 turned, his suffused eyes avoided hers. He was 
 smiling miserably. "Have I made a mistake?" 
 
 Julia felt blind inside herself. "Mistake?" She 
 laughed nervously. 
 
222 NARCISSUS 
 
 He fumbled for her hands. " Julia 1" His emo- 
 tion could no longer distinguish between her and 
 himself. His face was in her hair. "I can't help 
 it, child! I can't help it!" 
 
 Finding herself futile and inadequate, it seemed 
 to Julia that her pity for herself must include all 
 the things that surrounded her, and that she must 
 embrace them in the mingled agony of self-con- 
 tempt and pride. It was because she did not love 
 him that it liberated her so completely to give her- 
 self to him. She tried to abase herself utterly so 
 that she might experience the joy of rising above 
 her own needs. 
 
 Her tears were on his hands and he was bewil- 
 dered. The contagion of her emotion overpowered 
 him. He was equally astonished at her and at 
 himself. For a moment he was unable to speak. 
 a Oh ; Julia my Julia I love you!" He could not 
 comprehend himself. Why was it that even now, 
 when she surrendered herself to him, he continued 
 to feel helpless and almost terrified. He had not 
 imagined that she loved him as deeply as this. His 
 desire to abase himself, though it arose from a dif- 
 ferent motive, was as complete as hers. "Julia," 
 
NARCISSUS 223 
 
 he kept repeating, "don't! What is it, Julia? 
 Don't!" He wanted to kiss her feet. What is it? 
 What have I done? He found himself at the mercy 
 of something unknown that was cheating them when 
 they should have had happiness. "Do you love me, 
 Julia?" He observed her expression of tenderness 
 and suffering. Yet, while she was telling him that 
 she loved him, it seemed to him that he was ignored 
 and obliterated by what she was feeling. 
 
 Julia sat on the camp bed and, as he had prom- 
 ised himself, he knelt beside her and buried his 
 face in her lap. Still, though he did not admit it, 
 he knew the gesture was false. He was embarrassed 
 by his hostility to her pity. He believed now that 
 he loved her far more than he had loved her be- 
 fore. He could no longer articulate his situation 
 or his intentions, or anything practical connected 
 with his life. He decided that, though she made 
 him unhappy, life would only be endurable if he 
 saw her more frequently and in a franker relation- 
 ship. How this was to be brought about he dared 
 not reflect. When Laurence's name was on his lips 
 he recalled Catherine and the pain of indecision 
 made him dumb. 
 
224 NARCISSUS 
 
 Julia felt that even this last attempt to lose her- 
 self was a failure. While she stroked his hair, she 
 was furtively considering whether or not she dared 
 see him again. 
 
 LAURENCE knew now that his attitude regard- 
 ing Bobby was apparent to Julia, and that it 
 caused her pain. Why he punished her by keeping 
 her apart from his son and making her ill at ease 
 ;when the child was present he could not have said. 
 However, though he realized absurdities in himself, 
 he would not renounce his sense of righteousness. 
 What he suffered through compunction was to him 
 the pain of virtue. He hurt Julia in order to con- 
 vince himself of her depth of feeling. While he 
 observed her misery, he could believe that she would 
 not betray him again. Her agony was his, but it 
 showed him that she was not callous and indifferent 
 to the consequences of her acts. He could not yet 
 allow himself to express any love for her. He would 
 not even admit his desire to do so. In the mean- 
 time, without understanding his expectation, he 
 waited and withheld himself. When she looked at 
 him there was always in her eyes the demand of 
 self-pity. When she would accept, as he did, the rec- 
 
NARCISSUS 225 
 
 ognition that there was nothing, that there could 
 be nothing, he would not be afraid to give him- 
 self. He struggled with his tenderness for her. It 
 was always tearing at him. He was never at rest. 
 Because he put the thought of her out of his mind, 
 he seemed to have no thoughts at all only an 
 emptiness consuming him. He tried to comfort 
 himself with generalities and reverted to the illusory 
 finality of the positivist philosophy which he had at 
 one time professed. 
 
 Julia decided that self-loathing was the inevitable 
 outgrowth of profound experience. Others, who 
 were as fully self-aware as she, were filled with 
 the same nausea of futility. She had several times 
 talked to Charles Hurst on the telephone, and the 
 sound of his voice always exhilarated her. When 
 she sensed his emotion in speaking with her, a 
 kind of iron seemed to enter into her despair. Her 
 distaste for contact with him only convinced her of 
 the pride of her recklessness. The more intimate 
 their relationship became, the more voluptuously 
 she scourged herself by her accurate perceptions of 
 his deficiencies. Only by seeing him at his worst 
 could she preserve her gratification in being tender 
 to him and careless of her own interest. 
 
226 NARCISSUS 
 
 JULIA was continually irritated by the trivial 
 routine of daily existence. The banality of life 
 was humiliating to her. Always, before she went 
 to the laboratory, she stopped in the kitchen to give 
 Nellie the orders for the day. The poised indiffer- 
 ence of the old woman's manner never failed to 
 have an almost maddening effect. "Is the butter out, 
 Nellie? Shall I order any sugar this week?" Nel- 
 lie's opaque, self-engrossed eyes were continually 
 fixed on some distant object. "Yas'm. I reckon 
 you bettah odah sugah. Dey's plenty o' buttah." 
 Julia smiled and tapped her foot on the bare, clean- 
 scrubbed boards. "You're frightfully inattentive, 
 Nellie." Nellie's full purplish lips pouted rumina- 
 tively. Her face was like a stone. "I always tends 
 to what's mah business, Miss Julia. You has yo' 
 ways an' I has mine." And Julia, in puzzled de- 
 feat, invariably left the kitchen. 
 
 When she encountered May, it was as bad. The 
 girl's vapid, apologetic smile suggested the stubborn 
 resistances of weakness. "Do you love your negli- 
 gent Aunt Julia, May?" May would give a side- 
 wise glance from soft protesting eyes. Then Julia, 
 realizing that she should be touched by May's affec- 
 tion, would put her arms about the girl. 
 
NARCISSUS 227 
 
 But Julia found herself actively disliking the 
 child who forced upon her an undefined sense of re- 
 sponsibility, elicited by the exhibition of unhappi- 
 ness. "Now, May, dear, I know you love me 
 you funny, sensitive little thing!" Julia's perfunc- 
 tory tone was a subtle and deliberate repulse. 
 
 May, wanting to hide herself, pressed her fore- 
 head against her sleeve. Julia tried to pull May's 
 arms apart, and wondered at her own satisfaction 
 in the brutality of the gesture. It seemed to May 
 that Aunt Julia's hands were about to tear open 
 her heart. "Angry with me, May? This is so 
 silly." 
 
 With an effort, May lifted her quivering face to 
 Aunt Julia's cold eyes, and giggled. "Of course 
 not." She wanted to keep Aunt Julia from looking 
 at her and knowing her. 
 
 "You aren't, eh? Well, be a good girl. There!" 
 A kiss, meekly accepted. How Julia abhorred that 
 meekness! "Where's Paul these days? He hasn't 
 run away to the South Seas or some such place 
 without telling us good-by?" Julia felt guilty when 
 she referred to him. But Paul and May were chil- 
 dren. That explained away an unnamed thing. 
 
 "I I don't know." Again May giggled. 
 
228 NARCISSUS 
 
 "Why don't you go to see Lucy Wilson?" 
 
 "I don't know. I don't care much about going 
 
 anywhere." 
 
 My God, what's to become of the girl! Why 
 
 should she live, Julia thought. 
 
 MRS. HURST was finding it more and more 
 difficult to face her husband. Something 
 which was becoming chronic in his manner aroused 
 a suspicious protest in her. When, in the morning, 
 he entered the breakfast room and found her already 
 seated at the table, she bit her lips, and between 
 her brows appeared a little invariable frown. 
 Charles was a mystery to her. She wanted him 
 to be a mystery. The thing she had to fight against 
 most was the recognition of his obviousness. A 
 child! A ridiculous grown-up child! Quite incom- 
 prehensible. And when her reflections culminated 
 too logically she put them aside with an emphasis 
 on "the sacredness of sex". There were flirtations, 
 trivial improprieties, she knew, and she admitted 
 them. Perhaps all men were like that, spiritually 
 so immature. But where the flesh impinged upon 
 her dream there was only an excited darkness in 
 which she defiantly closed her eyes. 
 
NARCISSUS 229 
 
 "Mrs. Wilson is going out to Marburne this week, 
 Charles. She's organizing a distributing center for 
 the country women. They are quite out of touch 
 with the city markets and some of them make such 
 wonderful things jams and embroideries, needle- 
 work and the like. She's trying to get cooperation 
 from other people who summer there. She wants 
 to build an industrial school for the girls, and is 
 willing to put up a third of the necessary money 
 if others will contribute the rest. She wants me 
 to go out there with her and speak in various coun- 
 try schools." Catherine was resisting the convic- 
 tion that something critical was occurring in her 
 husband's inner life. The idea of going away from 
 the city, and leaving him, in such a state, to his 
 own devices, frightened her. To admit the neces- 
 sity of remaining, however, was to concede the ex- 
 istence of an issue. When he looked at her, it was 
 as if he said, I'm like this, but I can't help it, so 
 forgive me. She did not wish to know what that 
 look meant. For years she had warded off crises 
 by merely ignoring their imminence. She dared not 
 abandon the serviceable belief that the disturbing 
 elements of life cease to confuse us if we refuse 
 to admit that they exist. She called this, Rising 
 
230 NARCISSUS 
 
 above our lower selves. There is so much truth, 
 you know, in the religions of the Orient. At the 
 same time, Catherine's transcendental generaliza- 
 tions did not save her from bitterness. Life was 
 difficult, and Charles had left her more than her 
 share of responsibility for its solution. 
 
 Charles regarded his wife wistfully, almost sen- 
 timentally. He made a good-humored grimace. 
 "Mrs. Wilson going to carry sweetness and light 
 to Marburne, is she?" He was crumbling bread 
 between his blunt unsteady fingers, and scattering 
 it on the table cloth. What was he thinking of? 
 
 Catherine smiled at him, a perplexed resentful 
 smile, a trifle hard. He was unhappy before her. 
 There was something cold and watchful half-hidden 
 in her eyes beneath her pleasantly wrinkled lids. 
 "Mrs. Wilson is a very valuable, capable woman." 
 
 Charles grimaced gallantly but derisively. He 
 was leaning one elbow on the table, and now he 
 caught the flesh above his nose and pinched it with 
 his thumb and forefinger as if to still a hurt. "Yes," 
 he agreed with light absence. "By Jove, I know it! 
 Every time I see poor old Jack Wilson it reminds 
 me of how capable she is." 
 
 Catherine agreed to be amused, though her mouth 
 
NARCISSUS 231 
 
 was severe. "Ridicule is an easy way out of diffi- 
 culty, Charles." 
 
 "Difficulty? Is it? Damn me, I wish it was!" 
 He pushed his plate aside and pressed the fingers 
 of both hands against his lowered brow. 
 
 Catherine, determinedly complacent, tapped her 
 foot under the table and ate daintily. The nervous 
 frown reasserted itself and she smoothed it away 
 with an effort. 
 
 Charles lifted his head, as with a sudden sweetly- 
 depressing resolution. "So you're going away. 
 When?" 
 
 Catherine was diligently attentive to her food. 
 "Perhaps I may not be able to go. I have so 
 many important things " She hesitated. 
 
 Charles rose, as if imperatively desirous of physi- 
 cal expression. He halted a moment by the table. 
 Catherine had no name for his saccharine melan- 
 choly, but she detested it. "I haven't been such 
 a hell of a husband, have I, Kate?" Ridiculous, 
 she thought. She saw his mouth twitch. She was 
 afraid. He touched her hair and she bore it. 
 "Things might have been worse for you, Kate." 
 
 She sensed in his pity for her a phase of the pity 
 for himself which supplied the excuse for all his 
 
232 NARCISSUS 
 
 shortcomings. "You'll muss my hair, Charles. I 
 think life has treated me very well indeed both 
 of us, I should say." 
 
 "We men are a rough lot, but we mean well. 
 Time for me to get down to the dirty world of 
 commerce." His hand dropped away from her. He 
 took out his watch. 
 
 White feet he was tired. 
 
 Catherine did not glance up as he went out. 
 She was hostile toward his disappearing back that 
 was invisible to her. She laid her knife and fork 
 very precisely on her plate. When she spoke to 
 the servant who came to clear away the dishes, her 
 manner, though kind, was peculiarly severe. 
 
 had long ago definitely decided, 
 though on no more than circumstantial evi- 
 dence, that Julia had no life with her husband, and 
 now he wanted her to the point of divorcing Cath- 
 erine. Of course he had as yet said nothing de- 
 cisive to either Julia or his wife. Until he was 
 prepared to act it seemed to him unnecessary to 
 speak. 
 
 It was night. He was in his room alone. With- 
 out removing his clothes he threw himself on the 
 
NARCISSUS 233 
 
 bed, soiling the handsome counterpane with his pol- 
 ished shoes. Mentally he reviewed the histories 
 of those of his friends who had taken some such 
 steps as he was contemplating. The more he 
 thought about the domestic upheavals which he had 
 noted from a safe distance, the more it was borne 
 in upon him that, no matter how great his desire 
 to avoid causing suffering, the moment he began 
 to act positively, suffering for others would result 
 from anything that he did. 
 
 Charles had never found himself able to inflict 
 even a just punishment. Wherever possible he 
 avoided the sight of pain. In the street he would 
 go a block out of his intended way to evade the 
 familiar spectacle of some wretched beggar. In 
 doing so, his relief in escape was greater than his 
 sense of guilt. If he was approached directly for 
 whatever pathetic cause he always gave away every- 
 thing that was in his pocket, and only asked that 
 no one remind him of the occasion of his generosity. 
 His wife was an efficient charity worker. Every 
 quarter year he allowed her a sum always above 
 what her practical nature would have dictated to 
 dispose of in the alleviation of physical distress. 
 He deferred to her common sense, and was glad to 
 
234 NARCISSUS 
 
 be relieved of the depressing knowledge of particular 
 cases. As regarded legislative remedies for wrongs, 
 he was conservative where his business dealings were 
 affected, but had an open sympathy with revolution- 
 ary protests on the part of oppressed peoples in 
 any far-off European or Asiatic state. He had per- 
 suaded himself that extreme measures were needed 
 to compel fair play from the ancient orthodoxies 
 abroad, while reformatory methods could achieve 
 everything at home. 
 
 He decried the prevalence of divorce, and the dis- 
 integration of the home. Yet never, in a given 
 instance, had he been able to condemn the friend 
 or acquaintance who had become dissatisfied with 
 his wife and sought happiness by forming new ties. 
 Maternity in the abstract represented to him a con- 
 fused and embarrassing ideal. But he recalled his 
 own mother, who had never loved him, with a pain 
 he did not attempt to analyze. 
 
 He was thinking now of young Goode's wife, who, 
 before her marriage was a year old, had run away 
 with another man. Two days previously Charles 
 had met young Goode in the street. To keep from 
 listening to any reminiscence of the affair, Charles 
 
NARCISSUS 235 
 
 had talked to him rapidly in a jocular voice and 
 taken him off to his club to give him a drink. 
 
 Charles turned in the bed, groaned, and hid his 
 face. If only Catherine were far away! Had gone 
 abroad for a trip, or something like that! He be- 
 lieved that the emotion he experienced when he held 
 Julia in his arms or knelt with his head in her 
 lap was unlike anything that had ever before come 
 to him. He felt that through Julia he had dis- 
 covered qualities in himself by which he could lift 
 himself from the banal plane where he had been 
 placed by others. The imposed acceptance of lim- 
 itations had humiliated him. It was not so much 
 Julia that he was afraid of losing, as the quality 
 within him which he felt she alone could evoke. 
 He knew his own weakness too well. If, at this 
 crisis, he could not bring himself to initiate a change, 
 the miracle which was present would lose its po- 
 tency, and he would be convicted forever of the 
 triviality which his friends saw in him. 
 
 Charles rose to a sitting posture and threw off 
 his coat. When he lay down again he covered his 
 eyes with his stubby fingers. The revealed lower 
 portion of his florid face was harsh and drawn. He 
 could count the pulse jumping in his temples where 
 
236 NARCISSUS 
 
 his hands pressed. His weak lips, unconscious of 
 themselves, looked shriveled with unhappiness. As 
 the tears came under his lids and slipped down his 
 cheeks, his chin shook, and he made a grimace like 
 a contorted smile. All his gestures were cumber- 
 some and pathetic. He wanted the love that would 
 not despise his indecisions. At this moment he 
 feared that even Julia might not be equal to it. 
 
 He despised his cowardice, yet had a certain 
 pride in the frankness of his self-confession. Chris- 
 tianity, in his mind, had to do with sanctimonious 
 Puritanism. He resisted with disgust what he un- 
 derstood to be the Christian conception of humility. 
 But he wanted to trust people and lay himself at 
 their feet. Not all one woman's feet. 
 
 There was nothing else for it! His thoughts 
 were betraying him. He had to have alcohol. He 
 rolled to one side of the bed, tore his collar open, 
 and staggered to his feet. Already, the resolution 
 to indulge himself softened the clash of uncertain- 
 ties. When he had gone to a cellarette, and taken a 
 drink from a decanter there, his misery grew warm 
 and sweet. His body was inundated in the hot 
 painful essence of his own soul. He was helpless 
 and at ease, bathed in himself. 
 
NARCISSUS 237 
 
 Standing by the window, he watched the cold 
 small moon rising above the houses on the other 
 side of the street. Strange and alone in whiteness, 
 it flashed above the dark roofs that glistened with 
 a purplish light. Charles, startled by the poesy of 
 his own mood, compared it to a piece of shattered 
 mirror reflecting emptiness. He was ingenuously 
 surprised by his imaginings. Staring, with his large 
 nai've eyes, at the glowing moon in the profound 
 starless sky, he was convinced of an incredible beauty 
 in everything, but particularly in himself. 
 
 PAUL knew that in a fortnight he was expected 
 to be away at college. Without having spoken 
 to any one of his resolve, he had decided on rebel- 
 lion. Of late he had been a regular attendant at 
 industrial gatherings. When he talked to Social- 
 ists, Communists, or even people with anarchistic 
 leanings, he was conscious of making himself absurd 
 with the illogical violence of his remarks. He felt 
 that he was continually doing himself an injustice, 
 for almost everything he said suggested that he was 
 taking the side of the oppressed only to gratify a 
 personal spite. At the same time, he confessed 
 to himself that the revolution pleased him doubly 
 
238 NARCISSUS 
 
 when it emphasized the triviality and complacency 
 of women like Julia and her friends, who titillated 
 their vanity by trifling with matters which concerned 
 the actual life and death of a huge, semi-submerged 
 class. 
 
 On one occasion he listened to the tempestuous 
 speech of a young Rumanian Jewess, and was ex- 
 alted by the mere passion of her words, irrespec- 
 tive of their content. It seemed beautiful to him 
 that this young woman, under the suspicion of the 
 police, was able to express her faith with such utter 
 recklessness. He wished that he too might endanger 
 himself. He hated the bourgeois comfort of his 
 uncle's home. In order to achieve such righteous 
 defiance it was necessary to suffer something at the 
 hands of the enemy. Instead of running away to 
 sea, as he had at first planned, he decided that he 
 ought to go into a factory to work, and live in a 
 low quarter of the city. There was Byronic pleas- 
 ure in imagining the loneliness that would be his 
 lot. His desperation would be a rebuke to those 
 who despised him as a credulous youth. Above 
 everything, he wanted to be poor and socially lost. 
 When he was at home, his uncle nagged him and 
 
NARCISSUS 239 
 
 his aunt watched him continually with curiosity and 
 resentment. She thought he was lazy, that he 
 lounged about the streets and was untidy in his 
 dress. 
 
 Paul haunted slums where sex in its crudest form 
 was always manifest. He treasured his aversion 
 to it. The deeper understanding of life had lifted 
 him above its necessities. He was never so much 
 in the mood to enter the battle for industrial right, 
 in utter disregard of selfish interests, as after resist- 
 ing an appeal to what he termed his elemental na- 
 ture. Then he became impatient of his exclusion 
 from present dangers. 
 
 At last he was introduced to the Rumanian Jewess 
 he had so much admired. But when he saw that 
 she was interested in men, and even something of 
 a coquette, it filled him with repugnance. He ob- 
 served much in her that he had not taken account 
 of before. There was something coarse and sensual 
 in her heavy figure. Her skin, that was dark and 
 oily, now appeared to him unclean. And in her 
 friendly eyes, with their look of frank invitation, 
 he discovered a secret depravity. This made him 
 question the need to merge his sense of self in the 
 
240 NARCISSUS 
 
 impersonal self of the working class. It seemed 
 certain that, to remain pure for leadership, he must 
 live apart. 
 
 IN the vague morning street figures passed dimly 
 on their way to work. The sun, half visible, 
 melted in pale rays that trembled on the wet roofs 
 of houses. The diffused shadows lay on the pave- 
 ments in transparent veils. Julia, on her way to 
 the laboratory, saw Paul walking in front of her, 
 stooping, a tall, awkward figure with a cap pulled 
 over its face. She called, "Paul!" She noticed 
 that he hesitated perceptibly before he glanced back. 
 In her state of mind she felt rebuked for every- 
 thing that went wrong around her. Paul's hesitation 
 challenged her conscience. 
 
 He turned and awaited her approach. She took 
 his cold limp fingers. He seemed shy almost an- 
 gry and would not look at her. "May and I have 
 missed you, Paul. Were you trying to run away 
 from me?" A moment before hearing her voice 
 he had felt worldly and old and self-possessed. He 
 hated himself because, at the time, she always obliged 
 him to believe in her estimate of him rather than 
 his own. He walked along beside her with his hands 
 
NARCISSUS 241 
 
 in his pockets, his head lowered. "Until I met 
 your aunt the other day I thought you had taken 
 the long voyage you were always talking about. We 
 haven't been such bad friends that we deserve to be 
 ignored, have we?" 
 
 Paul said, "I haven't been to see anybody." 
 
 She thought his reserve sulky. "Aren't you go- 
 ing to college in a few days?" 
 
 Paul turned red. He was all against her. "I 
 think a lot of college is a waste of time." 
 
 "I suppose it is, but one might waste time much 
 more disastrously." 
 
 "I feel that going to college would be hypnotizing 
 myself for four years so I wouldn't know what real 
 people were doing." 
 
 "Surely there are some real people in college!" 
 
 "Well, they manage to hide themselves. No col- 
 lege professor would ever let you know that there 
 was such a thing as a class struggle going on!" 
 
 Poor child! Why is he so angry! "I see you're 
 still very much interested in economics." 
 
 "Well, I haven't much use for the theoretical side 
 of it." 
 
 "I thought economics was all theory." 
 
 Paul's intolerance scarcely permitted him to an- 
 
242 NARCISSUS 
 
 swer her. Most women, who go in for making the 
 world right over a cup of tea, do! "If anything 
 good comes to the working people of this country 
 it will be through direct action." He could not go 
 on. His words suffocated him. He knew that she 
 was cursing him once more with the sin of youth. 
 "I can't expect people who don't know anything 
 about actual conditions to agree with me." His 
 trembling hands fumbled helplessly in his pockets. 
 It was all dim between them. Love. I must love 
 the world. She has never suffered. It was almost 
 as if she must suffer before he could go on with 
 what he believed. The world that was old seemed 
 stronger and harder than he could bear. People 
 work because they must starve otherwise. She goes 
 to work that is only another diversion. They die. 
 I could die. Dead beast. Beauty and the beast. 
 His heart was like a stone. 
 
 Julia, watching him as they walked, saw his gullet 
 move in his long stooped neck. Poor awkward 
 child! "I like you for feeling all this, Paul. I used 
 to feel the same things." 
 
 "I suppose you don't believe in them now!" 
 "I'm afraid I don't, Paul not entirely. So many 
 people have tried." She was jealous of the child's 
 
NARCISSUS 243 
 
 illusion, but at the same time complacently sad. He 
 doesn't know me. The boy doesn't know me. Pity, 
 baby, Dudley, Charles, Laurence. 
 
 "It wouldn't be hopeless if they didn't all pat 
 themselves on the back for being disillusioned." 
 
 "What would you think then if I said I envied 
 you?" She loved him for misjudging her. It magni- 
 fied the importance of her loneliness. They were at 
 a crossing where they must part. "Are you going 
 this way?" What makes the child look at me like 
 that! He's unhappy. Paul said, "No." "Then 
 you'll come to see us come to see May and me?" 
 His hand did not take hers, only permitted her grasp. 
 She smiled and went on, feeling that she was leaving 
 something behind that she had meant to keep. 
 
 He remembered her eyes, proud and humble at 
 the same time, that asked of him. As she left him it 
 was as if he were dying. I must love some one! He 
 thought of her soul, a physical soul, meager and 
 abandoned. All at once an unasked thing possessed 
 him. I love her! He was sick with sudden terror 
 and surprise. He walked blindly, jostling people he 
 met. She takes everything beautiful out of my life! 
 His hands clenched in his pockets. No. When he 
 said love, he meant hate. 
 
244 NARCISSUS 
 
 The Indian girl walked down the grass to the ship. 
 The waves, pale and white-crested, parted before her. 
 The waves were like white breasts lying apart wait- 
 ing for him. It was cold in the sea. She wants to 
 kill me. Now he knew what was meant by death 
 beautiful in coldness. White breasts like sculptured 
 things. They were so still he could lie in them for- 
 ever. Death. The peace of perfection. In the cold 
 pure sky quivered the thin rays of stars. The end 
 of life. I love her, not beautiful her weak body 
 torn by life. 
 
 No, no, no! He could not endure it. Seas paler, 
 and paler still. Not beautiful. The water ran out 
 forever. Dawn, and the empty sands like glowing 
 shadows of silk. A sandpiper flying overhead made 
 dim reflections of himself. With flashings of heavy 
 light, the water unrolled, and sank back from the 
 beach. 
 
 made repeated unsuccessful efforts to 
 see Julia. It was a long time before he was 
 willing to be convinced that she was avoiding him. 
 When he finally realized it, he felt that he had been 
 going toward a place which seemed beautiful, but 
 
NARCISSUS 245 
 
 that when he stood in it there was only emptiness. 
 The emptiness was in him, hard, like a light which 
 disclosed nothing but its own brightness. He hated, 
 but the emotion had no particular object, for, by its 
 very intensity, even Julia was obliterated. There 
 was nothing but himself, a thing frozen in a bril- 
 liance which blinded its own eyes. If he could have 
 felt anything definite against her it would have been 
 easier. To stop hating the emptiness, he began to 
 drink more heavily. If he permitted himself to seek 
 an object through which his suffering could be ex- 
 pressed he reverted to Catherine. He must keep 
 away from that. I mustn't hurt her. Poor old girl. 
 It's not right. 
 
 He found that his repugnance to Catherine had 
 become so acute that, to keep himself from saying 
 and doing irretrievable things, it was necessary to 
 escape the house and her presence. By God, it's 
 rotten! She's stood by me. I've got to be good to 
 her. 
 
 In his rejuvenated conception of his wife he exag- 
 gerated both her acuteness and her capacity for suf- 
 fering. It now appeared to him that she had im- 
 molated herself on the altar of an ideal of which he 
 
246 NARCISSUS 
 
 was the embodiment. She's loved me. She's always 
 loved me. I don't know what's the matter with me. 
 Christ, what a rotten world this is! 
 
 Then her small face rose up before him in all its 
 evasive pleasantness. He hated the faded prettiness 
 of it; the withered look of her throat; the velvet 
 band she wore about her neck to make herself ap- 
 pear younger when she was in evening dress. He 
 hated her delicate characterless hands that were less 
 fresh than her face. The very memory of her rings 
 oppressed him. She was always so richly yet so dis- 
 creetly dressed. Such perfect taste. She had a way 
 of seeming to call attention to other people's bad 
 breeding. He remembered the glasses she put on 
 when she read and hated the look of them on her 
 small nose. The little grimace she made when she 
 laughed. Her verbal insistence on sensible footgear 
 and the feeling he always had that her shoes were 
 too small for her. The quizzical contempt with 
 which she baffled him. Her sweet severe smile be- 
 hind which she concealed herself. 
 
 My God, I've got to. I've got to. When he real- 
 ized that the recollection of Julia was coming into 
 his mind he went somewhere and took another drink. 
 It was hot and quieting. Warm sensual dark in 
 
NARCISSUS 247 
 
 which he could hide himself. Julia was something 
 bright and glassy that stabbed his eyes. He put her 
 out like a light. He held fast to his sense of sin. He 
 had to torture himself with reproaches to make it 
 seem worth while to go back to his wife. 
 
 tried to immerse himself in business. 
 This was the one province in which he could 
 act without hesitations. He called it, "playing the 
 game". The atmosphere of trade hardened him. 
 He had unconsciously absorbed some of his wife's 
 contempt for the details of money making. Where 
 he was not permitted to be sentimental, he luxuriated 
 in a callousness of which he was incapable in his in- 
 timate life. 
 
 Day after day, scrupulously dressed, he sat in his 
 office, an expensive cigar between his lips, pre- 
 serving to his associates what would be called a 
 "poker face". If he were able to get the best of any 
 one especially through doubtful and unanticipated 
 means it gave him an illusion of power which 
 tempted him later to prolific benevolence. He had 
 begun life as a telegraph operator in a small town. 
 He deserted this profession to go into trade. At one 
 time he was a small manufacturer. Later he sold 
 
248 NARCISSUS 
 
 mining stock, and promoted a company that ulti- 
 mately failed. His first success had come when he 
 went into the lumber industry, and he had recently 
 become possessed of some oil fields that were mak- 
 ing him rich. 
 
 Charles never felt pity for any one who was on a 
 financial equality with himself. He would fleece 
 such a man without a qualm. He distrusted Social- 
 ists, tolerated trade unions with suspicion, but was 
 sorry for "the rough necks". Poor devils! I know 
 what it's like. We're all of us poor devils. He loved 
 to think of himself as one who, through sheer force 
 of initiative, had risen despite unusual handicaps. 
 By gosh, before I get through I'm going to be quits 
 with the world ! At least we can keep the women out 
 of this ! Damned muck! 
 
 In the flush of unscrupulous conquest, his eyes 
 glistened with triumph. His gestures were harshly 
 confident. He looked young and happy. If, at such 
 times, he encountered women, they found his mix- 
 ture of simplicity and ruthlessness particularly in- 
 gratiating. 
 
NARCISSUS 249 
 
 IN the street Charles remembered a small niece 
 whom he had not thought of for a long time. 
 Brother's kid. I'll send her something. His brother 
 was a poor man working on a small salary. Charles 
 wanted to do something generous that would help 
 him to think well of himself. God, what a fool I am!. 
 He walked along briskly with his hat off, looking in- 
 solent and debonair. When an acquaintance passed 
 in a motor car a jovial greeting was exchanged. 
 To make himself oblivious to the resentment 
 which was in the memory of Julia, Charles dwelt 
 elaborately on the memory of other women. Blanche, 
 damn her! I'll have to go and see her again. One 
 hand around the old boy's neck and the other in his 
 pocket. He tried to keep away from the center 
 toward which his thoughts converged. What price 
 life! Hell! (In the depths of me, this awful des- 
 pair. Horror, horror, horror. Something clutched 
 and dragged him into himself.) He stretched his 
 neck above his collar and % passed his finger along 
 the edge. (Some woman's throat white like that. 
 Bent back. Lilies on a windy day. I shall die.) 
 
 Young Goode coming toward him. Goode think- 
 ing, Here's that unmoral innocent. He'll live for- 
 ever. Hurst's a bounder. Damn well-meaning ass. 
 
250 NARCISSUS 
 
 They stood on the street corner gossiping. Young 
 Goode's brown eyes desponded from boredom. Very 
 handsome. A black mustache. His nose almost 
 Greek. His head empty only a few clever thoughts. 
 "Hello, Hurst." "Hello, Goode, old chap. Yes, go- 
 ing out to Marburne to-morrow Wilson and his 
 wife. How are you? What do you think of the 
 election? Glad that crook, Hallo well, got kicked 
 out." 
 
 Goode said he was thinking of turning Bolshevist. 
 His smile was self-appreciative. Ludicrous! 
 
 "Well, I hope not. Haven't come to that yet. 
 But the patriotism of some of these ward heelers is 
 pretty thin. Yes hope we'll see you." 
 
 They moved apart. Young Goode grew small in 
 distance. A dark vanishing speck down the glaring 
 street. Christ, what a hot day! Charles mumbled 
 over some obscene expressions. I don't want to 
 think. (Catherine, lilies, white and beautiful neck.) 
 
 Charles had gone all the way to town on foot. In 
 front of the building where his office was located he 
 encountered Mr. Wilson. "Hello! Hello! What do 
 you think of this for the beginning of fall? Hot, eh? 
 About time for another drink? Yes, going out to 
 your wife's new place. Kate says it's quite a 
 
NARCISSUS 251 
 
 buy. Not yours? What's a husband now-a-days! 
 Superfluous critter. Endured but not wanted." 
 
 Mr. Wilson's eyes were twinklingly submerged be- 
 tween his fat cheeks and bulging brows. He hadn't 
 time for a drink. He wanted to talk business be- 
 fore he left town. He chuckled at everything 
 Charles said. His full cheeks quivered and his neat 
 belly shook in the opening of his coat. Charles was 
 wary of unqualified approbation, but the more sus- 
 picious he became the more easy and Rabelaisian 
 was his conversation. "Well well well, Hurst! 
 I'll be" Mr. Wilson actually suffered in delight. 
 
 They had seated themselves in Charles's inner 
 room, a handsome heavy desk between them. 
 Charles gazed with cold innocent eyes at the laugh- 
 ing fat man opposite. 
 
 When Mr. Wilson had gone Charles opened a cup- 
 board and took out a bottle. In business hours he 
 was very moderate in his indulgence. 
 
 A long white road, just empty, going nowhere. 
 The car jumped to his touch. How cool and still it 
 had been in the woods at evening when he and Julia 
 drove home. That's beautiful. Myself beautiful, 
 wanting to be loved. Fat old fool. Little children, 
 little children, come unto me. 
 
252 NARCISSUS 
 
 My God, he said out loud, I'm getting a screw 
 loose. Growing senile! Julia that hurts. I can't 
 think of that. Kate, poor girl ! 
 
 All day he felt as though the memory of some 
 pathetic death had made him kind. 
 
 AT last Paul had made up his mind to run away. 
 His interest in the revolution had waned. 
 What do I think? May that Farley woman. I 
 don't know. His emotions had betrayed him. 
 Where am I? I don't know anything. I don't know 
 myself. He was unhappy, afraid that some one 
 would discover for him that his unhappiness also 
 was absurd. His aunt, and Uncle Archie, were inti- 
 mate with the things that made his thoughts. He 
 wanted to go away, overseas, to know things which 
 their recognitions had never touched. When he was 
 a part of foreign life they would not be able to reach 
 his thoughts. He wanted to put his wonder into 
 things that were dark to them. 
 
 There were days when he spent all his free time 
 among the docks. He edged into the vast obscurity 
 of warehouses. Red-necked men, half dressed, were 
 pushing trucks about. When they shouted orders 
 to each other their voices echoed in the twilight of 
 
NARCISSUS 253 
 
 dust and mingled odors in the huge sheds. Through 
 an opening, far off, Paul saw the side of a ship, white, 
 on which the sun struck a ray like light on another 
 world. There was a porthole in the glaring frag- 
 ment of hull. The porthole glittered. The strip of 
 water below it was like twinkling oil. 
 
 He made friends with a petty officer of a Brazil- 
 ian freight boat who took him aboard for a visit. 
 On the machine deck Paul saw sailors' clothes spread 
 out to dry. With the smell of hot metal and grease 
 was mingled the odor of fresh paint. He leaned 
 over one of the ventilators and the air that came 
 out of it almost overpowered him. 
 
 From where he stood he could see the city dis- 
 tantly. Here and there a tower radiated, or a gilded 
 cornice on a high roof flashed through the opacity of 
 smoke. When he faced the sun the glow was in- 
 tolerable, but he turned another way and watched 
 a world that looked drowned in light. The ships 
 were crowded along the docks as if they were on 
 dry land. Masts and smoke stacks bristled together. 
 The harbor, filled with tugs and barges, seemed to 
 have contracted so that the farthest line of shore was 
 only a hand's throw away. 
 
 He listened to the creaking of hawsers and the 
 
254 NARCISSUS 
 
 shouts in foreign tongues. When the wind turned 
 toward him, the strong oily fragrance of the sacks of 
 coffee that were being unloaded over the gang plank 
 pervaded everything. The wind touched him like the 
 hand of a ghost. Gulls with bright wings darted 
 through the haze to rest for an instant amidst the 
 refuse that floated in the brown fiery water. 
 
 Down in the engine room something was burring 
 and churning. The water rose along the ship's side 
 with a hiss of faint motion, and descended again as 
 if in stealthy silence. Nothing but the lap, lap 
 of tiny waves succeeding one another. As if the 
 sun's rays had woven a net about it, the water was 
 caught again in stillness. It was a transfixed glory 
 like the end of the world. 
 
 I shall die. I shall never come back. Inside Paul 
 was like a light growing dim to itself, going on for- 
 ever in invisible distance. When he contemplated 
 leaving everything he knew, he followed the disap- 
 pearing light, and when it died away he belonged to 
 the strange lands which wanted him like dreams. 
 The river and the city, dim and harsh at the same 
 time, had the indefiniteness which allowed him to 
 give himself to them. He was in them, in smoke and 
 endless distance. He listened to the hoarse startling 
 
NARCISSUS 255 
 
 whistles of tugs, the shrill whistles of factories blow- 
 ing the noon hour on land, the confusion of voices 
 that rose from the small boats clustered about the 
 ship's stern. 
 
 Going away. Dying. I shall be dead of light, not 
 known. Fear of the unknown. There is only fear of 
 the known, he said to himself, the known outside. 
 The unknown is in me. He wondered what he was 
 saying, growing up. Mature. He felt as if he had 
 already gone far, far away, beyond the touch of the 
 familiar things one never understood. The strange 
 was close. It was his. 
 
 MAY felt herself lost in pale endless beauty of 
 which Aunt Julia was a part. Love in the 
 darkness. Love in her own room at night when she 
 was alone and hugged her pillow to her wet face. 
 Through the window she saw the trees in the street 
 leaning together and mingling their odd shadows. 
 An arc light was a blurred circle through the branches 
 and the stiff leaves shaking and dropping occasion- 
 ally to earth. When she was unseen she could give 
 herself. If they saw her, they shut her in. Now 
 she was everywhere, wanted, dark in the dark street. 
 She could see a star above the roof and she was in 
 
256 NARCISSUS 
 
 the star filled with thin light. She felt as if she were 
 dying of love, dying of happiness. Happy over a 
 world which was beautiful because she loved it. She 
 loved Paul, but he was only a part of the secret city 
 a part of everything. She did not want to think of 
 him too much. Jesus, everything, she said. I'm 
 Jesus. She shivered at her blasphemy, and was glad. 
 I'm Jesus! I'm Jesus! The leaves rattled against 
 the window pane and fell into the dark street. It 
 was too bright. She drew herself up in a knot and 
 hid her face. 
 
 IT was a hot night. Bobby was excited and cross. 
 He was going away to school the next day. His 
 two trunks stood open on the floor of his room. Out- 
 side the windows the dry leaves rustled in the murky 
 night. Some rain drops splattered against the lifted 
 glass. Then there was silence, save for the occa- 
 sional rattle of twigs in the darkness. An auto- 
 mobile slipped by with the long soft sound of rubber 
 tires sucking damp asphalt. When the branches of 
 the trees parted, the Kghts in the house opposite 
 seemed to draw nearer. Bobby disliked their 
 spying. 
 He clattered up and down the stairs and through 
 
NARCISSUS 257 
 
 the halls in the still house where one could hear the 
 clocks tick. 
 
 Depressed and resentful, Julia had kept herself 
 from the boy and his preparations. He encountered 
 her outside his door. She was passing quietly, trying 
 not to be seen. "Gee whizz, Aunt Julia, I haven't 
 got anybody to help me!" Julia realized that she 
 was hypocritical in her determination to keep away 
 from him. "I don't see why you can't help me, 
 Aunt Julia." 
 
 Julia clasped her long pale fingers together in front 
 of her black dress. She smiled. Bobby doesn't 
 know! Oh, Laurence, how can you! "Hadn't you 
 better do it alone, Bobby? Then you'll know 
 where everything is." She was thinking how proud 
 his throat looked above his open collar. His sun- 
 burned neck was full and slender like a flower 
 calyx. She found something pathetic in his small 
 hard face: his short straight nose, his sulky mouth, 
 his round chin, his eyes that saw nothing but their 
 own desires. She loved him. He hurt her so, hard 
 beautiful little beast. She walked through the door, 
 into his domain that recalled his school pennants 
 and baseball bats. "What a trunk! You haven't 
 left room for clothes, child." 
 
258 NARCISSUS 
 
 "Well, gee whizz, Aunt Julia, I've got to take my 
 boxing gloves and my hockey sticks, and there's not 
 anything in yet." She crouched by the trunk and 
 began to lift his treasures from it. "I'm afraid this 
 will all have to be taken out." 
 
 Bobby stepped on her trailing skirt as he peered 
 into the trunk. "Gosh, Aunt Julia, it's so long!" 
 He added, "You're so darn slow." 
 
 "Have you asked May to help you?" 
 
 "Gosh, Aunt Julia, I don't want her! She never 
 will help me anyway." 
 
 "I'm afraid you don't help her very much." 
 Julia glanced over her shoulder. Her smile apolo- 
 gized for her severity. 
 
 "Well, gee, when she wants me to help her it's 
 always some fool girl's thing. She's not going away 
 to school." 
 
 Laurence, climbing the stairs slowly, heard their 
 talk. He had hidden himself for the evening, and 
 was on his way to bed. He went to the door and 
 looked in. Julia saw him, and clambered to her 
 feet, tripping over her skirt. Laurence concentrated 
 his attention on Bobby. "Not through yet?" 
 
 "Well, darn it, Dad, I've got to get everything in 
 these two measly little trunks. I just can't do it." 
 
NARCISSUS 259 
 
 Laurence came forward. "Oh, yes, you can." He 
 squatted beside the heap of clothes. Julia stepped 
 back like an intruder. She watched his hands, with 
 their gestures of delicacy and tension, moving among 
 the scattered objects. His sweet sneer seemed graven 
 on his face. Everything about him, his clumsy 
 humped shoulders, the spread of his hams straining 
 the cloth of his trousers, was full of her knowledge 
 of him that he would not admit. Bobby ran about 
 the room bringing things to his father. Rain flut- 
 tered out of the darkness and made threads of mo- 
 tion on the silvered glass. "You'd better shut that 
 window, Bobby." Bobby struggled with the sash. 
 "Gee whizz, Dad, it's so hot in here!" 
 
 Julia wanted to leave them, but could not. She 
 felt blank, and excluded, as though they had thrust 
 her out into the obliviousness of the night. She was 
 tired of the disorder of her inner life, but there was 
 an intoxication in desperation vivid enough to make 
 remembered peace seem dead and unreal. The only 
 peace she could look forward to would come in go- 
 ing on and on to the numbness of broken intensity. 
 When one became God, one destroyed in order to ac- 
 complish one's godhead. By destruction one brought 
 everything into one's self. But she was heavy with 
 
260 NARCISSUS 
 
 the everything that she had become. It was too 
 much. Only Laurence remained outside her. He 
 would not have her. He was more than she, because 
 he would not take her and become her. Love could 
 not annihilate him. She understood the strategy of 
 crucifixion, but could not accomplish it. 
 
 Laurence was rising stiffly to his feet. "Better, 
 eh?" 
 
 Bobby was grudgingly appreciative. "There's a 
 lot more. I'm much obliged. I guess it's all right." 
 
 Laurence settled his cuffs about his wrists and, 
 drawing out a crumpled handkerchief, brushed dust 
 from his small hands. "Well, that will do until morn- 
 ing anyway. Anything we can't find room for we'll 
 send after you. You'd better get to bed now." 
 
 Julia said, "Good-night, Bobby, dear." "Good- 
 night." Bobby did not see her face. "Good-night, 
 Robert." " 'Night, Dad." 
 
 Julia followed Laurence out. Still he did not look 
 at her. He was relieved by the certainty of Bobby's 
 departure, and willing to acknowledge that he owed 
 Julia some compensation. "Well, I suppose we'll 
 miss the kid." 
 
 "I shall." They were before Julia's door. She 
 hesitated with her hand on the knob. "Won't you 
 
NARCISSUS 261 
 
 come in and talk to me a minute, Laurence?" He 
 avoided her eyes again and stiffened weakly to re- 
 sist her tone. "Pretty late, isn't it?" He noted her 
 trembling lips. I can't bear that mouth. "Isn't it 
 time you got to sleep?" "I can't sleep." 
 
 Then he had to meet her gaze. He was lost in it. 
 He smiled wryly. "All right." With a sense of 
 groping, he followed her in. He wanted the strength 
 to keep her out of his life forever. When she exposed 
 her misery to him, it was as if she were showing him 
 breasts which he did not desire. 
 
 Julia said, "Sit down, won't you, Laurence? I 
 feel almost as if you had never been here." Why 
 did she treat him like a guest! He knew her suf- 
 fering gaze was fixed on him steadily. Laurence, 
 self-entangled, was ashamed to defend himself. He 
 hated her because he loved her. He was jealous of 
 the virgin quality of his pain, and he must give it up 
 for her to ravage in a shared emotion. It was as if 
 her hands, sensually understanding, were reaching 
 voluptuously for his heart. 
 
 "You've changed your furniture around." He 
 fumbled in his pocket for a cigar. Julia was closer. 
 He could feel her movement closer to him. He could 
 no longer hide himself. 
 
262 NARCISSUS 
 
 Julia knelt by the side of his chair. "Are you 
 sending Bobby off to get him away from me, 
 Laurie?" 
 
 I shall have to look at her. I can't! I can't! 
 "What an idea, Julia!" 
 
 "Laurie, don't punish me! It's killing me to be 
 shut out of your life." 
 
 His head was bent over his unlit cigar, as he rolled 
 it endlessly in his fingers. A tear splashed on his 
 hand his own tear. He wondered at it. He was 
 helpless. "Laurie, my darling! I love you, whether 
 you love me or not!" She was pressing his head 
 against her. His lost head. It lolled. It was hers. 
 Everything was hers. She had taken him, and was 
 exposing his love for her. This would be the hardest 
 thing to forget. Could he ever forget? He gave 
 himself limply to her exultance. "You've killed me, 
 Julia. What is there to forgive? Yes, I love you. 
 I love you." They leaned together. How easily she 
 cries! They love each other. "Oh, Laurie, my 
 darling, my darling! Thank you! Thank you!" 
 She was kissing his hands. He writhed inwardly. 
 My God, not that! Even 7 can't bear it! "Don't, 
 Julia. Please don't." "I want to be yours, Laurie 
 oh, won't you let me be yours?" "Julia, I'm any- 
 
NARCISSUS 263 
 
 thing. I'm broken. I don't know." He was weep- 
 ing through his fingers. She pulled them apart, and 
 pressed her lips to his face and his closed eyes. 
 
 After a time they were calm. She was tender to 
 his humiliation. When he lit the cigar which he had 
 recovered from the floor, she sat at his feet and 
 smiled. He recognized his need of her now. It was 
 dull and persistent. Yes, God forbid that I should 
 judge anybody. I love her. 
 
 "Laurie?" 
 
 "Julia?" His furtive eyes admitted the sin she 
 put on them. 
 
 "Dear Laurie! I love you so much." 
 
 Unacknowledged, each kept for himself a pain 
 which the other could not heal. Each pitied 
 the other's illusion, and was steadied by it into 
 gentleness. 
 
 THE END 
 
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