2019114006-wittenLM-test.txt

"You mean dream"?	26.85148961008665
"Not exactly.	11.1922964057249
Just see it".	10.561469591612475
Benson grinned and flipped a rock with his thumb like a marble.	369.24887844918743
"Nope, just you, all the time- sometimes I think it's the only way I'll ever get a decent partner".	956.8308395775313
Ramey smiled but he thought to himself, I always see me too.	190.0000729842011
Never Benny.	25.111475602829024
Whenever he saw someone lying in the dirt, Ramey wondered what the person had been thinking and he would try out thoughts in his own mind.	571.7106190477107
Then he would realize they were really things that only he himself could think.	103.09010743750801
With this realization, sometimes, he saw himself as he looked down.	96.1522591407877
"You seen him yet"?	39.001182028778594
Benson said, referring to the Indian.	376.1448591408836
"He wasn't in the car", Ramey said.	181.61650792974464
"You didn't go clear around", Benson said.	78.10116652192316
"If you want to see something, he's back on the other side by the trunk of the car".	447.94551531611785
"Too long a waiting line", Ramey answered, pretending to joke.	227.39215337536848
A few minutes later the insurance man, a road checker, drove up in the gray coupe with license plates on it from a far-away state.	618.8527051665146
It was a trick they used to try and conceal their identity when they followed trucks to check their speed.	242.6927632137385
Sometimes they just parked at the side of the road and used radar on the trucks as they passed.	104.51969505610708
All the drivers knew about the plates and they also knew about the big floppy straw hat with shredded edges, the kind natives in travel ads wear when they are out joyfully chopping cane.	1755.2583965285653
Horsely, an agent on the east end, wore the hat, trying to look like a tourist.	584.1087538096431
It had always seemed strange to Ramey that to disguise himself as a tourist, an ex-truck driver like Horsely would merely pick something outlandish and put it on his head.	859.2441028321066
The insurance man informed them that he had talked to Crumley who was all right and that he would watch the men's personal effects until they towed the rig back to town.	758.1895305178518
He chatted with Ramey and Benson for a minute or so in the meager shade of the trailer.	285.13000071069325
Every so often the diminishing sound of a car came under the trailer as it slowed down for the wreck then speeded up again as it got clear.	489.37016339065025
When they were ready to leave, Benson and Ramey walked back around the rear of the trailer.	172.26875794686896
"There's a body you won't mind looking at", Benson said and they stopped.	173.35068427018678
She had driven up with her husband in a convertible with Eastern license plates, although the two drivers knew nothing at the moment about that.	517.1113133096762
She wore shorts and a loose terry-cloth shirt.	186.07521766341196
Slender and tanned, her dark brown hair was drawn straight back, simply.	379.71549663961207
"What outfit does she drive for"?	80.4635621980148
Benson said.	18.573845183833658
Seeing her caused a lurch in Ramey, a recognition.	148.17844915710154
She might have been someone he had once loved.	91.013846075838
He had never seen her before, but now he thought of the manner in which he and Benson went in and out of the cities, at each end of their run.	1351.7475194254996
The truck routes, the industrial areas with walls grimed with diesel smoke passed briefly through his mind- back alleys were their access to a city and they could never stay.	1095.8791865868375
How would you ever see her again?	74.95123500612108
The feeling subsided, it was only a small yearning.	565.2602242976297
Their work was lonely.	20.743171384576193
"What's she doing in this bunch"?	93.76068588779589
Benson said, and Ramey wondered how close their thoughts might have been.	246.9313163863203
The girl looked around at the countryside.	50.139251427844826
Her glance swung past the trailer where the two drivers were standing.	261.01785481839124
It made only a tiny bump over the two men like a tire over a piece of gravel then moved on.	240.68699428070065
She began to watch a blonde-haired man, also in shorts, standing right at the rear of the wrecked car in the one spot that most of the crowd had detoured slightly.	457.7362918751287
What had caught his attention was obscured by the car itself, so that neither the girl nor the truck drivers could see, but Benson knew what it was.	609.4089354054075
The girl took a couple of steps toward the man in shorts when Benson, in that barefoot courtliness Ramey could never decide was real, said, "You don't want to go around there, Ma'am".	1799.5028883300495
The girl stopped but did not turn her head or acknowledge that someone had spoken to her.	209.6849340141536
The man stood near the bent levi-clad body of the Indian who lay face down almost under the car.	508.02512095869577
The two drivers moved closer.	39.25706724193316
"What does he want, a spoon"?	31.825765762034592
Benson said to Ramey.	69.61636163631105
One tiny detail in a happening can clog the memory and stick like meat in a crooked tooth, while the rest of the occurrence will go hazy and uncertain.	624.2866450064571
With Ramey it was a dusty work shoe that was half-off the Indian's foot that he would always remember.	421.6228954611204
The laces were broken at the bottom of the eyelets but there was still a bow knot at the top.	634.731759052577
The slightest twitch would have parted the shoe entirely from the foot, yet the toes were still inside.	361.11907526433987
The two men in overalls stood just behind the blonde-headed man.	143.60020747199553
He wore tennis shorts and a white sweater with a red V at the neck, the sleeves pushed above the elbows.	866.2208635146433
He turned and looked at them with clear blue eyes, immaculate eyes.	141.88723648772037
He was very tanned- big hands might have torn him from a Coca-Cola poster.	401.8971905796968
"He's dead, isn't he"?	43.2560026494417
the man said.	16.49840937124433
He turned and bent over the body of the Indian.	271.73413866121604
There was nothing in particular on the man's face.	124.90420698427555
It was simply a matter of curiosity, a natural right to examine.	72.45214666506021
"What's this"?	11.321772411621568
the man said, backing up a step, still looking down.	128.21057029668665
His words were mostly to himself.	17.360894178371474
"Don't".	6.720178891407462
There was a gentle concern in Benson's voice.	61.43894230695391
Ramey looked down and saw the white sneaker at the bottom of the man's tanned leg cautiously nudge a bit of folded, blood-flecked substance lying by itself on the pavement.	1277.0565718689488
"But what is it"?	31.067183752192797
the man said with a tone of impatience.	80.82219560964764
But what is it?	31.067183752192797
The man had spoken only once.	27.790444265567555
Ramey heard the words again inside, weakened, the way moving water sounds through a grove of trees, until he was not sure whether it was sound or light-headedness pressing in his ears.	1836.0523612454717
The sneaker reached out once more to tap against the mass and Ramey's vision darkened except for an unreasonable clarity of the man's leg.	647.2051886802985
Ramey saw sunlight touch the curly blonde hairs on the brown skin.	601.5740385457144
He stared at the shining, shining circles of hairs and heard the voice of his partner through trees, "Don't do that, fella.	502.72401049174033
Them's brains".	45.536935916928186
The man seemed to sink a little as Ramey brought the tire iron down on his shoulder and it seemed that the blonde head was turning as he hit the man again, with his fist.	929.9350907834738
Ramey swung and caught the man just to the left of his mouth.	114.4020264830121
It was a straight, solid, once-in-a-lifetime shot; he laid all four knuckles in between the man's cheekbone and his chin.	253.7343969872471
Ramey's fist and the air expelled from the man's collapsing cheek made a hollow pop in the air like cupped hands clapping together.	1791.566109802072
The man took two short steps backward then sat down heavily on the pavement.	256.30000472889867
Ramey heard a cry from the girl and felt a slight pain somewhere in his hand.	192.3989482212574
As he watched the man sit suddenly, a detached part of his mind observed how very difficult it was, really, to knock a man off his feet.	909.178585706354
He hadn't done it this time and he would never again hit anyone so hard.	1523.249510922641
With a thoughtful look, the man sat on the pavement, legs straight out in front of him.	264.775075877489
His arms hung like empty shirt sleeves, and his mouth was slightly open.	289.5359132906343
After what seemed several seconds, the open mouth grew dark inside then blood began to ooze from it.	370.23439776094074
The man brought one hand up slowly and the fingers fumbled across his face until he touched his mouth.	295.6128504278314
He moaned and pulled the hand away.	62.37202075503162
Even yet there was no realization in his eyes.	57.706398458078866
Ramey could hear the crowd coming up rapidly behind him and the questioning voices coming over his shoulder had no identity or importance to him.	534.2350317158646
He did not look around.	12.425359737739191
"What happened"?	6.126574568554337
someone said.	13.24306669741279
"He's hurt"!	36.59957848659855
A woman's voice said, and then he heard a sort of wail from the man's wife.	311.97220087742187
The man on the ground began to move; one of his hands flattened out on the pavement and supported him.	467.6796735811469
Blood dripped down the front of his sweater, soaking into a dark streak of dirt that ran diagonally across the white wool on his shoulder, as though the bright V woven into the neckline had melted, running a darker color.	2240.2041605356744
The girl kneeled by her husband with one arm at his back.	136.72703788333402
"Can you hear, can you talk to me"?	52.519503656868004
she begged.	27.264630711679846
An incoherent, puzzled sound came from the red mouth.	320.10405499804506
The girl looked around quickly at several of the people.	144.80360982776267
None of the crowd had stepped forward to help.	130.6144556089782
Then she saw Ramey and her face was misshapen with bewilderment.	233.65579868618005
"Why did you do it- why did you hit him"?	98.56362783428455
she said, her voice rising.	225.61435159386116
Ramey said nothing.	27.615546768471283
A shine in her eyes suddenly became tears and she turned back to her husband again.	286.81154430210904
Behind Ramey feet scraped beneath sharp questioning whispers.	711.5366496087448
No one seemed to know for sure what had happened, nor was there any purpose or responsibility in the muttering feet and urgent voices behind the driver, beyond finding out.	779.0096657791006
Ramey looked around and caught sight of his partner near the front end of the wrecked truck talking to the patrolman.	512.7590340034459
Benson moved his arms, gesturing with an unfamiliar vigor and talking rapidly.	399.99912418380967
Ramey caught a glimpse of the insurance man.	95.52527794397531
Some of the ruddiness was gone from his face and he stared at Ramey.	375.0435490112373
It's all over now, the driver thought as he saw the patrolman turn and walk rapidly down along the trailer toward them.	481.4417696362801
Ramey watched him coming with a vision as clean as the glare on the metal sides of the trailer.	342.09130784835924
He saw the dark sweat spots flip in and out of sight under the patrolman's swinging arms and in the leather holster that swaggered and rolled at the side of his stocky body, the sun left a smoky shine on the narrow strip of blue metal that ran between the horned handles of his pistol.	1471.7432641390994
"All right, step back"!	38.84708619530865
the patrolman said to no one in particular as he pushed between the fat man in the baseball cap and a young boy in levis.	1868.3155332456613
He walked straight up to the man sitting on the ground and bent over to look at him.	367.8525609611346
"You all right"?	19.66953897882763
"Mough- it's my mough", the man said, trying to talk without moving his lips.	207.53021443884245
His brown face looked gray from dirt streaks where his hand had come off the dusty pavement and rubbed across it.	649.12902371426
Then he calmly and carefully slugged the remaining five shots into the venomous head- caught in the wicker back of the chair, the eyes dead on him as the life finally went out of the brute.	745.1673799394968
The body continued to lash, but now Keith used the legs of the chair to fork the loathsome, bloody mass out of the bungalow.	407.8160616831957
He slammed the door and listened as his servants ran up, alarmed at the sound of the shots.	218.85356702723837
He heard their chattering, and then the sounds of hacking as they dismembered the snake right on the porch with wood axes.	462.204165224888
It was only then that he turned to look at Penny.	134.36099434827028
She was sitting on the edge of the bed again, back in the same position where the snake had found her.	834.2055370495691
The fear had not entirely gone from her face, but there were some other emotions now, crowding into her eyes and the lines of her mouth.	421.0595055888698
But her hands were calm, now.	34.16223563632841
She's got guts, thought Keith.	132.85162032681149
She's got more guts than any other woman in the world.	257.19716449758766
"Keith", said Penny, "Keith, you were wonderful.	187.70414726926748
I don't suppose a wife should be grateful to her husband for saving her life, but I am.	508.67127489847877
Thank you, Keith".	55.013769253216815
He smiled at her sincerity.	26.1966732883923
And for the hundredth time that week, he was startled at her beauty.	129.15431832385408
Strange.	10.480665544470849
Seven years they'd been married.	178.67130648199046
He knew her mind pretty well, by now, its quick perceptions and sympathies, its painful insistence on truth and directness, its capacity for love almost too deep for a man to reciprocate, even in part.	452.9507254837322
But her beauty always surprised him anew.	112.01388374740533
"I realize that this is hardly the time to say it, Penny", said Keith.	204.20380357536598
"But knowing you, I know that you're glad to be alive, and grateful- and sorry because I killed the snake, even though I had to.	4843.434890833147
Isn't that so"?	12.009581845490503
Penny lowered her eyes.	60.49716180743765
"Yes", she said, almost in a whisper, as if admitting to a crime.	99.14054309159985
"The snake was beautiful, wasn't it"?	56.98574781595865
asked Keith, his voice getting harsher in spite of himself, as he struggled to control his growing anger.	297.4158857081265
"It was a king cobra, the largest you ever saw, and it deserved to live out its life in the jungle, didn't it?	230.7164068062188
DIDN'T IT? "	116.0823674357694
Penny did not answer.	29.955271107980096
Now, she just sat there looking at him, without an expression except concern for him.	167.55670591877484
"We're all God's creatures, aren't we"?	232.7176119421402
Keith was snarling now.	60.02667483412373
"All of us- every goddam roach and worm and killer in that jungle.	231.75566305599816
You love this village and these stinking brown people because they're God's creatures, too.	327.96176721531367
And you love Ahmiri, that black bastard of a servant even a little more, because he's a beautiful man.	258.46473192321156
And he loves you because you're a beautiful woman.	252.0576106158076
We're all God's creatures, aren't we, Penny?	336.97573391171244
All of us, that is, except me.	25.785126463627204
You hate me, you hate my guts, because I like to hunt.	227.7014843102278
You actually hate me- and we both know it- because I killed that filthy snake.	625.0235336083539
h Well, why don't you say something"?	41.283934987974796
Penny would not rise to his mood.	84.07874805916275
"There isn't anything left to say, is there, Keith"?	129.5489403478634
She softly let herself into the bed, and took her regular side, away from the door, where she slept better because Keith was between her and the invader.	4908.72001258775
He knew she was not sulking, not even angry at him.	213.14413677640474
Just as he knew that she had stopped loving him.	594.8228281380548
The Brahmaputra has its headwaters in the tableland of the world, the towering white headwalls of the Himalayas that are unknown to man as any other space on the planet.	539.3978094114021
For a brief period each year, the rays of the sun are warm enough to melt some of the snows piled a mile deep at the base of the headwalls, and then the pinnacles glisten in the daytime at high noon, and billions of gallons of water begin their slow seepage under the glaciers and across the rockstrewn hanging valleys on their long, meandering journey to the sea- running east past the sky-carving massifs of Gurla Mandhata and Kemchenjunga, then turning south and curling down through the jungles of Assam, past the Khasi Hills, and into Bengal, past Sirinjani and Madaripur, until the hard water of the melting snows mingles with the soft drainage of fields and at length fans out to meld with the teeming salt depths of the Bay of Bengal.	2248.3636034397823
Keith Sterling had looked down on the Brahmaputra more times than he could remember, during the war days when he flew over the Hump of the world, thinking it high adventure in those times before man was guiding himself through outer space.	933.316550070431
But Keith looked down more than up.	72.19259907809572
He thought of the jungles below him, and of the wild, strange, untracked beauty there and he promised himself that someday he would return, on foot perhaps, to hunt in this last corner of the world where man is sometimes himself the hunted, and animals the lords.	691.2354087727666
At first it had been just a romantic dream of his, the same as the idea of finishing Oxford after the war.	198.82377139735556
But "after the war" was a luxury of a phrase he did not permit himself.	361.61879497999394
Wing Commanders in the RAF do not imply survival in the future either in their orders or in their attitudes, to their men or to themselves.	345.5039784351273
And Keith's record of kills made him a man to listen to- a man paradoxically, who might even survive.	516.5078172502564
He became a fighter pilot after the stint over the Hump in the big crates.	219.4550778240528
The RAF was Britain's weapon of attrition, and flying a fighter plane was the way her sons could serve her best at this point in the war.	467.99696162721585
He knew how to shoot down Nazis.	75.43018734918235
And he knew that the men talked about him behind his back, saying that he was one up on everybody else- including the pilot of the plane with the swastika on it- because he was chemically incapable of fear.	1146.3525642381012
That was true, but only half the truth.	73.26192009264942
The other half he didn't like to recognize, even to himself.	48.04283027773351
He enjoyed the killing.	22.984557378907727
Not defending England, or being an ace, or fighting for humanity.	161.6920905406457
He enjoyed killing.	23.016479444178806
And he would have enjoyed it just as much if he had been a Nazi.	93.23506282417742
Nowadays, we talk as though the blitz were just a short skirmish.	186.15050535965767
The Nazis bombed Britain, so the RAF retaliated and shot them all down.	283.5274218389848
Not quite.	13.048248652815268
It was a war of nerves, of stamina, of dogged endurance in which the stupid insistence of the British on their right to their own country became ultimately an unsurmountable obstacle to the Nazis, who were better organized and technically superior.	2050.03691104959
It took a long time before the British tipped the balance.	68.68272318928334
Keith learned too much about air combat, and air killing, to be risked.	611.7855469268944
They grounded him over his protests- not including his true reason for wanting to fly and put him in the Command offices.	363.7534170378232
That was where he met Penny.	56.890519773654866
He was aware of her as a frightfully good-looking American WAC, a second lieutenant assigned to do the paper work, regardless of how important she might have thought she was in the Command offices, but that was all.	1422.882057543754
Penny knew him better, on her part.	263.95570564854944
He had a war reputation, but this was the kind of man women like even without medals.	372.167122289411
They don't go for bull-like muscle, as a rule.	68.24311397828272
He had strength in his six-foot frame, but it was like the tensile steel in a rapier.	279.63309798411944
He was on the thin side, with big hands, and the kind of wrists that give away the power in forearm and bicep.	421.55791283011683
His hair was black, already greying at the temples in the classic beauty-idiom, the only one permitted to a man.	410.30964768251744
The pretty little twittering WACS said he had the look of eagles- and Penny, hating the cliche, had to admit that in this case it applied.	3691.819334182385
Keith was an eagle.	65.52823318521985
Penny and Keith had no romance.	141.0697333508068
No dates or hand-holding.	61.83424268514644
But they met in one searing moment that gave them to one another instantly.	166.22273145782816
The Command offices were in the border country, up north, where the radar systems centralized their intelligence reports, and the fighters were dispatched to harry the enemy.	689.4378787757764
The Nazis knew this, of course, and while their chief quarry was the industrial centers, they let a few drop every time they went over, hoping for a lucky hit.	426.60100209290147
This time, they had been lucky.	51.5692676253839
The Command post was underground, and well camouflaged.	93.97024173078609
But there hadn't been enough time to build it for keeps.	102.25080994180193
There was a measure of protection in its concrete walls and ceiling, but the engineers who hastily installed it were well aware that concrete is not much better than prayer, if as efficacious, when a direct hit comes along.	605.0249267984909
This one was actually more of a "near miss".	101.92464690897125
The bomb plunged into the ground near the Post, but not precisely into the Command room itself.	436.2812353599205
There was a shattering, cracking sound as the concrete started to buckle, the air filled with dust and flying debris, and everyone in the room- men and women hit the floor and used the desks as turtlebacks, as ordered.	749.7305394615094
That is, everyone but Keith and Penny.	70.46475847691111
They stood there, just the two of them, in the rocking, shattering blast.	575.4811271861199
Keith was on his feet because he didn't care at all about life any more Penny on her feet, proudly, because she cared too much.	905.5065285254891
The bomb was a solitary one.	34.05775591388781
The blast damaged, but did not destroy the room.	57.427773572396994
Keith's eyes met Penny's as they stood there in this strange marriage of destruction.	336.22673005529737
And, as the others began to crawl out from beneath the desks and tend to those wounded, and mark the several killed, he climbed across the debris to Penny and took her hand in his.	834.2881341354714
The chaplain married them, on the next day.	289.9457978904949
After the war, Penny had wanted Keith at least to visit her home with her.	379.85751786288427
She came from Ohio, from what she called a "small farm" of two hundred acres, as indeed it was to farmer-type farmers.	278.02890340852537
But to Keith's London-bred mind, such acreage sounded rather invincible.	419.5604905176809
It wasn't that, however, which decided them not to go to America.	332.72460446498485
Keith told Penny about his dream to return to India and Burma.	274.77936179795927
He stressed the wild beauty of the mountains, and the jungles.	1556.9549352938768
He didn't tell her the truth he now freely admitted to himself.	101.71230234252688
He couldn't stop killing.	28.27946200208273
That was his true love, not Penny.	53.487562274213744
The terrible power of a gun, the thing that blasted the soul out of a living body, man or beast, was one he never wanted to lose.	383.6520427449431
And in the hunting land, this hunger was considered to be a noble thing.	94.20257520475604
When they got to Shillong, in Assam, he was happy.	121.23947682146625
This is a paradise for hunters.	26.816137848094126
This was the land of the sladang, the great water buffalo with horns forty inches across the spread.	198.06673734913156
The great black leopards.	36.07995562934854
The sambur buck, the jungle stag that is even more noble than the Scottish elk.	952.604084774304
He even hunted elephant, although the Asian elephant is not quite as ferocious as his African cousin.	491.5462759232181
But there are big rogues in both countries.	46.19991796527434
These were the ones Keith sought out- the loners, the ones who killed for the joy of it, like himself.	280.6250798684898
He and Penny would go out on tame elephants, raised from babyhood in the keddah.	389.9290826441971
And while he was ever alert for game, and most particularly a tiger, Penny marvelled at the Eden they were traversing.	1889.6507949130842
They came upon cheetal deer at woodland pools.	219.54061272603394
Peacocks strutted across their path, preening.	282.653941275182
There were fantastic flowers without perfume, and gaudy birds without song.	223.47368542331688
Mouse deer played around the feet of the elephants, or fled when the mighty legs thrashed too close.	1153.9708311379366
Wild boar watched their progress with little pig eyes, and grunted derision when they didn't consider such game worthy of a shot from the .404's.	1765.5433566667039
Now, the next morning, they were anchored at The Elbow and the boat was riding directly over the underwater ledge where the green water turned to deepest blue and the cliff dropped straight down 600 fathoms, with the weighted line beside it; and Robinson Roy, who had gone down this line ten minutes before to set a new depth record for the free dive, was already back on the surface.	2125.9986150463787
He and his safety man, Herr Schaffner, swam up to the boarding ladder together.	300.17500663175355
The German courteously indicated that Robinson should mount first.	156.73398123691064
Robinson clambered heavily into the boat, sat down, and stripped off his triple-tank assembly.	839.6392625628355
He was frowning.	9.311808333071978
He took his mask from his forehead and threw it, unexpectedly, across the deck.	311.4438521224444
"Temper, temper", Mrs Forsythe said, laughing uneasily.	305.3957151454016
A phony blonde hanging onto a bygone youth and beauty, but irreparably stringy in the neck, she was already working on her second gin and tonic, though it was not yet ten AM "I loused it", Rob said, with a savage note in his voice.	2760.722899043582
"All I have to do to set the record is to go on down.	342.3211647168823
So instead I come up".	110.84015068286463
"Was it my equipment"?	27.741388553696844
the German asked.	23.964824817688847
"Was it something went bad with the breathing"?	95.9260917956445
"The equipment was fine", Rob stated, standing up.	85.13365111401576
He was a huge young man of twenty-four, clothed in muscle, immensely strong, with a habitual gentleness and diffidence of manner that was submerged under his present agitation.	957.7550264763119
He stared stonily at the floor.	157.82066565667685
"I was down to 275.	27.98089300447906
I've been that far half a dozen times.	23.58309278039426
I don't get it why this time I should pull such a stupid trick".	173.61727874071752
"Well, I get it", Artie said, still on the ladder.	60.587532236351265
"You are a big muscle-bound ape and you got this idea about setting a record.	229.49237574337434
And you also got this little spark in your bird-brain that tells you to turn around before you drown yourself.	450.40120477187133
So you turn around".	14.58577175430679
"No, it wasn't that", Rob said.	44.18711993466337
A note of awe came into his voice.	64.13599591840958
"When I came up, damnit, I thought I was going down.	184.68427320202454
I came up maybe fifty feet before I knew what was happening".	278.52487299567235
"Pressure-happy", Artie said, and climbed in.	122.87680852228274
"That's right", Robinson said.	33.47055836815358
"I was expecting it, sure.	26.463539962566408
But when it happens to you like that, I tell you, and you're a hundred feet from where you thought you were- well, it makes you think.	372.35972230863393
You don't head back down again.	39.21438197969568
Not me, anyway.	14.0670605432351
Not right away".	17.552149677652743
He had his voice under control again no one became aware that he was terrified by what had just happened to him.	1641.8022349598148
Waddell, the newspaperman, was a fellow in his middle forties, with a graying crewcut, heavy-framed glasses, and a large jaw padded with fat.	889.982348062401
Now he was going to show how much he knew.	111.44627954408037
"Our boy didn't chicken out, no sir.	109.06042282272686
He ran into the rapture of the depths.	43.84399357117001
Nitrogen narcosis.	55.56803692523301
It makes the diver feel drunk".	56.719794672796404
"Well, that's the only way to be", Mrs Forsythe said, and gave her brassy laugh.	5366.539387243226
"Maybe not, if you're 200 feet under water", Artie said.	109.76351877189664
"Anyway", Waddell went on.	29.769085043452762
"it's nothing to fool with.	43.759940622556336
It can kill you.	17.030957522385606
Personally, I don't blame him for giving up the dive, much as I regret losing the story".	668.5085369402238
"Nobody's giving anything up", Robinson said.	110.39724499284958
He stood there, towering over them all gentle, mighty, determined, the moving force in the group; and yet like a child among adults.	597.0452543322249
"You think I got you and Artie and Herr Schaffner all the way out here just for the boat ride?	841.7675621875178
I'm going down again".	19.1259151719587
"That's my boy"!	20.723994895669488
Mr Forsythe exclaimed.	38.94639096143625
"Rob's not going to give up as easy as all that".	99.46984563781415
He was a florid, puffy man in his early sixties, very natty in his yachting cap, striped jacket and white flannels.	1033.863734298789
He went to Key West every fall and winter and was the only man in town who did not know that his title of "Commodore" was never used without irony.	317.3265682639325
Old Commodore Forsythe, who had once lost a fifty-dollar bet on whether he could get both motors started and turn on the running lights without accidentally turning on something else first.	732.4474637978118
Now it did not occur to him even to wonder whether it was wise for Robinson to dive again Rob was his boy, the kid he had rescued from the streets, the object of his pride.	303.78248051685154
"Why", he went on, "when Rob asked me if he could make his dive on this trip, I didn't think twice about it.	2930.159683767757
I've helped him along ever since he was a youngster hanging around his brother's tackle shop.	676.8907520858702
Hell, I gave him the first decent job he ever had, six, seven- how many years ago was it, Rob"?	3711.629975718562
"Seven years ago, Commodore", Rob said impassively.	156.80482142462097
He was thinking, big deal skipper on his drunken fishing parties for seven years and no better off than when I started.	336.9284568331018
"Excuse me", he said abruptly.	79.31491945591172
He went down the steps to the galley and sleeping quarters; went into the forward stateroom and locked the door behind him.	484.96697018661064
"When you gotta go, you gotta go", Mrs Forsythe said.	177.41996296581863
Waddell muttered something about taking a look around and climbed up to the flying bridge.	321.7661544093738
He was disturbed by what had happened on the dive and by what he remembered of a conversation he had had the night before with the German, who had come out of the head while he was fixing himself a drink in the galley.	677.7699808429488
"Hi there, Schaffner", he had said.	44.454696572110976
"Can I make you one"?	35.67564912124426
"No thank you very much", Schaffner had answered in his accented English.	242.1083187086037
"I do not drink so much, thank you".	43.87261197937023
Waddell had looked the man over, trying to size him up.	110.34293227128128
He was in his early forties, rather short and very compactly built, and with a manner that was reserved and stiff despite his efforts to adapt himself to American ways.	567.0048364012816
His open face seemed to promise a sort of innocence, until one looked into his eyes, which had no warmth in them but only alert intelligence.	365.9423642619758
Waddell had heard that he had been a commando in Rommel's Afrika Corps, and he said to himself I'd hate to run into him in the desert on a dark night.	419.32357918081857
Aloud he had said, making conversation "Rob tells me he's using your Atlantis equipment on the dive".	1681.125059929921
"Yes", Herr Schaffner had said.	50.69579888624062
"He's one hell of a decent boy.	164.66129885093258
I like that kid".	20.560533239939346
"I agree, yes".	18.204885468071687
"And if the dive goes OK he has the exclusive import rights to your line for this country, is that right"?	297.8437984486516
"Well, no", Herr Schaffner said.	56.82268796615414
Waddell turned to face him.	54.224942967766886
"No"?	4.469093835843528
he asked.	3.0139882038473726
"But that's what he told me.	424.39775747952314
Why, that's his main reason for making the dive".	109.63609274398338
Shaffner looked at him, altogether without guile, and shrugged his shoulders, making a little spreading gesture with his two hands.	473.89341481121187
"What do you mean"?	3.3056467200777755
Waddell asked, frowning.	55.83016244453022
"Please let me explain", the German said earnestly, his face still devoid of deceit.	305.29290459030386
"I have in Europe a gross business of seven million dollars the year.	198.888234483849
Now I wish to enter the American market, where the competition is very strong.	578.3385861978699
I must have a powerful representative here, a firm with a national distribution and ten, twenty thousand dollars to advertise my products.	597.5424401713917
With all respect to a fine young man, Mr Roy is not able to provide these necessaries".	2644.23126675771
Waddell was not an eminently moral person, but he did not like what he had just heard.	277.0887285917661
"Did you tell him all this"?	29.377202507917936
he asked.	3.0139882038473726
"Perhaps not in so many words", the German said.	120.28201405843943
"But surely you have misunderstood Mr Roy.	87.22184947682463
Never, never did I offer him the exclusive rights.	104.55568555009621
We spoke of the need for advertising, and I agreed that the deep dive would be most useful for publicity.	299.0866197260053
He was most eager to make the dive; of course, I was willing.	450.23609172405
But there was no definite agreement about business arrangements".	46.89239342775598
"Well, damn", Waddell said.	42.9297368899349
There was the end of his front-page feature story, with byline.	186.21326319067597
He started out the door.	15.213462300950582
"One moment"!	12.62021329013463
Herr Schaffner said.	39.79024988452333
"You intend to speak with Mr Roy"?	109.11864164732849
"What else"?	6.865049186603037
Waddell asked.	21.820867231201557
"If you will pardon, I think it would be better if not.	857.8328677705424
Mr Roy is determined to make this dive.	95.94858207534385
Whatever you tell him he will dive.	92.09609645170609
I know this from my talks with him".	30.481232339381442
"Well, let's let him make up his own mind, OK"?	243.93254192696463
Waddell said.	18.573845183833658
"On the basis of the facts".	14.510937906586248
"You will make him unhappy and anxious", the German said.	74.49772828505579
"At 200, 300, 400 feet under the water, when he must be paying very much attention, he will be thinking about what you are telling him.	286.0580868341624
It is not good, Mr Waddell you will do him great harm".	178.12359328277586
There was no doubt that Herr Schaffner meant every word of what he said.	149.21637953719556
Waddell came back from the door and sat on a bunk.	3252.2469765366704
"I am an honest man", the German said with fervor.	1813.8027525587509
"I will give Mr Roy his due for this dive.	120.67203522002325
I will make him distributor for all of Florida- a big market.	109.77721345883926
All tourists come to Florida.	48.71089186476137
This will help him to get out of his little tackle shop.	220.01786381535544
Yes!	3.7329947314156176
But there is no use causing him to worry at this time".	78.65608009462004
The German's words worked on the newspaperman like a reprieve from an odious duty.	329.9106055179744
He took a big swig of his drink.	52.57464409212941
It would be a colossal shame to throw away a story like this.	91.82648060790281
"I think maybe you're right, Schaffner", he said.	81.58838177399248
"He has the distributorship for Florida, you say"?	82.23890788193575
"Yes", the German said.	48.408978918337645
"At least for South Florida".	25.873061152395458
"By God", Waddell said, "we don't want to upset the boy at this time of all times.	495.6498596085465
I guess you're right".	36.81844791273043
He sloshed his drink around and drained it in a few large gulps.	195.84014683778872
The story was shaping up nicely in his mind the young pioneer, as of old, altruistically braving the unknown; the rewards prompt and juicy in modern big-business America.	512.4179243295748
"Join me in another"?	39.95316862086977
he had asked.	16.817909323620526
"Thank you", the German had said courteously.	279.0792965758338
"I do not drink so much".	20.256027752698085
Now, in that same cabin, Robinson fell to his knees beside a bunk.	402.893362463005
Fear and relief mingled in his churning emotions.	153.72822843578697
He pressed his palms together and addressed himself to the patron saint of divers in a hurried and anxious whisper.	1074.7667545963666
"Blessed Saint Nicholas, I thank thee for getting me out of that mess and sending me up instead of down when I was bewildered.	1248.4210471338872
And when I make the dive again"- He paused; crossed himself; said a Hail Mary, slowly and with understanding.	301.05706005345195
Folding between his hands the cross that hung from his neck, he took his appeal direct to Headquarters.	364.00865102352435
"Holy Mary, Mother of God, Star of the Sea, stay Thou with me on this next dive.	560.7028713826112
Make it come off all right.	38.582913726504096
Let me set the record this time, and let me get back OK, so the German will give me the exclusive.	673.5532159801538
And make my life different and better from this time on.	75.36924085413979
Amen".	9.610748664906085
He crossed himself again and rose.	34.837597795796796
He felt a good deal less shaky.	37.949864852725774
As he reached for the door there was a knock on it and when he opened he found Artie, who came in and sat down on a bunk.	447.10024163171494
Artie had picked up a snorkle and was twirling it on his forefinger.	912.4482017277091
He waited awhile before he said, "Roy, you know your decompression table, don't you"?	290.6385053335137
"You know I know it", Robinson answered warily.	104.87547436466124
"You came straight up from 275 without a stop", Artie said.	197.92917073714221
"Well, I was a little bit confused.	660.1924862316854
Anyway, I wasn't down long enough to matter.	53.08021865913908
You don't see me stretched out on the deck, do you"?	112.8383772640428
"You know what they say about two deep dives in one day", Artie went on, still twirling the snorkle and studying it intently.	1437.1943717131778
"I don't think you should go down again".	26.978530030685718
EARLY that day Matsuo saw a marine.	151.11158317419793
The enemy came looming around a bend in the trail and Matsuo took a hasty shot, then fled without knowing the result, ran until breath was a pain in his chest and his legs were rubbery.	1088.599369351358
As his feet slowed, he felt ashamed of the panic and resolved to make a stand.	189.4845682733908
He crossed the next meadow and climbed a tree where the jungle trail resumed.	232.2154316268174
In the leafiest part of the tree, straddling a broad horizontal limb, he could see over the meadow.	343.62653577786523
For a while he was content to let events develop in their good time.	77.81818984384641
He had no doubt the marine was the lead scout of a column, and while his shot had probably bred indecision, they would soon come hunting.	348.7683658112627
His superiors had emphasized that marines tortured others for the sheer pleasure.	327.92160782442147
Yesterday; today; tomorrow no surrender.	79.5439489230281
His remembering the self-dictate brought no peace- only a faint chill of doubt.	248.43134096315376
He murmured to himself, with firmness "No surrender".	104.69291767205083
It was best to die fighting the marines.	52.15926405837142
His superiors had also preached this, saying it was the way for eternal honor.	882.4637769953517
What if the marines never came?	41.41721026943637
His comrades were all dead.	41.431585663722686
He had no rice.	13.084551193395269
Then it would be a choice between starvation and suicide.	78.4259544196677
Whichever the way, he would rot in this vast choking green, his wife never to receive an urn of his ashes.	678.549328540638
He sighed and leaned for a moment against the trunk.	130.64980640593592
His fingers touched the bone handle of a knife.	91.92184713144272
The knife, an ammunition pouch, and a half-filled bottle of purified water hung on his belt.	540.5439256524431
Besides the belt he wore a loin cloth.	116.77793351248155
As he looked up from picking at a leg ulcer, he saw a marine in the jungle across the clearing.	285.511271084833
Gloom receded.	55.56803692523301
The marine came to the edge of the green jungle mist and stayed, as though debating whether to brave the sunlight.	681.437154282836
His fatigues made a streak of almost phosphorescent green in the mist.	205.96442773819155
"Come out, come out in the meadow", Matsuo said under his breath.	202.81833812511204
The man leaned against a tree and wiped a sleeve across his face.	137.2273654706641
A signal?	9.227650599274217
Matsuo lifted his rifle, easing the sling under his left upper arm for steadiness.	683.0825649151267
Fresh on his mind were events of the past day when his whole regiment was destroyed in the hills.	361.94771890546315
They had fought from caves, and the marines resorted to burning them out.	139.54573372553898
Even now, like a ringing in his ears, he heard the wooooosh of flame-throwers squirting great orange billows.	2413.571250092652
A wave of flame rippling through their cave had reached Nagamo, his friend, and with a shriek the man bolted through the entrance, then slowed to the jerky walk of a puppet, his uniform blazing.	691.5585462325671
The marines let him advance.	47.6832511884178
When he sank on his knees, they had allowed him to char without administering the stroke of mercy.	260.29570048126374
Matsuo had faked death and was pitched on a stack of corpses, both the burned and the unburned, the latter decomposing rapidly under the tropical sun.	620.7251075847284
The callous marines had laughed at each other's retching, while stacking bodies.	516.8133590978829
Matsuo repeatedly choked down his own nausea.	309.9169765077376
At nightfall he had been able to sneak down a hillside and into the jungle, reeking of death.	195.69253529881104
Apprehensively he peered to the left, to the right into the leafy, vine-crisscrossed maze.	1140.1463462603194
He decided that the marines must be deploying around the meadow, with the one left to distract him.	240.38890188509933
He strained his hearing.	18.207053841995155
Cautious feet stepping on leafmold; faint creaking of belts and slings; whispers he heard none of these.	2148.5904551094195
Only the hum of insects and the distant fluttering call of a bird.	153.93079258414556
Because he couldn't hear them, he was more convinced they were there.	231.04639931171002
A spectacle occurred across the meadow the lone marine took a seat on the ground; leaning sidewise on a tree trunk, he embraced it.	760.3387836772071
Humiliation made Matsuo tremble.	127.31059103776138
While his comrades cocked the trap, that one behaved as if it was some dull maneuver.	691.4636109413868
Taking aim at the man's face, Matsuo squeezed the trigger up to the point of discharge, and then he changed his mind.	369.24381744862393
He wanted the arrogant marine to know fear, and so he aimed above the head.	251.70590816173288
The shot reverberated in diminishing whiplashes of sound.	144.78582095905463
Hush followed.	25.13711398174282
Like a mischievous boy expecting punishment, Matsuo awaited reaction from the jungle.	415.849705761996
How stupid to give his position away.	68.03310059191489
The jungle did not retort.	60.69480669851788
The sitter remained seated hugging the tree.	120.38703822231669
Before long the atmosphere reverted to its old normalcy, and insects hummed and birds occasionally called.	389.1098063368548
Matsuo puzzled and grew anxious over the complete passiveness, concluding that he was the butt of a devilish joke.	516.0391467384073
Five or so minutes later the marine abruptly pulled up and stepped into sunlight, immediately throwing his hands over his eyes.	1044.358252946981
He went into a whirling dance, a sort of blind chasing of the tail.	96.84450984498713
It ended when he tumbled; but jumping right up, he staggered in no particular direction.	268.84004746503604
He wore no head cover of any kind and, more odd, had no visible weapon.	153.53274644954763
With a sudden decisiveness he lurched in Matsuo's direction, crossing the meadow in a zigzagging gallop.	621.1384676637597
When he got closer to the tree, Matsuo noted the wild look on his face.	140.99712699385216
The pockets of his jacket bulged.	72.82084275855306
Hand grenades.	31.17212023189648
the bobbing head was a poor target, so Matsuo shot him in the upper trunk.	743.3067351439291
The marine spun, clapping a hand high on his chest, and dived forward.	1633.582803700641
In the hush that followed the echoes, Matsuo was tense.	133.01939660860353
They could come on him now without difficulty.	47.592728749528
Gradually he reached a conclusion.	28.091569566072376
The marine was alone, for they were impatient people and by now would have vied to knock him from the tree.	342.038246446993
Down the tree he scrambled and knelt at the edge of foliage.	165.39399730789256
The marine was sprawled some thirty yards away, one arm extended.	217.00853728380085
Matsuo jumped when the hidden arm flopped out.	253.62029843364294
Reflex?	20.324827059120516
Rifle leveled on the man, he made a rush.	632.5157616214937
Heat, in the sunlight, pressed in like an invisible crowd.	131.22203414528587
He squatted by the head, gently placing the rifle on the ground.	190.84197891357073
With a snakestrike motion he grasped the hair, and, twisting, pulled the marine over on his back.	481.836295251609
He was bearded.	12.881859511409012
The bullet had penetrated in the area of the right collarbone; around the hole, blood glistened in a little patch.	443.53218691349394
Maintaining his clutch on the hair, Matsuo watched the closed eyes while rummaging in the jacket pockets.	592.372401116252
In one a package of cigarettes and a tinplated lighter, both sticky from the man's bleeding.	277.97325901496305
In the other a wristwatch with broken crystal wrapped in a dirty handkerchief.	244.1817347398094
One by one he tossed the objects aside.	150.63886254828577
He didn't smoke and could not light fires with a flintless lighter; he had no use any longer for exact time, even had the watch been running.	394.00622977381215
Then there was no saying how many times the marine had blown his nose on the handkerchief.	432.90572634024267
Too bad the marine had no water.	42.08957971081016
From its holder he took his own canteen.	108.6898555396958
The cap was stuck and made a thin rusty squeaking as he applied pressure.	278.39901732898716
The marine's eyes opened, squeezed shut, then opened squinted in the glare.	384.2985254091663
So, alive.	11.46652112480736
Matsuo put the bottle to his own lips.	112.89899073501596
The marine reached up a hand.	41.620797946444014
Matsuo shook his head.	37.89333852976538
"None for you".	10.791798174990538
The marine blinked, soon dropping his hand.	95.5287033354249
Not only had he no canteen, but he lacked even the belt to hang one on.	159.44475788722647
"You came well equipped to die".	51.216814310764455
Some odor made him lean over the man.	70.61232925815354
He sniffed and recognized it.	30.714538401745507
Sake.	16.05296361890169
So that had been his difficulty.	105.74728231169419
Drunk on sake, he must have wandered off from his bivouac.	617.8415314539386
The marine tried to roll on his right side, and moaned.	149.103834675489
When he rolled on the left side, propping on his left elbow, Matsuo seized his hair and pulled him back over.	659.1662575143138
"Be a good turtle".	37.179048855956204
Awkwardly with one hand Matsuo got the cap back on the water bottle.	585.0041172686866
The smell of sake had freshened yesterday's events in his thoughts.	488.1090977463455
In the caves, with other supplies, they had kept cases of sake.	102.98847166383717
The marine shut his eyes.	36.82310777659596
"Are you a thrower of flame, marine"?	85.78962786910742
Matsuo took the small knife from its scabbard and laid it on the ground, out of the marine's reach and away from their shadows.	519.4387454316844
He waited in his squat, gripping the hair.	68.32159172554887
Every so often he turned the knife.	45.87617497486638
Its blade was dazzling in the intense sunlight.	113.3522026661223
The sun was noon high and Matsuo perspired until his body was dripping.	256.623946406568
Wet also were the marine's fatigues and the face had an oily film.	248.3005345300353
The man had thrown the left hand over his eyes.	212.81882219064332
Now and again he murmured something that ended in a giggle.	158.11467636018855
He must have saturated himself in the drink, for the bullet not to shock him out of his drunken haze.	418.42495444881087
Matsuo shook his head.	37.89333852976538
Strange.	10.480665544470849
At last he reached for the knife.	26.162084735302415
Even the bone handle scorched, and he retrieved the marine's handkerchief to wrap it.	309.22654242135064
First he barely touched the blade on the hand which shaded the eyes.	154.71471134480888
The marine yelled and flung the hand away.	96.12756104122542
With a firm grip on the man's hair Matsuo applied the blade flat on a cheek.	362.6965576800221
A shrill yelp, kicked legs, and groping hands that circled Matsuo's wrist.	622.0757769153258
Matsuo wrenched free and burned the hands into retreat; burned the other cheek; burned each hand when they came groping again.	868.7062445156305
The marine commenced to weep and it blighted the sense of enjoyment.	155.027838921395
Matsuo stood up.	38.3718674623809
"A small measure of payment, marine".	52.255971161679305
He dropped the knife in its scabbard, hung the rifle behind a shoulder.	151.15091687259218
The marine, hands on cheeks, rolled by his unwounded side onto his stomach.	295.8519667911085
He ceased weeping.	26.901310921761212
Matsuo walked toward his tree, once glancing back.	223.07503189020966
The marine was still.	19.284887384868053
He would soon die.	20.114227504746136
As Matsuo climbed by using the vines and kicking his feet against the trunk, a mood of gloom immersed him like a jungle shadow.	718.6472475571663
What now?	3.9072895530196767
In the jungle, birds were mute, while insects preserved only the monotony of living.	204.1833017921584
Someone called.	12.62307856129129
It was the marine head lifted, he strained and called.	76.54103071339152
Then he astonished Matsuo by pushing and dragging himself until he sat.	253.2163516448802
He cupped his mouth and yelled.	82.9797200719063
Matsuo hustled the rifle off his shoulder.	146.83296761342007
Once and for all he'd finish this marine who would not die.	384.0402157657507
He aimed, but listened.	38.42391635341511
It sounded as if the man were calling him "Hey, Japanese h hey there, Japanese".	241.50452170952505
The man tilted back his head and went through the pantomime of drinking from a container.	169.35845415699896
He performed the act twice more, and the begging in his tone grew more distinct.	416.71078926499234
"Sake"?	20.324827059120516
Matsuo called.	22.50185792978895
The marine nodded vigorously.	61.756161439047624
Matsuo laughed, slung the rifle.	118.41864749543174
The marine was a winehead.	43.83155230923842
His superiors had said that all marines were depraved.	574.5975877661042
The marine slumped forward into a bow like a priest before an idol.	330.90980773601615
Remembering his own thirst, Matsuo took out his water bottle.	298.6105504852735
One swallow was all he would have; he was very thirsty, but he must observe water discipline.	207.03626438729987
His years of campaigning had taught him the value of water discipline.	127.87101557354273
He began to uncap the bottle, the rusty cap squealing on its threads.	283.5579069877379
Popping upright, the marine waved both hands and shouted.	300.7084716791096
Of course it was water he really craved; down in the broil of the sun he was becoming dried out.	159.99586309506472
The marine shouted for it until it seemed that his voice had to crack.	143.30077335328775
Matsuo shook his head.	37.89333852976538
He had no water for an enemy.	84.11981599252387
And when this was gone, he hadn't even a little bitter tablet to purify other water if he were to discover some stagnant jungle pool.	692.7281327214647
He capped the bottle and replaced it.	57.43313759458073
After all, he had less reason to desire it than the marine.	131.81294092338308
Before much longer the marine quieted down.	102.86370258211036
His head slumped.	23.724642783148926
The upper part of his packet had stained dark.	68.0431596606421
"Marine.	10.480463886343145
There is nothing for you", Matsuo said.	29.98688783294632
"Your superiors will certainly beat you for your desertion, besides the dishonor of it.	274.4501601279043
I've nothing for you".	11.784979514464961
From the convulsive quivers of the man's shoulders it was plain he had resumed the weeping.	243.14671310973858
He reminded Matsuo of a similar thing he had witnessed in China.	168.22463243081333
In China it was a baby sitting on a railroad platform, smudged, blood-specked, with the village burning about him and shells exploding.	449.626489249772
CHAIRS SCRAPED BACK and customers hastily vacated their tables as the tall young buffalo hunter pushed open the swing doors and walked towards the bar.	1427.4865831556751
Only Blue Throat and his gang stayed where they were.	515.9400089279467
Blue Throat was slumped with his back against the bar, elbows supporting his massive frame.	441.2259619485245
He leered at the stranger as the distance between them closed.	108.26014435365818
"Since when did they allow beardless kids into the saloon bars of this town, boys"?	413.3474544364355
he asked.	3.0139882038473726
"Seems to me I don't remember altering any law about that".	211.02806984201192
He straightened up, alert now as the buffalo hunter came closer.	207.34946791249524
"Stay right here where you are, kid", he called.	123.82713509289069
"I don't aim to have minors breathing down my neck when I'm a-drinking" The stranger ignored him.	393.316555202417
He didn't stop till he was within three feet of Blue Throat and by that time the gang leader's right hand was on the butt of his revolver.	1084.5530747431894
"I'm Billy Tilghman", said the stranger, "and I've come for Pat Conyers' body".	607.0584690642446
"And what makes you think you're going to get it, pretty boy"?	998.9649784109872
"Because I'm asking.	50.814226365492
Most of the time I get what I ask for".	250.87122869407457
Blue Throat winked at his six cronies.	278.1593866404377
"The kid has no manners, boys.	47.495522622094775
Shall we teach him some"?	42.62839718764567
His gun was half drawn when he asked the question, but the weapon never left its holster.	1287.7088802434653
Tilghman's clenched fist swept over in a terrific right cross and clipped the big gunfighter on the side of his chin.	544.3089496014724
His head snapped round and he reeled back, crashing into the table where his buddies were sprawling.	460.7388199989699
Tilghman leapt on to him, dragged him upright and hit him again, this time sending him careening against the bar.	740.3494738201456
A bullet gouged into the bar top an inch from Tilghman's stomach as Blue Throat's henchmen started shooting.	885.4046525349918
Tilghman flung himself aside, dropped on one knee and pulled his own gun.	375.5108115359333
The Colt roared twice and two men dropped, writhing.	152.39844255647353
A third shot doused the light.	37.63184012231197
Somewhere at the far end of the room a voice yelled, "You all right, Billy"?	104.27232911324933
"Yes, George, but I ain't got poor old Pat's body yet.	237.4531429543404
And I aim to have it".	89.45100326806303
He fired again, and somewhere in the gloom a man screamed.	199.7805195278133
Another took off his gun belt and flung his weapons to the floor.	141.41453009979557
"OK, Tilghman, I'm quitting".	81.87503187192598
"And me", said another Blue Throat henchman.	170.92988272059242
Somebody brought a light.	29.71888434910183
Tilghman and his partner, George Rust, herded the men into a corner.	216.4373354700483
"And now", said Tilghman with deadly calm, "I'll repeat what I said.	298.94356977857984
I've come for Pat Conyers' body".	176.25064343158084
In two minutes the body of Tilghman's former comrade, who had been killed by Blue Throat in a gambling brawl the previous night, was carried into the town's funeral parlor to be prepared for decent burial.	1404.0241485746612
Blue Throat, nursing an aching jaw and a collosal dose of wounded pride, rode out of town with the survivors of the fight.	497.8958937228626
"That critter will be back tomorrow", predicted George Rust, "and he'll bring fifty of his kind back with him.	567.0789857181662
Blue Throat won't stand for this.	81.97066300681088
He'll shoot up the town".	20.50825046197305
The prediction was correct.	24.08153114639033
The Reverend James Doran had scarcely completed Pat Conyers' last rites on Boot Hill in the township of Petrie, when shots were heard in the distance.	961.6133909586546
"Amen", said the Reverend Doran, grabbing his rifle propped up against a tombstone, "and now my brethren, it would seem that our presence is required elsewhere".	415.3768391015174
Billy Tilghman and his comrades rode off to the battle.	151.63564958303425
Blue Throat, who had ruled the town with his six-shooter for the last six months, certainly had no intention of relinquishing his profitable dictatorship.	396.56339632806873
It was essential that he should restore his formidable reputation as a rip-roaring, ruthless gun-slinger, and this was the time-honored Wild West method of doing it.	610.4030972828987
He rode in at the head of sixty trigger-happy and liquor-crazed desperadoes and took over a livery barn at the entrance to Main Street.	1302.2831693518274
The entire length of the street could be raked with rifle fire from this barn.	374.23531373971906
Any posse riding down the street to demand Blue Throat's surrender would be wiped out with one deadly burst of fire.	905.4209585969687
The law-abiding citizens of Petrie had gathered inside Kaster's Store, halfway down the street.	787.303801304439
Several were firing into the barn when Billy Tilghman arrived.	224.071002548741
He sized up the situation and shook his head.	32.597914494941
"If Blue Throat has his way he'll keep us all cooped up in here for days", he said.	964.2460243542196
"There's only one thing to move him fast, and we have it right here in this very store".	1412.5433393013902
He called the store owner and together they went into the stockroom.	103.21678699018736
Billy returned with six sticks of dynamite.	152.4856321118213
"I'm gonna drop these into Blue Throat's lap", he announced, "and I'd like every gun to be firing into that barn while I get near enough to toss 'em through the window".	1679.1933044898228
He slipped outside, hugging the walls of buildings and dodging into doorways.	287.1265846192722
Blue Throat's men spotted him and a hail of bullets splintered the store fronts and board walk as he passed.	417.6437540618794
Fifty yards away from the barn he dodged inside a barber's shop and came out at the back.	1344.3024916712047
Here he couldn't be seen by Blue Throat and his gang.	194.20277769169252
All he had to do was light the fuses of the dynamite sticks, run to within ten yards of an open window in the barn and hurl the sticks through.	415.03145554531585
Billy Tilghman did just that.	46.00831801924876
Within seconds the big barn was blasted into smoking splinters, with every outlaw either dead or injured inside.	865.2374533334673
It was the abrupt end of Blue Throat's dictatorship in Petrie.	171.43609235866114
Though only slightly injured himself the big hoodlum never returned to those parts.	273.46391941793263
To Tilghman the incident was just one of a long list of hair-raising, smash-'em-down adventures on the side of the law which started in 1872 when he was only eighteen years old, and did not end till fifty years later when he was shot dead after warning a drunk to be quiet.	2082.6324781117205
Of all the rip-roaring two-fisted tough boys of the Old West, "Uncle Billy Tilghman" stands out head and shoulders.	636.8398466751606
He was the lawman who survived more gunfights than any other famous gun-slinging character in the book.	508.7050751571815
He saw the most action, beat up more badmen with his bare fists, broke up the most gangs and sent more murderers to the gallows than any other US marshal who lived before or after him.	559.7169535209981
For fifty years his guns and ham-like fists shot holes through and battered the daylights out of the enemies of law and order in the frontier towns of the West.	497.736857855311
The deeds of countless western bandits and outlaws have been glorified almost to the point of hero-worship, but because Billy Tilghman remained strictly on the side of the law throughout his action-packed career, his achievements and the appalling risks he took while taming the West have remained almost unsung.	989.6665895489638
Citizens took the view that a lawman was expected to risk his life on the odd occasion anyway, but this fighting fury of a man risked it regularly over a period of half a century.	978.4514688267645
He came within an ace of being riddled with bullets during his long fight with the Doolin gang which terrorized Oklahoma in the 1890's.	852.5251600862038
Led by Bill Doolin, these mobsters specialized in train robberies but as a sideline they looted stores and robbed banks, making liberal use of their guns.	1209.8235938876633
Bill Doolin's ambition, it appeared, was to carve out his name with bullets alongside those of Jesse James and Billy the Kid, and Bill Tilghman had sworn he would stop him.	834.9351453771276
Tilghman knew that some ranchers were hand-in-glove with the Doolin gang.	171.90622318929363
They bought rustled cattle from the outlaw, kept him supplied with guns and ammunition, harbored his men in their houses.	478.8566584052645
Billy decided to set an example by arresting one of the ranchers, named Ed Dunn, who lived at Rock Fort.	410.3008333233339
On a bitterly cold day in January, 1895, accompanied only by Neal Brown as his deputy, Tilghman left the township of Guthrie and headed for Rock Fort and Dunn's ranch.	961.1596819960324
It was snowing hard when they got there and they saw no horses outside.	167.74087154661592
The only evidence of occupation came from the chimney, which was belching out thick smoke.	192.73785232406615
The two lawmen halted their wagon about twenty yards from the door.	575.3774408271124
"Wait here, Neal", said Tilghman.	119.97970646841905
"If I don't come out within half an hour ride back to town and bring out a posse".	308.36483122660013
Leaving his rifle in the wagon, Tilghman walked up to the door and hammered on it.	371.0444658366622
There was no reply so he shoved it open with his foot and stepped inside.	141.50491180505506
Directly opposite the door was a roaring log fire, a welcome sight on that bitterly cold day.	220.2124332467143
Seated near it with his back to the door was the rancher, Ed Dunn.	618.5274878995724
"Hello, Ed", said Tilghman.	114.89538488334952
The rancher grunted an acknowledgement but didn't move.	137.5250476425224
Tilghman closed the door behind him and walked towards the fire.	72.2571655753012
Suddenly he saw something which made his big heart give a sickening lurch and caused the hairs to bristle on the back of his neck.	341.7039591744671
Along each side of the room were six tiered bunks, each one screened off with a curtain.	533.4873197502435
And projecting wickedly through these curtains were the gleaming muzzles of six rifles, all trained on Billy Tilghman.	884.7120563316865
The fighting marshal had walked right into a trap and at any moment six slugs might slam into his hide.	591.9975137961992
Thinking fast, Tilghman never hesitated for one instant.	248.216699738848
He walked right up to the fire as though blissfully unaware of the guns covering him.	180.37391518515784
The men behind them were Bill Doolin and five of his gang- every man a killer.	221.7547085529958
"Cold day", said Tilghman, placing his hands behind him and casually presenting his backside to the fire.	400.1159631690496
"Just dropped in to ask where Jed Hawkins lives.	191.8946565356933
Can't seem to locate landmarks in this snow".	125.1084278364387
The rancher was trembling.	16.62794170238284
He wouldn't look Tilghman in the face.	238.27220216232791
"Follow the river for five miles", he said hoarsely.	121.042350826655
"Jed's homestead is on the south bank".	838.032671084554
Resisting the overwhelming temptation to flng himself out of that bristling death-trap, Tilghman deliberately engaged the nervous rancher in trivial conversation for a good ten minutes.	1009.7194028380263
All that time rifle barrels were pointing unwaveringly at his head and body.	209.10110401606096
One false move on his part and he would be a dead man.	438.5943186906618
"Well", he announced, "Guess I'll be going now, Ed, and thanks for the warmup".	207.7069864707637
He strolled back to the door, whistling softly, hands still clasped behind him.	401.1531036671655
He left the house and almost certain death without even increasing his pace and wondered by what remarkable stroke of Providence he had been allowed to come out alive.	740.6782291818569
But he knew well enough that those guns would still be trained on his back as he walked towards the wagon.	172.22984679782223
If he showed signs of collecting his rifle and going back with his deputy to the ranch he would be shot down instantly.	328.41312132441413
Leisurely he climbed on to the wagon next to Neal Brown.	205.7635923309263
"Don't say or do anything", he said softly.	38.817277492433455
"Just get out of here without it looking as though we're in a hurry.	190.98937111636863
That place is crawling with Bill Doolin and his gang".	200.4311245248347
Even as he spoke those words Billy Tilghman's life hung on a thread.	305.7620429482803
Back in the house a hoodlum named Red Buck, sore because Billy had been allowed to leave unscathed, jumped from a bunk and swore he was going after him to kill him right then.	1143.1613651416567
"You'll stay right here", commanded Bill Doolin, covering Red with his rifle.	228.4893119396818
"Billy Tilghman is too good a man to shoot in the back.	105.76560184640681
We'll let him go".	25.481459566400922
But the fighting marshal's fifty-year run of immunity from violent death came to a full and final stop one night in a street at Cromwell, Oklahoma, where he had been sent to clean up the gambling and vice rackets.	1796.7653383359673
Wiley Lynn, a self-styled prohibition officer, had hit town the previous day and had been drinking ever since.	844.5871589053602
That night he reeled out of Ma Murphy's dance hall and proceeded to disturb the peace by shooting off his revolver.	620.1654942565641
FOR SEVERAL MONTHS now, Jack Carter, a big overgrown boy of fifteen with a fuzzy, pimpled face and greenish catlike eyes with a lot of red in them, had been haunted by a dream, a vision, of a Woman.	1655.245085194872
This Woman had no distinct shape or size and no particular face, but she radiated warmth, a sweet warmth; she would talk to him in a soothing voice about things his mother would have said were not nice and put her hands on him and kiss him passionately.	1258.7336887551216
When she would do these things, he would turn blind for an instant and become sick at his stomach.	1978.4955361680964
Then he would run to the toilet behind the house.	145.6025285743735
Sometimes he did this three or four times a day, for this Woman was almost always with him.	158.91357626399147
He would feel ashamed each time and wonder whether his mother and father knew- thinking they might see it in his eyes or smell it on him.	500.8801040426816
But they never said anything, so he figured it was all right.	203.85352534461646
And so when Miss Langford came to teach at the one-room Chestnut school, where Jack was a pupil in the eighth grade, the Woman of Jack's mind assumed the teacher's face and figure.	1635.251010816696
He could not keep his eyes off her when at school; when he went home at night, he took her with him in his mind, and she did the things the anonymous Woman used to do, and he did the thing afterwards each time as he used to do.	7074.544028401071
When he awoke in the mornings, she was in his mind and he could hardly wait to get to school to be near her in the flesh.	2916.3932985046904
Miss Langford her first name was Evelyn was an attractive girl.	235.7509575879845
Tall, blonde, blue-eyes, fair, buxom without being heavy, she cut a fine figure of budding womanhood as she swished among the pupils in her fresh, starched summer dress.	896.5477598614114
Something was beginning to stir and come alive in her, too it may have been there for a good while, since she was twenty now; but if it had been, it had been smothered until now by fear you could tell it by the way she watched the older, bigger boys, like Jack.	1785.4874955621806
She would look at Jack, with that hidden something in her eyes, and Jack would see the Woman and become breathless and a little sick.	648.9511394462286
School began in August, the hottest part of the year, and for the first few days Miss Langford was very lenient with the children, letting them play a lot and the new ones sort of get acquainted with one another.	464.39764620372847
The first two or three days they went home early.	71.51711702169318
All, that is, except Jack.	28.884475502219395
He hung around the schoolhouse, watching through a window from outside while Miss Langford straightened desks and put the room in order.	342.1301410974556
Once this was on the third day of school she kneeled down to pick up some books where they'd dropped on the floor and Jack looked up her dress- at the bare expanse of incredibly white leg.	865.5652121494549
He thought for a moment his heart had stopped beating.	93.57477646814073
About that time Miss Langford straightened up and looked out the window directly at him, he thought, although probably she didn't even see him.	793.8008554794229
He jumped back, ducked and ran, crouching, down the hill away from the school.	256.5005028736827
He didn't look back and he ran until he was out of sight of the schoolhouse and out of breath; then he slowed to a walk.	614.2013403062114
The vision became even stronger now.	47.91229758528177
"I'll get her yet", he muttered to himself.	34.47345944557648
"I've got to get her".	3.9953303066118333
That night he dreamed a dream violent with passion, in which he and the Woman, now the teacher, did everything except engage in the act and this probably only because he had never engaged in the act in reality, and when he awoke the next morning his heart was afire.	1227.2626461781342
He ate litle that morning, and his mother became concerned, inasmuch as he usually ate heartily.	782.6179141596184
"What's the matter, honey"?	134.05205371343555
she said, with the solicitude of a middle-aged woman for her only child.	466.0583943816063
"Aren't you hungry"?	18.95894976487963
"No, I'm not hungry", he said, pushing back the bacon and eggs.	145.76846100669073
Outside it was already hot at 730 AM, and it was getting hot in the kitchen.	576.3768528229248
He felt a little sick at his stomach.	127.92562149437481
"Are you sick"?	17.01274421750474
"No", he said.	24.934875115483344
"I'll be all right.	7.190991343435406
I guess it's this hot weather".	51.76729031360501
"Don't you play hard today then.	42.98422488675599
And if you get sick, ask the teacher to let you come home early.	116.60120063736392
Daddy left the car for me, and I'm going to town this afternoon".	80.21720539767473
"O K, I won't play hard", he promised.	122.36386366637763
Just then Charles Lever yelled, "Hey, Jack", from the quarry road which ran behind the Carter house, and Jack grabbed the lunch from the table and darted out the kitchen door, yelling "Good-bye, Mom" over his shoulder.	1176.2489758600746
"Whaddya say, boy"?	64.50394428442043
Charles said, grinning, showing his huge yellow teeth.	165.92952548614068
Charles, also fifteen, was tall and skinny, scraggly, with straight black hair like an Indian's and sharp brown eyes.	508.80905110941234
He considered himself handsome and seemed to think all the girls were after him.	117.87466024572322
"You know what I done last night"?	23.47568030680361
Charles said as they picked their way over the rocky road which led up the hill away from the Dixie Highway, through a corn field and a patch of woods to the school.	659.1405950151948
Jack knew of course that the tale to be unfolded would involve a girl and probably be dirty, because girls were Charles' only apparent interest.	426.6217969087576
But Jack always derived vicarious sensual thrills from Charles' revelations even when he suspected his friend of exaggeration or invention, so he usually invited them, as he did now.	1233.5436853250221
"No.	3.389188185682365
What"?	5.789336317050656
"I got Margaret Rider in one of them old box cars down there by the quarry".	551.2201509306428
A nude imaginary picture of Miss Langford flashed across Jack's mind.	478.88821978716976
His heart beat faster.	31.688921507478355
"Hell you say"?	47.019720541795536
he said, lapsing into the profanity he often used when away from his parents and especially when he was with Charles.	748.9744493698767
"How'd you do it"?	48.44876873233049
"Hell, I jist got on top of-" "No, I mean how'd you get her to do it"?	1072.7937512907167
"Hell, I jist ask her".	86.0415958523369
"Jist like that"?	24.663746524364715
"Hell, yes.	20.733061772778395
She's been hangin' around me a lot here lately, and I figgered I might as well's try it.	744.6536843047543
Besides I heard her old uncle that stays there has been doin' it".	269.4107955544654
"I never heard that".	7.249614071405404
"It's all over Branchville.	38.02977286195507
If you'd get out of your back yard once in a while you might even get her your ownself".	995.6773194019611
"I might try it one of these days", Jack said wonderingly, thinking of Miss Langford.	514.2169519593712
WHEN THEY reached the school, a gang of boys and girls were already there playing "crack the whip" in front of the schoolhouse.	400.561777597073
Miss Langford, in a fresh white dress and low-heeled white sandals, without socks, was out there with them, trying to get them inside.	2112.868500318845
"Time for books", she yelled, jingling a little five-and-dime store bell in her right hand.	319.68615962979186
"Let's go inside".	13.595068818262929
"Oh, come on Miss Langford, play with us just onct", one of the little girls begged, smiling wistfully.	501.24397629530984
"No, not now", said the teacher.	65.66521384059376
"Maybe at dinner time.	26.89872855167365
Come inside now".	28.27852379108813
The children grudgingly stopped playing then and straggled into the schoolhouse.	243.10860820798672
Jack watched Miss Langford all morning.	156.52802214265895
He could think of nothing else save his mental image of her nude figure and what Charles had said that morning about Margaret Rider.	220.82398300649874
Occasionally he would look across the aisle at Margaret, fourteen and demure in a fresh green organdy dress, sitting in the sixth-grade row, and he coud hardly believe she would do what Charles had said she did.	2384.4381533211717
At noontime, remembering what the teacher had said about maybe playing with the kids, Jack stayed close to the schoolhouse while all the other big boys, except Charles, went off out the road to play ball.	556.2966177131666
"Why ain't you playin' ball"?	163.18151023003963
he asked Charles suspiciously as they sat in the well-house shade, watching the girls congregate in front of the schoolhouse.	1096.3939121816702
"Miss Langford, come out and play with us like you promised", several of the little girls called.	349.2568753990051
"I'd druther stay here and watch the girls", Charles grinned.	138.5810627425791
"Maybe some of 'em will fall down and we'll see up their dress".	278.11102014149776
"Maybe", Jack said idly, watching for Miss Langford.	218.1904602816053
Presently she came out of the schoolhouse.	59.08371743872941
When she appeared, two or three of the little girls jumped up and down, yelling, "Goody, goody".	883.458598334977
"Let's play with 'em", Jack said, rising from where he sat on the ground and dusting off his overall pants.	1244.9083392929165
"OK" Charles rose also, and the two of them moved over to join the girls.	382.92635499270034
They played crack the whip a few minutes without mishap.	206.57984230136094
Then when Miss Langford was on the end of the line of girls, Jack, in the middle of the line, gave an extra hard pull and the young teacher sprawled backwards, sitting down hard, her dress flying over her head.	1271.7444831471616
While she was struggling to get her skirt down and get on her feet again, Jack ran over, offered her his hand and said, "Gosh, I'm sorry, Miss Langford.	308.0885308271944
I didn't mean to pull so hard".	51.82303993531049
"That's all right", she said, tossing her head back to get the hair out of her eyes.	367.9294700234169
"It was my fault".	14.550867645079174
With one hand she held her skirt down while she took Jack's extended hand with the other.	1374.0511712359971
When her hand touched his, fire went through Jack and he felt weak, but he managed somehow to get her on her feet.	270.96333856934893
He thought she gave him that look with the hidden something in it as he let her hand go.	160.34504663998385
"Thank you", she said, dusting herself off.	326.692539618162
"Will you play with us again, Miss Langford"?	134.18064848045316
one of the little girls said.	96.25012485787194
"No more today.	11.401573141662332
Maybe some other day".	19.618772611785353
"Oh, shucks", the girl said.	30.424164454477364
"I don't believe I'll play any more neither".	431.39579176417135
"Me neither", others said, and soon the game broke up, the children going off in pairs, in larger groups and alone.	643.4876347826093
Jack walked off alone out the road in the searing midday sun, past Robert Allen's three-room, tarpapered house, toward the field where the other boys were playing ball, thinking of what he would do in order to make Miss Langford have him stay in after school- because this was the day he had decided when he thought he saw the look in her eyes.	2227.137957366039
When he came back to the schoolhouse, his mind was made up.	50.94283724287887
He simply would not work his arithmetic problems when the teacher held his class.	137.46165326324973
That should do it, he thought, because Miss Langford had said she was going to be strict about school work.	444.6665527037837
He had considered throwing erasers or flipping paperwads at someone or pulling the hair of the girl sitting in front of him, but he couldn't take a chance on either of these possibilities the teacher probably would make him stand face-to-wall in a corner instead of stay in after school.	766.4257426251594
The only drawback now to the plan he'd decided on was that someone else might fail to do his work, too, and the teacher would have that person stay late along with Jack.	1013.9718533418916
"But I've got to take a chance on it", he told himself desperately.	36.2450465888667
To his surprise his plan worked perfectly.	69.06420860914552
"All right, if you can't do your arithmetic during school hours you can do it after school it out", Miss Langford said firmly, not smiling.	810.6936275500865
"You will stay here thirty minutes after the others go home this afternoon and work your problems".	223.01891958713122
And so when the others stampeded out that afternoon Jack remained docilely in his seat near a window, looking out in what he hoped was a pitiable manner, while the other kids laughed and yelled in at him and made faces as they dispersed, going home.	914.21118643407
He scarcely saw them.	21.484067442709083
His heart was pounding like a mighty dynamo and he was trying to think, his mind seeming to scream at him like a hurt or frightened child, "How will I do it?	669.2287930033899
On the fringe of the amused throng of white onlookers stood a young woman of remarkable beauty and poise.	395.2452334218964
She munched little ginger cakes called mulatto's belly and kept her green, somewhat hypnotic eyes fixed on a light-colored male who was prancing wildly with a 5-foot king snake wrapped around his bronze neck.	4011.0820821195557
The youth with the snake had a natural pride and joy of life which appealed to the woman.	634.6588421509489
Lithe and muscular, he had well-molded features, and his light color told of the European ancestors who had been intimate with the slave women of his family.	524.292105999211
The haughty white girl turned to a distinguished, hawk-faced man standing at her side and murmured "Look at your watch, Col Garvier.	808.2008535940894
It is almost time for and calinda to begin".	40.943066850795155
Col Henri Garvier was one of New Orleans' most important and enlightened slave owners.	439.7164919670036
He chuckled and gave the signal for the dance to start.	46.84166763253567
The slaves ran gaily to the center of Congo Square and gathered around a sweaty youth they called Johnny No-Name.	489.5989533379579
Johnny vigorously pounded two bleached steer bones against the gourd which served as his drum.	737.5193374778243
He showed his gleaming tusks of teeth and bellowed incoherently, his brass earrings jangling discordantly as he shook and trembled in ecstasy.	1107.612315112922
The drummer flogged the gourd with frantic intensity as the dancers began the calinda, a sensual gyration which had long been a favorite of voodoo practitioners and their disciples in the Louisiana slave compounds.	1564.1736365794059
The dance was of Haitian origin.	45.173393162053564
The white girl with the penetrating green eyes sipped the lemonade handed to her by a handsome man of about 30, who had coppery skin and beetling eyebrows.	1226.4101973111726
He was possessive in his manner and, though a slave, obviously was educated after a fashion and imitated the manners of his owners.	457.8102921893217
He proudly wore the blue livery of her house, for the girl was Madame Delphine Lalaurie, wife of the prominent surgeon, Dr Louis Lalaurie, who bore one of the South's oldest and most cherished names.	889.255971425131
Delphine was a pace-setter in high society.	117.70064019161767
She was a top horsewoman and one of the city's most gracious hostesses.	72.41141134780416
Although New Orleans was not to learn of it for a spell, she also was a sadist, a nymphomaniac and unobtrusively mad- the perpetrator of some of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed on American soil.	599.6783966486204
Madame Lalaurie gestured with her riding crop toward the 20-year-old youth who was stomping and writhing with the king snake still draped over his bare shoulders.	1341.991732589574
The slender, handsome fellow was called Dandy Brandon by the other slaves.	239.1542559988518
He was gifted with animal magnetism and a potent allure for women of any race.	217.0659051951865
But Dandy had had little experience with girls on his master's plantation in Bayou St John.	380.9183378086853
Shy, actually, he avoided feminine overtures and seemed truly ignorant of the girls' desires when they sought to make liaisons with him in the open fields, in carriages and in boathouses.	1234.2227970482086
This young slave was therefore quite unprepared when Delphine Lalaurie signaled that she wanted him to draw near.	1306.8434836885024
The woman eyed the youth with the avidity a coin collector might display toward a rare doubloon which is not yet in his collection.	2568.999899370459
"What is your name, boy?	13.105733141808184
Come a bit closer.	41.63320725292828
I won't bite, you know".	36.19453377534142
He gaped at Madame Lalaurie and sniffed the Paris perfume which emanated from her.	432.01203371555386
Then he smiled shyly.	39.69915903496811
"My name is Dandy Brandon, missy.	168.64314548527085
I belong to Master Alexander Prieur".	130.80931921591198
She said with intense feeling "Come near, let me feel your arms.	479.98269255759277
You look quite strong and healthy to me, Dandy".	134.54795552724946
Mrs Lalaurie impatiently propelled the slave toward her waiting carriage.	504.90564168692146
Lifting her skirts, she climbed in, never relinquishing her grip on his arm.	324.8260238364214
The woman seemed utterly unafraid of the snake which coiled on the floor in a torpor.	563.2872439616837
Once inside the luxuriosly-upholstered landau, she drew the curtains and proceeded to give the startled youth the kind of physical examination usually reserved for army inductees.	2784.889235981698
Satisfied at last, and after a few amorous gambits on her part which convinced Delphine that Dandy was capable of learning new arts, she opened the window and called to her liveried driver.	1241.0356353259474
This was the big man with the proprietory air and the beetling, shaggy eyebrows.	354.4319989053614
"Aristide!	28.826365438569706
I want you to find Monsieur Prieur at once and give him this money for the boy's purchase.	438.5468766825231
There's $600 in gold in this chamois sack.	185.08982300600303
If the old fool argues about the price, tell him I shall order my husband not to treat him as a patient any longer.	296.36442783907313
Prieur has gout and depends on Louis' pills and bleedings.	439.84604012588284
Besides, he owns 300 slaves.	41.826138041928886
One less shouldn't matter to him".	38.79220085124698
Aristide Devol, the sardonic manservant who had been brought in chains years before from his native Sierra Leone, smiled thinly and touched his well-brushed beaver hat.	4049.2225753494845
His bold eyes raked the woman, and a perceptive spectator might sense that there was more to their relationship than that of slave to owner.	550.0532293882385
"Another youth, Madame"?	48.31842639171263
the coachman said softly.	53.11963594076074
"This one is a tender chicken, oui?	108.65362703762204
Such delicate beauty, such fine flesh.	90.28585096835678
It will rip and shred easily for Madame".	126.57162721583995
"Be quiet, Devol!	76.67975917377615
You are forgetting your place".	33.95133934831271
The tall coachman walked off briskly in search of Alexander Prieur.	409.07775790850366
Delphine Lalaurie took the reins in her gloved hands and drove Dandy Brandon- cowering in the back seat of the carriage- to her mansion at 677 Perdido Street.	1856.854672844431
Dr Louis Lalaurie stood on the veranda at the head of the driveway and watched his carriage as it approached the pillared mansion.	480.17261943051557
Dandy, curiosity overcoming his apprehensions, peered out at the doctor from the window of the vehicle.	308.9379003981401
He saw a pint-sized man with a graying spade beard and an unusually large head.	373.083927048196
Dr Lalaurie wore a maroon smoking jacket, and his myopic eyes were blurry and glistened behind thick octagonal lenses.	1469.501387534992
He was about 50 years old.	19.482590831724142
"Another young man, my dear?	69.37660245975621
Really, you are most indiscreet to drive him here yourself", he said, frowning with displeasure.	268.7913372222929
Delphine presented her cheek for a kiss, and the physician pecked it like a timid rooster.	575.1288155179632
"Dandy is to be our house guest, Louis.	275.059126744253
I want the room in the attic prepared for him He is a most unusual lad, quite precocious in many ways.	527.1606417211102
He deserves a better life than just rotting away on the Prieur plantation".	261.90302784240066
"Quite so, my dear.	44.504723828671374
His room will be ready shortly".	53.34036526273014
The physician led the horses to the stable after a cursory glance at the cringing slave.	187.9743455904549
Had Dandy been older or wiser, instinct might have warned him that he would be well advised to flee from the Lalauries' tender care if he valued his life.	1651.4704686900507
But he liked the smell of Delphine's perfume.	100.46096651271415
Besides, her endearments and caresses in the carriage had been new and stirring experiences to the simple youth.	241.02480185680903
Also, he was weary of plantation drudgery and monotony.	87.66304699359092
So Dandy Brandon trustingly entered the house with Delphine Lalaurie and trudged up the rear steps to the attic room which was to be his new home.	2584.2746030205226
Airless and dingy though it was, the attic represented luxury to a slave who had led a wretched life with six brothers and sisters and assorted relatives in a shanty at Bayou St John.	2497.8750749191945
He bounced exuberantly on the sagging bed and was even more delighted when Madame Lalaurie- after closing the door- showed the slave that the bed was designed for something other than slumber.	721.3933139746069
It was just as well that the ignorant Dandy enjoyed himself to the hilt that first evening, for the room was to become his prison cell.	1737.5540211375383
When he finally left the sinister mansion on Perdido Street, he was carried out in a coroner's basket.	664.9839453647791
JUST six weeks after Dandy Brandon's arrival at the mansion, the little surgeon and his svelte young wife gave their annual open house and ball, to which only New Orleans' oldest and wealthiest families were invited.	1203.5157871786805
A stringed orchestra played softly behind the potted palms, and Delphine circulated graciously among her guests, chatting airily of the forthcoming races, the latest fashions from Paris, and Louisiana politics.	1854.0843994174572
Suddenly there was a commotion upstairs, a despairing boyish shriek, and the strains of the waltz faltered and died as the musicians and guests gaped at an apparition descending the marble staircase.	1304.3159696279847
It was Dandy Brandon, clad only in a bloody loincloth, emaciated and quaking as if the devil were breathing hard on him.	500.6954582873372
The lad's once superb body was a mass of scars and welts.	256.33078881461967
His pinched face showed the ravages of malnutrition.	162.01675784401058
Feebly he pointed an accusing finger at Madame Lalaurie and shouted "Evil woman!	923.450750470927
You did this h you like to hurt h to beat people h I want h to go home".	475.85617362580314
These were the last words he ever uttered.	38.82810392525831
Convulsively, he spat up some blood and collapsed into the arms of Senator Gaston Berche, crimsoning the frilly shirt and waistcoat the politician wore.	1169.2742318399844
Dr Louis Lalaurie examined the inert form of the slave on the parquet dance floor and pronounced him dead.	835.5516378273451
The ball broke up in confusion.	31.43698745541392
Guests stared with horror at Madame Lalaurie and made speedy departures.	569.6391297604085
Delphine stood like stone, her eyes alive with hate as she looked down at the sheeted corpse.	583.8094267268548
But at the coroner's inquest Delphine told a forthright story.	202.7978233948422
"I saw the boy Dandy at the Congo Square festivities and felt sorry for him.	493.20158738218845
It was our hope to educate him and to give him his freedom when the right time came, for he was a bright and friendly youth who seemed worthy of our interest.	902.0714085593539
After I paid Monsieur Prieur for Dandy, I brought him home, but he was ill at ease and ran away the same night.	1263.7227479305582
How he returned in such a ghastly condition, or why, I cannot say.	243.30889879272527
Dr Lalaurie and I didn't even know he was in the house until the night of our ball when he came down the stairs".	2000.062253672775
She daubed at her swimming eyes with a lacy handkerchief and said with obvious emotion "That poor boy!	688.5708616719306
He must have fallen in with evil companions, for he was a simple youth and quite trusting and inexperienced.	1250.508132080299
Ruffians must have robbed and beaten him before bringing him back to our house to die.	346.70209048663736
Such a pitiful end"!	45.271648576360796
Though the slave's dying words about the woman troubled the coroner's panel, Dandy's accusation was adjudged an aberration by the jury and disregarded.	854.1907353572383
The Lalauries were at the top rung of the social ladder, and even a jury didn't feel privileged to doubt the veracity of so illustrious a lady.	612.9167344322848
Moreover, runaway slaves frequently got into serious trouble in New Orleans' dives.	372.5937748195776
So the verict was "death at the hands of a person or persons unknown", and the elite of the city, accepting Delphine's testimony, welcomed her and the doctor back into the fold.	607.0231101867491
Once again life went its serene way- soirees, fox hunts, balls and dinners.	355.3427233045274
The excitement over Brandon's bizarre death abated and Madame Lalaurie's stock soared when she resumed her self-imposed chores of visiting the poor and bringing cakes and comfort to destitute patients in the county hospital.	1726.536270931401
Then, on July 2, there occurred another incident which set tongues to wagging at a furious clip.	358.0456473996472
Mrs Victor Dominique, socially prominent and a neighbor of the Lalauries, chanced to glance out of her parlor window at dusk one evening and beheld an amazing sight.	920.3562688142267
The manservant Devol and his mistress, Delphine Lalaurie, were pursuing a young girl- an octoroon of cameo-like beauty- across the front lawn of the Lalaurie mansion.	1055.1608508231911
The girl was not more than 16.	226.86002643416256
She was nude to the waist and her tumbled abundance of black hair did not conceal the knife slashes on her back.	416.45275464023234
The bleeding girl was tiring fast; the coachman and Delphine were gaining on her as she raced down Perdido Street.	737.7396477869389
The fugitive cried out in an oddly sibilant voice "Help me, somebody!	611.4606351202449
They have pulled out all my teeth and now she will carve out my tongue with her hacksaw!	442.23186646183433
"Bastards", he would say, "all I did was put a beat to that Vivaldi stuff, and the first chair clobbered me"!	739.0374431465392
Since then, and since the pure grain had gotten him divorced from every decent- and even indecent- group from Greenwich Village to the Embarcadero, he had become a sucker-rolling freight-jumper.	3122.530915255832
"There ain't nothin' faster, or lonelier, or more direct than a cannonball freight when you wanna go someplace", Feathertop would say.	824.0774322872518
"The accommodations may not be the poshest, but man!	87.46702475802653
there ain't nobody askin' for your ticket stub, neither".	379.65323289523167
He had been conning the freights for a long, long time now.	38.228484540965965
Ever since the hooch, and the trouble with the Quartet, and Midge and the child.	79.7809725313304
Ever since all that.	60.83710467129482
It had been a very long time that had no form and no end.	458.92827965153833
He was- as he told himself in the vernacular of a trade no longer his own- riding the dark train out.	181.44174860388887
Out and out and never to return again.	47.18539752608082
Till one day the last freight had been jumped, the last pint had been killed, the last beat had been rapped.	357.43945573949634
That was the day it ended.	54.69554290678177
THE FREIGHT CAR WAS COLD, early in the morning.	109.79639593996959
He was pressed far back into the corner of the car on his hay sacks, the rattling and tinning of the wheels on the rails almost covering the sound of his ocarina.	1171.4692319949067
He held his elbows away from his body, and the little sweet potato trilled neatly and sweetly as he tickled its tune-belly.	639.3722365052073
The train slowed at a road crossing, and the big door slid open; at first gratingly, caught by grains of corn- then with a clash into its slot.	553.974209900117
The boy lifted the girl by the waist and set her on the lip of the floor.	175.73794901505042
She pulled her legs up under her, to rise, her full peasant skirt drawing up her thighs, and Feathertop's music pffft-ed away.	831.783481614596
"Now that is a very nice, a very nice", he murmured to himself, back in his corner.	513.5736308322678
A little thing, but the right twist for the action that counted.	156.79422216574508
Hot, that was the word, hot!	231.13577149190527
Hair like a morning-frightened sparrow's wings, with the sun shining down over them.	360.2971660304807
A poet, yet!	32.91611968736164
His thoughts for the swanlike neck, the full, high breasts, the slim waist, and the long legs were less than poetic, however.	394.68633797550734
Zingggg-O!	60.420885461177264
Then the boy straight-armed himself up, twisting at the last moment so he landed sitting.	187.67758610764454
He was less to see, but Feathertop took him in, too, just to keep the records straight.	255.3329704480372
Curly hair, high cheekbones, wide gnomelike mouth, a pair of drummer's blocky hands, and a body that said well, maybe I can wrestle you for ten minutes- but then I'm finished.	1098.187172947237
"We made it, Cappy", the chick said.	177.34999847407394
"Yeah, seems so, don't it", the boy laughed, hugging her close.	268.94544252381525
"Ah-ah"!	63.589204650461355
Feathertop interrupted, standing up, brushing the pig offal from his dirty pants.	668.7044507500303
"None of that.	5.6005991194826805
We run a respectable house here".	50.31051447435199
They whirled and saw him, standing there dim in the slatted light from the boarded freight wall.	345.0648055892819
He was big, and filthy, and his toes stuck out of the flapping tops of his shoes.	181.3104339444392
He held the black plastic kazoo lightly.	100.83447874478453
"Come sit", said Feathertop, motioning them toward him.	176.73798654084078
"That crap is softer over here".	85.24661739079122
The girl smiled, and started forward.	419.9066488503855
The boy yanked her back hard, tugging her off her feet, and gathered her into the crook of his arm.	659.1230994549928
"Now stay with me, Kitty", he snapped irritably.	151.95347677331077
"I vowed to take care of you- and that's what I'm gonna do.	119.7348003714455
We don't know this guy".	29.35680939197196
"Oooo, square bit", Feathertop screwed his face up.	230.24016119380525
This guy was strictly from Outsville.	92.54444733308216
But nowhere!	22.220840501212376
"What is with this vow jazz"?	55.16513271541814
Feathertop inquired, lounging against the freight's vibrating wall.	407.3367614976885
"We- we eloped", Cappy said.	72.09035754020333
His head came up and he said it defiantly.	230.7233254773891
"Well, congratulations".	16.44195930178556
Feathertop made an elaborate motion with his hand.	461.46286006688166
These two were going to be easy pickins.	247.43086460837415
They couldn't have much dough, but then none of the freight-bums Feathertop rolled had much.	356.18014151498545
And besides, the chick had a little something the others didn't have.	78.78073380547347
That was gonna be fun collecting!	108.97292718220366
But not just yet.	17.24949317069987
Feathertop was a connoisseur.	63.38545223349927
He liked to savor his meat before he tasted it.	92.24674208309285
"Come sit", he repeated, motioning to the piled hay bags, over the pig leavings.	466.4152967816926
"I'm just a poor ex-jazz man, name of- uh- Boyd Smith".	152.01324868274207
He grinned at them wolfishly.	66.66125176630077
"That ain't your name, Mister", the boy accused.	150.2807228624156
"And you know- you're right"!	85.10452929728554
Feathertop aimed a finger at him.	73.14786176424208
"Oh, come on, Cappy", the girl chided.	92.03659220697294
"He's okay.	27.76621351433249
He's a nice guy".	33.77281457713463
She started to move toward the hay bags, dragging the reluctant Cappy behind her.	902.3426758936497
Feathertop watched the smooth scissoring of her slim, trim legs as she walked to the bags, and tucked them beneath her, smoothing the skirt out in a wide circle.	1116.7214021907737
He cleared his throat; it had been a long, hot while since he'd seen anything as nice as this within grabbin' distance.	1048.9755790186198
He had it all doped, of course.	26.41910793758531
Slug the kid, grab his dough- at least enough to get to Philadelphia- and then have a rockin' ball with the doll.	1230.9943172513704
Hmm- diddle!	95.85598248656227
"Where'd you come from, Mr- uh- Mr Smith"?	221.59514050120976
Kitty inquired politely.	78.05181259534025
"Where from"?	9.005612564159838
he mused.	27.58287463355499
"Out.	7.47098532474671
I been riding train for a ways now".	68.47249396560942
They lapsed into silence, and the freight wallowed up a hill, scooted down the other side, shaking and clanking to itself.	408.40230556515365
After a while, Kitty murmured something to Cappy, and he held her close, answering, "We'll just have to wait till we pull into Philly, honey".	1177.4041333154248
"What's the matter, she wanna go the bathroom"?	320.3420759206713
Ernie found it immensely funny.	105.1188531071391
The boy scowled at him, and the girl looked shocked.	285.19882346870054
"No!	9.99520584836142
Certainly not, I mean, no that isn't what I said"!	291.000448503032
she snapped at him.	29.9276685924979
"I only said I was hungry.	36.68552380112943
We haven't had anything to eat all day".	78.69110366702849
Joviality suffused Feathertop Ernie Cargill's voice as he reached behind him, pulling out a battered carpet bag, with leather handles.	1625.1854928119556
"Whyn't ya say so, fellow travelers!	320.98245766621915
Why, we got dinner right here.	43.766164036879495
C'mon, buddy, help me set up the kitchen and we'll have food in a minute or two".	103.66763148315312
Cappy looked wary, but he moved off the floorboards and followed the dirty ex-musician to the center of the refuse-littered boxcar.	530.7648826374553
Ernie crouched and opened the carpet bag.	150.45333569561885
He took out a small packet filled with bits of charcoal, a deep pot of thin metal, some sheets of newspaper, a book of matches and a wrinkled and many-times folded piece of tin foil with holes in it.	910.3805279969779
He put the charcoal in the pot, lit the paper with the matches, and carefully stretched the tin foil across the top of the pot.	224.7135066839301
"A charcoal pit, man", he said, indicating the slightly-smoking makeshift brazier.	531.4062979982847
"Fan it", he told Cappy, handing him a sheet of newspaper.	167.7207143440693
"Yeah, but what're we gonna eat?	143.53244643370797
Charcoal"?	20.324827059120516
"Fella", Ernie waggled a dirty finger at the younger man, "you try my ever-lovin' patience".	691.3749343663872
He reached once more into the carpet bag and brought up a package of wieners.	227.4169449771327
"Hot dogs, man.	27.13077438107851
Not the greatest, but they stick to your belly insides".	166.64441262141798
He ripped down the cellophane carefully, and laid three dogs on the tin foil.	278.46922353276597
Almost immediately they began to sizzle.	87.97528604207997
He looked up and grinned.	22.415517490958376
"A Kroger's self-serve", he explained.	59.400078320900015
"I self served".	16.135266302430047
WHEN THEY HAD LICKED the last of the wieners' taste from their fingers, they settled back, and Cappy offered Ernie a cigarette.	670.8672622869041
Nice kid, Ernie thought, too bad.	121.54859822752945
"How come you're riding the rods, kids like you"?	220.57567735691632
Ernie asked.	20.203389169547908
Cappy looked down at his wide hands, and did not reply.	855.2085432248264
But surprisingly, Kitty's face came up and she said, "My father.	328.16863839604866
He didn't want us to get married.	79.37076888238822
So we ran away".	19.25679472438824
"Why didn't he want you to get hitched"?	199.56607892290168
This time even she did not answer.	74.31248297962897
She looked down at her hands, too.	36.086349712356174
After a few seconds, she said, "Dad didn't like Cappy.	276.34518785283666
It was my fault".	14.550867645079174
Cappy's head came around sharply.	102.01725193987211
"Your fault, hell!	53.410655111971636
It was all my fault.	23.958516150682158
If I'd been careful it never woulda"- he stopped abruptly.	545.2151530186135
Ernie's eyebrows went up.	88.52884843712657
"What's the matter"?	5.8903754125086705
The girl still did not raise her eyes, but she added simply, "I'm pregnant".	335.4947856448785
Cappy raged at himself.	66.84017953143646
"Oh he was stupid, her old man!	85.01005494611319
You never heard nothin' like it Kitty's gonna go have an abortion, and Kitty's gonna go away to a convent, and Kitty's this and Kitty's that h like he was nuts or somethin', y'know"?	1148.7251068868445
Ernie nodded.	29.03187826693186
This was a slightly different matter.	20.574171492580522
He remembered Midge, and the child.	27.68759891734756
But that had been a time before all this, a time he didn't think about.	159.93515677787065
A time before the white lightning and the bumming had turned him inside out.	146.08479422550104
But these kids weren't like him.	54.775460678503705
Oh crap!	45.88393693335622
he thought, Pull out of it, old son.	177.65601594948836
These are just another couple of characters to roll.	67.65412667443512
What they got, you get.	24.39111123856091
Now forget all this other.	30.46768735399779
"Wanna drink"?	53.91138473526753
Ernie offered, taking the pint of sweet lucy from his jacket pocket.	368.4937018329533
"Yeah.	7.786428610600051
Now that you offer".	18.11269013226686
The answer came from the open door of the boxcar.	70.52206757163043
From the man who had leaped in from the high bank outside, as the train had slowed on the grade.	235.90895009230198
Ernie stared at the man.	885.0226168601154
He was big.	7.593017723500466
Real big, with shoulders out to here, and hair all over him like a grizzly.	237.85557734582582
Road gang, Ernie thought.	90.92774943068997
"You gonna give me a drink, fella"?	182.6719993628975
the big man asked again, taking a step into the boxcar.	181.31821743441634
Ernie hesitated a moment.	44.884821934509176
This character could break him in half.	43.42417643046404
"Sure", he said, and lifted the pint to his own lips.	80.46833397106352
He guzzled down three-quarters of the strong home-blend and proffered the remainder.	1188.566772172948
The man stalked toward them, his big boots heavy on the wooden flooring.	211.6260813522119
He took the bottle with undue belligerence, and making sucking noises with his thick lips, drained it completely.	394.7252484474095
He threw his head back, closed his eyes, and belched ferociously.	139.72028224021403
He belched again, and opening his eyes, threw the bottle out the open door.	182.0160523026917
"Well, now", he said, and reached into his pocket.	517.5870043211281
"I didn't know I was gonna have company in this car".	230.09813568372303
"We're going to Philadelphia", Kitty said, pulling her skirt down around her legs all the more.	280.4204233930031
"No, I don't think so", said the big man, and it was the final clincher for Ernie.	1230.368460531452
He had suspected this guy was trouble, and now he was sure of it.	362.7221942450417
"Maybe you and me will, girlie, but these two ain't goin' nowhere".	215.24436870864164
He advanced on them, and abruptly there was a shocked electricity in the car.	243.68076038074543
Ernie was screaming inside himself No, damn you, you ain't gonna take my meal ticket away from me!	912.6670893353282
The newcomer stalked toward them, and Kitty shied back, her hand to her mouth.	230.6335290293332
Her scream split up the silence of the car, accompanied by the rattling of the freight, and then Cappy came off the floor, his legs driving him hard.	2413.8200974274605
The kid hit the bigger man with an audible thwump!	239.08795062968852
and carried him backward in a footballer's tackle.	186.60120239398813
They went down in a heap and for a long minute there was nothing to see but flailing arms and legs.	1000.7899092003827
The kid showed for an instant, and his arm was cocked back.	116.21870139524349
The fist went down into the pile of flesh, and Ernie heard the bigger man's deeper voice go, "Aaawww"!	555.3855047901043
Then they were tumbling again, and the big man reached into the same pocket he had gone for earlier, and came up with a vicious switchblade.	462.6062512082621
He held the knife aloft an instant- an instant enough to press the stud.	223.51851822493597
The blade came out with a snick!	107.2980385232453
He fisted the knife overhand, and drew back to plunge it into the kid's throat.	328.794696147309
Kitty screamed insanely and her face was white.	194.1127513638664
She grabbed at Feathertop's sleeve and shrieked, "Help him!	375.92854416632235
Help him!	22.318526880987065
Do something"!	23.0751977506405
They neither liked nor disliked the Old Man.	144.1511831172127
To them he could have been the broken bell in the church tower which rang before and after Mass, and at noon, and at six each evening- its tone, repetitive, monotonous, never breaking the boredom of the streets.	2869.492205890677
The Old Man was unimportant.	43.39131783102483
Yet if he were not there, they would have missed him, as they would have missed the sounds of bees buzzing against the screen door in early June; or the smell of thick tomato paste- the ripe smell that was both sweet and sour- rising up from aluminum trays wrapped in fly-dotted cheesecloth.	5311.285610944691
Or the surging whirling sounds of bats at night, when their black bodies dived into the blackness above and below the amber street lights.	1398.5090750345219
Or the bay of female dogs in heat.	59.861481236337454
They never called him by name, although he had one.	58.479082558832296
Filippo Rossi, that's what he was called in the old country; but here he was just Signore or the Old Man.	2403.769317960999
But this was not unusual, because youth in these quarters was always pushed at a distance from its elders.	449.35304198329317
Youth obeyed when commanded.	74.1118926975262
It went to church on Sunday and one Saturday a month went to confession.	126.8015034683749
But youth asked nothing of its parents- not a touch of the hand or a kiss given in passing.	170.50429557445392
The only thing unusual about the Old Man had long since happened.	133.7932867554431
But the past was dead here as the present was dead.	54.7174176885306
Once the Old Man had had a wife.	54.47273409278943
And once she, too, ignored him.	32.73054594426242
With a tiny fur-piece wrapped around her shoulders, she wiggled her satin-covered buttocks down the street before him and didn't stop.	758.0343312693558
In one hand she clutched a hundred dollar bill and in the other a straw suitcase.	206.86522043410218
The way she strutted down the street, the Old Man would have been blind not to have noticed both.	483.7313711610163
Without looking at him, without looking at anything except Drexel Street directly in front of her, she climbed up into one of those orange streetcars, rode away in it, and never came back.	1365.0862674406915
"But she shouldn't have come here in the first place", the women had said.	583.4561840111945
"No, no.	6.203090777897406
Not that one.	8.212085231446148
She thought she was bigger than we are because she came from Torino".	126.80023301212859
"Eh, Torino!	73.58572527301031
She gave herself fancy airs!	120.05115778494577
Just because she had a part on the stage in the old country, she thought she could carry her head higher than ours".	586.9339374919426
They had slapped their thighs.	54.383597234491866
"It's not for making pretty speeches about Dante those actresses get paid so good".	347.9541656874884
"Henh"!	28.826365438569706
Calloused fingers, caressed only by the smoothness of polished rosaries, had swayed excitedly beneath puckered chins where tiny black hairs sprouted, never to be tweezed away.	3411.724538584334
Mauve-colored mouths that had never known anything sweeter than the taste of new wine and the passion of man's tongue had not smiled, but had condemned again and again.	1402.932806654796
"Puttana"!	28.826365438569706
But if the Old Man even thought about his wife now, nobody cared a fig.	232.0501528485576
It was enough for people to know that at one time he had looked down the street at the fleshy suppleness of a woman he had consumed- watching her become thinner and thinner in the distance, as thin as the seams on her stockings, and still thinner.	983.6253093904141
His voice had not commanded her to stop.	57.947331810798566
It had not questioned why.	26.515562971269155
The women said they had seen him wave an exhausted farewell; but he might have been shooing away the fleas that hopped from his yellow dog onto him.	786.3903997241518
He was never without that dog.	20.57418285775254
And his eyes- those miniature sundials of variegated yellow- had not altered their expression or direction.	353.1767832086434
The Old Man's very soul could have left him and flown down that street, but he wouldn't have had anyone know it.	322.5279584283842
Perhaps he had known then where that hundred dollar bill had come from and where it was taking his wife.	423.7389944136136
But when he called for his withered, wrinkled sister Rose to care for him and the children, had he guessed that all he would remember of his woman was the memory of her climbing into that streetcar?	428.1977028939368
There seemed to be a contemptuous purpose in the way he sat there with his eyes glued to Drexel Street and his back in opposition to the church behind him.	715.62326756979
For all he saw or cared to see, this could have been a town in Italy, not the outskirts of Philadelphia.	292.5076079660304
It could have been Bari or Chieti for the way it smelled.	236.6805158041856
What did it matter to him that the park at the foot of Ash Road stretched beneath elevated trains that roared from the stucco station into the city's center at half-hour intervals?	732.2352957200033
Or that the tiny creek spun its silent course toward the Schuylkill?	374.7943528882575
This place was hatred to him, just as hatred was his only companion in his aloneness.	840.9205995585544
To him they were one and the same.	12.874088591217378
Sameness for the Old Man was framed in by a wall of ginkgo trees which divided these quarters from the city.	777.4979095224386
Sameness lined the streets with two-story houses the color of ash.	255.03559298429929
It slashed the sloping manure-scented lawns with concrete steps which climbed upward to white wooden porches.	1037.4728429457862
It swayed with the wicker swings and screeched with the rusted hinges of screen doors.	428.37723345915066
Even the stable-garage, which housed nothing now but the scent of rot, had a lawn before it.	222.84930262549022
And the coffee shop on Drexel Street, where the men spent their evenings and Sundays playing cards, had a rose hedge beneath its window.	1132.7816579704077
The hedge reeked of coffee dregs thrown against it.	231.7360417590286
Only one house on the street had no lawn before it.	170.44792919033915
It squatted low and square upon the sidewalk with a heavy iron grating supporting a glass facade.	468.6105317668149
That was Bartoli's shop.	30.693345909449572
Above it, from a second-story showroom, wooden angels surveyed the neighborhood.	211.38575824851952
Did the Old Man remember them there?	103.59586137434123
Yet everywhere else sameness was stucco and wood in square blocks- like fortresses perched against the slant of the hill, rising with the hill to the top where the church was and beyond that to the cemetery.	2028.3166345676154
Only paved alleyways tunneled through the walls of those fortresses into the mysterious core of intimacy behind the houses where backyards owned no fences, where one man's property blended with the next to form courtyards in which no one knew privacy.	2736.879915822334
Love and hatred and fear were one here, shaded only by fig trees and grape vines.	439.54786636473847
And the forked tongue of gossip licked its sinister way from back porch to back porch.	439.7534591040342
The Old Man silently fed upon these streets.	152.01958317752693
They kept him alive, waiting.	48.71520407617526
Waiting for what and for whom, only he could tell and would not.	72.92627723646801
It was as though he had made a pact with the devil himself, but it was not yet time to pay the price.	2848.4501408708047
He was holding out for something.	25.814268346836787
He was determined to hold out.	22.9768904618629
2 The Old Man's son threw himself down, belly first, upon a concrete step, taking in the coolness of it, and dreaming of the day he would be rich.	461.5994187528677
At fifteen he didn't care that he had no mother, that he couldn't remember her face or her touch; neither did he care that Aunt Rose provided for him.	646.6530550033299
He was named Pompeii as a tribute to his heritage, and he couldn't have cared less about that either.	189.94510640179857
To him life was a restless boredom that began with the rising sun and ended only with sleep.	543.1515271022425
When he would be a man, he would be a rich man.	9065.467051137866
He would not be like the "rich Americans" who lived in white-columned houses on the other side of the park.	473.55554471380634
He would not ride the eight-thirty local to the city each morning.	71.70949129519039
He would not carry a brief case.	30.049964727033686
Nor would he work at all.	20.760186748571982
He would square his shoulders and carry a cane before each step.	140.25933104210773
He would sit inside the coffee shop and pound a gloved fist upon the table and a girl would hear him and come running, bowing with her running, calling out in her bowing, "At your service".	550.2340781730586
He would order her to bring coffee, and would take from his vest pocket a thin black pipe which he would stuff- he would not remove his gloves- and light and smoke.	737.0143247746827
He could do that when he would be a man.	5723.277954170692
"Hey, Laura"!	32.865838302355506
he called to his sister on the porch above the steps.	106.47083524055742
She was only ten months older than he.	63.068429674461946
"Laura, what would you say if I smoked a pipe"?	203.2574359937456
Laura did not answer him.	15.518113736149909
She leaned unconcerned against the broken porch fence, brushing and drying her wet, gilded hair in the sun.	1137.1309922177702
One lithe leg straddled the railing and swung loosely before the creaking, torn pales.	738.8369567511112
Her tanned foot, whose arch swept high and white, pointed artfully toward tapering toes- toes like fingers, whose tips glowed white.	1284.949170124401
All the while she sat there, her sinewy arms swirled before her chest.	287.26460109936687
Her face showed no sign of having heard Pompeii.	201.31975437781998
It was a face that had lost its childlike softness and was beginning to fold within its fragile features a harshness that belied the lyric lines of its contours.	495.61263696618744
The eyes, blue and always somewhat downcast, possessed a sullen quality.	187.27223832364692
Even though the boy could not see them, he knew they were clouded by distance.	240.2980282112682
He was never sure they fully took him in.	39.61177335456838
Pompeii called again, "Laura"!	124.05749098063372
But the only answer that reached him was the screeching of the porch rail from her leg moving against it.	213.89997652131814
"She's in a mood", he thought "There's not a month she doesn't get herself in a mood".	455.7590286933299
Well, what did that matter when the sun was shining and there were dreams to dream about?	793.3551391326436
And as for his pipe, if he wanted to smoke one, nobody would stop him.	205.51994905365788
Not even Laura.	15.96631340803688
Suddenly he was interrupted in his daydreaming by a warm wetness lapping against his chin, and his eyes opened wide and long at the sight of a goat's claret tongue, feasting against the salt taste of him.	1565.7501453972318
Above the tongue, an aged yellow eye, sallow and time-cast, encrusted within a sphere of marbleized pink skin, stared unfalteringly at him.	706.9499503397527
"Christ sake, goat, git"!	171.05800306200138
But the goat would not.	21.610969176479575
"You're boiling milk, ain't you"?	66.58618827180754
soothing it with his hand, knowing the whiskered jowls and the swollen smoothness of teats that wrinkled expectantly to his touch.	2612.951651989887
Pompeii rolled over.	44.87769420537556
His head undulated gradually, covering space, to come straining beneath the taut belly within the warmth of those teats.	602.2532506927531
With his mouth opened wide, he squirted the warm white milk against the roof of his mouth and his tongue savored the light, earthy taste of it.	432.5361593803611
The boy's fingers and mouth operated with the skilled unity of a bagpipe player, pressing and pulling, delighting in what he did.	326.8976541813484
Above him slid the evasive shadow of a storm cloud.	161.0997346663351
Its form was a heavy figure in a fluttering soutane.	160.62058028940092
But the boy could see only the goat's belly.	98.11801577122611
The Old Man near the corner let the shadow pass over him, sensing something portentous in it.	294.07372486044574
He knew it was there, knew also what it was about, but he wouldn't raise a finger except to smooth his yellow dog's back.	491.40232833384863
There would be time enough, perhaps the Old Man reassured himself, to pay the devil his due.	369.4741031022947
Time enough to give up his soul.	129.14708580171907
In the meantime, six sandals, stained an ocher, the same color as Pompeii's shaved hair, edged up close to him.	1047.7881891513862
The clapping they made on the concrete interrupted him in the ecstatic pleasure he knew, so that he quickly released his hold on the goat and pretended to be examining its haunches for ticks.	1552.876127916554
He knew at a glance that the biggest sandals belonged to Niobe, the neatest ones to Concetta, and the laced ones to Romeo, Concetta's idiot brother.	698.242743497289
Pompeii expected Romeo's small body to sink closer and closer to the ground.	1260.6528029340052
He expected Concetta's thin hand to reach down to grasp the boy, and her shrill, impetuous voice to sound against the rotundity of his disfigured flesh that was never sure of hearing anything.	1534.7795487320939
People came in and out all evening to see the baby and hold it.	103.72345307345515
The room filled with smoke, and Maggie's head throbbed with excitement and fatigue, but Stuart had such a happy, earnest look of proud possession on his face that Maggie couldn't bear to do anything to quench it.	1244.9951481262133
Little Anne rapidly outdistanced her mother in recovery.	204.91634848424448
In two months she became a fat highly social baby, with a fuzz of flaxen hair all over her head.	778.175819766564
She stopped flying into rages and started digesting her food; she developed a peaches and cream complexion and a sunny disposition, and she asked for nothing more of life than that she be kept dry and comfortable and fed huge amounts of food at stated intervals and be carried to where she could watch activity going on around her.	1089.0223498073585
She was so heavy that Maggie's arms shook from lifting her and taking care of her.	399.5272572412426
Maggie couldn't seem to get her strength back or catch up with herself with all she had to do there was the big basket of clothes to be coaxed through the rackety old washer and lugged out and lugged back; there was the daily round of household chores in which Maggie insisted on participating.	3352.9342978392547
Worry had a great deal to do with it; Stuart had been laid off at the produce company and had to go back to sitting in his father's office, taking what salary his father could hand out to him.	986.2752276396022
Mr Clifton would have preferred death and bankruptcy to having his son stay with his wife's people without contributing to his and his family's upkeep, and besides that there were the things that had to be bought for the baby, milk and orange juice and vitamins and soap, just plain soap.	1269.9714446827027
Maggie and Stuart pored over figures every night, trying to find how they could squeeze out a few pennies more.	475.93893073401483
In desperation Maggie consulted Eugenia one afternoon "Do you think you could find me something I could do here at home to make some money, so I could still watch the baby and do the rest of the things"?	1128.5171795681918
"It seems to me you have enough to do as it is", Eugenia said.	123.95126929988686
She had been watching Maggie go from the washing machine to the baby to the stove and back again.	168.20929475532824
"I have plenty of odd moments when I could be doing something", Maggie said.	178.5447782866834
"It would make me feel a lot better, but the Woman's Exchange isn't taking baked goods any more and I can't leave the baby with Grandma because she isn't strong enough and the baby's too young to be put in a nursery".	1294.4291019259801
"I should think so", Eugenia said.	49.101323040669136
"For one thing you can stop keeping that child in starched dresses and changed from the skin out nineteen times a day".	932.6591437446818
"She's so beautiful, and I do like to keep her looking nice".	328.2056002948983
Maggie said.	18.573845183833658
She picked up the baby and nuzzled her fat warm little neck.	210.35144061421204
"She'll be just as beautiful in something that doesn't have to be ironed", Eugenia said.	981.0108637638124
"Evadna Mae Evans said she didn't put a thing on her child but a flannel wrapper until it was nine months old".	860.1154035274585
"Evadna Mae Evans got all her baby clothes from Best's Liliputian Bazaar in New York, and I'm sick and tired of hearing about Evadna Mae Evans".	1224.653442584192
"Well now, Maggie, you don't have to snap at me", Eugenia said.	388.4034676758741
"I'm just thinking of a way for you to be sensible".	106.36258556505238
"I'm sorry.	2.8913635792072867
I do seem to snap at everybody these days, but I would like to think of a way to make a little extra money".	3052.0358383734147
"Well, let's see.	47.19370846986845
Let's make a list of your assets".	66.4911017365818
Maggie started laughing, and she laughed so hard she couldn't stop, and she kept on laughing while she lugged the clothes out to the yard to hang them up while the sun was still shining.	850.8513140245149
When she came back Eugenia was sitting at the kitchen table with a pencil and envelope jotting down words and figures.	892.1397313310998
"I have here that you could run a nursery of your own for working mothers", Eugenia said.	153.37752036086766
"We could put up cribs on the second floor sleeping porch and turn the front bedroom into a playroom where it's nice and sunny, but of course it would entail quite a bit of running up and down stairs and Chris said you were to be careful about that".	1032.5473338981835
"What else"?	6.865049186603037
"You might set up a dress shop in the living room".	105.11191261775011
"Every woman in the block has tried that".	100.78847100867335
"What about a tea room, then?	52.52098218806813
You could set up tables in the front room and serve salads and your baked beans and brown bread and Grandma could dress like a gypsy and tell fortunes".	725.2236688687318
"It's too elaborate.	15.163259020371319
And Grandma isn't strong enough to take on something like that, and to tell you the truth neither am I".	3227.0071684274176
Eugenia sighed.	34.96654888551656
She said, "Well, those are the really interesting things, but if you don't like any of those I can turn over some of my extra typing jobs to you, if you think you can type well enough".	1514.8167426281605
"Oh, I'm sure I could do that", Maggie said.	121.60913959261063
"But it really wouldn't be fair, taking your jobs away from you".	136.26200236672892
"Don't worry, I can get plenty more", Eugenia said, wondering where in the world she could.	298.10561048578097
Maggie was looking much happier already, clearing a space on the table and chattering about how she could put up a typewriter right there, and be brushing up on her typing so Eugenia wouldn't be ashamed of it.	1566.876146287697
"And then whenever I have a minute I can be working at it, and keep an eye on the baby and the stove at the same time.	562.9842840942655
And I can go back to my contests and be thinking while I'm doing the washing".	374.45959224606753
"What are you going to do with your feet so you don't waste anything"?	884.5075046158674
Maggie laughed.	30.94846803817152
She said, "Oh Eugenia, I wish h" "What"?	118.70795194888201
"I wish I had three wishes", Maggie said.	80.6721806051235
"All of them for you".	44.83725566610121
It grew bitterly cold toward the end of November, contributing to the miseries of countless numbers of people.	874.2859774221521
The temperature dropped to twenty below at night and stood at zero during the days.	160.95612180279582
The cold settled like a tangible pall over the Mile High City, locking it in an icy grip that harshened its outlines and altered its physical appearance; it had a look of grim stark realism, resembling other cities whose habitual climate was cold, instead of the sprawling bumptious open-handed greedy Western city basking in eternal sunshine at the foot of mountains stored with endless riches and resources.	2064.052648296694
The jobless huddled in the streets outside of employment offices, outside newspaper buildings, in parks, in relief lines, outside government agencies.	381.73565779806785
There weren't facilities to take care of them; there never had been a need felt for such facilities.	183.88434752489644
That kind of poverty was regarded as the exclusive property of the East, which created depressions with their stock markets and their congested populations and their greedy centralization of industries, protected by discriminatory freight rates.	1692.118292913093
The East was popularly supposed to have got the country into war and into depression, dragging the west along; and now the East was creating government agencies for which the West doubtless would have to pay.	844.7030609501168
The government offices were being opened but they weren't being opened fast enough and meanwhile the cold penetrated everything.	465.93339290266323
Shivering, people talked and argued; all this government spending would have to be paid for somehow, but on the other hand desperate circumstances called for desperate remedies and something had to be done.	815.67109555992
Something had to be done; it was the theme song of millions of American people, their personal problems no less urgent than those of the government.	598.0174743808436
Something had to be done.	32.15431495162256
The Abernathys said it to each other a dozen times a day.	90.37666171872071
Something had to be done about the furnace, the fuel bills, the washing machine, the doctor and dentist bills, about making money stretch for food, for the mortgage, for taxes, for shoes, for half soles, for overshoes, for clothes, for the new leaks in the roof, for gas and light bills; about keeping warm, about keeping well, about meeting the minor emergencies that came up once, twice, fifty times a day.	1428.5610265215566
Just dropping the baby's bottle and breaking it became a catastrophe, and Stuart wore out his shoes so fast that he was termed a major disaster.	625.0032174879124
The Abernathy furnace consumed fuel like a giant ravenous maw that had to be appeased by hurling tons of coal into its evil red depths, and no matter how much coal they put in the house remained cold.	2836.9179472224664
Cold came in the innumerable cracks that seemed to have sprung up, under doors, around loosened window frames, from the sleeping porches, the attic, from the widened cracks between shingles on the roof.	1189.4123340071956
Presently they had to give up running the furnace at full capacity and depend on the old coal range in the kitchen, which had never been removed when the new gas range was installed, and the fireplaces and an electric heater in Grandma's room.	2389.5118228384536
It was so cold and so wretched that a sort of desperate gaiety infected all of them, like people stormbound or shipwrecked or caught in some other freak of circumstance so that time stood still and minor anxieties fell away and the only important thing was to cling together and survive.	1103.6933787371236
The pipes burst and they all laughed and stood in ice water to their ankles while they swabbed the bathrooms.	475.175649079556
They lived mainly in the kitchen; they moved Maggie's bed and the baby's basket there, and the rest of them undressed by the stove and ran groaning and shivering to the upper polar regions and plunged into icy beds.	1585.7003623563487
Grandma said it was just like the early mining camp days, and it was the way people ought to live, only she was getting too old to take the pleasure from it that she used to.	2863.282303854625
"You said a mouthful", Eugenia said grimly.	164.07380294945187
Eugenia hated being cold worse than anything, and she was beginning to find the joys of poverty wearing thin.	653.6359892713998
She said to Maggie that it was one thing to meet an emergency and another to wallow in it, and it was beginning to look at if this one was going to last forever.	245.87347338762223
"Plenty of people are poor all their lives".	215.2654329522127
"Plenty of people haven't our brains and talent".	101.24879256619326
"I know you when you start talking about brains and talent", Maggie said.	214.60200160815316
"You're working up to something, and if you don't watch out you'll ruin your whole life one of these days just to prove that the Abernathy family is superior to everything, even a depression".	1050.1411333541405
"The only thing that worries me is how I'm going to prove it", Eugenia said.	451.24663291561643
They begged Grandma to let them put a bed in the kitchen for her, but Grandma said she was getting too old to sleep in strange beds and be seen with her teeth out, and that she hoped to die in privacy like a Christian and if the Lord willed it to be of pneumonia than it would have to be that way.	844.9631794569507
She didn't want to be the only one with a stove in her room, especially as her life span was nearly run out anyway, and she insisted that Hope have the heater.	1128.4629466830447
Hope wouldn't hear of it, and she took the heater back to Grandma's room, and Grandma took it back to Hope's room, and the two of them dragged it back and forth until Grandma tipped it over and almost set her bedspread on fire.	2409.6830517500184
She said that proved she wasn't to be trusted with a fire in her room, and she could be burned to a crisp without anybody knowing it.	846.4944422623241
Eugenia suspected her of deliberately overturning the heater because she was getting tired of dragging it back and forth and still wanted her own way, but Hope said if Grandma wouldn't have the heater nobody would have it, so Grandma had to give in.	7460.569279605418
"Thrifty of her to use it up.	41.94642758248742
Unusual in a case like this, but"- "You can joke!	494.6786727798799
Didn't you read it?	39.49547980718014
She's married that tenant!"	88.00060303059155
"I read it, yes.	20.898189007906115
This ought to simplify Tolley's life".	82.02379110419659
Laban had more to say.	33.833531171606126
Tolley had gone to live in California.	181.96724074640994
He'd mentioned it, himself, at church and everybody seemed to have the idea that Tolley had left because Jenny had jilted him for Roy robards.	412.5213308605079
"It was plain as the nose on your face that they're laughing about it, Mamma.	123.60527842507565
Zion stayed to get my pin, but it'll be a cold day in June when I go back".	291.6401784022784
"We will both go back, Laban"!	86.09473023117765
Kizzie turned to go inside.	68.78366410441187
"Let me stay and take the pictures you wanted, Mamma.	89.01212068932325
The sun's right"- "Pictures"?	74.47816927603557
She swung around.	20.925169266063044
"What pictures"?	16.185967474230875
"In Brace's room!	49.173907440411966
You told me to bring my camera.	205.51886846702783
I'm not going back"- "Indeed you are!	29.900354423829217
Why should I want pictures of an empty room now?	83.89181413694612
Tolley had no idea of marrying that sneaky little Jenny!	478.33792287410444
This- trip of his had nothing to do with her consorting with tenants, and I am going to see that everybody at Mt Pleasant understands that simple fact.	671.8395435942709
Wait for me, Laban, I'll be dressed in half a second"!	141.0147802630752
Frank followed her into the bedroom, hooked her dress up the back.	168.97309553037348
"Hurry, Frank!	57.08570127041252
They're not going to laugh at the Fairbrothers and Labans very long!	145.8597746153338
Tolley's going is my fault.	99.1703537729153
I drove him away.	21.405676230979157
You know it and I'll tell everybody exactly how it happened".	146.0399656889553
She was so beautiful, so valiant, so pitiable.	51.54421936013476
He kissed her.	14.500608564952799
"Make your confession to God, Kizzie dear, not to the congregation".	694.73026313582
"I'll decide that when I get there.	36.529235120724366
I was so cruel to Tolley, so unfair.	85.12875385258063
But I'll be fair now!	98.93209749041351
He is coming back, isn't he, Frank"?	67.73213631742077
Yes, oh yes.	29.479033144672975
What else was there to say?	32.95029565989595
Returning to the log-house he found some favorite lines from Jonathan Swift on his lips "Under the window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together.	617.6128730635074
Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder".	376.8174013682459
Absolution for his lie?	66.51820967036257
He questioned God's taking time to telegraph the message, but he felt better about Kizzie, and he took the sealed envelope from its pigeonhole, wondering why he had preserved it.	942.8171087847717
If he died before she did, she would never be unable to resist opening it.	157.45708732250202
In any case he would be thrusting a burden on his remaining sons, making them parties to a deception peculiarly his own.	201.00303895153598
It was simply his necessity to confess which had made him write and keep this thing.	146.73693507566247
"You've told God, Frank", he said.	28.603727435789196
"Why lacerate the- congregation"?	64.0469566081536
Reaching for an old clay pot, relic of pioneer days, he tore the envelope in pieces, dropping them into it, touching the little pyre to flame, watching it curl, the red sealing wax melting and bubbling in the feathery ash.	1216.7516347894302
Surely now his beloved son could rest in peace.	140.58962064513224
"'And let me go, for the night gathers me, and in the night shall no man gather fruit'".	1523.6273567641338
A beautiful and haunting line, a subtle genius, Swinburne, difficult not to envy a gifted man, and perhaps he did h. But there were great satisfactions, even for a small man.	1080.3644716593165
Beyond his window were the greening trees, new spring, eternal hope, eternal life.	252.26494944847425
There lay Grand Fair's Quinzaine, his own young parents' graves, but new life and promise for his sons, grandsons.	619.7417183996581
He poured his thimble of wine for the toast he'd made so often.	207.60336331049015
"To absent loved ones".	35.404287552843925
But this last time he drank not to Brace but "To Tolley"!	248.51483678185195
42 MR ROBARDS- Jenny was the only person she knew of in the Mt Pleasant neighborhood who called him that- was kind but too easygoing.	1040.483787329759
It didn't bother him for everybody from the blacksmith to the preacher to say, "Howdy, Miss Jenny", adding a careless "Roy", but it did her.	377.7386435253429
He could put a stop to it, she told him again and again.	487.82112834388965
Simply call Mr Whipsnade Oscar, and Dr Dunne PG, and C'un Major Frank.	729.6555896219967
Mr Robards laughed, said he'd feel a damn fool, plain-out couldn't do that even to please her.	455.1858448906649
"You could try.	11.448765777887262
And if I ever hear you say 'Mist Laban' again I'll scream.	170.9656479119532
And don't tell me you didn't at church Sunday.	119.10179157812645
I heard you"!	74.26102108859531
He really hadn't meant to, he assured her, but it was plain to her that the importance of these small things was lost on Mr Robards.	207.7598018433894
How strange it was that he could give her this handsome house and carte blanche as to its beautiful furnishings, and fail her in- spiritual ways.	1189.8081747730403
Another weakness- far more irritating than his manner of speaking, which he made only token effort to change- was his devotion to that old horse of Tolley's.	669.0604447932949
Her horse, rather.	26.331388761708688
But Mr Robards' now, oh my yes, indeed, yes!	254.67821245253808
He called her "the Mare" much as Mrs Whipsnade spoke of "the Queen, God bless her".	246.89721812030018
h He, with fifteen or twenty horses or mares or geldings or what-nots out there in the barn, was reverent only of "the Mare", "the Racin' Mare", the revolting Gunny.	876.4524966525696
For the first few months of their marriage she had tried to be nice about Gunny, going out with him to watch this pearl without price stamp imperiously around in her stall.	1443.278831632257
And what had happened?	19.293666012984183
Gunny invariably tried to bite her.	128.78854682727825
Nerves, Mr Robards said, just a nip anyway.	219.20829006362806
"Stand back, Miss Jen, she's oneasy of your scarf".	376.0584529103931
Never, "Quit that, you sor'l devil"!	266.51669708449987
Never concern for his wife's nerves, or the danger that the curled lip and big teeth might mark their own dear baby due in January.	802.085032091448
She musn't annoy Gunny whose foal was due then too!	601.3975857046288
Listening for hours to his laments that the war and "Mist Fair's" poverty afterwards had robbed the mare of many a racing triumph, and to his predictions of greatness for the procession of foals to come, Jenny could look forward to years of conflict with an animal who disliked her intensely and showed it.	1762.405269276151
Gunny symbolized so much that was unpleasant- Tolley, the indifference with which the Fairbrothers and indeed the whole neighborhood now treated her and which she would die rather than acknowledge to her husband, his lack of understanding and sympathy in her present condition, her disgusting swollen stomach.	2359.6282481385388
Human birth was no novelty to Mr Robards.	181.1278625842897
Tillie was a fine midwife and could get here quick, he suggested.	177.2546267996793
Jenny's aversion to having Dr Dunne, a former admirer, seemed silly to him, but he would humor her, get anybody she wanted, the best never being too good for her.	750.7864853527014
The chances were against his being here to humor her when her time came, she was sure.	276.25902335610397
He would be in the barn, or riding for the veterinarian!	135.13948132138708
Night after night he stayed with Gunny in the dead of winter, rubbing her with quarts of expensive liniment, fussing over her bran mash as the cook did over charlotte russe, tracking manure on the pretty new carpet when he did come to the house.	1413.74978643871
Yet when the dear baby came, he had Tillie over here in a jiffy, and was as attentive and sweet and worried and happy when it was all over as any husband could have been.	1098.1675301006633
Jenny wished now that she had had Dr Dunne, feeling that somehow he wouldn't have allowed the dear baby to turn into triplets.	1292.2796125680209
There was something not nice about triplets, though their father seemed pleased, showing no disappointment that they hadn't been the son he wanted, saying, "You don't see triplets trippin' down the pike ever' day, Miss Jen, hon.	1289.4784274609665
Rhyme 'em up cute- Arcilla, Flotilla h" Edmonia for her mother, she said firmly, Jennifer, for herself, and- "Kezziah, for Miss Kizzie", he suggested.	1125.5049089563138
"She was mighty good to you past times, an' this'll fetch her".	160.230244018006
Now she must be thinking of a boy-name, something special.	210.8536495683493
Just wait till she saw the Mare's foal.	269.6625485883397
Handsomest colt in all Kentucky.	84.14287810493133
Strong too, up on his legs when he was an hour old.	526.5687316906923
What about Royal Robards?	81.11893989369536
"Why don't you name him Jesus Christ!"	65.97884808050196
She burst into tears.	23.95000561901287
Roy was deeply distressed.	74.07983190720714
He'd had no idea how unhappy his sweet peach had been.	657.8806850063659
Of course she wasn't herself right now, but as her strength came back her spirits didn't seem to rise with it.	882.2071991582659
He had a good idea why not.	218.94375879224972
Those elegant "At Home" cards she sent out, now she could wear her pretty clothes again, and had the house all trimmed up, hadn't brought many callers in two whole months.	1866.6368492000352
Doc Dunne and Miss Sis had come.	160.3414763841309
So had Miss Shawnee Rakestraw, full of criticisms about the changes here, giving thanks that her dear old father had gone to his Heavenly Rest last year, saying how much she enjoyed her boarding house in town in inclement weather, was looking forward to Quinzaine Spa this summer.	1295.0075867889252
There was an idea.	8.152423867159508
Miss Kizzie had been right snippy ever since they were married, though you'd have thought a namesake would have brought her round.	531.9568821344653
Oh, she'd come to see them once, left silver teething rings for all of the trips.	745.9365166141057
But when Miss Jen went over right away to return the call, Miss Kiz couldn't have been very cordial, for she'd come back before she hardly had time to get there.	1247.197407391712
More and more, these days, she'd been driving that pretty little mare that looked like her, over to Tillie's and Nick's- his own old square frame box on posts, chickens and cats and pups under the house, everybody friendly inside, making a to-do over the babies dressed like dollies.	1332.680148698948
Though he was glad she got on well with his young folks, she ought to be welcome at the finest house in the land, too.	693.6106142669097
It made him pretty hot under the collar, after the idea Miss Sis had given him, to be told by Miss Kiz that her holy spa was all reserved for this summer and next, if you please, and that much as she regretted it, they would be unable to entertain Mrs Robards and the children.	1820.6969727439794
She hoped they were well.	31.446527787981648
He didn't tell Miss Jen, but she must have got word from the cook or nurse, who of course knew those Quinzaine nigs, and she really took a fit.	510.0450463156384
If he ever did such a thing again she'd die of shame.	158.58618605626222
"Have a party an' leave 'em out, hon", he suggested.	125.8019695697516
"A swell party, send an invite to ever'body but them- those folks you met at the Galt House, the ones I've got to know in this new Jockey Club affair, the whole dang neighborhood.	1672.8187092035753
We'll have oystchers- couple bar'l oystchers'll fetch in a crowd any time.	261.8894223582745
I'll see word gets round".	97.92470231997777
"Don't you dare!"	27.993357944590713
Miss Jen was funny that way, funny that she didn't seem to take to his ideas and perk up.	328.8175752705424
He was downright worried about her, but there was one more thing he could try h. Zion was surprised when Roy's buggy stopped beside her on the pike one early summer day as she was walking home from the country school where she was teaching now that Eph Showers had had a call to preach in some mountain town.	1597.2001586543788
Roy smiled- he did have a nice smile- took off his hat most politely, told her to hop in, and he'd give her a lift to Quinzaine.	920.4792591035606
Her hesitation was only momentary and she hoped he didn't notice it, as she settled herself, asked quickly how Miss Jenny and the babies were getting on.	954.5369361525671
"See for yourself, Miss Zion.	75.2321121990877
It won't take a minute".	19.286305692781653
He swung in through his own wide gateway.	107.00943672073019
"Them's the purtiest babes you ever did see, but Miss Jen gets mighty lonesome.	949.6144849942664
She'll relish the sight of a friendly face.	50.885969413820014
Miss Kiz won't care your comin', will she"?	306.01863895103236
"Why of course not", Zion said uncomfortably.	100.78835100827543
"He must have forgiven me", Henrietta murmured to the room.	72.12402135947899
The absolution of Doaty's last will and testament was proof enough of that; Doaty would never have left her house to a godless woman.	481.6341983451667
She found herself wishing an old wish, that she had told Doaty she was running away, that she had left something more behind her than the loving, sorry note and her best garnet pin.	579.8329553285186
Perhaps Doaty had guessed already and kept her counsel.	205.8033955196587
Henrietta thought, It's extraordinary how much she always knew about both of us.	172.21114868647865
There had been more to know about Hetty, inevitably, and most of it unfavorable.	312.70335505564253
Adelia was the good one, or, if not always good, less frequently tempted.	756.7734731953647
Their childhood would have been quite circumspect without Hetty's flair for drama, especially through the long summers.	849.6548553891108
In winter, in the city, there had been the Maneret School, which taught excellently with a kind of austere passion for knowledge; there had been lessons in French from a small Polish nobleman with a really profound distaste for his pupils; there had been the dancing class- Miss Craddock, thin and tireless, with her supervising wand and her everlasting one-two-three, one-two-three.	1588.293183098511
There had been supper parties and teas, fetes and little balls, Mama small and pretty and gay and Papa enormously jocular, enormously possessive, the sun around which the Blackwell planets revolved.	917.2750864880304
Mama had died before the corruption of the family circle, the interruption of Charles.	120.02294776588312
It was safe to assume that Papa, sighing heavily, had said many times to his remaining daughter, "Thank God your poor mother was spared this", and indeed it might be true that it had been easier for Henrietta to leave, with her hand in Charles' hand, just because her "poor mother" was gone already and would never know.	1119.62013958416
Mama was vulnerable; one had always felt the need to make a safe world around her.	1734.283676583411
But I would have gone anyway, thought Henrietta.	236.1926675973718
She had always been able to ignore the moral question because there had been no choice.	113.11573056049018
Only at this moment- perhaps because it was before dawn and she was lying in Doaty's bed- she found herself examining how others might regard her.	1591.6266189976566
Perhaps they would argue that morality consisted just of that ability to see a choice.	159.48468618186436
She turned on her side, finding the idea oppressive.	83.22316844371349
If Adelia had felt about someone as Henrietta felt about Charles, would she have run away with him?	389.00398501312895
Impossible to imagine Adelia feeling so about anyone.	215.71618987711798
No temptation, no sin.	36.1618700208636
No temptation, no virtue?	59.21517409934379
A curious thought to end a curious night.	74.83585830862226
The birds were really awake now in a colloquy of music, and light was beginning to creep across the room, touching sill and door, table and chair and all of Doaty's flowers in their artificial blossom and leaf.	2077.979939910673
Before anything else, she would go to Doaty's grave with flowers from Doaty's forgotten garden.	479.3885045992687
Everything must wait upon this mission, this sentimental duty of a pilgrim whose nature avoided graveyards.	450.49575375474666
She closed her eyes, remembering the small French cemetery, enclosed by stone walls.	297.5440900956782
It had always seemed to rain there, and even the grass was gray.	196.8838339152316
After the sad impatient moment, waiting for comfort which could not come, she slipped out of bed and went to the open window.	1306.025782244079
The garden below was lacy with dew and enchanting in its small wildness.	315.88217137012856
Leaning out, she could see a tangle of rosebush and honeysuckle, one not quite come to bloom, one just beyond it.	309.23678098060003
On a thrusting spray thick with thorns and dewdrops and swelling pink buds, like a summer Valentine, a bird balanced and sang, nondescriptly brown and alive with its own music, a little engine of song.	1294.718386689572
It was so pretty and artless that she felt like a child again and would have enjoyed running out barefoot to play on the wet grass with all the growing things, but Doaty never permitted bare feet and she was decidedly not a child but une femme d'un certain age.	1015.4309824348283
Feeling suddenly neat and subdued, she dressed quite soberly and went downstairs.	465.91528061682897
Rosa, unbelievably, was not yet up and about, reassurance that Rosa was human.	424.40805765746325
Feeling protective toward this sleeping being, Henrietta found a yesterday bun and milk in a white jug, a breakfast which was somewhat the equivalent of going barefoot.	673.5641744760817
Outside, the garden, the tame wilderness, yielded a patchwork bouquet of daisies, sweet william, scented stock and lady's bedstraw, which she tied with long grasses and took back to show Rosa, who was now stirring about the kitchen and haranguing Folly.	1281.3726740749605
The poodle came gleefully to Henrietta and begged for the flowers, supplicating the air with prayerful forepaws.	1361.6661816846156
Henrietta held her bouquet out of reach and said it was for Doaty.	555.3372164550505
"Rummaging in the dew", said Rosa coldly.	213.5279761617395
"Go change your shoes before you turn around".	114.56201267523707
She sounded so exactly like Doaty that Henrietta obeyed her under the clear impression that she could either comply or stay home.	686.1831927364949
Folly danced, eager for whatever lay beyond the door.	190.35237700017734
To a Blackwell, there was only one church.	62.92940452759053
The cemetery slumbered just behind it, and the way lay through the village and close to the sea.	817.8241307445675
For the first time in thirty years, Henrietta walked down the narrow street with its shuttered shops just stirring and its inhabitants eying her with the frankest curiosity.	496.06088717447784
She smiled and bowed, recalling the princess-in-a-carriage feeling she had enjoyed when she was a child.	770.0249154939505
Now, some of the acknowledgments were cautious, but all were interested.	81.42047672139334
An old man, sitting against the wall of a cottage and waiting for the sun to find him, gave her a more than reflective look as she passed, the sap still plainly rising in his branches.	6008.691765358943
On an impulse, she turned back and said good morning.	286.6395631430853
He cupped his ear and shook his head at her repetition, announcing in a nettled way that he had heard her the first time.	213.13938243709302
He then offered his own estimate of the weather, which was unenthusiastic.	114.00703978139788
"Summer's been slow to come", he said.	54.282348222403314
"It's my dryin' out time".	65.72900162876581
He scowled at her flowers.	48.05535894620393
"I'm taking them to the cemetery", said Henrietta, out of a vague feeling of hospitality.	263.40292064946783
"They'll be takin' me next", he said pleasantly, "but not so soon's they plan.	321.7331289285444
See half of 'em in their graves before I choose my own coffin.	305.8590534797851
It's dryin' myself out that does it".	66.05298280866143
He regarded her with rising hope.	50.738785272947176
"You'd like to hear how I go about it".	238.20675424491046
"It's nice of you", Henrietta said doubtfully.	117.18221974310302
"Y're welcome".	23.668921458946294
He straightened himself, soldierly against the wall, and pulled his sprawled feet together so they stood side by side in their old boots.	1681.3090420381047
His stick ceased to be a thing to rest his chin on and became a pointer for emphasizing the finer aspects of his text.	360.5310449143295
"Every month, f'r three days", he said happily, "I take no water into my system, no water whatsoever.	1062.0653632209585
It rests the tissues".	24.25822882851299
Henrietta murmured that she could quite see how it would, and he nodded approval of her womanly good sense.	226.40288839434012
"Rests the tissues", he said, "and pacifies the system.	69.44070290204817
My dad did it, and he lived to a great age".	85.2392004110364
He looked up at her sharply.	31.00367905726868
"Don't remember, do you"?	34.39635886582273
She did suddenly, through the link of memory with his father, old Titus, who must have been in his nineties when Henrietta ran away.	3193.03032580604
Next to the Blackwells, Titus had owned the island most, and she and Adelia had often stood in front of him, silenced by his terrible years- a scanty man with a thin beard and very deep-set blue eyes like a mariner, more aged than possible.	1036.4444492175446
He had never spoken once to the awed sisters, but his son had been friendly, a big fellow of fifty or more, a fishing-boat captain and powerful like the sea.	472.50367906508274
It must be that son who sat before her now, shriveled to half his size and half his senses.	326.30775484183306
She said gently, "Of course I remember you".	74.76022917660991
"Not so well's I remember you", he said.	36.95069132360608
"Y're the young Blackwell woman.	69.47732779950042
Ran away on a black night with a lawful wedded man.	242.2780958228557
I know all about you".	13.370994217339163
"You do seem to", said Henrietta, impressed.	56.51215967935986
"Can't blame a man for leavin' his wife", he said quite cheerfully.	279.52278697396343
"Left mine many a time, only she never knew it.	94.58886939081991
Man in a boat, there's a lot of places he can put in at and a lot of reasons he can be away for a bit.	200.75358587774932
Any harm in that"?	25.82122471999312
"Probably", said Henrietta dryly.	65.11589253654908
He gave a short hard laugh and looked at her knowingly.	824.908019810861
"You'd be the one to say", he observed, and she found herself liking his approval none too well, but she could not defend herself and say that her actions were "different", since all actions had their own laws.	1094.2882867476221
Only, this old man's connivance was even less to her taste than Selma Cotter's open censure.	577.4098759812344
Well, she had not come back to Great Island to be understood, praised or condemned.	691.6652490938206
She had come to make her peace with the past, and of that past this ancient of the earth was only a kind of shadow.	321.5944414171718
She started to move away, just as a woman came out of the cottage, a big-boned, drab-haired figure with a clean apron tied over her limp print dress.	2372.8745869515756
She smiled vaguely at Henrietta and spoke to the old man.	299.7569618540269
"You've not had your breakfast yet, gran'dad".	139.12204274467567
"Y'r dam' porridge is no breakfast", he said.	343.36600820053957
"Milk and sops"!	56.278988193170626
He beat the air with his stick, and it fell from his claws and clattered on the stones.	313.2473762784328
"He's owly today", his grand-daughter said wearily, and bent to pick it up.	637.3530093758445
"He's got this idea about drying out h" "It ain't an idea"!	241.5649052510137
"If it ain't an idea", she said, "how comes it you can drink beer but not water"?	263.1097321601066
He looked piously to heaven and said, "Beer don't affect the tissues none", and the ingenious hypocrisy of this defense pleased Henrietta so that she forgave him his stint of malevolence.	776.0102366833772
His grand-daughter sighed.	55.66437582402223
"Come on, do.	18.935417516112246
The children are eating, and Miss Blackwell's on her way somewheres".	177.19988551405166
"To the graveyard.	12.446374796652838
Who ain't"?	30.31298083981931
"Not me.	6.228464912666853
I've got a day's work to do.- You'll be visiting Miss Doaty, ma'am"?	312.31156771352755
Henrietta nodded.	20.519267309339256
How much they knew about her!	36.04179244025557
The woman she must have been a tiny baby when Hetty and Delia had stood arm in arm, watching great age grow small answered the nod with her own.	1058.1635383809398
"God rest her soul, she was a sweet one.	273.85320258983916
Come on now".	18.748650211865286
She put a strong hand under the old man's arm and lifted him up, patiently, with the gentle cruelty and necessary tyranny that the young show toward the very old.	373.34742328383743
He mumbled at her but let himself be led off inside the house, shuffling mightily to make it clear how weak and aged he was and how he was buffeted about by those who still had their wicked strength.	1089.4455704720635
There was a gabble of voices from indoors, young hungry sounds like cats after fish, and a burst of swearing from the old man.	373.8219382079707
Henrietta looked down at her bouquet, still lively with its color and scent, and set her feet on their journey's way again, leaving the village street and crossing the first field, Folly dancing ahead of her.	642.9999831942491
At the edge of the field, the wild rolling land took over, dotted with fat round bushes like sheep.	962.7387521783293
They were covered with tiny white blossoms, their scant roots clawing at the stony ground, and wild birds darted in and about and through them so they were nearly alive with the rustle and cry.	547.1549918508668
The air was full of sounds too but placid ones, a terrestrial humming as much out of the earth as out of the blue sky.	1902.681051677677
She felt mindless, walking, and almost easy until the church spire told her she was near the cemetery, and she caught herself wondering what she would say to Doaty.	1099.1464448981696
Both church and graveyard were smaller than she remembered them how many things had lessened while she was gone away but the headstones had grown so thick in thirty years that to find one named "Dorothy Tredding" seemed suddenly impossible.	976.4816600807046
She sat down on the nearest, fallen with age and gray with sea-damp, her fingers tracing the indecipherable carved letters padded with green moss.	1511.664976711687
The day's sun was gathering its strength in gold, and she wished she had brought her parasol, if only to shade Doaty's flowers.	837.5535770610011
A small, rock-carved angel watched her from a nearby tomb, the only angel in the cemetery.	274.0575002095768
She remembered, suddenly, a night of savage moonlight and scudding clouds when she and Adelia, having dared each other, had stolen out of their great safe house and come here, hand in hand, hoping and fearing ghosts.	1466.5015444764358
The Momoyama family had come from Miyagi Prefecture, in the northeast of the main Japanese island of Honshu, where there are still traces of the mysterious Ainu strain.	936.031176498125
The Ainus were a primitive people, already living on the island before the principal ancestors of the Japanese came from Southern Asia.	525.3227527561742
Apparently they were of Caucasian blood.	59.19499665815354
They had white skins and blue eyes; all their men were bearded, and many of their women were beautiful.	367.60785166332084
A pitiful few of them are left now, to subsist mainly on the tourist trade and to sing their ancient tribal chants, which have the same haunting sadness as the laments of the American Indians.	951.0695828912986
Most of them have been assimilated, but sometimes a man in Miyagi or Akita prefectures is much more hairy than the average Japanese, and occasionally a girl will be strikingly lovely, her coloring warmed and improved by a little of the tawny honey-in-the-sun tint of the invaders from the South.	695.5550797411867
Tommy Momoyama was one of these fortunate occasions.	457.5690947142902
She was taller than most Japanese girls, and had the exquisitely willowy form of the Japanese girl who is lucky enough to be tall.	2096.5336348378596
Her nose was higher of bridge, her complexion so pale as to be quite susceptible to sunburn, and the fish and vegetable diet of her forebears had given her teeth that were white and regular and strong.	831.6101532436604
Her mouth, soft and full, was something for any man to dream about.	126.14546384622939
She had black eyes, long and intriguingly tilted, and the way she walked was melody.	275.2717897833862
She had been in Japan just one week.	101.03081286160287
It was an alien land, and she hated it intensely; she was already considering putting in rebellious requests for duty at San Diego, Bremerton, the Great Lakes, Pensacola- any place the Navy had a hospital- with a threat to resign her commission if the request were not granted.	1179.8323204491044
Anywhere would be better than the land of her ancestors.	275.49330739449545
There was nothing wrong with her job.	59.108909595969095
Tommy had been assigned to the psychopathic ward.	557.6120631127758
There were no depressingly serious cases the ward doctor sometimes teamed up with the chaplain to serve as a marriage counselor- sometimes the Navy sent people back to the States to preserve a marriage- but mental health as a rule was very high.	1770.5987828989666
At present the doctor's main concern was in seeing to it that Japanese salvage firms were not permitted to operate on the hulks of warships sunk too close inshore, because the work involved setting off nerve-shattering blasts at all hours.	1577.6531454032283
Tommy was interested in psychiatry, because there was much an understanding nurse could do to help the patients.	2698.0538219156742
But she suffered in her off-duty hours.	72.3939618329165
Such as now, when she sat at a table in the coffee shop at the Officers' Club, having coffee and a hamburger to sustain her until dinnertime.	954.3926273538925
She had changed into a cocktail dress, and the whole evening should have been before her, but already she was beginning to get a tight feeling at the back of her neck.	1404.7808706824158
This was one of the Navy's crossroads- you find them all around the world.	174.01984994503596
Ships from the West Coast rotated on six-month tours of duty with the Seventh Fleet, and Yokosuka was the Seventh Fleet's principal port for maintenance, upkeep and shore liberty.	781.4353608416305
Sooner or later, all the gray Navy ships came in here; if Tommy sat long enough, she would be sure to see all the young officers she had met in San Diego and Long Beach.	2569.49327612854
And she wanted desperately to see someone she had known back there.	145.94701531359124
She felt, rather than saw, the approach of the good-looking young man.	2396.931305754247
He came through from the Fleet Bar, which was stag, with the ice cubes tinkling in a glass he carried.	308.618557146407
When he saw Tommy sitting alone, the tinkling sound stopped.	176.93458662606872
He was perhaps a trifle tipsy, having been long at sea where drinking is not permitted, and consequently out of practice; he wore a brown tweed sports jacket obviously tailored in Hong Kong, and he was of an age that marked him as a lieutenant.	1542.1792711681421
Probably off one of the carriers- an aviator.	93.09127279503592
There was a fifty-fifty chance, perhaps, that he would be unmarried, and an even more slender chance that his approach would be different.	247.45984359650515
Japan did something to a man- and it wasn't just Japan, either, because the same thing applied anywhere overseas.	281.1735806112505
It was as if foreign duty implied and excused license; it intimated that the folks at home would never know about it, and, therefore, why not?	1199.3293219325978
Then the young man in the brown sports jacket spoke, and it was no different.	942.3587880533482
"Harro, girl-san"!	107.4493416808464
he said, turning on what was meant to be charm.	1313.7860082140141
"You catchee boy-furiendo?	138.84637925502207
Maybe you likee date with me"?	59.271415598666714
"I beg your pardon"!	96.04741795489886
Tommy said out of her cold rage.	95.79829714128574
"I don't believe I know you, and I can't understand your quaint brand of English- it was meant to be English, wasn't it"?	1462.7733748214328
The nice-looking young officer fell back on his heels, open-mouthed and blushing.	379.31938484503564
At least, he had the decency to blush, she thought.	526.9865038239201
"Oh- I'm sorry!	129.93725821740915
You see, I thought- I mean I really had no idea"- "Oh, yes- you had ideas"!	223.22744598355538
Tommy interrupted furiously.	94.67622237376965
"All wrong ones"!	42.60818757335983
Then she jerked her thumb toward the door in a very American gesture, and dropped into Navy slang.	365.3329567848971
"Take off, fly-boy"!	66.49702496048027
"Uh- sorry"!	53.622476423116105
he muttered, and took off, obviously feeling like a fool.	346.733262392012
The trouble was that there was no lasting satisfaction in this for Tommy.	64.47811955848802
She felt like a fool, too.	40.62099873604774
It hadn't been this way in college, or in nurses' training; it wasn't this way in the hospital at San Diego.	1735.6316565740503
Everybody had accepted her for what she was- a very charming girl.	116.68873789994679
Nobody had addressed her in broken English at any of those places, nobody had suggested that she wasn't American.	1072.3114678149718
There are Spanish girls who look like Tommy Momoyama, brunettes with a Moorish hint of the Orient in their faces; there are beauties from the Balkan states who are similarly endowed, and- back in the blessed United States- they were regarded simply as pretty women.	1157.609818087119
Now, having been sent halfway around the world on a job she had not asked for, Tommy was being humiliated at every turn.	463.1829246912532
She looked around, self-consciously.	109.42097220047741
Four little Japanese waitresses were murdering the English language at the counter- Yuki Kobayashi happened to be one of them.	1390.9891491065928
Everybody but Tommy seemed to think it was charming when they called, "Bifutek-san"!	974.4316183459846
for a steak sandwich, or "Kohi futotsu"!	268.1779906644612
for one cup of coffee.	20.9397939855336
Two other Japanese girls were sitting at the tables, both quite pretty and well groomed.	471.2464622565067
One was with a whitehaired and doting lieutenant commander; the other was with her American husband and their exceptionally appealing children.	371.78986961349705
Seeing these did nothing for Tommy's mood.	126.70644681441402
She told herself rebelliously, and with pride, I am an American!	322.51459876126523
And so she was, and would remain.	88.55786432403654
But she was learning that so long as she was in this country, and wore civilian dress in the Club, there would always be transient young men who would approach her with broken English.	655.42566714927
There had been occasions when some of the more experienced had even addressed her in what might have been perfectly good Japanese.	209.7734347583978
Tommy wouldn't know; after coming to America, her parents had spoken only English.	286.4084896912191
One thing was becoming increasingly sure.	44.634074243174574
She had been sent to the wrong place for duty.	75.21015065986138
There was more to service in the Navy Nurse Corps than the hours in the ward.	205.59888883384232
One had to have friends, and a congenial life in after-duty hours h. Now there was raucous male singing from the Fleet Bar.	1203.5468306256269
It was terribly off key, and poorly done, and Tommy could never admit to herself that male companionship was a very natural and important thing, but all at once she felt lonesome and put-upon.	749.329122357164
She finished her hamburger and drank her coffee and paid her check; she got out of the coffee shop before the incident could be repeated.	1131.2874560095368
Eating while angry had given her a slight indigestion.	291.80499195504115
Back in her living quarters at the hospital she took bicarbonate of soda, and sulked.	303.0955824833313
Then, after a while, she went to her mirror.	1482.0590519899956
It was all true.	9.885091868547837
She certainly looked Japanese, and perhaps she could not really blame the young men.	832.7763647125307
And, still, they did not have to be so crude in their approach h. There was a letter to write to her mother, and she tried to make its tone cheerful.	686.8815841974782
She promised that she would soon take a few day's leave and visit the uncle she had never seen, on the island of Oyajima- which was not very far from Yokusuka.	834.245936089943
And tomorrow she would take time to shop for the kimono her mother wanted to present to the young wife of a faculty member as a hostess gown.	1804.3382310241132
Tommy, of course, had never heard of a kotowaza, or Japanese proverb, which says, "Tanin yori miuchi", and is literally translated as "Relatives are better than strangers".	1510.2527599250056
Actually, this is only another way of saying that blood is thicker than water.	101.61485850207477
/2, Doc Doolittle's scheduled appearance at captain's mast was a very unusual thing, because the discipline dispensed there is ordinarily for the young and immature, and a chief is naturally expected to stay off the report.	928.8230330967173
But the beer hall riot in Subic had been unusual, too, and Walt Perry was convinced that Doc had started it through some expert tactics in rabble rousing.	1184.8555324911606
Just why anybody should wish to start a riot the executive officer didn't know.	298.6387594123341
In his opinion, Doc had not grown up.	70.86238443871117
The lieutenant was not entirely wrong in the belief.	68.09947032745399
There had never been a good reason for Doc Doolittle to grow up.	356.5393514515489
He had come into the Navy too young, with the image of the fun-loving Guns Appleby before him.	1420.8170165446047
The war found him much too early, and its perils- and especially its awful boredom- were best forgotten in horseplay and elaborate practical jokes, and even now Doc had never found any stabilizing, sobering influence.	1110.3551000518855
He remained young at heart, with an overdeveloped sense of humor.	92.7962895352721
He wisecracked about the captain's indoctrination of new men, took great delight in slaughtering cockroaches with ethyl chloride, and gave no thought for tomorrow.	1227.8944431530513
He was doing thirty years, and the Navy would take care of him.	118.81080057075242
The job security enjoyed by Doc Doolittle, and nearly all members of the Armed Forces, is a wonderful thing.	510.5040141270235
Actually, all a man in uniform has to do is to get by.	93.96663490406041
He may not rise to the heights, but he can get by, and eventually be retired.	96.39410589904985
Doc had been under restriction to the ship since the Bustard left Subic.	366.19121912255974
This deprived him of liberty in Hong Kong, but he told Boats McCafferty that Hong Kong was a book he had read before, and the Navy would always bring him there again, some day.	950.1617444440817
At Yokosuka he was restricted to the confines of the Base because Walt Perry, being thoughtful, knew that Doc might have to draw some medical supplies from the hospital or the Supply Base.	2846.9131363262045
This gave Doc the whole range of the naval establishment, and suited him quite well.	315.8740685822736
There were two things he wanted to do inspect one of the many caves that had been dug into the hills on the Naval Base, and visit an old shipmate.	470.0722865865834
A telephone line had been hooked up to connect the ship with the Base exchange.	262.1861403718419
After supper, Doc called Whitey Gresham, who was now a lieutenant and had a family.	1088.8802230907593
"Well, Doc, you old sonofabitch"!	100.76997254973978
Whitey exclaimed, with true affection.	97.13876570448443
"Come over and have a drink.	107.86429391813753
We live down by the Base commissary.	82.89437077301598
Grab a taxi".	19.747368181584374
"I'll be there, but I'll walk", Doc said.	90.7691807739012
"I've got to run an errand on the way.	22.31067966250526
See you in about an hour".	138.04580206435983
He threw a smart salute at the gangway, went up the dock, and turned down the wide street in front of the Petty Officers' Club.	371.5000229937025
How, he wondered, does one enjoy one's spare time?	167.79837329879004
He considered some interesting excursion but he was on the road every day from dawn to dusk.	893.3007064711784
Then there was exercise, boating and hiking, which was not only good for you but also made you more virile the thought of strenuous activity left him exhausted.	463.0285748168872
Perhaps golf, with a fashionable companion- but he'd lost his clubs, hadn't played in years.	270.887226349776
There was swimming over at the Riverside Hotel, but his skin was so white he looked like the bottom of a frog.	516.8329469950685
Perhaps a packing trip into the Sierras, let his beard grow- but that was too stark.	689.2250276833367
I could, he thought, take a long walk- but where?	359.73595150756853
The telephone rang.	23.796281538804184
"You missed it", Buzz's voice said, "You should have gone over to the Pagan Room with us.	250.1326675725641
Wow.	16.05296361890169
Strippers, but scrumptious, and Toodle Williams and her all-lesbian band".	326.02129395878205
"Hi, Buzz", Owen said.	92.75591428326321
"I went over to the Willows and dropped two notes".	283.98368591256275
"Tough", Buzz said, "Listen, we're having a stag dinner over at the Pagan Room on Friday.	426.2136690768266
Imagine a stag dinner with Toodle Williams".	180.92893539335844
He laughed and laughed.	13.567903414020213
Owen wanted to be pleasant because Buzz worked the territory next to his, but he hadn't come to Reno for stag dinners.	471.796930717394
"Thanks", Owen said, "but Friday is a long way off and anything can happen".	362.1490628766454
Buzz was a tireless instigator who never let his victims rest.	347.937280746427
When Owen was finally rid of him, there was a timid rap at the door.	303.46457408065106
"Yes", Owen called out.	30.671346404015456
"Yes"?	8.198408249851672
"I'm Mrs Gertrude Parker", a soft voice explained, "And I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes, please".	563.4733504940747
Ahah, he thought, a lush divorcee at last.	105.20830743929076
Probably saw me in the lobby.	40.32242690373105
He was disappointed to find a nervous, scrawny woman with a big hat standing at the door.	345.18347105461817
She frowned at his green pajamas with the yellow moons.	221.7046673721034
"How do you do"?	9.863627860551816
she said, semi-professionally.	203.9079595680627
"Our church is sponsoring a group of very courageous women up in Alaska.	177.78431833440075
We call them lay-sisters and they go among the Eskimos making friends and bringing the light.	248.66708534873226
They're up there in that freezing climate and all of us have to try and help them".	339.2443562322522
"Oh"?	4.7474168562983445
"You see", she said, looking past him into the room, where the highball glasses sparkled dully in the bright light, "you and I can't understand the many hardships they have to undergo".	1568.2916800332334
"Why is that"?	9.611231965859414
She apparently wasn't satisfied with his reaction.	81.73611220078632
Smug, Owen thought, smug and sappy.	205.19020304172938
There was a slight nervous twitch in the region of her left eye.	71.05820285703804
It gave her a lewd, winking effect.	83.56415950893704
"Have you ever tried to reason with an Eskimo"?	79.78789525723195
she asked, winking wildly.	268.5865597014078
"They are a very difficult group of people".	297.19499956831834
"I don't know much about them", Owen admitted, "but I suppose they have their own religion and they probably resent outsiders coming in and telling them what to do and what not to do".	1123.7675992275404
She smiled in a sickly-tolerant fashion.	110.5920662753403
"You know, that's very interesting.	26.769093343870075
People don't know how much they give away about themselves by remarks like that.	414.1053112498641
The more canvassing I do, the more I note how far most people are from their personal God".	764.9807691147853
Forebearing, Owen kept his peace.	95.53024596302271
What would happen next?	11.429466681100795
That she was out for a touch was certain, but when did she get to the pitch?	257.65365837612916
Several people passed in the hall and stared as he slowly retreated, trying to close the door a little, and she slowly leaned toward him and raised her voice.	6426.141141270849
"How did you get by the desk"?	32.46389215694081
he asked curiously.	19.81606423991856
"I'm sure the hotel doesn't know you're wandering around the corridors, knocking on strangers' doors and talking down Eskimos".	474.19355213157337
"Oh, I just come once a week.	32.064304364207096
Every day I visit a different hotel.	50.93804151648224
I feel it's my duty.	33.00690901256863
I do this work all on my own, because I understand the difficulties and I want to help these lay-sisters.	793.1719358954864
Do you know these women go all through Alaska, and they don't have the proper facilities?	1242.1600535454563
They travel in pairs as much as a hundred-and-fifty miles a day".	274.20547474601767
"Do you have any idea how far I travel every day?	299.81165045184287
I have the whole Pacific Northwest".	351.2009024646561
Owen was aware he was getting overexcited but he couldn't help himself.	273.74395601597314
Mrs gertrude Parker drew back.	93.68595690459784
"That's hardly a Christian approach", she remonstrated.	119.19241159406957
"You're in the secular world".	18.763811182647117
"I didn't say it was Christian.	28.82039922616526
I don't think you'll find many active Christian salesmen.	113.78456869959282
Not that religion isn't big business; those bibles and prayer books make a lot of money for publishing houses, but they don't get top personnel.	424.6573767881486
Our key salesmen are in appliances and cosmetics".	136.83955026193334
"God, I take it, plays no part in this", she said waspishly.	720.3403781110554
"God doesn't have any appliance or cosmetics", he said heatedly before he caught himself.	363.6049526052472
It sounded silly; why go on?	55.23830401810824
More people were passing; he had to find some way to close this impossible conversation.	301.7266755705267
"And whiskey", she said, smiling and blinking at the highball glasses.	179.67183329208083
"Don't forget whiskey; it's such a big seller".	95.61266418845534
"You know", he said, getting a grip on himself, "I think you're going to have to excuse me.	2933.9781362680974
I have an appointment".	17.733542435633048
"I can imagine", she said.	40.32329643943531
"Probably down at the bar.	435.98101256889476
But what do you want to do about the lay-sisters?	16204.756868310784
They must be freezing up there now.	26.36638389351689
Can't you help them"?	39.75181509675827
"Leave a card or something.	44.052910771436814
I'll think it over".	35.10155328027694
"I have no card", she said bitterly.	50.91837985003664
"You haven't been listening to what I've been telling you.	1493.0785766174404
I only hope my talking to you has helped you a little, anyway, because you need spiritual bucking-up".	565.4871541739903
She looked crestfallen, as if he had somehow disappointed the whole human race.	56.824262259447195
She stood indecisively for a moment, then walked down the hall; he heard her knocking on another door.	244.30406617759434
It took him about fifteen minutes to calm himself; then he realized he was hungry.	204.8529604939775
He showered, shaved, dressed and went down to the dining room for breakfast.	499.1676226174254
On the way he stopped at the desk to receive his mail.	157.9889755168415
There was a check from his company, and the usual enthusiastic bulletins on new lines they always issued.	538.0461808456455
His lawyer had sent him a statement on his overdue alimony, and there was a letter from the Collector of Internal Revenue asking him to stop in his office and explain last year's exemptions.	1494.2074879835873
He ate breakfast in a sullen mood, but afterwards, when he walked out onto Virginia Street, he felt braced.	418.7804929363808
He looked off to the crest of the Sierras, still white-topped; the glisten of the Truckee River made a wide spangle.	523.5805154525924
He felt suddenly elated, adventurous.	70.72437087079415
With any luck at all he could easily find a flowerpot.	171.58012649226754
Although it was only three o'clock, he stopped in at the Golden Calf.	359.23817001352404
The tables were all spinning, the dice rattling, the bar crowded.	161.5781828567342
Just to test himself, he played roulette for quarters on his old combination, five and seventeen, and within an hour, he had won, surprisingly, twenty dollars.	621.3708716680871
The way was opening up; when the management brought around champagne, the breakfast settled its whirling around in his stomach.	324.6410143573996
The Golden Calf was dimly lit with shaded neon.	323.2241591300568
There were more women than men in the place, but he couldn't find a flowerpot.	361.0311009844233
They all had the hard look of gamblers who had stopped dreaming, who automatically turned the cards, hardly caring what showed up.	385.29684437468416
The mural around the wall depicted early settlers in covered wagons, who appeared much more animated than the gamblers.	502.6528638306525
The women had a bright shining expectancy as they leaned out from the wall and gazed splendidly into the distance, while the men were stern but hopeful.	3366.148869394636
All, of course, except the Donner party who were bent on starving to death.	302.49761321852384
"I wonder if they did eat each other at the end", Owen mused.	722.1303249491159
He sat down next to a heavily-upholstered blonde, but she was cleaned out in twenty minutes.	497.73930435167284
She sighed a dirty word and left.	69.99787374903863
Owen was surprised to see Mrs Gertrude Parker playing the one-arm bandits that were cunningly arranged by the entrance.	808.58476324281
She sat down and played two slots at once, looking grim, as if bested by mechanical devices, and Owen felt sorry for the lay-sisters depending on her support.	655.0055203297809
A dried-up cowboy sat down next to him in the blonde's place.	453.35917794572873
He was a little more authentic than usual because he smelled slightly of the stables.	273.9008140629428
"What you need is a steady martingale", the cowboy announced after watching Owen play.	294.6849102231484
"You can't build on your hit-and-miss five-seventeen".	101.9341632600138
"What are you playing"?	24.700246819472103
Owen asked.	19.313391054260872
"I'm just logging", the cowboy explained.	36.48097477849061
"I keep all these plays in this little black book, and I watch over a twelve-hour period to find out what numbers are repeating.	1300.379380998523
But roulette's not my game.	47.02311407420909
I'm always trying to find a breaking table in blackjack.	300.7938724610906
Incidentally, I'm pretty famous in these parts I'm called The Wrangler".	187.08742787909873
"Nice to know you.	23.19534060138007
Don't you have to spend any time on your ranch"?	229.1652499551836
"Well, of course I do.	14.20580618302285
I'm with the Bar-H, pushing a horse called Sparky.	125.37959152814167
He's my own horse, and what I collect from him I use on blackjack.	474.5489047454146
This Sparky can rack and single-foot and he's the fastest thing in Washoe County.	373.7122112477108
I figure if I can get any kind of publicity campaign going, I'll land him on TV- you know, one of those favorite horses for some Western hero.	479.9001340807322
I once trained a horse for Hoot Gibson, but nothing like Sparky.	249.6535458308057
He's a pinto and he photographs wonderfully".	105.92347475109594
Five came up while Owen was listening to The Wrangler and he neglected to play, a loss of ten dollars.	334.58038259140994
This proved conclusively that The Wrangler was a jinx, so he walked on down to Hurrays, an even more glorified gambling den than the Golden Calf.	833.1004619351779
When he looked in the back, Mrs Gertrude Parker was marking keno cards.	561.6137856488139
His adventurous spirit had waned; he studied the pistol exhibition that Hurrays featured as an added attraction.	1304.5558458689582
He ogled a long redhead with green eyes, but she was a shill with her money in front of her.	658.5114406973498
He had no great prejudice against shills; it just seemed such a dry run.	174.0747301964439
There was no cash around; everyone was flipping silver dollars.	126.44049378416541
The management discreetly withdrew the green stuff into the office and gave the customers chips or checks or premium points.	514.0683952709876
He read a special announcement whereby Hurrays would feature a special floorshow at three am starring Adele The Body Brenner and fourteen glamorous schoolgirls.	1903.9421894252102
He wondered if he might bag a tourist, but they looked frightened of him.	103.00372763064605
He passed two brides, both wearing orchids, and they made him feel a little sad.	266.05169694326463
Owen found Buzz watching chuck-a-luck.	241.96957308289515
Buzz had on a Hawaiian shirt and was carrying some sun-tan oil and dark glasses.	492.91170926345444
He was shorter and fatter than Owen, who felt good standing next to him.	139.79481949060082
"We're all going over to Lake Tahoe and try our luck at Cal-Neva", Buzz explained, still instigating.	923.2174627140156
"We ran into a guy at the Pagan Room who guarantees we can beat the wheel.	237.95939126566086
He started out as a stickman, then became a pit boss until the Club found him crossroading.	337.7052596352289
He was knocking down checks at faro".	121.56298520537241
"I'm allergic to Tahoe", Owen explained.	74.06497105475096
"Something about the pollen".	31.764480833149904
"Well, okay", Buzz said.	51.97232777542592
"We'll see you around later".	75.7750455330852
Owen went over to the crap table and the dice were hot, but he couldn't pyramid with any consecutive success.	994.4632609783574
"How's your luck, honey"?	96.03892272043714
A short platinum blonde in a bursting sun-suit addressed him.	257.2075158278792
She looked well-fed and prosperous, but he didn't get the impression he was being propositioned the way he'd been hoping.	790.4217602779819
"I haven't had any luck since I was a baby".	68.29156972329072
"Stake me", she said, "and let me at those dice.	554.3726646664503
I'll make them dance the tango.	121.3368210457762
We'll get it in a hurry and get it out".	1230.036777277828
"Let's have a drink and discuss a merger".	80.45691099842183
"If you go broke", she said, smiling up at him, "I'll leave you".	632.4295018530365
"Sounds like real love", Owen said.	96.76283630265718
"It sort of brings a lump to my throat".	103.11159116503883
"My name's Gisele", the blonde said after she ordered a Scotch.	319.8735149345644
"Named after the ballet.	31.052452690306033
My mother wanted to call me Sylphide, but it sounded too affected".	188.63807833234728
Spencer said nothing.	25.766216214311378
"Is there any word you would like to offer in your own defense"?	87.77952007417278
Spencer shook his head.	35.57922685376493
Alexander said, "Answer me properly, Spencer".	163.66218929948516
Spencer was quiet for a moment longer, then he said, "There is nothing I want to say, Captain".	2861.8974278207793
"Very well".	6.270103168942571
Alexander walked away.	29.316770198398295
Naval procedure, he thought, had its moments of grim humor.	342.69614636369874
Philip Spencer had cold-bloodedly planned the murder of his captain, yet it seemed in order to chide him for a lapse of proper address.	561.448404342922
During the morning hours, it became clear that the arrest of Spencer was having no sobering effect upon the men of the Somers.	184.35523484834266
Those named in the Greek paper were manufacturing reasons to steal aft under pretence of some call of duty, so as to be near Spencer, watching an opportunity to communicate with him.	671.818713151506
Hostile glances were flashed at both Alexander and Gansevoort.	406.08940486276487
The two met in the Captain's cabin.	54.50136585051855
"What is the next step, Captain"?	117.70073268785457
"More arrests, I fear".	39.053095293310065
In your opinion, who is this E Andrews on the 'certain' list"?	164.21129121005828
"Cromwell, of course.	15.038979704530597
He is the oldest and most experienced of the lot.	29.608748208514655
He saw the dangers, not the glories of being identified as a mutineer.	109.37339301613642
Somehow he talked Spencer into letting him use another name".	191.87329516228706
There was a tap at the door and Oliver entered with the word that Heiser wished to see the Captain.	398.09860841235235
"Have him come in".	19.004963725594752
Heiser, breathless and wild-eyed, brought the chilling news that the handspikes, heavers and holystones had been mysteriously removed from their customary places.	877.3936293633939
"And also, sir, two articles which were considered souvenirs now must be regarded in another light entirely.	727.639857489392
An African knife and battle-ax are at this moment being sharpened by McKinley and Green.	289.4161838505939
McKinley was overheard to say that he would like to get the knife into Spencer's possession and that"- "Where did you gather all this information, Heiser?	487.1354042810216
Who reported to you the disappearance of handspikes and heavers and who"- He was interrupted by a crash from the deck and sprang toward the ladder, with Gansevoort and Heiser behind him.	556.9073143139344
A glance revealed that the main topgallant mast had been carried away.	634.6494110166145
The aimless milling about of what had been a well-trained, well-organized crew struck Alexander with horror.	1201.5497724949364
He bellowed orders and watched the alert response of some of his men and watched, too, the way a dozen or more turned their heads questioningly toward the shackled figure as though for further instruction.	1141.5355652254393
Adrien Deslonde hastened to Alexander's side.	240.58854188794305
"Small violently jerked the weather-royal brace with full intention to carry away the mast.	576.7100506832838
I saw him myself and it was done after consultation with Cromwell.	274.7077086039389
I swear it, sir".	28.990675460860977
And it was clear that Adrien was not mistaken, for both Small and Cromwell took no step toward aiding in the sending up of the new topgallant mast till Philip Spencer had given the signal to obey.	1552.1013859880877
Then, with disappointment evident upon their faces, they moved to the work.	157.47597702333
Alexander guessed that they had planned confusion and turmoil, thinking it the ideal climate in which to begin battle and bloodshed.	1374.6697932910693
Their strategy was sound enough and, he reasoned, had been defeated only by Philip Spencer's unwillingness to sanction an idea he had not originated.	544.2825489155982
When the mast was raised, Alexander gave the order for Small and Cromwell to be placed under arrest, and now three figures in irons sprawled upon the open deck and terror stalked the Somers.	1060.8416087435635
Spencer's potential followers were openly sullen and morose, missing muster without excuse, expressing in ominous tones their displeasure at the prisoners being kept in irons, communicating with the three by glance and signal.	1405.5735052502537
One of the missing handspikes came out of its hiding place after Midshipman Tillotson had been insolently disobeyed by Seaman Wilson.	1419.826792477235
Tillotson had reported the man to Gansevoort and an hour later, with back turned, had been attacked by Wilson, brandishing the weapon.	371.26645996309236
Wilson, shackled and snarling, was thrown with the other prisoners and was soon joined by Green, McKee and McKinley.	352.6737657057508
Not a man on the brig, loyal or villainous, could be unaffected by the sight of seven men involved in the crime of mutiny.	301.264834559406
In the tiny cabin, Alexander met with Gansevoort, Heiser and Wales to speak and to listen.	267.6354558290261
Three days had passed since Spencer's arrest and each day had brought new dangers, new fears.	392.0620511549486
Gansevoort said, "It requires an omniscient eye to select those if any on whom we can now rely.	458.5643455326642
To have the Greek paper is not the great help that at first flush it seemed.	192.79047749788032
From actions aboard, it is easy to guess that Spencer's boast of twenty staunch followers was a modest estimate".	958.7838668648535
"Well", Heiser ventured, "why don't we hold an investigation with questioning and"- "That would be worse than useless", Alexander broke in.	454.7971739637504
"There is not space to hold or force to guard any increased number of prisoners.	121.00625620066927
Besides, suppose we hold a court of inquiry, then what?	114.30092627052373
Then we have informed a large number of our crew that when they reach the United States, they will be punished but that in the meanwhile, they may run loose and are expected to perform their jobs in good order.	372.3139258179867
Mr Heiser, does this sound like a truly workable plan to you?	204.63454489469893
Do you not think these men might choose the black flag here and now"?	170.20365491323486
Wales said, "Of course they would.	64.20023607597012
They are about to do so at any moment as it is.	73.0256929455157
All that is needed is for one man to feel self-confident enough to take the lead.	258.205142517919
As soon as that one man is appointed by himself or the others or by a signal from Spencer, we are going to be rushed.	159.55385026802963
We are going to be rushed and murdered".	45.67203924844878
"That is extravagant language, Mr Wales.	58.82056718399348
We are not going to be rushed and murdered", Alexander said.	120.50106128179928
"We are going to bring the Somers into New York harbor safe and sound".	159.69071905762988
"Of course, I agree with the Captain", Gansevoort said thoughtfully, "but the conspiracy is ferocious and desperate.	427.23592863414683
The instinct of discipline has been lost.	52.73427167326581
Anything is possible when anarchy has the upper hand".	113.24767241262548
He paused, then added, "Everything on a ship is a weapon.	89.44494664070666
Implements of wood and iron are available for close and hasty combat no matter where a man stands.	370.503722090913
And we are positive of so few and suspicious of so many".	75.74419719183578
"We ourselves must stand sentinel".	76.77729651029784
Alexander said.	12.154613122416217
"Under arms day and night, watch and watch about.	320.9475501218497
Those of us present, the Perry brothers, Deslonde and the other midshipmen now have the responsibility of the Somers.	630.3155440026577
A great deal of labor we have as well, for we are too uncertain of where trust may be placed".	97.32301890450766
And when he was alone again in the cabin, Alexander lowered his head into his arms and wept, for he knew full well what must be done, what in the end would be done.	1598.9094015496407
With all his heart he had loved the Navy and now he must act in accordance with the Navy's implacable laws.	186.60467384319426
And when he did, when he gave to his ship that protection necessary to preserve her honor, he knew he would lose forever the Navy to which he had dedicated his soul.	962.4419241433216
Where had he failed?	35.20628268639963
How had he failed?	32.5370283840653
He who had tried so hard, who had yearned so passionately to be a great officer.	329.9064344404265
It came to him as he wept there aboard the Somers that it was as foolish to strive for greatness as to seek to storm the gates of heaven.	568.263094125537
It was given or it was not given.	23.172624381744896
One did one's best and if fortune smiled, there was a reward.	137.7434088710857
One did one's best and if fortune frowned, an eighteen-year-old boy with murder in his heart sailed aboard one's ship.	379.1768827433393
And Alexander sobbed like a girl for the dreams he had had, and he felt no shame.	778.3689727134313
God knew his tears were his to shed if he so desired, for it had not been with an egotist's rage for fame that he had held precious his naval career.	943.9160864289915
Another field had given him fame enough to satisfy any egotist.	246.175663055824
It was for love that he had served the Navy.	41.157815802796556
To have someday that love returned was what he had lived for.	228.30705373174138
Now the hope was gone.	18.923387105481172
Yes, he would bring the Somers safely into New York harbor but at a price.	804.6522231847559
Dear God, at what a price.	54.69652924919654
And after a while, he dried his tears and walked the deck as a captain should with assurance and dignity.	488.4788223053467
Stern-faced, he inspected the prisoners, satisfying himself that they were clean, well fed and comfortable within reason.	409.61811785366757
The prisoners averted their eyes but not before he had glimpsed hatred and anger.	397.66378597297245
Only Cromwell, the giant boatswain, was mild-mannered and respectful.	255.77100816497284
He said, "Captain, may I speak, please?	48.364240364407515
Captain, I am innocent of any plot against you or the ship".	123.75153771843162
"Are you, Cromwell"?	19.694099966113306
"Yes, sir.	10.23030429527491
Before God I swear I am innocent.	107.80128703602448
I know nothing of any plot, if there is such a thing".	75.33335450057565
"You are the only man aboard who can be in doubt".	353.084315979758
"I cannot speak for others, sir, but I am innocent".	76.46052678894527
He leaned closer to Alexander, squinting up at him from the deck.	177.10797753083457
"Surely, Captain, you did not find my name on any suspicious paper or anything".	235.3589979424287
"No, Cromwell, I did not find your name.	72.77123611076343
You were careful about that".	26.658693241793532
Now Spencer, seeming with effort to shake himself from lethargy, spoke.	271.6622552821163
He said, "Cromwell is telling you the truth.	149.63302094920894
He is innocent".	9.956986394318118
Alexander shifted his gaze to Spencer.	142.5395310723723
The calmness and detachment of his tone suggested unawareness of how implicit was his own guilt in the words he had used to defend Cromwell.	762.265110146534
Alexander knew Spencer too well to think him naive or thick-skulled.	410.7570043652035
And in a sudden wave of painful clarity, Alexander recognized a kinship with Spencer.	277.9791920023875
Here was another human who understood the stupidity of quarreling with the inevitable.	251.8537917469385
There was good fortune and there was bad and Philip Spencer, in handcuffs and ankle irons, knew it to be a truth.	241.11839728524083
He expected nothing for himself but that which naturally follows those marked for misfortune.	178.81076549789123
The red-haired captain, towering above the prisoner as a symbol of decency and authority, was shocked to find himself looking with sympathy upon Philip Spencer.	566.4237246181561
This tragic lad had forged his own shackles.	220.01227282665548
But he could not have done so, could not have found the way, had fortune favored him.	270.63269107782116
And because fortune had favored neither the prisoner nor the red-haired captain, they would be each other's undoing.	508.43117608354873
"Spencer, if there is guilt, if you do not deny your own, how is it possible for Cromwell to be innocent?	794.1119949455555
He was your constant companion".	28.780390659930067
The hazel eyes met Alexander's.	106.72556984228181
"I tell you he is innocent".	124.22892514567818
"And do you think there is a reason why I should accept your word"?	156.07435583128034
"Yes.	3.418800859412557
I have nothing to gain by defending Cromwell".	756.4276930263078
"Nothing to lose, either, Spencer".	64.23321088539272
"That's true", Spencer agreed and withdrew himself from the conversation.	162.4378236224787
His eyes went back to contemplation of the sea.	43.650985759443635
"I am innocent, Captain", Cromwell said again.	70.95989631498637
"Before God, Captain, I am innocent".	73.25509919835197
And though it was logical that a man who could plot mass murder would not hesitate to speak an untruth, still it was difficult to understand why Spencer spoke only for Cromwell.	980.1134924580148
The boatswain was as guilty as any.	42.924334047930856
No action of his could be interpreted in his favor and four midshipmen, prior to their knowing the significance of the Greek paper, had seen it in Cromwell's hands while Spencer whispered explanations.	1793.155482799546
"I thought", Midshipman Rogers had told Alexander, "that Spencer was teaching him geometry".	702.6693287851831
It was fantastic to turn from the seven men in shackles to the wardroom, where a class of apprentices awaited him.	203.80457894316163
This was a training ship and the training would continue, but there was an element of frightful absurdity here which Alexander recognized.	401.54950397797927
Some of these apprentices were, in physical strength, already men and doubtless a percentage of them were Spencer's followers.	226.9948460184575
Rachel steered me along toward a school for young boys beginning to study the Torah.	331.94699676579836
Bits of trash lay in the roadway.	115.80203047762954
The air smelled warmish and foul.	119.43581442422237
A young man appeared out of a side alley and walked toward us with quick strides.	176.44465355254735
He wore a long double-breasted coat of a heavy material, dark trousers, and black boots with buckles.	376.7881894013152
His black hat with its wide brim, high crown, and fur trim rode high.	383.6944039744533
With his head erect, he approached, not glancing at us, and passed by with his clear eyes raised and fixed straight ahead.	304.2369678721857
He had a pinkish-white complexion, a small straight nose, a short black beard, and tightly curled paot.	427.69560580556004
I was suddenly conscious of my bare arms.	78.17395314885503
The girls in the market place wore long-sleeved dresses and covered their legs with cloth stockings.	604.9356539196257
I turned and watched him stride down the center of the road.	99.55561806334397
His hands were swinging at his sides, and he passed through the dingy market place with his back straight and, pivoting on his heel, he entered an old stone building.	591.3911619517571
Rachel had seen me watching the young man.	198.6874787660652
She smiled.	12.026802336432754
"When your mother was here he must have been a young boy.	70.33255379439078
Like the ones you will see now".	42.71622373614638
I swallowed hard and looked down at my feet plodding along beside Rachel.	2117.742150136634
She led me into a twisting side alley.	149.3823795334041
The dirty, discolored buildings looked boarded up, and their few windows stood high above our heads.	741.250284937076
Rachel said that schools and synagogues occupied most of the buildings.	72.42769768361588
We entered one where the front door stood ajar and climbed a flight of steep steps to the main floor.	654.327833400737
An old man with a white beard and dressed in a long shabby coat, baggy trousers, and a black skullcap greeted us.	1921.647133664087
Rachel talked to him.	20.62215428019789
He nodded, clasping and unclasping his hands over his paunch, and flicked glances at me.	365.5553545193249
I thought he would ask us to leave because Rachel and I were bare-armed, but he looked down into his beard and preceded us down the corridor.	312.4339141324475
His toes pointed out toward the walls.	66.22951172741297
He stopped in front of a door, placed a finger on his lips, and, still peering down into his beard, pushed open the door to a classroom.	274.30778269004423
We stepped inside.	21.920861699853948
He left us.	8.232511662759482
Little boys crowded together on long wooden benches, and in the center of the room sat the teacher.	219.5466703162494
His black beard dripped down over the front of his coat.	460.0988161035273
One white hand poised a stick above his desk.	152.0998260533185
He turned his surly, half-closed eyes toward us, stared for a second, then shouted in Yiddish, "One, two, three"!	777.054425657322
rapping the stick against the desk.	71.39950431545407
The little boys shrilled out a Yiddish translation or interpretation of the Five Books of Moses, which they had previously chanted in Hebrew.	1458.333165263038
They chanted a fixed tune in time to the report of the stick.	5497.467970692635
Each boy opened his small mouth wide and rocked back and forth on the bench in the way his grandfather and great-grandfather had studied and prayed in the ghettos of Europe.	421.7678248913258
The boys were tiny.	18.86379066662558
They had large bright eyes, the small upturned noses of all babies everywhere, and hair cropped short except for the long ringlets of paot framing their little white faces.	1177.0808259648336
They bent over yellowed prayerbooks and looked up only to watch the teacher.	654.0965021155803
Since they did not glance curiously at us once, I guessed that there was a penalty for distraction.	286.401228473812
The guttural language from the ghetto stopped.	79.15075574852068
The teacher plunged the children into a new portion, this time in Hebrew, rapping the stick incessantly.	284.47095474617754
One boy who rocked back and forth over his worn book had bright red hair and freckles.	388.59756667963245
His tightly curled paot hung down to his narrow shoulders.	341.09489980075466
In the center of his brilliant curls sat a small black skullcap.	134.09437559860274
His head barely rose above the table.	55.81402978582917
I stared at him for a long time.	69.72336652247165
He did not return my interest.	18.817792981885063
My eyes traveled over the bare walls and up to the one partially open window high above the little figures and back to the boys.	2528.5303783354075
Some of them ignored the texts and had apparently memorized the words long ago.	122.69111496174257
They singsonged the portion at the teacher, who accompanied them in an off-key baritone and spurred them on with the stick.	516.0254449999367
The tapping defined the rhythm and kept the boys awake.	125.33270195973033
I could not keep my eyes away from the boy with the red hair.	101.3188986895625
His body pitched back and forth on the bench.	59.84174665098534
His front teeth were missing.	50.354084654931974
I shuddered and backed out of the room.	32.52619265146179
Rachel followed, looked at me, and clucked with her tongue.	1255.2232574428956
We walked down the cool hall silently.	34.11449725659872
From behind us came the rapping of the stick and the high-pitched voices of the boys who would grow to devote their lives to rigid study and prayer.	710.995312162486
I said, "How long do they keep that up"?	65.58960989780073
"All day", she said.	11.585678766529131
"Except for Shabbat, when they are praying all day".	274.24205351809115
I rubbed my hands together.	42.771228847600995
They had turned numb and prickly in the classroom.	75.59551645600166
The old man in the baggy clothes waited at the foot of the steps.	841.8168437372312
He glanced down into his beard and muttered something in Yiddish.	228.83501897869036
Rachel said, "He asks for money".	32.560350673020686
She passed by him.	11.07801077797804
I reached into the pocket of my skirt, fingered ten pruta, and dropped the coin.	278.0460886604537
Then I picked it up again and handed it to the old man.	879.2389714882146
He thanked me.	19.87313050873512
I didn't look at him.	17.92979868364903
I grinned at Rachel.	33.12287965433686
"Does this bother you"?	26.29088104293313
I said.	42.92455568231413
She smiled to herself.	22.751862101712096
"Most of our Sabras think it's horrible.	86.76216237255045
When we were fighting, a few of our orthodox people were lying down in the roads so we could not pass.	187.51542155595868
They said that we must not fight but wait for the Messiah".	796.2927086737175
I was amazed.	5.390743644558055
You had to have convictions to lie down in the road in all those clothes and appear as though you might wish to turn yourself out of your own home.	1783.1238100137211
You had to be stupid or crazy or immortal.	92.51309799182835
And I wasn't.	11.724431610088695
I was American.	7.970465704471699
You had to know, also, that you were going to fail.	1571.3715971367608
All of it might have been heroic, but they had done it in the wrong place.	792.069973118986
I resented them.	17.818474596635053
Rachel faced me.	25.05032126735974
Her bright eyes were twinkling.	91.1263908861981
She said, "Sometimes I think they are keeping religion for us while we play around.	157.61275668368168
Your mother hated this way of life.	50.01658937611663
She wished to change much for the children here".	167.70486774484542
I said quietly, respectfully, "What did she do here?	139.87039330428578
In this section"?	11.958389735104603
Rachel clicked her tongue behind her teeth.	136.8245803455898
"Here, nothing.	8.79438609914847
But when she saw the children you have just visited, she wanted to take them away and put them out in the country, in the kibbutzim.	4191.222715550216
She loved the children.	20.334094797439267
She was a strange woman, your mother.	82.8559225905262
When she loved, it was with a passion that drove her along and carried along with her those things she loved.	413.86744600743793
Nothing was too impossible for her to do when she wanted.	601.94767632334
She stayed here to work for Aliah.	85.69823377193846
For many immigrants, for many children, the first thing they knew of Israel and freedom was your mother.	385.6264437308343
Sometimes it was dangerous for her".	16.8033939323282
Rachel grinned slyly.	71.59256843914531
"But she loved danger.	25.140825399253497
She took it with her wherever she went; she chose it.	108.03384524701411
And I think she sought out danger as much as she sought out helping other people.	279.86693024956054
She was most strange woman.	26.97219026299484
Ready to follow her impulse.	75.88852002839863
It was an impulse when she was here in Me'a She'arim- I was with her- that led her to stay in Israel.	276.6433709942619
Your mother wanted to bring children to Israel so that they could leave their ghettos.	216.4263027708144
Here they did not need to be in ghettos.	237.25924607473303
If she could not take the children out of this section, at least she could take other children out of their countries and put them on the farms.	2673.484290258056
She set out to make sure that no Jewish child anyplace in the world had to live in a place such as this".	276.21342608322266
I said quietly, gaining nerve, ready to ask any question at all, no matter how intimate, ready to be rebuffed, "Then why did she leave Israel?	1950.797178742264
I'd like to know that very much".	142.85211740068277
Rachel clasped her hands together and slowed her pace.	218.37504327393526
The soles of her sandals reported sharply on the cobblestones.	198.54635623096937
She pursed her lips, then clamped them together so tightly that I thought she was angry with me.	384.9800118934806
But she sighed and her face relaxed.	66.36408221080723
"Trouble came into her life.	38.035484342528584
She had good friends here, people who liked her.	72.18433257874662
Who loved her.	22.65924102774941
But she had to go out and hurt herself.	88.29533961401336
There was a man here in town.	47.66424904462411
He helped her meet people so she could go out and do the work she wanted.	169.54678972337257
She worked very hard.	20.037145234950085
There was a refugee who was able to come here because of her.	399.3837867468331
He came with his son.	91.71268963705137
At first I thought they were relatives of your mother, but it was not so.	41.57567363847462
This refugee was a middle-aged man, a big, handsome man with a strut to his walk as I have never before seen.	2784.360406761396
He had the black numerals on his arm, so he had been branded in a concentration camp.	313.0021972013576
Yet he walked like a young man.	480.075420404839
Often he was terribly despondent and talked to no one.	99.533657921105
Then he would walk off for a few days alone in the direction of Europe.	196.46643815105128
All his family was dead, except for his son.	51.04713263295207
Your mother would always retrieve him when he wandered off, and she would send him home to his son.	4289.56135784249
He loved the son and was always glad to be sent back to him.	637.6280733662882
Then his son did something"- Rachel threw up her hands- "I don't know what, but something, to an official here- it was during the Mandate- and the son was imprisoned.	508.4793126447269
A few hours after the son was arrested, your mother was informed.	111.7860037823473
She ran from a little group of us.	98.05368514251967
We were sitting together, talking.	33.93199559762265
She went to the father and found he had hanged himself".	63.09898247491787
Rachel paused.	24.419904895315156
It was silent in the stone alley.	51.013868868091386
Then she continued with energy, "I myself did not see her until a week after she had run off to find the father.	191.4667174453574
No one saw her except the man Reuveni".	76.04956442278167
"Yes", I said.	24.098879997638328
"I know him".	7.686604468595226
Rachel gave me a direct, bright-eyed look.	128.2586591479811
She said, "Reuveni wanted your mother to give up her deep interest in this refugee.	449.46065025781724
He said she would only hurt herself.	52.44323763467819
He complained to me once that I must talk to her.	71.42062163785941
When I did, she shrugged her shoulders and said that Reuveni wanted her to marry him.	241.15009700171754
I asked her if she would, and she said she would not.	67.00248955141497
He had known when he first helped her to meet the right people and work with them that she did not intend to marry him.	741.2506437183991
Anyway, I did not see her until two weeks after the refugee hanged himself.	293.5061446449586
She came to me one day.	58.51659736434029
She was pale and skinny; she was terribly alone.	102.74748312615834
And she said that after this man had been dead for a week she had gone to Reuveni and accepted his proposal.	199.2310205618856
He shouted at her and told her he loved her and couldn't understand why she had upset herself.	335.7684672911884
But now he was happy she would let him straighten out her life and take care of her.	379.19203541388924
He would never let her harm herself again.	88.59424505997532
For one whole week he never let her stay alone.	111.03640522031529
She let him lead her around.	51.42498703495185
He took her to a doctor, for she was run down, nervous, did not care where she was.	372.0454673610423
Reuveni took her with him wherever he went.	71.99444947545446
He did not let her talk to people; he did not let her choose her own food.	191.291346073076
She was limp and beaten from her loss; she did not care.	214.72259965137923
"And I'll take you with me".	99.56862047676591
The two of them against the world.	17.453375835972857
That had been how she imagined it.	54.21154925839883
For when he began to talk and dream all at the same time, making his plans as he went, she had begun dreaming too.	198.351246978481
But now the dream was over.	17.195001328506706
The big waking up had happened.	37.72102519780117
"What did I imagine"?	26.269997157677494
she thought.	13.359529653512805
"Did I see him about to swing low in a chariot?	140.15656179391866
Or maybe poling up the south fork of the Forked Deer River braving the wastes dumped in it?	904.0131292751954
Maybe I saw him on a barge with a gang of Ethiopians poling it".	216.78407709814076
And I'll take you with me.	99.56862047676591
He had taken her all right.	15.372658444493048
Wednesday nights after youth fellowship.	104.90188576734599
Out of the church and into his big car, it tooling over the road with him driving and the headlights sweeping the pike ahead and after he hit college, his expansiveness, the quaint little pine board tourist courts, cabins really, with a cute naked light bulb in the ceiling unfrosted and naked as a streetlight, like the one on the corner where you used to play when you were a kid, where you watched the bats swooping in after the bugs, watching in between your bouts at hopscotch, a room complete with moths pinging the light and the few casual cockroaches cruising the walls, an insect Highway Patrol with feelers waving.	3643.1293277439363
And the bed that sagged in a certain place where all the weight had been put too many times before and the walls fine and thin for overhearing talk in the next room when Gratt went out for ice, the sound coming through the walls like something on the other side of the curtain, so you knew they heard you when they were quiet and while you lay wondering what they had heard you listened.	883.9614835216735
And Gratt Shafer would be in Memphis today for the wedding rehearsal and then tomorrow he would marry just like everybody knew he would, just like everybody knew all along.	1084.495758090188
Like Mattie and the mayor up there gripping the microphone and Toonker Burkette back in his office yanking out teeth, like they all knew he would.	1097.7867044377808
Just like the balloon would go up and you could sit all day and wish it would spring a leak or blow to hell up and burn and nothing like that would happen.	1280.887764443787
Or you could hope the parachute wouldn't open just so you could say you saw it not open, not because you meant any harm to Starkey Poe in his suit of red underwear, but mainly because you were tired of being an old maid- a thing which cannot admit when it thinks it might be pregnant, but must stand the dizzy feeling all alone and go on like everything is all right instead of being able to say to somebody in a normal voice "I think I'm pregnant".	1564.3449918487033
You could wish that.	14.64799881827704
Or you could wish your daddy would really do it- kill Gratt Shafer like he said when you all the time, all along, could feel the nerve draining out of him like air out of a punctured tire when you are on a muddy road alone and it is raining and at night.	900.5629970472851
So you sit in the car and listen to the air run out and listen to the rain and see the mud in front of the headlights, waiting for you, for your new spectator pumps, waiting for you to squat by yourself out there in your tight skirt, crying and afraid and trying to get that damned son-of-a-bitch tire off, because that is being an old maid too, if you happen to drive a car, it is changing the tire yourself in the night, and in the mud and the rain, hating to get out in it but afraid to stay and afraid to try to walk out for help.	5578.432016815282
And every sound that might be the rain also might be the man who thinks after he has raped you he has to beat your brains out with a tire tool so you won't tell, a combination like ham and eggs, rape her and kill her, and that is being an old maid too.	2628.672592027847
It is not having his baby nestled warm and fat against your breast and it is not having somebody that really gives a damn whether some tramp cracks your skull.	749.370768317356
And most of all it is not having the only man you could love, whether he drives a bread truck or delivers the mail or checks the berry crates down at the sheds, or owns seventeen oil wells and six diamond mines, for if you are anybody what he is or does makes no difference if he is the one.	1232.2552454626295
He can even be a mild-voiced little-town guy with big-town ideas and level gray eyes and a heart even Houdini couldn't figure out, how it is unlocked.	862.5549335742508
And he can be on the way to Memphis, your Gratt Shafer can, and you discover you can stay alive and hate him and love him and want him even if it means you want him- really want him- dead.	865.8557257595438
Because if you can't then nobody else can either, nobody else can have him.	259.68376943589897
For you don't share him, not even with God.	192.20978541720714
If it is love, you don't.	21.145431482703437
And I'll take you with me.	99.56862047676591
Even if that's all the promise he ever gave or ever will give, the giving of it once was enough and you believed it then and you will always believe it, even when it is finally the only thing in the world you have left to believe, and the whole world is telling you that one was a lie.	557.2916778113854
Even when he is on the way to Memphis you will still have the promise resting inside you like a gift, and it is he inside of you.	114.81051769888444
And in a way the promise works out true, for whether he wants you or not, you go with him in your heart.	2458.3791933214497
You feel him every mile further away.	87.09359239670476
You feel where he is and what he sees, and at night you feel when he is asleep or with the other woman, the one that never could love him the way you do, the one who got him because she didn't particularly give a damn whether she got him or didn't.	3883.453162834335
And you know you will always wonder all of your life whether it was because you wanted him so bad that you didn't get him, and you can feel nearly sorry enough to cry when you think of that other guy, the chump who begged you to marry him, the one with the plastered hair and the car he couldn't afford and the too-shiny shoes.	1892.700769961422
You think "Did he feel that way about me"?	104.3924224451278
It comes to you that probably he did feel that way to let you use him like you did when you couldn't have Gratt Shafer; that he must have since he was there like the radio for you to turn on or snap off when you got tired of him, that other guy.	1740.6942497040018
It dawns on you that instead of a lump to fill the seat across the bridge table from you, he was a man, and that because Gratt Shafer was making you miserable, you were passing it down to him, to Gratt Shafer's substitute, that other guy.	7368.04030224694
And you wonder if that is why the little man lost his job and his car and stayed drunk about a year before he straightened out and moved to St Louis, where he got to be a big unhappy success.	3746.5728700433765
You wonder if he looks at his wife now and thinks of you.	621.0495364514625
You wonder about the Christmas card with no name on it, and it comes to you that maybe it would have been better to have made somebody else happy if you couldn't be happy yourself, to give somebody else the one they wanted- to give them you.	722.0592268528052
"Damn the world", she thought.	35.13976594494844
She looked out at the corn field, the great green deep acres of it rolled out like the sea in the field beyond the whitewashed fence bordering the grounds.	572.4066044205642
The mayor envisioned factories there.	49.31748687590396
Homes and factories and schools and a big wide federal highway, instead of peaceful corn to rest your eyes on while you tried to rest your heart, while you tried not to look at the balloon and the bandstand and the uniforms and the flash of the instruments.	516.9368064418336
The bands were impatient, but they were the only ones.	105.03248241843495
The others, the ones in the stands, were spellbound, for hearing the mayor was for them like listening to a symphony was for sophisticated folks in New York City.	267.3065337797994
It was like being in the concert hall in the afternoon and hearing the piano virtuoso rehearsing.	677.5699717043844
He was good and they knew that what he was doing for them he would do all over the United States some day.	376.66994135534145
So they stayed quiet and hung not on what he said but on how he said it, not listening exactly, but rather, feeling.	719.1564182912495
If a man was good, if he was going to be governor, you felt it and you wanted him to go on forever.	828.2378788421621
You were sorry when he finished talking because while he was up there you were someone else and the world was something else too.	1747.682480501053
It was a place full of courage and hope and you were part of it.	49.61672013612481
You laughed and then your chest swelled and you felt you could cry for a little bit, and then a feeling hit you like a chill in your stomach and the goose bumps rippled along your arm.	1701.0968812442818
He hit the theme about dying to defend your country, and you were ready to do it right then, without a second thought.	339.44466825684543
While he talked you wouldn't trade being a West Tennessee farmer for being anything else in the whole damned world, no matter if it hadn't, in six weeks, rained enough to wet a rat's ass.	1110.8594186418147
She glanced at the man nodding beside her, a man with weather cracks furrowed into his lean cheeks, with powdery pale eyes reflecting all the droughts he had seen, reflecting the sky and the drought which must follow now in August- yes, with eyes predicting the drought and here it was only June, only festival time again and thoughts of Gratt Shafer would not leave her.	1456.479855060912
"I should have stayed at the store", she thought.	44.47871473243289
Back at the Factory-to-You with the other old maids, back there she was the youngest clerk and she was thirty-four, which made her young enough to resent the usual ideal working conditions, like the unventilated toilet with the door you had to hold shut while you sat down.	853.7684889017956
There was no lock because Herman didn't allow a lock.	122.37794472702308
A lock on the toilet would encourage malingering and primping.	225.75137534357623
The toilet hadn't had a sincere scrubbing in years and there were things written on the walls of the little boxed-in place because you couldn't keep the public out- entirely.	1512.458729202677
She could not count the times Herman had rapped on the door, just a couple of bangs that shook the whole damned closet and might, someday, break away the pipe connections from the wall.	837.1798631205248
The two little bangs meant that he was getting impatient to have a crowd of customers waited on and that if he had to he would jerk open the door and drag out, by the opposite door handle which she would be clutching, whichever-the-hell clerk it was who thought she could waste so much store time on the pot.	2480.0658999654793
And the hours were six-thirty in the morning until eleven at night on Saturdays and during sales, and there were no chairs and you couldn't smoke and the cooling was overhead fans and there was no porter or janitor.	424.09567423427745
Among us, we three handled quite a few small commissions, from spot drawings for advertising agencies uptown to magazine work and quick lettering jobs.	707.2761798606447
Each of us had his own specialty besides.	94.26943770416949
George did wonderful complicated pen-and-ink drawings like something out of a medieval miniature hundreds of delicate details crammed into an eight-by-ten sheet and looking as if they had been done under a jeweler's glass.	913.519706715687
He also drew precise crisp spots, which he sold to various literary and artistic journals, The New Yorker, for instance, or Esquire.	395.4663828035824
I did book jackets and covers for paperback reprints naked girls huddling in corners of dingy furnished rooms while at the doorway, daring the cops to take him, is the guy in shirt sleeves clutching a revolver.	1432.4300024836473
The book could be The Brothers Karamazov, but it would still have the same jacket illustration.	356.8192667691225
I remember once I did a jacket for Magpie Press; the book was a fine historical novel about Edward /3,, and I did a week of research to get the details just right the fifteenth-century armor, furnishings, clothes.	709.7322084743109
I even ferreted out the materials from which shields were made- linden wood covered with leather- so I'd get the light reflections accurate.	955.3519428354894
McKenzie, the art editor, took one look at my finished sketch and said, "Nothing doing, Rufus.	616.5820591703441
In the first place, it's static; in the second place, it doesn't look authentic; and in the third place, it would cost a fortune to reproduce in the first place- you've got six colors there including gold".	887.7087483131737
I said, "Mr McKenzie, it is as authentic as careful research can make it".	609.194040312997
He said, "That may be, but it isn't authentic the way readers think.	101.80173597226016
They know from their researches into television and the movies that knights in the middle ages had beautiful flowing haircuts like Little Lord Fauntleroy, and only the villains had beards.	724.2025141701117
And girls couldn't have dressed like that- it isn't transparent enough".	195.42089150809846
In the end, I did the same old picture, the naked girl and the guy in the doorway, only I put a Lord Byron shirt on the guy, gave him a sword instead of a pistol, and painted in furniture from the stills of a costume movie.	582.6984543915701
McKenzie was as happy as a clam.	113.86895474041822
"That's authenticity", he said.	90.4589420696324
As for Donald, he actually sold paintings.	74.4211214680171
We all painted in our spare time, and we had all started as easel painters with scholarships, but he was the only one of us who made any regular money at it.	1107.7656013464252
Not much; he sold perhaps three or four a year, and usually all to Joyce Monmouth or her friends.	440.2643365955399
He had style, a real inner vision of his very own.	44.06925607536269
It was strange stuff- it reminded me of the pictures of a child, but a child who has never played with other kids and has lived all its life with adults.	2910.319089335488
There was the freshness of color, the freedom of perception, the lack of self-consciousness, but with a twist that made the forms leap from the page and smack you in the eye.	1123.317902212716
We used to kid him by saying he only painted that way because he was so nearsighted.	1052.1766329271838
It may have been true for all I know, because his glasses were like the bottoms of milk bottles, but it didn't prevent the paintings from being exciting.	345.9339312034815
He also had, at times, an uncanny absent-minded air like a sleepwalker; he would look right through you while you were talking to him, and if you said, "For Christ's sake, Donald, you've got Prussian blue all over your shirt", he would smile, and nod, and an hour later the paint would be all over his pants as well.	773.0353230265049
Mrs Monmouth thought of him as her discovery, and she paid two to three hundred dollars for a painting.	195.39921051666857
It was all gravy, and Donald didn't need much to live on; none of us did.	152.34923645261208
We shared the expenses of the studio, and we all lived within walking distance of it, in cheap lodgings of one kind or another.	1125.318100027722
Attending the life class was my idea- or rather, Askington's idea, but I was ripe for it, and the other two wouldn't have gone if I hadn't talked them into it.	785.5209671697557
I wanted to paint again.	17.7266008024132
I hadn't done a serious picture in almost a year.	67.36407305643677
It wasn't just the pressure of work, although that was the excuse I often used, even to myself.	119.34794979588459
It was the kind of work I was doing, the quality of the ambition it awoke in me, that kept me from painting.	142.9089005974135
I kept saying, "If I could just build up a reputation for myself, make some real money, get to be well known as an illustrator- like Peter Askington, for instance- then I could take some time off and paint".	1101.2124253267016
Askington was a kind of goal I set myself; I had admired him long before I talked to him.	279.82200380462945
It looked to me as though he had everything an artist could want, joy in his work, standing in the profession, a large and steady income.	992.6460532563817
The night we first met, at one of Mrs Monmouth's giant parties, he was wearing a brown cashmere jacket with silver buttons and a soft pink Viyella shirt; instead of a necktie he wore a leather bolo drawn through a golden ring in which was set a lump of pale pure jade.	2126.576353873019
This set his tone richness of texture and color, and another kind of richness as well, for his clothing and decorations would have paid the Brush-off's rent for a year.	1682.0551514850254
He was fifteen years older than I- forty-four- but full of spring and sparkle.	193.68361850398483
He didn't look like what I thought of as an old man, and his lively and erudite speech made him seem even younger.	4503.916465869847
He was one of the most prominent magazine illustrators in America; you saw one of his paintings on the cover of one or another of the slick national magazines every month.	408.81748459346073
Life had included him in its "Modern American Artists" series and had photographed him at his studio in the East Sixties; the corner of it you could see in the photograph looked as though it ought to have Velasquez in it painting the royalty of Spain.	854.5084076396618
I had a long talk with him.	215.3624395370433
We went into Mrs Monmouth's library, which had low bookshelves all along the walls, and above them a Modigliani portrait, a Jackson Pollock twelve feet long, and a gorgeous Miro with a yellow background, that looked like an inscription from a Martian tomb.	1310.4047401342311
The fireplace had tiles made for Mrs Monmouth by Picasso himself.	232.15453599954665
Like certain expensive restaurants, just sitting there gave you the illusion of being wealthy yourself.	328.6933489601358
In the course of our talk, Askington mentioned that he spent part of each week studying.	136.2707199216455
"By yourself"?	13.644841629837726
I asked.	2.845731170704088
"No, I take classes with different people", he said.	257.80008036803395
"I don't think I've reached the point, yet, where I can say I know everything I ought to know about the craft.	3228.6532537036596
Besides, it's important to the way a painter thinks that he should move in a certain atmosphere, an atmosphere in which he may absorb the ideas of other masters, as Durer went to Italy to meet Bellini and Mantegna".	3183.598476571109
He made a circle with his thumb and fingers.	56.793239079856555
"Painting isn't this big, you know.	70.14948808776022
It doesn't embrace only the artist, alone before his easel.	142.7706543679464
It is as large as all of art, interdependent, varied, multitudinous".	92.22609514572738
He threw his arms wide, his face shining.	89.18922051196154
"The artist is like a fragment of a mosaic- no, he is more than that, a virtuoso performer in some vast philharmonic.	628.4695906731756
One of these days, I'm going to organize a gigantic exhibition that will span everything that's being painted these days, from extreme abstract expressionism to extreme photorealism, and then you'll be able to see at a glance how much artists have in common with each other.	1887.6887375807266
The eye is all, inward or outward.	59.88379170714763
Ah, what a title for the exhibition The Eye is All"!	159.0379124470987
"What do you study"?	7.957389445626229
I asked.	2.845731170704088
I was fascinated; just listening to him made me feel intelligent.	177.4146292408847
"I'm studying anatomy with Burns", he replied.	61.292024895064955
"Maybe you know him.	16.292890539818508
He teaches at the Manhattan School of Art".	66.9319979753732
I nodded.	11.263566549760451
I had studied with Burns ten years before, during the scholarship year the Manhattan gave me, along with the five-hundred-dollar prize for my paintings of bums on Hudson Street.	638.513723612326
Burns and I had not loved each other.	218.98317989905954
"I'm also studying enameling with Hajime Iijima", he went on, "and twice a week I go to a life class taught by Pendleton".	3370.5331491841407
"Osric Pendleton"?	69.543462449236
I said.	42.92455568231413
"My God, is he still alive?	280.1343507407175
He must be a million years old.	84.03640364494883
I went to a retrospective of his work when I was eighteen, and I thought he was a contemporary of Cezanne's".	831.4304011418049
"Not quite".	13.048248652815268
Askington laughed.	33.42619430842442
"He's about sixty, now.	26.334366491390707
Still painting, still a kind of modern impressionist, beautiful canvases of mountains and farms.	282.48013432568774
He even makes the city look like one of Thoreau's hangouts.	170.27812870859688
I've always admired him, and when I heard he was taking a few pupils, I went to him and joined his class".	611.1634464387041
"Yes, it sounds great", I said, "but suppose you don't think of yourself as an impressionist painter"?	1232.5010161655418
"You're missing the point", he said.	11.518607676144791
"He has the magical eye.	22.42034472534862
And he is a great man.	155.6870163075921
Contact with him is stimulating.	56.911729586248825
And that's the trouble with so many artists today.	61.02064115300028
They lack stimulation.	28.125361636602424
They sit alone in their rooms and try to paint, and only succeed in isolating themselves still farther from life.	319.1353527691274
That's one of the reasons art is becoming a useless occupation.	92.41287305780861
In the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, right up to the early nineteenth century, the painter was a giant in the world.	1776.720383059977
He was an artisan, a man who studied his trade and developed his craftsmanship the way a goldsmith or a wood carver did.	249.0382143068578
He filled a real need, showing society what it looked like, turning it inside out, portraying its wars and its leaders, its ugliness and its beauties, reflecting its profound religious impulses.	560.9013821956427
He was a propagandist- they weren't afraid of the word, then- satirist, nature lover, philosopher, scientist, what you will, a member of every party and of no party.	351.2357581199403
But look at us today!	42.629246683885626
We hold safe little jobs illustrating tooth-paste ads or the salacious incidents in trivial novels, and most of our easel painting is nothing but picking the fluff out of the navel so it can be contemplated in greater purity.	1031.4334491662073
A bunch of amateur dervishes!	52.11683937063773
What we need is to get back to the group, to learning and apprenticeship, to the cafe and the school".	521.8453807968363
He could certainly talk.	19.061258788346237
The upshot of the evening was that I got the address of Pendleton's studio- or rather, of the studio in which he gave his classes, for he didn't work there himself- and joined the life class, which met every Tuesday and Thursday from ten to twelve in the morning.	708.1171944410554
It was an awkward hour, but I didn't have to punch any time clock, and it only meant that sometimes I had to stay a couple of hours later at the drawing board to finish up a job.	285.89124674282687
After a short time, both George and Donald joined the class with me so they wouldn't feel lonely, and we used to hang a sign on the door of the Brush-off reading OUT TO WORK.	1144.7306644002365
It was mostly for the benefit of the mailman, because hardly anybody else ever visited us.	162.86497156937926
In a way, Askington was right.	20.28116130943792
"Stimulating" was the word for it.	162.97241438132409
I don't know that it was always as rewarding as I had expected it to be.	123.98920602550646
Partly, it was because Pendleton himself wasn't what I anticipated.	361.05684214278045
I had come prepared to worship at the feet of this classic, and he turned out to be a rather bitter old man who smelled of dead cigars.	358.5042983444675
No, that isn't quite fair.	39.28275785799831
Actually, there was a lot of force in him, which is why I kept on in that class instead of quitting after a week.	302.7325433884569
SUCH a little thing to start with- the car registration.	144.0961321216758
"Ida, where is the car license"?	98.97857718159315
she asked.	3.5150327112772244
"I can't find it in the glove compartment".	46.50382083528114
"Via must have it", I answered readily enough, recalling her last visit.	535.5013553572107
"Via", she was frowning.	37.77113827434628
"Why should Via have it"?	25.390140604514055
Had she forgotten she had signed the car away, that whatever they mutually owned had been divided among the children?	429.27932090463923
I was silent.	8.721551263156314
I didn't want to stir things up.	128.6896333516396
"I drive my own car by courtesy of Via"?	174.39377577644876
"I'm sure she'd turn it over to you, if you'd rather.	116.98793893281314
You know that".	31.172635041844195
She looked as if she were accusing me of some fraud.	220.54370924291447
"She must have taken the registration when she went to Walter's.	79.27108406536651
I'll call her".	12.752386589925507
"No, thank you.	18.28356060395118
I want nothing of Via's".	38.52119551340246
Why should this suddenly assail her?	44.67028559372071
Walter was giving me checks for my pay, the household bills.	193.40071019877405
Had she been in such a turmoil that this had slipped her mind?	172.91379165712183
"What a fool I've been", she said quietly.	82.86633540764899
"I knew all this, but I paid no attention.	415.0383771233439
I don't even own the house I'm standing in.	72.56471829152566
I was so sure it was all temporary h that we would all embrace, and then the lawyer would tear up all those things h "It narrows down down down and finally there is no way out.	548.0995287423914
If I am not to be Mrs Salter I am nothing".	202.46704822285446
I suppose I should have paid attention to that half-murmured remark, but it seemed one of those extreme statements women under stress indulge in.	1468.6218501464434
I love you, I hate you, I feel like killing you and myself, and in the same sequence I love you I think you're the most wonderful the most noble and so on and on, meanwhile eating a good breakfast and dinner and enjoying living.	1625.427695420567
So I went about my business.	20.714174106265187
I made a lemon sponge, a light dessert, roasted a chicken, parboiled some frozen vegetables, so there would be something nice in the icebox for the weekend.	693.2456501232722
"Don't bother, Ida", she said.	26.544961723317126
"I have these appointments in town for Saturday, and I'll probably spend Sunday with Dolly or the Thaxters".	341.62183716371027
At last, I thought, she's recovering her spirits.	76.64371273769613
With this movie-to-be in London, and new faces about her there, she would soon be a more tranquil, a wiser person, all the better for her stay out here.	570.004698823112
I felt more cheerful, as if I had had a part in bringing her through to a greater tolerance of herself.	473.15326417055627
And I went back to my own cottage to live my own little patch of life.	1903.0245469449756
It was foggy that evening, but the path to my house was so well grooved that I could feel my way, accustomed as I was to the dense mists that rise from the sun-warmed palisades of the river and sometimes last for days.	1990.573048461958
In the morning the fog was still thick so that to go to the village I crept along with my headlights full on.	220.14468569107137
I did notice a twinkle of light from the big house through the woods but as I had left a light on in my own house because of the fog I assumed Mrs Salter had done the same before she left for town.	466.71726315516963
I did my shopping, had my dentist appointment, and from there I went to the women's lunch at our parish church where we discussed plans for the annual Christmas bazaar, so that dusk was beginning to gather when I drove home in the late afternoon.	2524.1396330262246
But the next day- Sunday.	25.70137695369025
Why, when I drove down to church, didn't it speak to me, seeing the lights still on and the day crisp and clear?	276.76734904611857
Prisoners brought to the dock accused of murder or accident say they cannot remember, and reading the accounts of their testimony you cannot believe that the mind can remove, absent itself, unsee.	641.0532095338081
When I came back from church at noon Mrs Thaxter was turning into the Salter driveway.	1307.6420773184514
Even at a car's length I could sense that something was wrong, and so I followed her up to the turnaround in front of the house.	1110.1927598573884
Dolly Engisch was waiting there on the steps and she came running toward us.	304.269147439396
"She's nowhere, nowhere"!	75.72384730072272
she screamed, and both women ran up to the house, and I followed.	401.7495990478493
The search began, in all the rooms, running upstairs, down, opening closets, talking, exclaiming in rushes and gasps.	724.9647093256388
Everything was as I had left it the night before last- her portfolio and bag for town, her lingerie and dress and shoes laid out h only her mink coat was missing.	549.0246404950215
And she.	6.762225510013932
Then the telephoning began.	24.575248214514296
I, who until that day before had been Mrs Salter's friend, her equal, was the servant now.	209.7491124300255
It was Dolly and Mrs Thaxter who were calling Via, everybody.	178.14403996084894
And when they spoke they spoke to each other and not to me.	51.027675633936894
And after I brought them sandwiches and coffee I had to go back to my place in the kitchen and wait.	1149.4461906451213
Sitting in the kitchen I recalled every word Mrs Salter said that could have been a sign to me.	416.95202316691785
"If I am not to be Mrs Salter then I am nothing".	226.7427875731593
Why didn't that alarm me then?	48.64715248179848
And when she returned from taking her guests back to New York she had said, "All they talked about was Harvie h Harvie this, Harvie that h When they know the truth will they drop away from me, will I become a nothing"?	931.6129367943611
And then I remembered a few years before after their return from a short trip to Rome I had heard her boast, over and over again, "On the boat people liked me for myself".	357.4341339353261
I had made a habit of calling her at night from my cottage, just to check.	703.2303178408591
The last night I had called, but the line was always busy and it reassured me.	134.94552552637353
I assumed it was one of those hour-long conversations with Dolly or Constance, she comfortable in bed.	569.490248943455
But it seemed not from what they were saying.	485.955444696789
Then was it a final desperate plea from her, to whom?	1001.4289561618859
h hanging on and on past any man's patience h some final stab of conclusion?	425.750991305452
She was found the day after at the bottom of the cliff.	43.70668014680449
I tried to believe that what must have happened was that, restless, disturbed by this telephone call or whatever, she walked out in the night, as she had a habit of doing.	719.7973092408861
Sometimes she took the path that winds up around my cottage to the walk at the edge of the cliff.	167.73734302959505
It's so romantic up there, she used to say, with the broad river gleaming in its moontrack like an enormous dark mirror and all the sounds of the night, so poetic.	1718.0116528610542
With all that warm rain and the fog it might have been as simple as a loosened rock, a misstep.	1311.8007608962214
But I didn't really think it was as simple as that, nor did anyone else.	296.0254939933311
When a fisherman brought her up in his arms, still, small, as if she were a child asleep, I began to shudder with a terrible excitement, almost triumphant, that I still cannot account for.	2878.9931743867746
Was it a hysterical release from the long strain of vigilance of those weeks?	224.2380578440211
that at last the vigilance, the will gives way?	102.57261920109713
Or what was it that, before Via, Sonny, Walter and all, I began almost to dance with shuddering and cry out, "I knew she'd do it!	354.8235160407464
I knew"!	11.145064348482945
Everyone stared at me and drew back.	79.64406618394223
Their eyes turned cold and accusing, even Via's.	178.4481982345936
And they have never changed.	57.43618747780456
At the same time that I thought I understood her at long last and pitied her, underneath this knowing had there burned unquenched by my pity a fire of hate, an enduring envy that burst out in that ghastly outcry?	667.3615922245605
Was that what had given way in me?	70.63757825756187
Even now I am appalled at how little anyone knows of what they really are.	242.04648794060532
It is absurd of course to say that that one exclamation estranged me from the family I considered my very own, but there it hangs, a cooling void that broke our close connection with each other.	538.7096575151724
At the time I was filled with self-pity at this separation, but in the years since I have come to understand that the sight of me was painful to them after that outcry.	1879.7056548612425
In my person they would always remember that last long time of me alone with her, so if they told themselves that I could have prevented it, I can understand that by now and love them still, because everyone must justify, have a scapegoat for what is not to be borne.	1234.0854844987352
It is not their avoidance that rankles; it is when I meet someone who was a close friend of the family, and therefore of mine, and they nod to me so coolly and walk away, that it hurts.	1002.8302490280249
I could tell them, but no one ever asked, why I had cried out so triumphantly at the sight of her body.	1676.039417909932
No, I forget Mrs Mathias, who had been away visiting a married daughter when it happened.	275.8306078055529
She haunted me; she persisted in explaining how and why she had advised Mrs Salter to return to the country.	1239.9337463163197
"We all feel guilty", I turned away from her coldly.	401.85707684151265
"It was nobody's fault.	31.997705582100398
She overplayed her hand".	38.88292580448386
"What do you mean"?	3.3056467200777755
she frowned.	20.935752997625507
"Why put such a high value on being top dog"?	104.54281546931838
I added.	8.228398957665135
It was coarse, almost insulting, this harsh appraisal, and she has never come to see me since.	668.8441822604425
But suppose she had not taken Mrs Mathias' advice and lived on like thousands of women in towns, dispossessed of love, hanging on to makeshifts, and altogether and finally arid.	582.7512352231703
If she chose, and in that final decision discarded, what, above all, all of us value, life itself, must she not have risen to her fullest height, and transcending her murky self, felt at last the passion of a great moral decision?	595.7123695869504
If they say I could have stopped her it is because they are ignorant of her last weeks of self-examination, her search into herself and its conclusions.	253.30308980188806
Yes, I had cried out that I knew she'd do it, but without my fully realizing it at the time, it was a cry of triumph for her, praise at her deliverance from pettiness and greed- and guilt.	1372.7223083687281
She was finally at rest in truth, of her own proud free choice.	243.51804308400034
At rest with my darling Ellen, the first Mrs Salter.	189.13991121361562
MR SALTER came home.	46.670365798725825
The funeral service was in the house, the Methodist minister, how clean and glistening his eyeglasses and his neat body standing beside that coffin with that doll inside, a stranger speaking to strangers the old sacred words, and the rain drumming incessantly in accompaniment, seven days of relentless rain that turned the ground to mud so the burial had to be postponed.	1692.2307510978123
I waited.	13.32436625016305
Then Via called to say they had decided to cremate her- as they had Ellen, the thought leaped to my mind- and did I want to meet her at the funeral home the next morning.	1767.994179343441
The coffin stood on trestles in a corner of the long low dimly lit funeral parlor, on its dark shining surface the sheaf of white roses I had ordered.	2093.702279740307
I knelt, just for decency I thought at the time, but found myself whispering, "Our Father which Art in Heaven h" And it was only after that that something unlocked in me and I felt a grief.	1986.9716509592895
Via was in the parking lot when I went outside.	115.11973822527999
Together we waited in her car until the hearse moved out and we followed it down into the heavy traffic of New Jersey.	731.2453152901888
By the time we arrived and entered the building sacred music was already swelling out into the chapel-like auditorium with its discreet symbols of religious faiths.	834.6650893978906
Again I felt impelled to kneel, and reached back and pulled Via down.	234.34473873467905
Something would come into her heart h if nothing else the sounds of Bach would give her some healing.	403.46191589590103
"I had a rather small place of my own.	808.8709470142554
A nice bachelor apartment in a place called the Lancaster Arms".	257.5889052862511
"Uhhu", she said, hardly listening as she studied her left eyelid.	303.08535416820655
"And then I had another place farther downtown I used as a studio".	286.87480928250244
"Uhhu".	16.05296361890169
"I'm not a man who has many close intimate friends, Carla", he said, wanting her to know all about him.	243.94377057907423
"Oh, I'd drink with newspaper people.	51.67812556095124
I think I was what you might call a convivial man, and yet it was when I was alone in my studio, doing my work, that I really felt alive.	945.6568674353524
But I think a man needs at least one intimate friend to communicate with".	112.08760064455129
Pausing, he waited for her to turn, to ask a question.	113.61803691241444
She showed no interest at all in the life he had led back home, and it hurt him a little.	1776.1524108301921
"Well, what about you, Carla"?	153.96141450194992
"Me"?	14.251419023678935
she asked, turning slowly.	173.254170773848
"What about me"?	11.838751712177933
"Did you make friends easily"?	50.868067237375776
"Umm, uhhu".	51.41832996850104
"Somehow I imagine that as you grew up you were alone a lot.	113.51732109381359
How about it"?	6.712993985575258
"I guess so", she said taking a Kleenex from her purse.	152.7292552369676
When she had wiped some of the lipstick from her mouth, she stared solemnly at her image in the mirror.	253.3887257498099
"Are your people still alive"?	75.71823122863329
he asked, trying to touch a part of her life Alberto hadn't discussed; so he could have something of her for himself.	1276.8903864431534
"You talk so well, Carla", he went on.	190.24222611729292
"You seem to have read so much, you have a natural gift for words", he added, trying to flatter her vanity.	1157.5809444212855
"You must have been good at history at school.	121.44400120101729
Where did you go to school"?	47.69235508963822
"What is this"?	5.6448826114721795
she asked, turning suddenly.	170.68828965732743
"Don't you know all about me by this time?	24.443972851722744
My name's Carla Caneli.	154.7129300233522
This is my town.	12.34032447230023
I sleep with you.	19.493299802625767
You know something more about me every day, don't you?	97.10025838509823
Would you be happier if I made up some stories about my life, told you some lies?	289.33783811005543
Why are you trying to worry me"?	126.26811918695813
"I'm not trying to worry you".	22.57185811221859
"Well, all right then".	18.32566542757177
The cleansing tissues she had been using had been falling on the floor, and he got up and picked up one, then another, hoping she would notice what he was doing.	2358.0613837346864
At home he had been a clean orderly man, and now he had to hide his annoyance.	3141.0665697696813
Was she just naturally sloppy about everything but her physical appearance?	441.76932587237974
he wondered.	20.57273187754149
Would he have to clean up after her every day, clean the kitchen, the bathroom, and get down on his knees and scrub the kitchen floor, then hang up her dresses, pick up her stockings, make the bed while she lay around?	1483.9109948934492
He straightened up, ready to vent his exasperation, then grew afraid.	215.88014741267213
If he dwelt on the indignities he suffered he would lose all respect for her, and without the respect he might lose his view of her, too.	666.7371287530818
"What's the matter"?	5.8903754125086705
she asked suddenly.	14.210902742793104
"Nothing.	5.354397600619958
Nothing at all", he said quietly.	94.82317835136715
"Let's go out".	10.325134198229536
"Are those the only shoes you have, Sam"?	98.21555977957117
"What's the matter with them"?	8.299712321133834
"The heavy thick soles.	44.60140061184066
Look at them".	6.791501272634551
"They're an expensive English shoe for walking around a lot.	223.4742114912904
I like them".	5.34186282543075
"Sam, no one around here wears such heavy soles.	227.17277925380336
Can't you get another pair"?	95.90776446963233
"Maybe I could", he said, surprised that she could turn from herself and notice anything about him.	174.49008031089775
"I'll get an elegant pair of thin-soled Italian shoes tomorrow, Carla".	261.4950375667502
"And I don't know why you want to go on wearing that outfit", she said, making a face.	506.2957470672328
"What's the matter with it"?	5.880377610039916
He had put on the gray jacket and the dark-gray slacks and the fawn-colored shirt he had worn that first night in Rome when he had encountered her on the street.	528.4799488016724
"Oh, Sam.	14.486999027208565
You look like a tweedy Englishman.	78.59539317154649
Can't you wear something else and look a little more as though you belonged"?	333.7793819025843
"I don't mind at all", he said, delighted with her attention.	105.15844802107694
Changing his clothes, he put on his dark-blue flannel suit, and laid away the gray jacket with the feeling that he might be putting it aside for good.	1639.519138837533
But it was a hopeful sign, he told himself.	43.266269676291856
She no longer wanted anything about him to remind her of the circumstances of their meeting that first night in Parioli.	1007.6898411291475
That day they loafed around, just getting the feel of the city.	135.48539586119472
They looked at the ruins of the old Roman wall on the lower Via Veneto, then they went to the Farnese Gardens.	761.4053183980617
She had some amusing scandal about the Farneses in the old days.	72.68804732646274
Then they took a taxi to Trastevere.	55.15270989610391
"There's a church you should see", she said.	37.86788357848383
And when they stood by the fountain in the piazza looking at Santa Maria he had to keep a straight face, not letting on he had been there with Alberto.	1078.649707647847
He let her tell him all about the church.	54.04742147113281
Then they had dinner.	15.939098303005352
All evening she was eloquent and pleased with herself.	113.22797736170983
When they got home at midnight she was tired out.	45.429366644949894
And in the morning when he woke up at ten the church bells were ringing.	299.3820643589048
He had never heard so many bells, and as he lay there listening, he thought of her scolding him for his remarks when he had looked up at the obelisk and the church at the top of the Spanish Steps.	1209.1762987031952
It was a good thing that she clung to her religion, he thought.	34.51626842497368
She might like to take him to St Peter's.	55.13669438138097
"Carla, wake up", he said shaking her.	110.98100246935223
"It's ten o'clock.	19.262557718439275
Aren't you going out to mass?	47.55293269114149
You could take me to St Peter's".	44.8001660617277
"Uhhu", she muttered.	48.468637213779296
"Come on, you'll be late".	28.53966750956397
"I think I'll sleep in this morning", she said drowsily, and as she snuggled against him, he wondered if she ever went to church.	430.4303563430547
Why did he want her to go to church?	688.5286784419137
he wondered h Probably because it was a place where she might get a feeling of certainty and security.	527.5966978424344
It would be good for her.	10.822922959263757
It was too bad he had no feeling himself for church.	74.96643682393297
Not his poor mother's fault.	77.513905531651
She would have been better off if she had stuck to her Bible.	63.44062770362781
As for himself, he just didn't have the temperament for it.	1358.4903752941698
From the time he had been at college he had achieved a certain tranquility and composure by accepting the fact that there were certain things he could never know.	602.7668987081595
Then he thought of those Old Testament figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.	627.0654391802553
Just figures out of a tribal folklore.	75.30336998998375
Could he honestly believe it would be good for Carla to have those old prophets gripping her imagination now?	456.2742899533686
Being a woman though, she would take only what she needed from church.	139.81760823893802
It was too bad he wasn't a Catholic himself.	61.68548092698768
Or a Protestant, or one of those amusing dogmatic atheists, or a strict orthodox Communist.	1318.121327813693
What was the matter with him that they all wearied him?	227.75965010598358
It was the times, he was sure.	247.9636496209317
All the ideologies changing from day to day, right under his eyes, so how could a man look to any one of them for an enlargement of his freedom?	330.51373761320474
It was all too wearying.	29.218097647883816
Look somewhere else.	31.505485877478783
But where?	6.1189777057691295
Just the same, he thought, pondering over it, it would be a good thing for a girl like Carla if she got up and went to church.	1497.5481852052756
A half hour later he got her up to go out for breakfast so the Ferraros, hearing them hurrying down the stairs, would think they were going to a late mass.	395.77170854154144
It seemed to him that if the Ferraros felt sure of them, could place them, it would help him to feel more sure of himself with Carla.	1602.9926251903503
"Since we're having coffee with them this afternoon", he said, "I think I'll ask the daughter if we can pay her to come in every day to clean for us".	116.03737957558756
And he waited for her to say, "Oh, no, I can do it, Sam.	2431.3440746687943
There's so little to do".	129.31086050829447
"Why not"?	3.6229771308461562
she said.	3.4828079357982547
"I'm not good at that kind of thing".	22.151032162348418
"This afternoon let's take an air with them.	71.35250779574666
Let's be fine superior people of great dignity", he said as if he were joking.	194.29351036506029
"If you find it necessary, Sam, go ahead", she said, turning on the stair.	135.5826690032637
"I am what I am.	80.25349466626484
I can't help it".	14.037010914561339
Her words remained with him, worrying him for hours.	348.37374793103834
He didn't know how she would behave with other people.	486.21616065067593
When they walked into the Ferraro apartment, the old lady, bowing and smiling, said softly.	525.1320312201888
"Ciao," and put out her hand.	203.4803272854917
Her little brown face wrinkled up, her brown eyes gleamed, and with her little gestures she said all the courteous things.	962.8634527035517
Agnese, smiling too, said, "'Ello", and then more slowly, "I am happy".	397.89773120716194
And they sat down and began their little coffee party.	103.06687332721276
The Ferraros offered them biscuits with the coffee.	95.65587228046265
Acting only as interpreter Carla, her hands folded on her lap, was utterly impersonal.	477.2049550694738
She would turn to them, then turn to him, then turn again.	4436.298613524652
Watching her, he felt like a spectator at a tennis game, with the ball being bounced back and forth.	938.6114690820539
Signora Ferraro, bobbing her head encouragingly, asked Sam about Canada, having a special interest.	591.5260356014621
Carla translated.	28.6544132911931
The old woman had a nephew from North Italy, a poor boy from a lumber mill who had got tired of the seasonal unemployment, and who had migrated to Canada to work on the railway.	1016.1264625506078
For a year the boy had lived in the bush in a boxcar.	361.80734086454555
Did many of Sam's countrymen live in boxcars in the bush?	318.4023993395647
Had Sam ever lived in a boxcar?	157.50341567103303
she wanted to know.	612.5483535587944
Regretfully Sam explained that he had no experience with boxcars.	4248.366332672654
Just the same, the old woman said, she would write to her nephew in his boxcar and tell him she had met a nice man from his adopted country.	1076.1818164309755
And Sam thanked her, and hoped he might meet her nephew back home, and asked her if she had any further news of the Pope.	2318.972418383183
A very great Pope, this one, the old woman explained, her black eyes sparkling.	3719.996113986158
An intellectual.	10.447531925471102
But very mystical too.	29.496325189053916
It was said that he had had a vision.	103.32691326440562
Just as thousands that day in Portugal had seen the sun dancing in the sky, he had seen the same thing later in his own garden, and she turned to Agnese for confirmation.	1247.480890507097
Agnese had been sitting quietly, listening with the serenity of the unaware.	204.3320958417917
Now a little flush came on her pale homely face and enchantment in her eyes.	267.04417510525326
The Holy Father would die soon, she said to Carla, so she could translate for Sam, although he had a brilliant doctor, a man who did not need the assistance of those doctors offered by the great rulers of the world.	993.6061263023188
Yes, the Pope could die and quickly be made a saint.	84.16224981549439
No, he was indeed a saint now.	131.6228085448865
Nodding approvingly and swelling with importance, the old lady whispered confidentially.	391.8460875208126
There was a certain discontent among the cardinals.	58.347997239144995
The Pope, in the splendor of his great intellect, had neglected them a little.	263.0516854128251
There would be changes made, and Signor Raymond should understand that when the Pope died it was like the end of a regime in Rome.	272.20667941903696
Jobs would be lost and new faces would become prominent.	170.36560438663298
Did Signor Raymond understand?	122.16679793546398
Indeed he did, Sam said solemnly, trying to get Carla's eye.	436.0053354697618
Surely she could see that these women were her Italians, too, he thought.	243.45374387562032
Devout, orthodox and plain like a family she might meet in Brooklyn or Malta or Ireland.	409.83025689192186
But Carla; eyes were on Agnese whose glowing face and softening eyes gave her a look of warmth and happiness.	573.6417010597481
And Carla, watching in wonder, turned to Sam.	114.34283458852028
"It means so much to her.	19.562428123586454
It's like a flame, I guess", she said in a dreamy tone.	326.13929405327343
But one night Dookiyoon moved in the direction of the women's lodge, where Shades of Night had gone to purify herself.	959.7405957176901
With the blue flesh of night touching him he stood under a gentle hill caressing the flageolet with his lips, making it whisper.	532.4321161323322
He saw her emerge suddenly, coming in her unhesitant fashion, her back stiff, her head erect, facing with contempt the night and whatever she would encounter, as if in her extreme disdain and indifference she would pass by all the outraged looks of those whom she might approach.	822.6956641865827
In her dark, scornful fashion she proceeded to her destination, afraid of nothing, not even the evil spirits which kept her company in her time of bleeding.	425.4293272398074
Seeing her come, he caught his breath, feeling his heart bounce in him, and turned away, afraid now.	554.5403353616961
Even he, wanting her, afraid of her and not knowing how to press his suit, feared the evil presences in her metabolism more.	342.13063783064473
His breath caught, and, trembling, he closed his eyes and stumbled off.	142.87335274893897
Going, he saw as often before some queer, hideous yellow face over his head, shining and weird like the old images which had invested him at other times like those that appear sometimes near the eyeballs when they are perhaps pressed by the thumbs.	1381.6677202085655
He cried out to her, his back turned.	738.6083797889934
Then he fled, not waiting to see if she minded him or took notice of his cry.	203.38696367292783
But she heard him go.	25.806093218986973
Yet she did not hesitate and only turned slightly, her neck tall as she looked in his direction, and continued on her way toward the end of the camp.	1907.3082584747535
Elsewhere others heard and stopped and waited, the women peering from their lodges then gathering in small, curious clusters.	626.998408799836
Early Spring came from her bed, from beside her half-drunk husband, Walitzee, and stood at the entrance way to her lodge hearing the mild commotion, the sound of hushed voices.	951.6756771546424
Standing there she saw Shades of Night come through the trees and stop beside the lodge, silent, almost imperious, her body taut, simply standing without speaking or moving while the wife of Walitzee waited, perhaps denying the dread that moved in her.	1022.0671857539842
When at last she could suffer the insult no longer, nor face the girl's scorn, she said in a voice overloud "I shall call your father!	1138.9516178685637
Go back where you can bring no harm, or I will go and get the old man from his bed so he can see your shame"!	352.37786411210953
But the girl said only, "Tell him I am here, that I have come".	435.74705849485326
And it was not Pile of Clouds she meant.	242.84783034993117
But now with real anger at last, something proud and indignant, Early Spring stood like a she wolf before her den and cried, "I will not shriek at you!	595.9270466790796
I will tell you to go, not begging.	63.17486169646709
Telling you"!	32.30285852335653
And unsheathing the knife she used for curing hides she stepped away from the lodge, holding the knife at her side.	503.90641171912034
"You bring only wickedness", she said and it was not to a child any longer but to another woman who had come to skirt her lodge with the cunning hunger of a wild animal.	578.8888891920244
Speaking in a low voice of loathing she went up to the girl, who stood with the same upright, scornful bearing and did not even look at the knife.	2841.633906077446
"Go take helsq'iyokom, your evil spirit, to the young boys", the woman said.	217.26996475667443
"They do not have to face battle.	160.1487417946293
I will not let your evil in.	125.22730824627386
I will simply kill you first.	39.979869642130936
Now go"!	19.890074836045148
The other women had come close now, their voices murmuring together until they stood buzzing in an angry knot, their threats mingling, rising, nagging at each other, each trying to make her indignation and anger felt.	1871.619814699111
They picked up sticks and hurled them at the girl.	104.32592978182356
The sticks fell like a shower around her and she felt them sting her flesh and send tiny points of pain along her thighs.	1304.2701242723176
They were all shouting at her as if she were the embodiment of the evil she brought.	455.2780374094479
But she did not move, taking the words and the sticks in that old defiance of her extreme youth until suddenly Pile of Clouds came howling among them, swinging a great bullhide whip.	783.5879976224853
"Go back to your lodges"!	44.27943168333944
he shouted.	7.570178814277265
"A pack of dogs makes less noise"!	139.38426618274738
He made the long whip sing and snap around their heads so that they ran screaming, some tripping over themselves in their flight.	422.2175304533339
And Early Spring seized the whip and said "If you must flog someone, let it be her, your daughter.	748.6685719211791
Drive the demons out of her and teach her to stay away from my husband"!	750.4727310515678
But the old man turned on her, jerking the whip from her hand.	128.50535046794894
"Get into your hovel"!	95.4831898601658
he spat.	27.58287463355499
"Go back to that double-married man of yours who so parades his fine body among the young women.	238.26418103703915
Keep him back, if you must tell me what to do.	259.5949118839298
I will be the one to confront my daughter, not the wife of him who leads her to sin"!	558.8039560073533
She retreated before the naked shame in the old man and the fury beyond it and sank into the darkness of her lodge where Walitzee stirred, mumbling, sitting up in a half stupor to say "What worrisome thing happens?	1818.1251480130668
I thought I dreamed of wolves fighting".	47.86409852642581
But she went to him and pressed herself against his nakedness, smelling the stale odor of the whisky he had stolen from TuHulHulZote.	516.0042747061573
She said, "There is nothing that concerns you here.	126.8890116002942
Lie back and go to sleep.	186.70091430472766
But do not dream.	17.985145932680393
Do not let the wicked spirits enter your brain".	124.49697912858338
He sank back, sighing, and was soon asleep again.	128.38721888832708
Outside, the old man, beyond all the curses of the spirits his daughter bore, went to her and twisted the gnarled talons of his fingers in her hair and turned her and pushed her rudely ahead of him into the trees where the moon sent out a thousand arms.	815.4526212287753
And, shoving her against a spruce, her back to him, he retreated with the whip and made it whine and crack in the damp air, shortening its arc until it narrowed to her flesh and the sound of it snarled and cracked, settling its own cruel demons on her shoulders while she stood as unchanged, as dark and motionless as ever, her eyes open and staring at the pale delineaments of the bark so close to her face.	1331.3932163471868
She said to him, her father, "How was I begotten, in pain or joy?	143.68419199469287
Is it for me to be forbidden the flesh you made grow on me?	109.83380120335772
They all know your foolish name"!	86.69146479879477
She stared at the pale tracings on the tree, hearing her breath refracted from it, her face close and touching at time the rough edges of the bark.	462.31520621782914
She felt the lash bite and heard her father say in crazed monosyllables words which had no meaning, like, "unnnt!	650.8007408118868
h sssshoo"!	39.98523623848904
The sounds of an animal in rage and despair.	75.53743827151277
Suddenly the lash stopped fighting the air and she heard Pile of Clouds say in his high, quavering voice "Did you follow me to see my shame?	1010.8272902718556
Move from the line or I will settle the whip on you h. Move!	308.02590960982616
Do you hear the anger of the whip's whine"?	121.9233599663567
Turning, the girl saw Dookiyoon standing between, his narrow shoulders unbent, his arms hanging long and resigned.	520.568796267566
He said, "Let me take her blows, for there are demons in me too".	106.54389089527751
Then, without knowing why, she found herself running from them, fleeing wildly through the trees, dodging her own shadows until she came to a little hollow in the rocky ground with a big stone in the center behind which she knelt and hid, listening to the madness of her heart and wanting for once to cry.	1922.5989389893953
/2, For a while the young men waited outside the lodge of Tu Hul Hul Zote, glorying in his harsh language as he talked with himself.	616.4821017121085
He shouted like a hoarse old mastiff, his hair stiff and bristling.	335.0642578290648
He ranted and prophesied the doom of his enemies, walking in circles in and out of his living place, drinking stolen whisky in great, gasping draughts until finally, incoherent and sick, he fell into his own oblivion.	979.0765822113236
He amused the young men who had been silent long enough.	676.4822794175823
But they could taste the appeasement of violence and retribution through his antics.	196.02162767827596
Now they moved, rubbing their flesh alive again, disdaining the gloom they saw in the faces around them.	294.5697057850066
They came out and held their games and races.	65.3155177025175
It was they who held the future in their hands.	220.37081633115736
They went into the sun together and paraded grandly in their war clothes, painting their faces with the sacred attis dug far off in the cave of skeletons.	981.6537734452393
They danced the paxam wildly at night, the war dance, and dipped their arrowheads in the venom of rattlesnakes and rode their horses in swift maneuvers, firing their few guns in unison at some indeterminate signal.	2290.1642511940704
Walitzee was among them, and Sarpsis, and they wore red blankets which flew like broad wings in the air of their passing.	403.5200104899627
And a very young one, Swan Necklace, tried to emulate them and followed timidly.	346.9160894477202
Yellow Wolf was there, nephew of the young chief by an older brother long dead, in whom also the disordered chemistries of youth worked.	546.7287854802642
He would spring bolt upright suddenly after sitting quietly with inaction, because something had boiled over in his fermenting juices.	802.8387062680802
All the young men, Alokut among them, challenged them in matched racing.	536.537634431154
They raced and maneuvered for war, swinging their horses in single file and then abreast like cavalry.	411.0504566489615
At times they would ride frenziedly through the camp, letting the women see their courage, how handsome they were in their regalia.	410.80517656266096
Then again they would stand in circles making other preparations.	131.28365967584799
They combed their hair and streaked it at the part and greased the bangs so that the hair above their foreheads stood rigid like the tails of sage hens making love.	900.973182475188
Walitzee whitened his leggings with clay, knowing the girl watched from her place in the trees.	589.2805330882492
He saw himself in a superior reflection, and he was as a speeding arrow from the taut bow, hurtling with a mad grace, his maleness shining and scented with meadow rue.	628.4301199849032
He was always aware of the women's eyes which followed him, admiring him.	180.24426549672745
And the suspicious, envenomed eyes of Pile of Clouds.	176.94250275473647
And those of Early Spring, haunted and now full of hurt and envy.	206.8140715411239
He felt so much like laughing; even like shouting and crying out from the hilltops from which he could descend as an eagle in a mad caper from the cliffs.	1029.2542063428348
He and Sarpsis planned a great parade with the young men.	326.0700332737613
They would give one final testimony of their challenge to let the people see their arrogance.	195.23728759278495
They would ride with streaming amulets, their colors ripening in the sun, shouting the last bellicosity of a nation in the throes of death.	663.14204596325
And so the sun came up again and for a moment its color was the young men's blood, shifting then into the full heat and outcry which ran with their hearts.	1020.9104976148122
They mounted their horses and rode off into the hills.	104.73026920081458
/3, The young chief stared at the wall of his lodge, listening.	1117.7667008431813
The sound rose on the other side of the hills, vanished and rose again and he could imagine the mad, disheveled hoofs of the Appaloosas, horses the white men once had called the Dogs of Hell.	406.88662395801356
He saw them in fleet images as they came rolling and now burst across the ridge.	236.74260196480424
Standing then with the others, peering into the sun, he saw the bright, multicolored legion, their hair flying like dark banners, only the thunder, the roll of drums, the mad cacophony of the hoofs accompanying them.	604.4874042519302
They leaned into the wind and seemed like one thousand-legged monster hurtling and plunging until suddenly they rose straight in their saddles and in one terrifying voice shouted, ejaculated their grotesque cry of war.	1183.8911571808599
She was moving through a screen of hemlocks, in among the white birch and maples.	157.70192664192527
The sounds from the quarry began to pulse in her ears.	128.81706106679957
She stood, once more listening.	47.19365543515449
She had never been here at this hour.	84.00565070462068
She felt as if some dark, totally unfamiliar shape would clutch at her arm; but she found the path she always used, the stubs of branches she had broken, those she had pushed aside; and she walked easily now, and more slowly, until she could see the dark glisten of water beneath her.	1143.168995978879
If I ever committed suicide, she thought, I would dive straight down from here- and no one would find me for days.	532.5356869064649
She smiled, and expertly let herself downward, holding this known root or that, her sneakers sliding in the leaves.	411.605548897007
She jumped out onto the flat expanse of rock and, seating herself, shook her short-cut brown hair and tilted her chin far upward.	1242.0445219700139
The reedy music of the frogs had faded, but presently it began again, growing in volume until it was vibrant.	363.81673154367417
Julia felt at peace and drew her legs up and clasped her hands tightly around the bent knees.	625.0912455000386
She had accomplished a miracle.	21.461280969697594
This was her place.	9.690542205123924
The hour couldn't change it h. Only- only- her thoughts were a little strange.	182.19668016298326
They were becoming confused.	19.985522854290675
Perhaps it was because it was so late, and because she had no business to be here now.	544.186376040497
She was thinking of Paul a few weeks ago, in the Easter holidays, with her at one of those awful Friday Evening Dancing Class parties her mother had made her attend.	995.9367892904762
"Hello, Julie, how are you"?	89.10105414363845
h And then off he went so casually, to someone else with breasts better developed, more obvious in a lower-cut dress, someone without a mouthful of wire bands and an inability to find words that would hold him.	756.5730699545329
I wish he was with me now, she thought, and that we were both the ages we are and doing what was once only pretense and acute embarrassment.	654.2967741713273
Oh God!	19.265102721494596
I wish I were older or younger, Julia Bentley thought.	176.92545346928293
I wish so much someone loved me.	66.25295876785258
CHAPTER 7 George Rawlings remembered seeing the door open sometime during the night- Millie, in a white robe, standing like a ghost at the threshold.	1289.4643826882898
She had vanished; he must have slept again.	72.78406795823736
He was staring at the blue china lamp left on beside him.	168.80351646020088
It seemed too much trouble even to reach for the switch; but of course the impossible effort of leaving would have to be made on this Monday morning.	315.69162670728133
This room was like a prison.	33.681134113946314
He would not be indebted to Sam!	181.06266261460814
Below him, as if at the end of some remote tunnel, he heard the humming of a vacuum cleaner.	819.3897956992228
His fingers fumbled across the bandages.	134.69688856182142
They had left both of his eyes uncovered h. Well, he told himself, let's put the show on the road.	132.826599493254
He was walking across to the bathroom.	30.34706677602398
He drank a glass of water and gripped the sink with both hands.	238.6095649436606
A fearful pain had come from his head, as if the water were coursing up through the blood vessels and expanding them h. He recognized his jacket and trousers.	717.3679264907037
The fabric was dark; the stains weren't too apparent; and there were his shoes, thank God, but his shirt was one terrible mess.	835.7685479904666
He shivered, and then tore away the blood-soaked parts and wound the rest around his neck like a scarf.	432.66401137063485
Sam would be amazed to find him gone.	88.35401702649561
Millie would have to understand.	27.971021624515874
She must have put his clothes in the closet.	45.59801603439083
He found a lump rising in his throat because of that one simple act of tidiness.	236.38875745409192
He was on the verge of tears.	12.06423036208204
Alex Poldowski- in a fashion he owed a debt to that effete gentleman.	645.8405953526252
At least Alex had told him he wasn't dying.	205.48087383449607
Perhaps George Rawlings would be better off dead.	387.8889055945204
What time was it?	15.75456444921024
He peered at his wristwatch.	39.743616587397845
Strange, it was still running.	24.15654091618722
A quarter to seven.	14.530147897888812
Too early for a vacuum cleaner, but probably Sam wanted the whole house in order before he came downstairs.	361.9465570918907
He was kneeling to tie his shoelaces.	79.87226963019728
His fingers felt absurdly thick and clumsy.	194.4036174486204
He rose slowly and looked into the mirror on the inside of the closet door.	165.3343147888709
He barely knew himself.	29.569216840968195
This was some freak, two strands of adhesive tape across his nose, like ugly roots from the mass of gauze, suddenly moist over his cheekbones.	1369.7905186224834
The surface, however, was perfectly white.	36.44122457113836
He was drinking another glass of water.	28.562914745704763
It was after seven o'clock.	19.55943621779712
He was supposed to be in court this afternoon, at City Hall.	122.88115280301436
Who would take over?	21.894208654564935
He'd have to think, but the main thing, the imperative necessity, was to leave before Sam Bentley was up and about, and before Millie detained him with sympathy.	2332.812645347165
He entered the hallway.	19.98771286300652
He was actually walking down the stairs.	174.58549223623393
A plane up in the sky, above the clouds, and this freakish wreck of a man desperately trying to get away.	1072.64159353393
"Father, is that you"?	19.60814790612608
The voice issued from the cavern of the hall below.	82.89104367228772
George did not reply.	33.20607640536176
"Is that you, Father?	132.98877183605467
h Who's there"?	31.285616691805636
For a moment he felt like a thief discovered.	55.27768502756564
Then Julia appeared under the arch leading to the dining room.	170.4766068401951
She stood gazing at him.	36.552493313527606
"Uncle George"!	33.11969018350136
He was trying to smile at her.	27.325901312278592
"Gosh!	28.826365438569706
You shouldn't be up, should you"?	52.94216653065322
"I- I was just leaving here, Julie h. I'm all set.	141.08771000160462
Just about to call a taxi".	20.820213288694287
She was wearing some sort of gray blazer.	107.76914962039181
She seemed overly tall, her brow knitted in concern.	169.48691242730357
"Well, at least you won't have to do that", she was saying.	1021.4688313968654
"I'm about to leave myself.	21.876881950028007
I'll drop you off".	12.458243608567162
"You're leaving"?	13.752554692677863
"I'm going back to school", she answered.	146.06791869437097
"Pietro's driving me.	44.332040574782546
I'm just finishing breakfast h. But have you told Mother you were going"?	187.15735035682718
she asked him.	8.30648337272861
"No h. I just don't want anyone disturbed, Julie.	181.67886962719163
That's my wish.	13.774982333664822
It's quite a big one", he added.	293.11244424340384
Her face seemed to float in an implausibly bright shaft of sunlight.	302.5586626388933
"Well, won't you come in then, have a cup of coffee- or something?	222.24980998219925
h Or maybe a drink"?	92.39177249344343
she asked, in a way that seemed oddly sophisticated, considerate, and yet perhaps partly scornful.	500.67280966921936
He tried to see her face more clearly.	351.0064850979944
"No- nothing at all", he said after a moment's hesitation.	195.25894656371568
"I'll just wait for you here".	83.11532388433915
He leaned his head against the wood paneling behind him, but the vivid red images of pain inserted themselves against his eyelids.	997.3514674260788
He raised them.	13.275871158405772
Julia moved past.	40.5074610171122
"I have to say good-by upstairs.	243.11464831406317
I won't be long".	14.495127482667256
"As a great favor, Julie", he said, "please don't mention you've seen me".	236.82192889650497
"Not to anyone"?	20.371768327176365
"No- please h. "I'll call your mother as soon as I get home.	123.34993444880561
It'll be so much easier".	36.35042516675902
"All right h" She was staring at him.	54.28038506940655
"I'm fine, Julie h. Please, you just go ahead".	107.66738352262156
She had disappeared.	11.169611319348018
He could feel a pulse pounding against the bandages.	94.5752284047597
He imagined Sam's voice "George, what the hell goes on"?	355.27801844088697
I wouldn't have the strength to answer, he thought.	29.311957917834622
Maybe I couldn't have called a taxi.	62.48079832242958
He could hear the footsteps overhead.	48.06891682227452
He saw the suitcase, which Julia was holding.	73.74344889445054
He stood up.	5.223143413354746
"I'll take that, Julie- for you".	65.83181834496382
"Oh no", she said.	9.031433292741172
"I can manage".	22.408665795550288
She went ahead of him.	131.2035499066683
Outside the Lincoln was parked.	45.883741796538224
He could hardly believe he was getting in.	44.530151073219166
Pietro was gazing at him in an insolent, disdainful fashion; but that didn't matter.	329.36684643323184
We'll drop Mr Rawlings off in Ardmore", Julia said, and for the merest second George was reminded of her father's tone with servants.	966.8552135130498
To the manner born- odd to have such a thought at a time like this; yet her inflection seemed forced or rehearsed.	603.1840809011343
He could not stop to analyze.	27.727462956873428
He had never felt particularly close to her.	268.5965835122581
Carrie seemed more affectionate, but obviously Julia had respected his request.	408.50138447688283
He took her hand.	15.344309551564928
"I wish I didn't have to go back to school", she said, and then, "I wish you lived in New York.	986.4887622549945
That's in the opposite direction".	8.939536713679082
"I wish I did", he responded.	159.66809882970415
"I wish I wasn't wearing this ridiculous costume, and that we could go to a theater together, or a nice restaurant, forget we knew h" He stopped speaking.	669.0372392239777
"Forget we ever knew what"?	92.54138308475851
"Oh, just sort of everything in general".	37.22760426964288
She said nothing until Pietro had slackened their pace.	163.55528571868075
"I know you feel badly, but that sounds like such a queer thing for you to say".	319.34686725856415
"Does it"?	5.582851146513564
he asked.	3.0139882038473726
"Yes, perhaps.	12.290449750618375
I'm supposed to joke about things, aren't I?	58.81146325825467
h But sometimes life can be rather a disappointing business".	115.79342462211342
His voice seemed thick and purposeless.	74.80249917581081
He relinquished her hand.	29.503466804302718
He could see the stone building where he lived.	58.69099422455515
Just a few more steps h. Abruptly he reached into his pocket.	226.97330392459799
Yes, there was the key.	82.54823397497181
"Are you positive you'll be all right by yourself"?	82.36172601618135
she asked him.	8.30648337272861
For a moment he smiled.	15.211062487815763
"Yes, Julie dear.	38.32974080579454
You've done me the greatest possible service.	43.84884691184365
By myself I'll be fine".	49.47072430335651
"Take care of yourself then".	42.0215821156903
"I will h. you, also h. don't work too hard".	78.58469788742771
It was an automatic phrase; as he crossed through the courtyard he regretted it.	141.80900629168664
He should have discovered a more tender farewell.	70.24967743043108
Someone shouted at him, "Well!	80.4594056606953
Will you look at George Rawlings!	106.74553484084345
What happened to you"?	7.153356696819506
"I bumped into a door handle", George said.	105.32804804570331
Someone laughed.	18.751406131741874
George walked steadily ahead into his entry.	135.4931438272749
His bandages seemed on fire.	56.02434279172802
He had shut his door with the brass number screwed to it.	86.89311475818234
In the kitchenette the raw whiskey made him gasp.	148.94004482005033
Just one or two swallows, he told himself, enough to lessen some of the pain.	541.2230118384255
He was telephoning.	14.972689205391884
"No, Millie, I'm home h. No, really, right as rain h. Tell Sam not to worry about the car.	337.0484721004666
I'll get it hauled away h. No, please- no visit today- I'll be asleep h. For God's sake, don't worry.	398.348587064459
That upsets me more than anything h. Yes, sure, I'll see the doctor- this evening, if you insist h".	384.5631309446799
There was one more call to make.	17.34248261063173
"Joan, did I wake you"?	63.70686562933793
he asked.	3.0139882038473726
"Yes, I thought you'd probably be up h. Look, sweetheart, some fool was h. happened to be driving somewhat intoxicated last night.	544.4234937596369
Unfortunately it turned out to be me, but I wouldn't quite put it that way to the boss h. Oh hell no, I'm not in a hospital.	359.81833288814863
I won't be in town for a couple of days, though, and there's that case I was supposed to handle this afternoon.	375.8645511696089
Too bad a jury isn't involved.	46.87057596562705
I might struggle in for a jury.	35.06044271801615
I'd win hands down.	24.61305183906343
But I thought maybe Tony Elliott could pinch-hit for me.	209.4819705007226
He'll understand- you might give him sort of a tactful nudge.	156.12228136016887
He's got all the facts.	87.97260666285742
I wouldn't want to ask for a postponement- it's really just a routine thing h. What?	298.20386113834894
h No, darling I'd rather you didn't come out".	370.23080014073076
A smile pulled at the lower strip of adhesive tape.	164.83761640598368
"Don't even send flowers.	41.688038732938786
I'll see you Wednesday.	59.60794327619662
I'll bribe you with a nice"- He was about to say "double martini" but thought better of it.	248.59792511510443
"I'll take you out to dinner.	58.59281814348914
Okay?	12.485542805089576
h" He had put down the receiver.	51.749814562955216
A strange relationship between Joan Fulbright and himself.	118.02547056998232
Who knew about it?	213.3020154472925
She lived alone in the older part of the city, in one of those renovated houses whose brick facade some early settler had constructed.	7794.066521873913
She had two tiny rooms on the second floor.	86.12565871679774
She was a clever girl, a most efficient secretary.	68.24958797678835
She let him come and go as he pleased, or as it pleased her.	99.48110049397555
In the office you might have thought them only casual friends; yet if he said Make an excuse yourself, come out here today, she would have been on the next train- and, similarly, if she had been in need, he would have gone to her.	4074.2295916311045
"They make us conformists look good".	55.85569386719609
"That's a peculiar way to think".	28.99441454777434
It wasn't just the obnoxious birds that had ruffled her own feathers, of course; she knew that.	234.0585725845923
It was Jim's "little" sister Myra, the unreliable, irresponsible, forever flyaway, Myra.	423.32248501131795
She's a year older than I am, Lucy told herself.	136.84168662102306
"Come, come", Jim said, jollying Lucy a little.	125.99890348297538
"I love you.	10.218819954619969
Susan ready"?	29.72025281604907
Lucy listened.	27.269075753118162
Obviously, Susan was not.	17.11543371068902
Upstairs, busy feet, showering like raindrops, pattered around her room.	403.8932959582428
Susan would be visiting her grandmother for only a few days, but even at seven she was a prudent soul; she always packed for a lifetime, just in case.	1415.7905752859879
"Not yet.	6.228974826952895
Every doll in the house must be going with her".	70.58266476880442
"She'd better step on it.	41.64763486968134
It's a long way to Websterville".	36.720349913357516
Jim's fine young face was an expressive one, too; as he looked at her, it registered anxiety.	629.252634320199
"You know", he said.	132.08923208660184
"Myra wanted me to thank you for taking Cathy.	1389.378380765276
It'll be only a couple of weeks before she finds a home for them in Paris- but even so, she wants you to know that she's awfully grateful".	354.0901754594618
Lucy did not believe him; Myra appreciated nothing.	198.0996268818136
Jim had put the thanks in his sister's mouth.	129.5745651323787
"Darling"- she said, and the single word mingled love and exasperation in an equal blend.	1460.6397807617027
"She should have told me herself.	43.52092598629573
And will it be only a couple of weeks?	39.710805756717825
Remember what happened the last time"?	35.49997819141317
Leaving Cathy with them, Myra had gone out to the Coast for a supposedly brief visit; but she had stayed all winter, and Cathy had stayed all winter too- with them.	587.1091076853918
Lucy suspected that Myra would never have come home if Gregg, Myra's husband, hadn't gone out to fetch her.	711.0149964127228
"That was an awfully long two weeks".	48.24080451253244
FOR an otherwise silent moment, Jim's keys jingled nervously in his pocket.	1520.4756230814207
"But she promised- This will be different", he said at last.	138.53407299475074
"You've got to admit she was smart to scare up this fine government job over there- she'll get a home for herself and Cathy in no time.	428.7250945960066
You'll see, Myra's settling down".	110.22748534918254
On the defensive, he added, "I wish you'd think what it must be like for her to be without Greg, to be a new widow, a young widow".	567.2578832380511
"It depends on the widow".	12.746307958128975
Lucy had an idea that Myra loved it.	103.51308835199522
And not for one moment did she believe that Myra had settled down.	179.8289559326142
It seemed to Lucy that all their married life, she and Jim had been doing nothing but rescue his sister from the constant crises that were her way of life.	288.7527447393778
Remembering that succession of disasters, she now considered Cathy, an ominous child-cloud on her horizon.	447.6940341902042
It was not that she disliked Cathy.	41.16117189420655
The youngster drew her, troubled her depths; whenever Lucy saw her, she tried, without noise or fuss, to give her the warmth she had never had from Myra.	1883.2968050034333
But Cathy was Myra's responsibility, not hers.	150.98706981801493
"I wouldn't even be surprised", she said unhappily, "if Myra tried to leave her with us forever".	290.1556901691719
Myra loved big cities; thousands of miles away- in Paris, of all places- she might forget she had ever been a mother.	772.3809182960784
Lucy knew her too well to find it impossible.	104.71645641389418
"That's a horrible thing to accuse her of"!	97.32024267255358
Jim was so indignant it was obvious that no matter what he said, he too had seen the looming specter of a forever-Cathy.	420.4630839919968
He went to the foot of the stairs and shouted up, fiercely, "Susan!	846.45809029987
Susan!	18.82000228217882
Get moving"!	34.911822279208984
A startled piping sound returned.	85.99148854190861
"Don't yell at us", Lucy said.	76.92421670480292
Was it only a few nights ago that they had been standing together in front of the house looking at the moon-washed river?	603.814487451073
Their arms around each other, they had been talking of the present and the future; their talk and their feeling had been as deep and warm, as steeped in light, as the air around them.	502.63513393413535
Then, from within the still, sleeping house, the telephone had rung; Myra, with her news, was on the other end of the line.	160.97291136385132
Jim turned back from the stairway and looked at her.	824.4735309961668
His dark brows, which had been lowered in anger, smoothed.	147.48947228476712
"Please", he said.	9.581217581488875
"There isn't a chance of Myra's letting anything like that happen.	193.5581306798954
Let's stay friends".	30.571568839573413
But they weren't just friends, Lucy thought; they were husband and wife, and Myra had no right muddling and chilling their marriage.	790.1770413136348
The only thing that had ever come between them was that worthless, selfish sister of his.	146.91307290551404
Lucy was sick of it.	17.350564705361155
"Well, at last", she said, because Susan was clattering down the stairs.	586.6280416832373
SUSAN looked like an overwhelmed baby nurse; her arms were straining with a burden of dolls.	616.7501470321513
"I'm ready", she announced.	21.87376249660069
"Do you need that big bundle"?	55.02289838345173
Jim said.	12.71465689198538
His voice had sharp edges, as though he knew very well Lucy and he were not friends at the moment.	968.857596556408
"All that junk"?	25.132549606219598
Susan stared at him with hurt blue eyes that gushed an instant grief; to her, each of her dolls was a real person with a living heart.	926.9690657553165
"Now, now", Lucy said, approaching Susan with a handkerchief, mopping skillfully.	264.61261758925554
"Your father didn't mean it, Susan".	98.25217945448651
She gave Jim a quick, shape-up look of warning.	105.66562786942953
"He'll take every one of them".	149.75610333854615
Jim groaned, but he lifted Susan's suitcase and said, in a gentler tone, "Sure- the entire thousand.	1915.184867605879
And when you get back from Grandma's, Cathy will be here to play with you.	399.5211285644009
Nice"?	11.308442014867905
"No", Susan said, grappling with her outsized armload of dolls with a Scrooge-like effect.	392.18481243086035
And at this point, Lucy thought, there should be a lecture on little cousins' sharing dolls- but she could sympathize with Susan; there ought to be a limit to sharing, too.	608.960293983863
That was one more reason she didn't look forward to Cathy's visit, short or long; the last one had been a Lilliputian war.	540.4640130110112
She suspected that Cathy had been competing with Susan for attention that she had never had.	266.04830166448
"Well", Jim said, out of the silence, "let's get going, dolls and all".	106.86454097278138
When the car, with Susan's hands waving wildly from the rear window, disappeared down the driveway, Lucy stood looking after its pale dust.	1080.6598275248352
The day was brilliant around her- flower-scented, crisp with breeze- yet her inner turmoil darkened it.	495.283953241381
She had let Jim go with a chilly good-by, a chillier kiss.	210.06680587290245
She was sorry, and angry at herself, because never in their life together had she done that.	155.74564517398545
She turned and began to walk toward the house.	43.033534625703574
At the feeding station, the raffish group of cowbirds again bobbed and gobbled over the ground, but now, gorgeous among them, was a beautiful red cardinal, radiant in its feathered vestments.	958.7106676076593
The handsome bird was solitary; its mate must be at home, silently guarding their nest.	412.73211740733416
She had better stay there, Lucy thought; the sly female cowbirds took instant advantage of nests without sentinels.	755.6756412542732
Well, Lucy?	16.97905631270861
she said to herself, abandoning the cardinals and the cowbirds.	121.60689728932977
She had a day of things to do; among them, she had to prepare the guest room.	460.37422994738284
How long would it be occupied?	39.4159926200191
she wondered, with a baffled feeling of helplessness.	142.0521206837358
As long as the unscrupulous Myra chose?	62.784488717002006
For a moment, her mind returned again to the strange, flying world of birds, and she said to herself.	114.09782806803166
It isn't only birds that dump their children in other people's nests h. In the sunshine of late afternoon, Lucy stood looking at the ready guest room.	546.6033102629656
There were new yellow curtains, bright as a child's life ought to be, a new bedspread, lively with hopping rabbits, and hanging from the ceiling was an airy Mother Goose Mobile, spinning slowly in the breeze.	796.3774954206666
A row of little hangers waited for a child's clothes in the neatly empty closet; since Myra had always put most of Greg's money on her own back, Lucy suspected that no more than a few of that long row would be needed.	1639.960588286977
The closet was faintly fragrant with lavender, and as Lucy shut the door an unhappy memory slipped into her mind, like a lavender ghost Greg's house, on the day he was buried, and the child, pale, silent, baffled, watching the funeral guests with panicky eyes.	1807.159135462071
Many times since his death that memory had worried and troubled her.	163.00706102587804
Out in the hall, the upstairs phone shrilled, and the small ghost vanished.	314.43291727648653
When she picked up the receiver, her mother's cheerful voice was there.	423.5477976821722
"Websterville Junction calling", she said.	77.93258273809516
"I just thought I'd let you know.	183.55253181130993
Myra dropped Cathy this morning, and Jim picked Cathy up and left Susan a few hours ago.	2096.8613041607246
I'd have phoned sooner but I've been busy".	169.36839755171667
"I can imagine"!	23.563058578821177
Susan was an active character; for Mother to be able to call, Susan must be napping now, surrounded by her multitude of dolls.	489.4342715186038
Lucy drew out the chair and sat down; she relaxed a little, and some of the tension went out of her.	7381.320894897077
You could think yourself as grown up as Methuselah, yet the maternal voice still kept its comforting magic.	458.44832176833336
"How was Cathy"?	33.882194548579086
"Subdued.	16.05296361890169
But Myra was the merriest widow I ever saw".	154.75267172121602
On her way to the airport, on her way to Paris- you bet, Lucy said to herself.	527.9681716299137
"I've been fixing up the guest room for Cathy".	77.62630190985912
There was a momentary pause, and then her mother said, "How long is she supposed to stay"?	207.09163431413646
"Just for a couple of weeks, till Myra finds a place for them".	177.3923043066473
"Well"- This time there was a long silence, while the telephone hummed faintly with a voiceless life.	251.81277862930676
Puzzled, Lucy stared at the flowered wallpaper; her mother was forthright; she was not usually given to mysterious silences.	767.8207180862
Was she thinking along the same lines Lucy was- that it was quite possible Cathy might be left with her for good?	352.7616297802343
"You mean once Myra gets to Paris"?	184.35025400998956
Once the soft, pretty moth found the bright light she had always wanted?	283.4359986148257
Suddenly, seekingly, Lucy asked, "Mother, do you know something I don't know"?	237.50217831835735
Again there was that curious pause, and then her mother said, "I guess I do.	209.90877542459262
Just before Myra left- She was saying good-by to Cathy, and she didn't realize I was near".	276.4319187790968
She hesitated, as though hunting over words and ways of putting them.	93.70463033599198
"Cathy was in tears, of course, and I heard Myra say, 'Now be good, and at Christmastime I'll send you a wonderful present from Paris'".	875.1461307925196
Shocked speechless, Lucy sat there.	111.01151489644009
Then she jumped to her feet, the elastic phone cord uncoiling like a black snake.	893.7082428262147
"Christmastime!"	28.826365438569706
Then it was no bogey she had dreamed up; it was only too true.	147.96590582057513
Myra had no intention whatever of sending for Cathy in two weeks.	237.89821987737275
For a moment, anger darkened the hallway about her, and when she found her voice, anger thickened it.	330.7307279665678
"That does it"!	18.869943763094586
she said.	3.4828079357982547
"I'll keep Cathy for two weeks.	34.222354710305964
Then, if Myra does nothing about fetching her, I'll pack her right back to her mother- if I have to take her myself"!	1319.1449904122221
Her hand tightened on the receiver.	85.42160213968796
"And that's what I'm going to tell Jim".	40.081055911183896
For Lucy, the day's nagging to-and-fro had come to an abrupt end.	484.2801516885119
As she hung up, she saw through the hall's open window the purple-black flying of the cowbirds' wings, and heard their grotesque singing.	811.2049595921802
Cowbird Myra!	93.49995994298074
She's not going to get away with it.	981.571446244742
CATHY is tired, Lucy thought, watching them come slowly up the path.	271.47298389626445
The child's thin legs were plodding.	107.88514008306291
She trudged along slowly, both hands clutching a tired teddy bear.	435.5941101191923
She was at the moment just a small, walking package, being delivered to her aunt's and uncle's house.	408.7418612831918
Unlike Susan, she was traveling light; the worn teddy bear, a tiny suitcase that Jim carried, and the clothes she wore, were all she had.	526.5838650439532
Lucy glancing at the miniature case, knew there would not be enough in it for the shortest of stays; they would have to buy things for her.	359.15081867640725
She opened the door.	28.755546262823543
Unimpressed, the dog plopped on the sand.	88.85294873336133
Quint couldn't blame Maggie for disbelieving.	343.78636924354333
For eleven days they'd done the same thing, leaving the cottage quietly before breakfast, before Esperanza Beach got jammed with tourists and beach balls and show-offy lifeguards.	1194.654825552206
The swirling sand made Quint's limp more pronounced.	268.02934849727865
They walked slowly past the sherbet-colored cottages- eleven lemon, nine mint, seven orange- around the curve to a deserted stand with an "Eats" sign jiggling in the wind.	890.1227950269713
Now they were in friendly territory.	37.2461318322299
Nobody around.	12.229718255796879
Nothing but sand and a ridge of rocks sloping jaggedly to the water's edge.	256.4684202454814
His rock was to the right of a V-shaped inlet, a big, brown, lumpy rock trailing seaweed whiskers.	831.493259176024
His rock was special because no one on the beach could see him here.	149.34411940928211
Here he was enclosed and safe.	39.277354280492055
If a dragon or a sea monster came along, didn't he have a red Swiss hunting knife on his belt- ten blades and a corkscrew?	711.6603820255237
Here was a perfect place to lie down and make believe.	145.80015843463104
He was Canute controlling the waves.	37.53300969012518
He was a knight of the Round Table, "Sir Quintus the Brave", slaying evil spirits and banshees and vampires and witches with warty noses.	789.0255770932235
One good thing about a suit of armor, his leg wouldn't show.	167.0874200058936
He was the first astronaut on the moon, chosen because of his small size and intrepid nature.	709.9413166761091
He was six feet one like his father, with big hands and a hairy chest, a man the weak and persecuted would turn to.	237.38975504457235
Fearless.	16.05296361890169
Every night when he wanted a drink of water, didn't he practice being fearless by not turning on the bathroom light?	431.7350920990178
A dark bathroom can be pretty scary, and he'd creep back to bed, proud of himself, thinking Tomorrow, for sure, I'll go down to the rock and keep my promise to Dad.	474.4217073500801
He hadn't intended to make the promise.	37.95595111860009
It happened two weeks ago, the night before his father left on a business trip to South America.	1021.0446798413292
Every piece of the nightmare was clear, in place; and when he woke up, his father was saying, "Stop screaming, Quint.	670.6321915656858
It's all right.	9.177957492986446
Stop shaking".	27.59040098789006
He could remember the feel of his father's big hands, the thump of his father's heart sending out signals- regular, like radar.	367.1532155671636
"Let's talk about the beach.	36.05053646906559
Son.	10.790183146910731
While I'm gone you get brown and fat as a pig, hear?	256.56160189367904
Look, I can put two fingers between the cords in the back of your neck.	77.92017001401035
Dr Fortman says swimming would help your leg.	205.7468608395649
He says you're limping more than you need to".	64.21344531616997
"How does he know?	20.88937112469797
Big dumb nut.	47.01445478237408
He never had polio".	27.274317041111146
In the light from the bedside table his father looked so worried that the promise spilled out.	210.51902979215657
"You just wait, Dad.	56.738231395102794
When you get back I'll probly be swimming better than Victoria.	242.93105105972677
Wait and see, Dad".	48.0184053138432
Victoria was fourteen months younger than Quint, a head taller, and could lick any boy or girl on the beach.	1004.9217752921988
He called her "Fatso".	33.563059749078754
She called him "Stuck-up- that's why nobody plays with you, Mister Stuck-up".	383.01475287208507
Or, what was worse, she prayed for him out loud at bedtime "Please, Lord Gord, please give my brother the strength to go swimming like he promised".	990.0036064551152
"She's got a nerve".	45.83366524106279
Quint said now to the clouds.	47.306632334378875
Strength began to zip up and down his chest.	134.49557984310715
He felt strong as a giant.	28.293556911781216
He unlaced his high brown shoes and took off the metal brace on his leg.	301.4485420936428
He wadded his sweat shirt into a ball and stripped down to his swimming trunks.	333.247326373013
"Goolick, goooolick", creaked a sea gull.	255.13573468469772
"Aw, shut up", he said.	43.591105653392205
He stood on the rock, a skinny, dignified boy surrounded by the ocean.	290.52822322830497
The wind bored a hole between his shoulder blades, and when he looked at the choppy waves coming and going and crossing each other he could see his head down there, bleeding, wedged between the rocks and the waves.	1313.5907771922427
I can't go in.	12.169873177663957
I'm scared of the nightmare.	24.87419640588622
Shivering, he put on his clothes.	241.14820327607706
And shivering with shame, he crawled to the narrow end of the rock and spat into the water.	426.0261528764985
"Watch it, big shot", a hoarse voice yelled back.	181.9692059687683
She was holding on to his rock with one hand.	56.66408524540576
She smelled of peppermints.	55.16774201022055
She wore a bathing suit like his mother's, no straps on the shouders.	197.49028907707904
"Why didn't you duck"?	37.87803537184628
he snapped.	23.066207348885257
"This is my rock".	14.060010735487918
"Isn't".	9.135853650095639
"Is".	6.395712400032839
"Isn't".	9.135853650095639
"Is".	6.395712400032839
She was sore as a boil.	28.779791197248063
"Ever hear of squatter's rights"?	102.43117008813779
"Sure.	9.610798453901891
They started with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of eighteen"- "Mister Big Britches, aren't you"?	371.5567238101077
"I'm Mark Gordon Peters the Fifth.	78.74143761146554
They call me Quint".	52.4282888034907
"Then why don't you stop squinting"?	110.6859216154025
"I said Quint.	24.58707889913767
That's short for Quintus.	50.8537364429952
Quintus in Latin means"- "I can speak both kinds of Latin, smart aleck".	419.32997257143984
Her cough sounded like cloth ripping.	240.63070588195683
"You shouldn't smoke so much", he said, unconsciously imitating Victoria's holier-than-thou voice.	461.75967359057415
"I don't smoke".	11.9721769380667
She was horrified.	17.031293132905283
"Do you"?	4.688663263559636
"Hell, yes".	20.733061772778395
Not having said "hell" before, he stumbled a bit before gathering momentum.	292.82953510191726
"Sometimes eleven, fourteen a day".	38.28851118015558
"If I was your mama, I'd wop your tail off".	153.14084642012202
"My mother never wops me.	44.47818277022332
I've got this leg brace".	23.97912660023613
She seemed so unimpressed that he was obliged to roll up his blue jeans so she could see his brace.	386.6470680963305
"Dingy-looking", was what she said.	62.329439968504516
"Why don't you paint it red and white like a barber pole"?	172.59189373490742
"Because maybe I won't have to wear it always.	292.979538126338
Dr Fortman says if I exercise my leg more, maybe I can use a cane when I'm big".	476.7057836315557
She spouted a mouthful of water into the air.	306.8411030768739
"A cane's mighty handy.	85.48322257005336
Someone's walking past, you want to stop him, zoooop, snag him around the neck with the crook in your cane.	859.2453215123716
Or say a waiter brings you a bowl of soup with a dead fly in it- all you got to do is bannnnnng, stooooomp your cane on the floor h. Hey, will you look at that"?	1275.999574782997
Maggie had shaken himself awake and was licking the sand off his stubby whiskers and his long plume of a tail.	703.2795066817888
"That's some dog.	19.897634796033
What kind"?	9.144974488181738
"Part collie, part wire-haired terrier".	202.40855076841268
Quint glared.	51.449040200519605
He always did when people asked.	33.74506491374698
"Holy mackerel, that's the most unique dog I ever saw", she said firmly.	311.77675494146115
"His real name's DiMaggio, only we call him Maggie because he has to take tranquilizers.	859.440170800695
He's braver than he looks.	59.40224640080653
He's been sick lately.	40.739772778393856
Last Tuesday he went on a ham jag".	150.89423925949134
"A what"?	7.173695236654928
He would have told her, but Victoria was yodeling.	105.15632767871037
That meant "Mama wants you Quint.	143.43806280910118
Come home or I'll come find you".	83.91299623367314
"I gotta go.	23.02679289918182
Even though this is my rock, you can use it sometimes.	441.9488357150368
I come early in the morning".	9.785850970857291
"So do I.	11.972650803960478
See you around, Mister Squint".	107.41228218335097
That was how they started being friends.	47.377400800066795
They met next morning and all the mornings thereafter.	104.78113234876503
Same time, early, before the fog burned off, because she didn't like the sun; it made her blister.	326.9964470471454
Her name was Sabella, and the strip of seaweed around her neck was an emerald necklace the King gave her as a token of his undying love.	460.7181824431746
"You going to marry the King"?	45.83211638955091
"No.	3.389188185682365
He's got a long beard and picks his teeth with a fork.	126.8390238422692
My hair is what he's nuts about.	88.39330722388148
Naturally curly hair runs in my family.	111.90429392381107
Personally, I prefer straight hair like yours, but as they say on the Continent, 'What can one do'"?	235.95046290833633
"Which continent"?	29.67906548769761
"Name one, I been there".	170.57200094382264
Japan, she said, smelled pugh because people let dead fish lie on the beaches till the fish got hard as rocks; then they scraped off the mold and made fish soup.	1011.0498609660101
Pugh.	16.05296361890169
Camels in Tripoli had harelips.	154.20380161495305
Near Galway the tinkers drove their caravans down to the beach and sang and drank and fought all night.	783.5001791421278
As for dancing- holy mackerel, he ought to see the gypsies in Jerez; they danced on the sand till your blood got hot and danced with them.	1772.8272564376907
"Really".	10.480634517870445
Quint smothered a yawn.	126.48253238982326
She made better pictures than any book he'd read, but he didn't say so.	163.03523193099434
Artfully, as the days went by, he found occasion to tell her that his father had won the Navy Cross in the Korean War; that his baby sister could spit up through her nose when she felt like it; that he personally had an IQ of 141 and was currently reading the Mushr to Ozon volume of the encyclopedia.	1119.9677326684707
"Books are for schnooks".	31.48046325491565
She skipped a piece of water at him and laughed, a funny, hoarse laugh he liked to hear.	276.9813961775973
Nobody ever appreciated his jokes as much as Sabella.	232.26823400848562
"What did one tonsil say to the other tonsil?	123.96144961932305
Let's get dressed up- the doctor's taking us out tonight".	211.6832964814273
And "What time did the Chinaman go to the dentist?	135.16958700644557
Tooth-hurty".	42.667618392567626
Encouraged by her giggles he imitated Maggie who was crazy about ham.	621.3035450318371
He described the ham decorated with pineapple and cherries, cooling on the porch.	236.86428344421898
He snuck up on the ham like Maggie, gumming it with soft, stumpy teeth, then panting with thirst, lapping up the water in the lagoon, swelling up like a balloon, staggering home to be sick, while his mother said, "That does it.	737.5858075282249
That dog has to go".	129.1238586926807
"Say, you're quite a comic", Sabella said admiringly.	389.4003048043583
"Ever thought about going on the stage"?	243.57482768543173
He hadn't.	7.156336860082071
But it was such a nice thought that he nodded his head.	68.87921274314321
"Either that or a veterinarian".	44.381045133797535
"Better make up your mind, son", Sabella said.	132.53571759250482
"You can't serve cod and salmon".	86.79675562348984
Sometimes they argued.	10.64776613499409
She said sharks have no bones and shrimp swam backward.	284.7185123200208
His encylopedia agreed with Sabella.	108.98816118653518
Next morning he tied a bunch of sea daisies with string and threw them across the V-shaped inlet to the rock where she was swimming around.	608.0156369702678
Boy, could she catch!	56.17540091142992
Like Willie Mays in the outfield.	87.89145262766584
"Nobody gave me flowers before.	57.86315907933102
Thank you, Quint".	58.59192473964472
Her face turned pink with pleasure and a smothered cough.	261.4836329315266
"You can always tell a real gentleman- they got a certain je ne say quok".	429.6798029329302
Sometimes they didn't talk at all.	150.20569651012084
He daydreamed on the rock while she swam and splashed around.	213.13616262660153
Once when she asked why he never went swimming and he answered, "Don't feel like it", he was tempted to tell her about being scared.	1348.4767134637777
But Victoria began yodeling just then and he went home, carrying Sabella in the back of his head, not thinking about her, just knowing she was there, smiling, smelling of peppermints.	970.4197596234753
As for his promise- oh, he had plenty of time, buckets of time.	620.355685727583
Wednesday morning it happened.	32.912973601338884
They were eating breakfast.	22.509219279027583
"We beseech thee, Lord Gord, to bless this food"- that was Victoria saying grace while the baby sprayed raisin toast on her plastic bib.	1340.47500493948
Same old breakfast till the phone rang, making his mother's voice shake with excitement.	551.9322940036278
"Your Daddy's in San Francisco", she told them.	100.92515548592105
"He says he'll be here on the one-o'clock plane.	301.80798818071383
Fifteen days early- isn't that wonderful"?	131.7210772598762
"Yeah, keen".	21.65418565558991
A cave seemed to be opening in Quint's stomach.	306.64854925952454
"Children, we'll have to get organized.	74.03002859070479
The baby can have an early nap.	76.08187108108426
Victoria, I want you to h" Quint closed the screen door quietly so Maggie wouldn't be scared.	491.43147822937607
"Hurry up, we're late", he said, noticing with a chill how gray the sky was this morning, the fog like a rope along the horizon, the choppy waves sending off sheets of blue and Kool-Aid green.	602.8758794441763
The cave in his stomach hurt.	60.31041457473509
He had to go into the water.	9326.534880424433
He'd tell Sabella about the nightmare.	60.37762183527939
It had started two years ago when he was in an iron lung.	430.6891379449576
What caused it, he didn't know.	270.13654730650893
The metal collar gagging his neck?	158.34750531467336
Sweating so much?	31.217165654785333
The unbearable weight on his chest?	92.68723573577498
All of it together meant drowning.	58.53667665994446
The first time the nurse took him out of the lung, she said if he got frightened, she'd put him back for a second.	923.426673623087
When Bobbie Evans smashed up his car, the Jaguar his wife Linda had given him for his last birthday, and himself quite thoroughly with it, driving back from an afternoon's golf at Oakmont, it seemed to mark the end of a long, miswritten chapter in the social life of the community.	2121.8134339357075
Linda looked remote yet lovely in black, and everyone held his or her breath.	339.0596717376545
Not that Linda was heartless, not that she would do anything prematurely or in bad taste any more than John Cooper would.	439.02121757109535
Hadn't Linda been a perfect wife to Bobbie, who was the least bit of a disappointment all these years?	735.6038833281004
Wasn't John Cooper even more attractive at forty-seven than he had been twenty-five years earlier?	341.8624651718172
And wasn't John's wife, Edythe, even more appalling, if possible?	277.5750622305568
Didn't John Cooper, after all this time, deserve something better of life?	3587.7097736042624
Wasn't it adult and realistic to look at it that way?	101.12758247785055
And romantic?	15.888920047041191
Everybody knew that John Cooper had married Edythe on the rebound.	319.5964731053117
It was the kind of thing that could ruin a man's life, and it was a tribute to John's strength of character and very real business ability that it hadn't ruined his.	321.01679021639353
"Of course, there was nothing you could do, but you still ought to be ashamed of yourself for letting it happen", Mousie Chandler said to Linda Stuart.	2425.3442052384335
"Poor John"!	31.635894294554788
Linda accepted the reproach, which was something she did rarely in all her life and most rarely in that summer of 1936 when she was by all odds the prettiest and brightest young woman west of the Allegheny Mountains, and John was surely one of the handsomer and brighter young men around Pittsburgh.	839.6384896496464
For it had been John and Linda ever since she had come out two seasons before at the Golf Club to the goggle-eyed admiration not only of the stag line but even of her fellow debs.	3186.8561481594174
John had claimed her from the stag line, a young man a year out of Dartmouth with skiing crinkles still around his eyes.	280.48368584571995
You saw them always together those years.	66.10608308950883
You talked about John-and-Linda as an entity.	128.13384295980012
John-and-Linda were at Longue Vue last night; John-and-Linda drove to Conneaut in three and a half hours.	389.21239397542814
Then there was a spat over something, as there had been lovers' spats before; only this one didn't heal.	284.6911452910287
You still said "John-and-Linda", but as if you were speaking of a national catastrophe such as the depression or Dillinger.	290.91970452728873
It got worse instead of better.	40.57809864927691
First, it came out after Mr Cooper's will was settled- he had died the year before- that John and his mother weren't rich any more.	387.7040553669058
And then there was Linda's engagement to Bobbie Evans.	432.86803468504365
There was no connection between the two events, because Bobbie wasn't rich, either, though he was more aggressive than John.	190.50830228496207
He was a bright and handsome young man from New York, who worked for the same steel company as John did.	319.4584672713935
Some people said Linda had just announced the engagement to jolt John into some action, but when John came home from a business trip to Cleveland with Edythe, with Edythe his bride, it could no longer be John-and-Linda even to sentimental wishful thinkers.	1625.9572520826212
It wasn't even John and Edythe.	51.69537689766218
It was simply Poor John.	29.38601991556
There was nothing specifically wrong with Edythe, but there was absolutely nothing right about her either.	170.5617049440513
Mousie Chandler had been to school with her someplace near Baltimore and tried to explain rather than defend her to the gang having lunch at Horne's.	2244.138206158323
"Well, you shouldn't underestimate Edythe", Mousie said.	143.3701419397654
"I know she gives the impression of being shallow and frivolous and scatterbrained.	173.1700542209299
She is frivolous and scatterbrained, but she really isn't shallow"h. Bobbie and Linda looked magnificent at their wedding.	574.1834488804498
John was at the church with Edythe.	509.7307247715971
She giggled during the ceremony, and Mousie Chandler, who was one of Linda's bridesmaids, said John glared black as death at her.	389.0600640165549
"As if he were choking", she said.	32.923822539506226
"Poor John"!	31.635894294554788
Edythe settled down to become a social myth and a horrible example.	150.81610993752412
Her hair never seemed to be in place and her skirts were never quite the correct length.	500.1564012130673
She didn't have a bad shape when you caught her at the pool at Longue Vue, but her bathing suits were far from smart.	501.3059826299514
And you didn't see her much at Longue Vue or anywhere, for John had drifted away from the gang.	431.7198349373079
Mousie said it was because he was too proud to stand pity.	1081.3202385145303
Others thought he couldn't stand seeing Linda, Mrs Bobbie Evans, still so beautiful, so much in command of everything.	955.4387624199644
There were less-dramatic reasons too.	42.806358068858266
John's mother died not long after his marriage, and there was even less Cooper money left.	490.2177775231602
John sold the big old place in Sewickley and bought a smaller house in Fox Chapel.	358.7606954417344
He was not reduced to poverty, but his job at the steel company had become a real job and not a method of passing the day.	159.54705866538959
John was good at his job.	24.085967101742334
It probably wasn't hard for him to keep his nose to the grindstone with nothing but Edythe to come home to.	370.1418195091638
Though that may be unfair since Ben Cooper, John's first son, came along early in 1938, the cutest baby you ever saw and a blessing that he looked all Cooper from fontanel to pink toes, nary a trace of Edythe.	1219.3974055406939
But the continuing charm of the other children- Sally in 1940 and Jack in 1944- and all John's success at his work only made Edythe's dizziness and general uselessness more glaring.	1390.4872320548607
She never could fit into a crowd which had known, which still knew and admired Linda.	258.4523804977623
When there was bridge at Edythe's house, the cards shuffled like wet graham crackers and the food probably was wet graham crackers.	919.0752630891965
She managed a missionary drive for the church once and got the books so confused that old Mr Webber, the eldest elder, who'd never donated more than five dollars to anything, had to cough up five hundred dollars to avoid a scandal in what Edythe called "the bosoms of the church".	829.9719756003001
John did find the missing checks and money afterward, and the drive was actually oversubscribed, which was a real bit of luck for the missionaries.	369.3258605397366
Being an intelligent man, John must have guessed what everyone thought about Edythe, but he never let on by so much as a brave smile.	455.5330320508915
Poor John was the kind of stock that keeps a bargain without whimpering and maybe bends over backward to keep a bad one.	385.7981959981545
He was an attentive and generous husband, overgenerous, a lot of people felt, because they knew that money must be a problem to him.	1353.1559872062483
But he got ahead in business on leave from his job to an important Washington assignment during the war; after the war back to the heir apparency of the steel company.	334.2886086128198
The Coopers saw Bobbie and Linda socially, but no more than was necessary.	232.70638112718834
Bobbie had been successful, too, though he didn't match John's pace, and after all he didn't need to, with all the Stuart money.	791.4701678990107
He and Linda settled down to being social leaders, and Linda managed to look a little more beautiful each year.	315.01268409488205
And then came the hairpin turn, the smashed Jaguar and Linda, mourning alone and lovely.	332.1826923846593
Everyone held his or her breath.	55.94446486141468
"Don't think Linda couldn't have got John back any time, if she'd tried", Mousie Gordon, who had been Mousie Chandler, said between bites of a chicken sandwich at a luncheon table at Le Mont.	2045.6798106140795
"Now you know she could've, but she isn't that kind of girl.	144.55020609087507
But now- well, it would be a blessing, I think.	104.44171849753344
Poor John".	14.437188697841076
Linda Evans felt more wretched than she had ever dreamed Bobbie's death could move her to feeling.	758.505085844446
What she felt was a bone-deep loss with a sense of waste to it, not so much sorrow for handsome, ambitious Bobbie, but for the lost years that had been brought into high relief by his death.	983.2394498206853
She knew what people were thinking; it was what she had been thinking herself.	172.05339941241257
It was up to her to save Poor John, dear John, to undo the wrong she had done, but she trembled at the decision as at the brink of a cold stream.	2592.9450911584654
There was no one who would blame her or John; she could be sure of that.	688.2121954333661
It might be rough on Edythe at first, but Linda and John between them could make a settlement handsome enough to soothe her, to send her back to Cleveland or anywhere.	582.9047353878345
And Linda felt capable of capturing the affection of the children, anxious even, since she and Bobbie had had none of their own.	292.9859734350425
It would be good for them to have a mother they need not be ashamed of.	708.2549997443756
Linda would have to wait, she knew.	711.1751087525123
But what was a decent six months or so after the more than twenty years gone by?	602.1548733692322
Years of watching while Poor John struggled without the help and understanding of the kind of wife a man needed to get ahead.	316.35200283130087
Of course, he had done wonders h. Alloy steels and regular steels had different sales departments at Smith MacIsaacs, where John and Bobbie both worked.	2718.7165627872087
Bobbie had been head of the alloy division, while John was just another good salesman in the regular branch.	701.0367230314472
So when old Mr Lovejoy, the company president, talked about putting in a single sales manager for both branches after the head of the regular steels had gone with Carnegie-Illinois, it looked like the perfect chance for Bobbie.	1300.16236685426
For Linda knew how to help her husband, not just the Stuart-family contacts but also the little dinners for Reuben Lovejoy.	1660.969916380251
She was almost sick when Bobbie came home with the news that Poor John had won the job.	250.0404371127287
"What did you do"?	9.105147085236231
she asked Bobbie.	27.18909095364847
"You must have done something, something wrong.	39.34894409135585
Lord knows I had everything set for you".	74.73076258128675
Bobbie said something about damned Pittsburghers sticking together, and Linda got angry at him.	617.6425803208898
They had their first real fight, and Bobbie went off to get drunk.	156.78170953303427
Linda dragooned her uncle, Donald Murkland, into a lunch the next day to find out what had happened.	687.3125907596349
He was a director of S M and must have been in on the decision.	254.34494412921293
But jolly old Uncle Donald would tell her no more than that Bobbie had certainly been considered for the job, but there were factors in a large company which outsiders and even some insiders couldn't understand.	1307.8233529736485
He didn't tell her of the long board meeting where Bobbie and John were weighed one against the other.	796.2862002730454
"I'm behind John Cooper", Mr Lovejoy said finally.	128.1199555967901
"I think we're agreed that he and Evans are equal in ability, so we have to look at the thing in terms of incentive.	965.8634185559089
"Now, I believe Poor John'll work just a little harder.	656.5488763528941
With that wife of his, I think he feels every chance he gets is his big chance.	389.07102542103877
Bobbie, with Linda behind him, will have plenty of other opportunities.	189.69578795212615
And also, the money can't mean as much to Bobbie.	108.50781918141372
"Bobbie will take the job as his just reward and work hard at it; Poor John will take it as a miracle and have every other independent steel company sitting up nights worrying about us".	1276.7481975909957
Most of the directors nodded.	52.78115745997193
Uncle Donald Murkland found himself nodding agreement too.	329.4256687899399
After the surprise was over, Linda was almost as pleased as anyone with John's good luck, though she agreed with Bobbie's decision some months later to move to Funk Furnaces.	841.8276726242987
The job at Funk wasn't particularly better, but it got him away from being subordinate to John and assured him steady advancement, since Funk was owned to a large degree by various branches of Linda's family.	804.6835431513158
Poor John's rise continued to be meteoric.	166.13849725378307
When he was made a vice president only a year after the new sales job, a leading business magazine ran his photograph with a brief biography in a series on NATIONAL BUSINESS LEADERS OF THE FUTURE.	935.7543783566766
She called then to say she had a baby-sitter for that night.	113.06812354119616
"Shirley appreciated the chance to make some money.	112.59848924865429
Such a nice little thing- lives right in the building".	513.6499873337355
"That's swell", I said sweetly.	85.86964897419169
I could get along without that three dollars.	185.88836500080222
In some ways it was worth being out the money- just knowing I was no longer obligated to Nadine!	253.42744080627986
It was past midnight and we were in bed when the phone rang.	115.55624663482806
I stumbled through the hall, wondering who would be calling at this hour.	396.716318278194
I answered to find Nadine at the other end.	131.79770055557879
"You scared me half to death", I said shakily.	144.63499277131476
"What's wrong"?	24.075503646065
"Janice, nobody answers at the apartment"!	147.30861453410427
Her voice came shrill.	59.750168885977324
"I'm absolutely frantic!	37.326172861854346
That stupid girl might have gone off and left Francie"!	303.9502621386689
"Oh, she wouldn't do that", I said.	224.463550774928
"She's probably fallen asleep and doesn't hear the phone.	192.433897861374
But if you're worried you can go home and check"- "I can't leave the party!	322.92998529552835
We're at Ken Thom's apartment, and when one couple leaves early everything falls flat!	832.8435421343146
Old Mr Thom is already down on Wally, and we simply can't afford to get Ken mad at us"- I was all set for what came next.	772.0208633929201
"Janice, could you possibly go over and make sure everything's all right?	363.2496637452085
I'll call you there in ten minutes"- "I can't make it in ten minutes"- Wondering, as I said it, why I should make it at all.	375.0128310028518
Why should I go over at midnight to check on Francie, when her parents didn't care enough to leave a party?	640.2197488506309
"Fifteen minutes, then!	45.463015956656655
Please, Janice.	25.091004239899043
I'll be glad to pay you"- So sure that money could do anything!	146.21670096692998
"All right", I said.	44.62638381080228
I'd do it.	8.14473625200637
Not for the dollar or so Nadine would give me.	99.60431033969932
But because there was the chance that something had gone wrong at the apartment, and if I didn't go over, who would?	522.7271387774583
CHRIS WAS sound asleep, and I didn't see any sense in waking him.	798.255380438348
I dressed in the kitchen, then left a note on the table telling him what had happened.	143.87642735677227
I drove off through the cool darkness to Nadine's apartment and rang the bell, and in a few seconds a young girl opened the door.	294.6906659799398
Her face was flushed from sleep.	79.72309215386271
"It's all right", I said, as she started to look scared.	3194.832606363441
"Mrs Roberts had called, and couldn't wake you.	104.00060927324715
I just came over to make sure everything was all right".	53.246594043624356
"I'm- hard to wake up", she faltered.	59.71520067267108
She didn't look over thirteen.	44.31935297362544
And Nadine insisted that her sitters be reliable!	256.2190899674824
"I have to get up early for church tomorrow", she went on.	238.74291013825672
"I didn't know it was going to be this late"!	418.2932536141796
The phone started ringing.	49.69200936408713
"That's Mrs Roberts again", I said.	144.78783680507564
"I'll answer it".	11.199777641648561
I crossed the beautifully furnished living room to the pale yellow phone.	716.2347477734135
I told Nadine everything was fine, and that I'd be getting on home.	7068.933452971605
"Janice, would you mind staying"?	115.43140946292486
There was a ragged edge to her voice now, as if she'd been crying.	224.11438466703066
"Wally's drunk- I'll get him out of here as soon as I possibly can, but I don't want Shirley to see him like this.	734.0729027871511
You know how gossip of that sort spreads through an apartment building"- Not a word of thanks for what I'd already done.	603.4239559610305
The receiver clicked in my ear.	86.56108806567177
She didn't even give me a chance to refuse.	71.42465408663014
Well, there wasn't any law that said I had to stay!	216.23921883315012
But then I looked at Shirley and thought that I might as well- the child needed her sleep, and Heaven knew what kind of a mess it would be, with Wally coming home drunk.	913.8765638826694
So I told her Mrs Roberts would pay her in the morning, and she scooted off to her own apartment.	649.0998637771862
After I looked in at Francie, I went into the living room and waited.	204.46128921057888
I must have dozed off, because I came to with a start at the sound of voices.	211.10959595908628
Nadine's, shrill with anger- Wally's loud and thick- As I went to the door I heard the clock strike two.	707.3573793573464
I opened the door, and Wally stumbled in- fast- as if Nadine had pushed him.	214.7318432362559
I had always thought she was so beautiful.	22.444690639778923
But now she looked ugly.	22.76720502927862
Her skin was stretched so tight that her cheekbones stuck out, and if looks could kill, Wally would have been dead.	915.1821926179572
"Pack your clothes", she hissed.	150.07871509309678
"Pack- and get out"!	67.68320288835666
"You're crazy", Wally said thickly.	75.42818898076341
He lurched and stumbled to the davenport and sank down on it, and was instantly asleep.	464.2496310747363
Nadine strode over to him, and her pointed nails raked across his face.	503.9335899363305
I grabbed her arm and she turned on me and for a scared second I thought that maybe Wally was right, and she was crazy.	530.056139058158
"You stay out of this", she spat at me.	1660.4095326045501
"He's ruined us- do you hear me- he's ruined us!	304.74985421722954
He insulted Ken Thom"!	174.72968210388237
Her eyes were wild.	40.04832951805173
"He told Ken to his face that he doesn't have what it takes to get a woman!	203.80543510273645
And the other people there were listening!	63.46523128410332
We're ruined and he's going to get out if I have to throw him down the stairs"- "YOU'D BETTER simmer down", I said nervously.	2123.3304495272146
I was plenty scared.	32.70107756362284
In the state she was in, she could actually kill him!	85.77312352833732
"Now you just take it easy, and I'll make you some tea"- "Tea," Nadine screeched.	804.5281019452943
"How can you be so damn stupid?	45.3279773949881
Wally's lost his job!	98.56564512240008
Ken will never forgive him- never!	131.6174586793352
And we don't have any money- we don't have a dime!	164.93426786656335
All we own is Francie's bedroom set and the televison-record player and we even owe on them.	283.58784447228476
And we'll be poor and have to live in a grubby little house like yours- and all because of that"- I clamped my hand over her mouth to stop the stream of filth.	2218.195775179125
"Stop that!	21.81905751890371
You'll wake up the whole building.	92.88555940840214
Wally can't go any place at this hour"- "Well then, I'll get out"- But she looked uncertain.	262.11162852777386
She was coming to her senses enough to realize that you don't go traipsing off anywhere at two in the morning.	863.8317968067233
"You go to bed", I said curtly.	343.7689993467483
"In the morning you and Wally can talk things out"- She collapsed against me, as if everything inside her snapped.	326.1220551073913
I got her into bed, and sat with her until she had sobbed herself out.	208.89859580890666
It was three o'clock before I figured it was all right to go.	232.50932431688204
I left her, a limp bundle of self-pity, shivering with terror because her bubble had burst around her.	534.9145529381277
Wally was snoring on the davenport.	115.89031718193063
I had done all I could.	20.380507620944876
I had done all I was going to do.	98.45235752737045
Whether or not Wally lost his job was no concern of mine.	86.55343908453005
I drove home, found Chris still asleep.	151.59534513733183
I snuggled up close to him- loving him- thankful for a man like him.	988.1510085149856
Thankful I wasn't Nadine.	121.58514352640432
I kept on being thankful.	54.1090711059617
In the afternoon Nadine and Wally came over with Francie.	137.2455196245627
Wally sat in our big chair, his hands between his knees, looking ready to cry.	322.9774122223961
"I'd had all this trouble with the old man, that's why I drank so much.	960.6999149760616
I- got fired yesterday for not attending to business"- Old Mr Thom himself had stopped at the service station for a grease job, Wally confessed, and couldn't get one because there were cars on the pits waiting to be repaired.	999.53846462908
Seems that the kid Wally had hired had a repair business of his own going on the side.	562.2927946953166
Mr Thom had gotten Wally on the phone, and fired him.	146.94289450450174
"I thought I'd smooth things over through Ken", Wally said miserably.	277.68187571796125
"But Ken got coy and wouldn't make any promises.	224.66817888647932
And I was plastered and I blew my stack"- "And told him right to his face he'd never slept with a woman"!	686.6621764810417
I tried to quiet Nadine because the children were there.	59.55535749846216
But she was beyond caring what she said.	45.33293154658093
"Things may smooth over yet", Chris said, his nice lean face grave with honest concern.	485.0162199965347
But I couldn't help thinking that Nadine and Wally were getting just what they deserved.	341.96567545038147
Now maybe they'd realize that life can be tough.	154.0077675825947
WHEN A bubble breaks, there's nothing.	131.8200954979052
Little by little, during the week, Chris and I discovered the crazy unbelievable way Nadine and Wally had lived.	706.1355897480689
They had not only spent every cent- they were in debt up to their necks, owing on everything they owned.	930.541061796645
On top of everything else they were two months behind on their apartment rent, and the day Wally received written notice that he was fired, they were evicted.	482.8736702902147
Worst of all, Wally had no training for any kind of work.	194.42903877622635
He had fallen into a soft job, and now the job was gone and he was stranded.	225.7267026988613
Chris fretted.	51.449040200519605
"I wish we were in a position to offer a little money to tide them over".	469.0699468941656
I said I wished we were, too.	21.304937200249146
It was easy enough to say it, because of course we couldn't spare a cent.	480.656410964037
But Chris brightened up like a candle.	103.43282114726406
"I'm glad you feel that way, honey.	29.942612680257085
There is one big way we can help them.	41.8857268852253
We can let them move in with us"- Something I had simply never thought of.	138.6641377192406
Something so incredible- I just stared at him.	92.71059190624423
It was incredible- He gave me an embarrassed, pleading look.	127.5024436422196
"I know we'd be pretty crowded.	259.42935838513966
But it would only be for a couple of weeks- until they get straightened out".	249.67427467393836
Straightened out- They'd had years of making all that money!	562.8330317165091
"I won't do it", I said flatly.	528.7275798791842
"Nadine was always too good to live in a little house like this!	1112.4379513817112
Well, now she can sleep in the street for all I care"!	101.47518796370878
"That isn't like you, Janice", Chris said uncomfortably.	161.867893015447
Then I felt uncomfortable, too.	27.725705030161567
I didn't want to be like that, mean and bitter.	2132.3780512364574
But, darn it all, why should we help a couple of spoiled snobs who had looked down their noses at us?	394.4984951024561
But, in the end, we did.	493.3714848929698
It just seemed as if there was nothing else to do.	418.5481427441683
The finance company took all their furniture- and they didn't have a cent to their name.	250.89097638541395
Then Wally got sick.	52.803811539379275
To my way of thinking, he was scared sick.	75.73518496107651
His luck had failed him, and it was easier to crawl off into bed than to get out and fight the world.	520.2399521416038
Chris made trip after trip in our old car, moving the clothes and dishes and the stock of groceries Nadine had bought on special.	1060.2992703588973
At least we'll eat, I thought grimly as I put all the food away.	180.26347774384635
While I worked, Nadine sat and cried.	91.3186277039819
When she wasn't crying, she was in our bedroom fighting with Wally.	486.72365896577236
"Virus infection nothing", she'd scream at him.	194.5481556291702
"You're too lazy to go out and look for another job.	69.36237429468953
You're just a no-good bum"!	158.65587387877343
It was a mess, all right.	46.129374370020294
But it couldn't go on forever- A couple of weeks, Chris had said.	94.43509143674098
I figured I could stand practically anything for a couple of weeks.	49.9852169593763
But the two weeks dragged into three, and they were still with us.	767.5828835238461
Nadine's constant nagging had finally gotten Wally out of bed.	319.7415400598669
He set out every morning looking for work, and come home around noon, full of alibis and excuses.	410.33647811366296
Wendell Thom had black-balled him.	165.5456313432572
Nobody would even take his application.	52.9580987595174
"You can get something," Nadine would snap.	54.78589125619814
"You can get a job working in a grocery store, if nothing else".	91.05736011665897
"The high school kids have got everything sewed up", he said, a whine in his voice.	209.02897888778423
"Those damn punks- taking work away from men who need it".	193.6130451637667
"BY FALL they'll be back in school", I'd say, trying to sound encouraging.	1750.914598106523
But this was only the middle of July h. And I couldn't take six more weeks of this.	219.26005724782416
I mentioned it to Chris one stifling hot night, when I had slipped outside for a breath of fresh air.	825.1754369265395
I DON'T really believe in intuition.	119.75347016060516
But I swear to you from the moment I opened my eyes, I knew it was going to be a bad day.	4904.919427524905
Part of it was the weather, so foggy it would take me twice as long to get to the hospital.	361.14071645184464
Part of it was being so tired- I'd not only had my usual full day yesterday, but a dinner meeting as well, that kept me up late.	1770.7597716593239
But the rest of it, the main part, wasn't based on logic at all.	477.8739417880854
It was just going to be one of those days.	64.03055306221393
For the thousandth time, I wished I'd chosen some nice, nine-to-five, five-days-a-week profession.	337.70763553797127
And for the thousandth time, I answered myself.	62.09564763015325
I hadn't chosen medicine- it had chosen me.	112.7518153300911
Actually, I shouldn't complain, I told myself in the shaving mirror.	168.76002106814428
I had a lot to be thankful for.	125.94856247788582
A profession that brought me as good an income as mine wasn't to be sneezed at.	234.35348960426478
Maybe I didn't see as much of Gladdy as I'd like, but how much worse it would have been if I'd had to board her out somewhere after Alice went- send my daughter to an orphanage or a boarding-home.	634.7136397140688
At least, we were together and we had Mrs Hodges, bless her, to look after us- no mother could be fonder of Gladdy than Mrs Hodges was.	356.91066869639246
I was lucky in lots of ways, no doubt about it.	125.21224049129845
Especially in the way Gladdy had turned out.	81.063493192798
Growing up without a mother from the time she was three- it wasn't a good thing for a child, even knowing the kind of mother Alice had been.	625.2637238242096
But I mustn't start on Alice.	75.61511172844189
She is a closed book, a picture I keep on my bureau, but never look at.	135.7552953722207
If she'd kept on as she'd been going, the story I'd told Gladdy would probably have been true by now, anyhow h As usual, Gladdy's bright smile greeted me at the breakfast table.	1019.5960059604226
Her first class wasn't until ten, but she always got up to have breakfast with me.	210.96662534648405
It made me feel good and knowing that she'd decided, all on her own, to go to college right here in town made me feel good, too.	298.02184753647043
Oh, I knew that I couldn't give myself all the credit for her decision.	762.1996494063217
I had a feeling that young Pete Michelson, the most promising intern at Fairview, had something to do with it, too.	2823.3891644684313
She'd been out with Pete the night before and her gay chatter about their date lightened my mood a little.	403.5507550439885
But once I was alone again, driving to the hospital, the heaviness returned.	511.77123620325216
If she and Pete were really getting serious, I'd have to do some hard thinking.	470.635234415464
Should I tell him the truth about Alice?	106.9155277326853
Did he have a right to know the secret I'd kept from Gladdy all these years?	200.23614652589424
The boys were already waiting in the corridor outside my office when I got to Fairview.	260.8545795530525
Two interns and Dick Ishii, the other resident.	172.17849675161924
I'm Chief of Medicine here and this morning would start like all others, with me taking the boys on the rounds.	191.77148097362138
Pete was down on Seven, Dick told me, and he'd meet us there.	629.9108296328393
There wasn't anything of special interest that morning, no one sicker than they should have been.	1489.5007917857665
Pete came to meet us when we stepped out of the elevator on Seven- he'd had a case of post-operative shock, but it was all taken care of now.	809.1320185572706
Seven is a women's floor and, as it happened, not very busy right then.	130.3169115389703
When we'd finished our regular rounds, Pete pointed me toward the small ward at the end of the floor.	304.41540326895773
"Got a new one in last night", he said.	53.84255141475713
"I haven't seen her yet, but I hear she's a lulu"!	1198.8904325812082
I wasn't surprised.	15.56899945865802
The ward was a small one, four beds, kept reserved for female alcoholics.	535.1062357369905
We didn't get many at Fairview and they were never pretty sights.	436.80678334724263
It was thought wiser to keep them segregated from the patients in the regular charity ward.	212.58399115282498
The moment I walked in, the whole miserable feeling of the day seemed to focus on the woman in the bed.	840.6934489640214
They'd cleaned her up some, of course, and she'd pretty much slept off her drunk.	337.5466450676881
But there was something about her- and I felt my lips forming a name.	196.76089954989186
Alice h But this woman's name was Rose Bancroft!	420.52727369144185
I looked at the chart for reassurance.	908.6834971848848
Yes, Rose Bancroft, diagnosis acute alcoholism.	230.3131484954261
She looked about sixty, though I recalled that the chart gave her age as forty-four.	431.89257428662637
An ugly scar disfigured the somewhat familiar puffy face, already marred by the tell-tale network of broken red veins that heavy drinkers carry.	984.0703092226179
Her coarse hair was two-colored- bleached blonde and its real, dirty gray.	379.1558753823211
Oh, could it be?	7.415675832134654
No, no h it was an unfortunate resemblance, that was all it was, and I turned to Dick, forcing myself to put my disquiet out of my mind.	4682.051622800161
In a low voice, Dick filled us in h SHE'D BEEN picked up downtown, passed out in the doorway.	432.6018340316436
Although quiet when they brought her in, she'd suddenly turned violent and had to be knocked out.	194.94533957875404
It was the old story.	12.295362972861662
We'd keep her a day or two, and the AA people would talk to her.	830.7647065134767
But if she wasn't interested, she'd just go back to the same life she'd left.	424.60494554564536
Turning toward the patient again, I- I can't describe what happened to me then, except to say that I felt sick.	243.56241166347033
I tell you, it took every ounce of control I had to be able to speak.	2994.6924460312443
"Now, Miss- or is it Mrs Bancroft"?	78.74107385591884
I never liked going straight into an examination with patients- it relaxes them, I've always thought, to chat first.	496.3355689351123
This was one time I'd have gladly broken my own rule, but habit was too strong.	828.79292708114
"Hey"!	18.820141563989527
Her voice was flat and dull.	55.34635649626134
But those penetrating eyes- I had to turn my head away.	739.9225149999536
It was then that I saw what the drawn-back covers revealed.	74.643676509249
There were bloodspots on the sheet.	33.7618641826968
"What's this"?	11.321772411621568
I asked.	2.845731170704088
"Your period"?	18.18219145357102
She shook her head.	25.410354320170747
"I been spotting a little now and then", she said quietly, no emotion in her voice.	143.2844197261077
"Have you spoken to a doctor about it"?	40.11135115811363
Once again, there was a negative shake.	84.04562987681257
I told Miss Groggins to move her down the hall where we had an examining table.	508.6428133729209
"Better do a Papanicolaou", I told Pete.	132.8978728810208
It was only a few moments before Miss Groggins had her in the proper position for a vaginal, but I couldn't see anything wrong on gross examination.	2213.509288997737
Pete stood by with a slide and took the smear, sent it down to the lab with a request for the test.	168.1172174764162
That done, I told Miss Groggins to take her patient back to bed and again put her out of my mind.	4693.947442152425
I was busy the rest of the day.	13.995030804084298
Late in the afternoon, I was up on Seven again.	79.99080312951807
One of my private patients was being admitted and I went in to see her settled.	126.58242995010654
On my way to the elevator, I ran into Pete.	361.5144184316092
"I've got the results on the Bancroft smear test", he said.	56.50451361719089
"There's something there, all right.	25.236196304273527
Class Three, they said.	36.88170945146271
Do you want to talk to her, doctor"?	15.64198518028489
"Well"- I didn't- I didn't ever want to see that woman again.	345.70539934093244
But that was ridiculous, of course.	17.99192699641766
"All right.	3.3441791718922933
We'll do a D and C and get her permission for a hysterectomy.	219.03269828403427
Maybe it's nothing, maybe it's intraepithelial or in situ- can't take any chances".	321.72329363435716
"If you can keep her here that long", Pete said wryly.	118.93087882987483
"Groggins tells me she's started badgering already, wants to get out.	6432.562023117848
Wants to get to her booze, I guess".	87.74492832101159
I grimaced in distaste.	39.63118012808434
"Well, better see what I can do".	1494.575538655502
We'd been standing right outside Miss Bancroft's door and as I went to turn the knob to enter, I was surprised to find that the door was slightly ajar.	775.5008776238932
But she seemed to be dozing and in any case, we'd been talking in low tones.	267.25046946737245
Her eyes opened as soon as she heard me, though, and once again, I felt an inward shiver.	3932.4637812285328
"I sure can't complain about the service in this place", she said.	90.73901238112197
"I just got through seeing one of you guys.	91.34227296426987
What do you want"?	6.326233973892957
There was something almost insulting in her tone, but I disregarded it.	249.0480933575496
"I've just been talking to Dr Michelson", I said.	98.35441046294386
"We'd like you to have a dilatation and curettage.	114.88854747326774
That's quite minor, nothing to worry about.	39.513962898045285
But we would like your permission to do- that is, to go further if it proves necessary".	221.17215994685932
"No".	3.389188185682365
It was flat, definite.	21.935024524879132
"Suppose you let me explain.	44.61448476758019
Actually, I rather doubt that we'll have to do this.	264.377000396746
Even if we do, you'll be out of here in a week, probably".	196.40375055902874
I was sure that was the difficulty- she just didn't want to stay here, where she couldn't get to the liquor.	654.9695029741113
"No".	3.389188185682365
I looked at her in amazement.	414.4362716080791
I'd had patients who'd refused surgery before, of course, but never one who didn't show, in one way or another, the reason why.	992.0675560165141
Mostly, it was fear, but this woman's voice didn't tremble and her hands were still on the coverlet.	334.70939963638455
"Will you tell me why"?	50.14706117222722
I asked.	2.845731170704088
She smiled, a smile without humor.	70.15882336250938
"You shouldn't tell your little secrets outside of the patient's door", she said.	701.9458643120156
"I've got cancer, haven't I"?	28.85758523202527
She went on, disregarding my protests.	89.85940806729275
"I'm not going to be one of your guinea pigs.	47.02652170634312
Let your pupils learn on someone else, doctor.	541.0938842663884
Just let me die in peace".	22.175762786182744
I stared at her, almost speechless.	78.5428802520985
Her little speech was totally out of character with the sort of person I thought she was.	122.46397218522414
Even her voice had taken on a more cultivated tone.	113.3813060076391
This was someone who'd come down in the world, I thought.	343.8766709638559
A long, long way down.	24.60181365663775
Again there was something familiar about her, something h "You haven't got cancer", I said as strongly as I could.	284.75309252238776
"I don't know what you heard that would make you think so, but I assure you I don't even know myself, so how can you be so sure?	1131.6308932911606
And even if"- "Don't give me a lot of talk, Joe".	66.83803334382873
I gaped at her.	22.52388230608606
She could have found out my first name, of course- that wouldn't be difficult.	115.24618358056756
But there was that something, some echo in the way she spoke h She was watching me intently, a funny little half-smile on her lips.	320.79319466050714
"Surprised, baby?	34.50170520226152
Guess I've changed, haven't I?	172.5899478023293
But you haven't changed much, Joe".	70.62226843649596
I knew then, knew with a heart-stopping shock.	86.63595120660169
"Alice"- I stammered through dry lips.	157.44063345534857
"Alice, for goodness sake"- "Alice", she echoed mockingly.	349.36224642859673
"What's the matter, Joe, you scared of me?	197.80654682457495
Think I'm going to make you introduce a drunk as your wife?	785.1728110454077
Well, don't worry.	15.954256714094964
Just let me outta here"- "But why did you come back"?	157.8023194320612
I'd found my voice.	21.64998014395137
"Where have you been all these years"?	52.398633996771956
She shrugged.	14.029619265578063
"Here and there.	7.512498600362533
As for coming back here- well, I'll tell you the truth, I didn't even know where I was when I came to.	139.37232372526313
The last thing I remember is a bar in San Diego"- The way she spoke, her flat acceptance of her alcoholic blackout, made me shudder.	475.87813231759213
And this was Gladdy's mother!	49.516726842486406
"I never asked you for any favors, Joe", she went on, "but I'm asking one now.	123.40520799529803
Let me outta here!	42.30185853941877
You doctors are all alike- all you want is to cut up people and what's the good?	240.45296665451303
No, I want out, Joe"!	124.85504957133301
I looked at the pathetic wreck of a woman before me.	858.7739696479163
Let her out, let her out- that would be the solution, wouldn't it?	114.11125904659218
What she'd said was true- in all these years, she'd never asked for anything from me.	604.3565331753083
If I let her go, she'd disappear once more.	97.72032874049157
And Gladdy would be safe!	85.58735871771214
I was slowly swimming down to the bottom of the sea.	54.61426184279049
She made me welcome.	27.055843013179572
Her dark cool caresses were sweeter than any woman's; the many little tricks she knew made her embrace the ultimate one- the ever more fantastic pressures deeper in her body squeezed not me but the air I breathed into a nitrogen anesthetic.	1306.6185092072512
Yielding-Mediterranean-woman-flesh-of-water, she soothed me, and drew me deeper into her.	534.5347257046881
I no longer knew how deep I was, somewhere under 230 feet, getting drunker, happier and more contented by the second.	758.5203990434975
The reasons for this dive seemed foolish now.	43.10782107918205
Only the dive itself had any meaning.	60.38145365619193
The metal-tasting nitrogen made me wonder if I should remove the mouthpiece and suck in the sweet water.	396.78133726854065
Perhaps if I took off the aqua-lung I could swim better, love my woman better.	345.7696828748742
I chuckled aloud, and the mouthpiece fell out.	109.11325924228674
While a hazy part of my mind concentrated on swimming down, a clear part sorted over recent events, among them my only positive act in a long time.	584.2006825276623
It was when I packed up what duds I had and went to Paris.	241.85126663295168
It was no vacation, just me getting out after a bellyfull.	112.3249970579025
I knew it wouldn't be the same.	82.95232840521831
Wild kicks never are, but I hoped to dig up a better frame of mind.	184.6557581379156
Once before I had been to Paris, long before I married Valery.	444.4463515700104
That first time was good and it stuck with me.	61.433035037124604
I was twenty-one back then, in the army, and fog put our plane down at Orly instead of Rhine-Main.	423.7297130521526
It was a Saturday evening in April with a mist-like rain, and I was a little high on the good taste of life.	177.10135992218522
I had a pocketful of money, which was unusual when I was in the army, and the plane would be grounded all night.	3141.246247413756
In less than an hour I had gotten a hotel, showered, shaved and was out on the Champs Elysees in a fresh uniform.	703.7876273912495
I felt like a Hun in Rome.	44.49781936383424
All the women were beautiful, and the men were equal to them; everything was glamorous to my dazzled eyes.	171.04103083990427
There were some sweet machines other than women an old Bugatti, a lean Farina coachwork on an American chassis, a Swallow, a type 540-K Mercedes and lots more.	858.3244450608241
There was the Arc de Triomphe and the Tour d'Eiffel- I was no yokel, but I was young, and this was Paris!	596.4174350050334
I had champagne at Maxim's, then went into a cafe called the Jour et Nuit to ask the way to Montmartre.	535.0416907477739
I never got there.	12.126602742475223
I met Claire, which was better.	43.82974465860435
She was eating bread and cheese just as fast as she possibly could, and washing it down with red wine.	498.13370114526356
I stared.	13.678972883257186
I didn't know a human could feed so fast and still be beautiful.	274.1277982220447
She was blonde, and young, and nice and round in a tight white dress.	316.7718972836543
Maybe her ravenous eating wasn't grotesque because she was so positive about it.	316.1403905204517
When she had drained the last of the bottle and paid her bill, she came directly to my table and said "Handsome soldier, I have assuaged one hunger with food.	544.3520130517653
I feel another of terrible urgency.	49.49415468977624
Is your evening free"?	32.07277068278138
"Madame", I said with noblesse oblige because of the "handsome"- "yeah".	379.8618262491638
And so off we went to her apartment.	48.346253117679915
She was a nymphomaniac, of course, the poor girl.	39.26869850589949
Toward the break of day I waxed philosophical, and drew analogies about her way of eating bread and cheese.	665.4528721883266
Now it was nine years later, and it wasn't spring but winter when I returned.	869.4704617841991
I got there on a Saturday evening.	35.67071225039436
I made the mistake of going to the Jour et Nuit.	252.21007692942115
The place was busy but I didn't feel like a Hun.	153.8953616801998
I sat waiting for Life to come along and sweep me up.	113.29212714047938
I had part of a bottle of French beer called Panther Pils so help me, then switched to Tuborg.	467.79920736154344
After a few hours, Life hadn't showed, and I was crocked.	573.3394029687396
I went to my hotel and slept.	38.81653317759076
The next morning a little cognac made me feel better- but what can you do in Paris on Sunday morning?	266.4845157232411
So I drank more cognac.	67.2508377741259
All that day and Monday I drank just enough to orbit but not make deep space.	242.01997058780213
I read the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer.	103.55563645539159
Elemental, but sex.	34.694086218147135
That's what was on my mind.	23.809983611798913
I was turning over the idea of a good debauchery when I dozed off.	293.2397230955918
I felt better Tuesday evening when I woke up.	102.30420711302871
My head was clear, my thinking sober and I was reconciled to this Paris idea as a flop on top of all my others.	362.6785256299811
A good binge has that kind of therapeutic value.	77.8261167597203
Sometime earlier the weather had turned cold and it was snowing.	133.8731492487637
I went out into it.	14.032582540161718
I walked around breathing the cold wine of the air until I found a park, and I sat down on a snowy bench where the light was dim and came from the sky.	1904.2760555672933
There was dignity and beauty in the little white flakes falling through the blue night.	169.60797352765493
I had on only a topcoat, but I wasn't cold.	206.8775916276999
I was just miserable.	13.886067092932658
Pretty soon a woman came along carrying a folded umbrella as a walking stick.	364.2084326461086
She saw me and sat down beside me, three feet away.	142.38110116717084
Suddenly I understood why she had the umbrella.	98.97097876703798
It gave her poise and posture.	52.96395087895405
Without it she would have been drab and limp.	321.3194546568982
It gave her propriety.	25.394095283045893
It gave her the right to sit down beside me, back straight, one hand out on the handle.	177.2014620206726
I couldn't imagine her without it.	31.69157472175376
I knew all about her.	14.932937556478572
She was another human being and happened to be a hustler.	240.85719362334328
I didn't much care if she were there or not.	58.59931165663024
After a while she said with sort of an unuttered laugh, "You have snow in your hair and ears".	221.66509646267863
I didn't have on a hat.	31.673020325016903
Hardly glancing at her, I smiled a bleak one which said, Thanks, baby, but I'd rather be alone.	345.63589063355687
She was silent for a while, then said, "Why are you so unhappy"?	124.48444159610744
"I'm not unhappy", I lied, staring at the snow.	57.2339686158398
She was trying to make a hole in my armor, and I didn't want it.	510.7431532828256
"Is it a woman"?	18.012200588812316
she asked gently.	20.36420390865354
She must have seen the ring on my left hand.	49.54432719924401
"Well- women and unhappiness go together", I observed profoundly, adding, "You can wager your derriere on that".	390.37767455166
"Ah, monsieur, it is not my business to wager it h" This took me so funny I had to look at her.	3434.817558812228
I felt my frozen sad face crumble, and I grinned a silly one I couldn't have helped.	432.4405298208476
I even snorted a chuckle.	56.09974296998147
She smiled at me, but it was an awfully sad smile.	841.7907202836884
She was even more miserable than me.	43.89729062077707
Her eyes were smiling, too, but so sadly, and there was tiredness and infinite wisdom in them.	335.04415995877105
"Now isn't it better to smile"?	76.95718070036841
she asked.	3.5150327112772244
Because I liked this sad person so much, I said, "Will you have a drink with me"?	345.86429045776555
I could see the ancient cynicism reinforce itself in her eyes, and I wondered how many men she had picked up with this same gambit.	1932.6587170072646
Anyway, I pulled a bottle of Remy Martin out of my topcoat, drew the cork, and passed it to her.	452.1853061998098
I could see she was shocked.	77.98419822064687
"I'm sorry I haven't got a glass", I said.	36.703114361254876
"Non, non", she said, taking the bottle, "not for that be sorry".	116.78167301550891
She tilted up and drank, and then I drank.	312.2745038792414
It's really rotten to drink good cognac like that, but I hadn't cared before.	1517.7892036633727
I wasn't going to lug around a glass.	79.38305305930109
There wasn't much light in the blue dark, but I could see her well.	204.63804964298856
No child, this tart, she must have been thirty-five or even forty.	663.7070387662901
I couldn't be sure.	13.291304691062978
Somehow she was attractive.	31.05785082934423
Not good looking, but self-confident and wise so that it made her attractive.	513.8083102350116
I liked her, and all at once I was glad she was there.	580.1140211852429
We finished the bottle- I hadn't had a lot out of it earlier- not speaking much to each other, and we stayed sober.	378.1556953217303
I suppose we were cold, but we didn't feel it.	135.7305885389539
We seemed to be drowsing, sadly, soberly, in the cold, cold air while the snow fell.	213.57951655290722
Then she said, "Allons", and we got up and went to my hotel without another word.	435.3087367452025
I sensed no stranger in her.	50.479761164227845
We undressed and made love with the comfortable acceptance I had once known with Valery.	282.1519223304608
I decided thirty-five was the best estimate of her age.	217.48050051288868
She had a funny little scar on her stomach, on the left side.	434.748653971723
I think we were very tired, for we awoke at the same moment, deeply rested, surprised to see the late morning sun on the windows, which were wet where the rime had melted.	407.1330791724161
I felt wonderful, the absolute opposite of last night's melancholy.	155.2630500093371
My head was clear.	19.302673524528107
I was hungry as a wolf, and my body felt lean and vital.	151.1167464746405
"Bon jour", I said brightly, sitting up, which pulled the covers to her hips.	389.0247576088892
She looked good, with her short tousled hair and no make-up.	303.3924539579989
Maybe closer to thirty, I thought.	54.47276868760226
"Bon jour"!	93.49995994298074
she exclaimed, smiling.	56.31424242557223
"J'ai faim"!	147.8163925221375
"Yeah, but breakfast first".	29.35867130086053
With a laugh she beat me to the bathroom.	67.98271650288095
I called downstairs for food and a toothbrush for her.	85.63699643050953
She came out pink from a hot bath, and I gave her my robe.	183.71478157789707
I had brushed my teeth, showered, shaved and dressed by the time a waiter wheeled in breakfast.	300.34337117253807
"The toothbrush monsieur", he said, presenting it.	72.88673507123902
I gave it to the woman.	19.23420910715061
"What is this for"?	8.06045326233936
she asked innocently.	25.36831886964897
"Why, to brush your teeth".	34.67007071930934
"But I already have!	23.516871447764046
I used yours".	14.604425091795482
"Oh"?	4.7474168562983445
I said with round eyes.	27.6383225388052
I wondered if I ought to go use the new one myself.	83.38387007472015
But I smelled the coffee, and thinking, What the hell, live dangerously, I decided I would scald my worries away.	530.4058107633979
The coffee wasn't very hot though, made in a filter pot, but it was good.	1449.8423589274546
We sent the waiter away and ate a tremendous amount of cold ham, hot hard-boiled eggs and hot garlic bread.	394.9104338161362
As we ate, we talked.	34.98477954557265
Her name was Suzanne, and mine Stephen.	49.586981083411935
We sat back comfortably on the bed with our last cups of coffee.	167.90295195353323
"You are very tactful, do you know, Stephen", she remarked.	303.3532150131473
"Um"?	20.324827059120516
I grunted, sipping.	41.40975532417923
"Yes, because you didn't run off to use that new toothbrush".	134.71543965564675
I raised my eyes to look at her in the mirror.	179.92038500745673
"I didn't really use yours", she went on.	63.483716299420635
"I carry one in my purse.	54.62228074319405
I know men never kiss les putains".	162.81308266297572
To my immense relief, she changed the subject in the next sentence "Shall we go to the Louvre today"?	337.4186730591141
"All right".	3.3441791718922933
I said with enthusiasm at the idea.	29.369914530133364
"But not immediately".	11.171633172531758
I put aside my empty cup.	79.08030318682968
She smiled all the way to her wise, sad eyes, and drained her own.	158.96668804068608
We were not rushed.	15.423914343731344
"What is this from"?	8.581786918340972
I asked, touching the scar on her stomach.	69.15828250430177
It was like a long thin line drawn through a pink circle.	793.8554165096377
"A bullet", she answered.	22.940184836752543
The cynicism was back in her eyes, a bitter wisdom, and I wondered if forty were not so far wrong after all.	751.9984139940055
She understood sex anyway, and played at it well.	98.11962981972717
We went to the Louvre for a few hours, then by Metro to a cabaret in Montmartre.	170.51909932955314
It was a nice place, not filled with smoke.	32.84179552039457
We had champagne and steamed mussels.	96.02210476840722
The sommelier brought the wine first, a magnum instead of the bottle I had ordered.	323.5348208727233
He must have thought I was a tourist.	48.02278614086115
I fixed him with a steely eye and said, "What's this for?	156.15598034009622
I didn't ask for a Jeroboam of champagne".	88.92008400579114
I thought that was pretty humorous, but I didn't laugh.	84.03370014941636
TWO LETTERS HAD ARRIVED FOR MISS THERESA STUBBLEFIELD SHE PUT them in her bag.	2145.9140297728172
She would not stop to read them in American Express, as many were doing, sitting on benches or leaning against the walls, but pushed her way out into the street.	374.6746440356159
This was her first day in Rome and it was June.	56.04160280254196
An enormous sky of the most delicate blue arched overhead.	207.02531389150946
In her mind's eye- her imagination responding fully, almost exhaustingly, to these shores' peculiar powers of stimulation- she saw the city as from above, telescoped on its great bare plains that the ruins marked, aqueducts and tombs, here a cypress, there a pine, and all around the low blue hills.	1279.110286721997
Pictures in old Latin books returned to her the Appian Way Today, the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine.	407.9970956446673
She would see them, looking just as they had in the books, and this would make up a part of her delight.	3937.1505032225364
Moreover, nursing various Stubblefields- her aunt, then her mother, then her father- through their lengthy illnesses everybody could tell you the Stubblefields were always sick, Theresa had had a chance to read quite a lot.	1515.3533837530913
England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy had all been rendered for her time and again, and between the prescribed hours of pills and tonics, she had conceived a dreamy passion by lamplight, to see all these places with her own eyes.	2855.922281830838
The very night after her father's funeral she had thought, though never admitted to a soul Now I can go.	309.8456187901357
There's nothing to stop me now.	32.76029822753504
So here it was, here was Italy, anyway, and terribly noisy.	716.6561048453797
In the street the traffic was really frightening.	50.96635546379983
Cars, taxis, buses, and motorscooters all went plunging at once down the narrow length of it or swerving perilously around a fountain.	698.1513890019155
Shoals of tourists went by her in national groups- English school girls in blue uniforms, German boys with cameras attached, smartly dressed Americans looking in shop windows.	1056.6307495958283
Glad to be alone, Theresa climbed the splendid outdoor staircase that opened to her left.	422.6643570361483
The Spanish Steps.	29.450234566734327
Something special was going on here just now- the annual display of azalea plants.	247.444746075604
She had heard about it the night before at her hotel.	71.51207689446704
It was not yet complete workmen were unloading the potted plants from a truck and placing them in banked rows on the steps above.	622.4908998051447
The azaleas were as large as shrubs, and their myriad blooms, many still tight in the bud, ranged in color from purple through fuchsia and rose to the palest pink, along with many white ones too.	767.3066981681483
Marvelous, thought Theresa, climbing in her portly, well-bred way, for she was someone who had learned that if you only move slowly enough you have time to notice everything.	868.7393387594493
In Rome, all over Europe, she intended to move very slowly indeed.	157.73721018542835
Halfway up the staircase she stopped and sat down.	171.93039202260795
Other people were doing it, too, sitting all along the wide banisters and leaning over the parapets above, watching the azaleas mass, or just enjoying the sun.	686.7078167945149
Theresa sat with her letters in her lap, breathing Mediterranean air.	359.4877607525447
The sun warmed her, as it seemed to be warming everything, perhaps even the underside of stones or the chill insides of churches.	1643.2871928331867
She loosened her tweed jacket and smoked a cigarette.	228.7176908585271
Content h excited; how could you be both at once?	262.5903501732079
Strange, but she was.	173.53776904179475
Presently, she picked up the first of the letters.	286.2480648774558
A few moments later her hands were trembling and her brow had contracted with anxiety and dismay.	379.4398879859577
Of course, one of them would have to go and do this!	180.24737061735493
Poor Cousin Elec, she thought, tears rising to sting in the sun, but why couldn't he have arranged to live through the summer?	1050.9507384033634
And how on earth did I ever get this letter anyway?	178.02008199272385
She had reason indeed to wonder how the letter had managed to find her.	130.55473588645864
Her Cousin Emma Carraway had written it, in her loose high old lady's script- t's carefully crossed, but l's inclined to wobble like an old car on the downward slope.	2197.9926435948746
Cousin Emma had simply put Miss Theresa Stubblefield, Rome, Italy, on the envelope, had walked up to the post office in Tuxapoka, Alabama, and mailed it with as much confidence as if it had been a birthday card to her next-door neighbor.	1402.7095166793813
No return address whatsoever.	48.86117658759724
Somebody had scrawled American Express, Piazza di Spagna?, across the envelope, and now Theresa had it, all as easily as if she had been the President of the Republic or the Pope.	3144.42992553393
Inside were all the things they thought she ought to know concerning the last illness, death, and burial of Cousin Alexander Carraway.	1246.7989674730334
Cousin Emma and Cousin Elec, brother and sister- unmarried, devoted, aging- had lived next door to the Stubblefields in Tuxapoka from time immemorial until the Stubblefields had moved to Montgomery fifteen years ago.	1786.8752216467915
Two days before he was taken sick, Cousin Elec was out worrying about what too much rain might do to his sweetpeas, and Cousin Elec had always preserved in the top drawer of his secretary a mother-of-pearl paper knife which Theresa had coveted as a child and which he had promised she could have when he died.	1759.633908326989
I'm supposed to care as much now as then, as much here as there, she realized, with a sigh.	454.89196397768853
This letter would have got to me if she hadn't even put Rome, Italy, on it.	153.144897236449
She refolded the letter, replaced it in its envelope, and turned with relief to one from her brother George.	257.62779547513986
But alas George, when he had written, had only just returned from going to Tuxapoka to Cousin Elec's funeral.	593.6769969998543
He was full of heavy family reminiscence.	59.695699635176005
All the fine old stock was dying out, look at the world today.	450.5625176523348
His own children had suffered from the weakening of those values which he and Theresa had always taken for granted, and as for his grandchildren he had one so far, still in diapers, he shuddered to think that the true meaning of character might never dawn on them at all.	1713.5564609828505
A life of gentility and principle such as Cousin Elec had lived had to be known at first hand h. Poor George!	754.3917680402756
The only boy, the family darling.	121.71058531110414
Together with her mother, both of them tense with worry lest things should somehow go wrong.	293.69532222127697
Theresa had seen him through the right college, into the right fraternity, and though pursued by various girls and various mammas of girls, safely married to the right sort, however much in the early years of that match his wife, Anne, had not seemed to understand poor George.	609.8628200730006
Could it just be, Theresa wondered, that Anne had understood only too well, and that George all along was extraordinary only in the degree to which he was dull?	1267.9462843166973
As for Cousin Alexander Carraway, the only thing Theresa could remember at the moment about him except his paper knife was that he had had exceptionally long hands and feet and one night about one o'clock in the morning the whole Stubblefield family had been aroused to go next door at Cousin Emma's call- first Papa, then Mother, then Theresa and George.	2045.5426171218562
There they all did their uttermost to help Cousin Elec get a cramp out of his foot.	329.0189689854414
He had hobbled downstairs into the parlor, in his agony, and was sitting, wrapped in his bathrobe, on a footstool.	294.8282499330397
He held his long clenched foot in both hands, and this and his contorted face- he was trying heroically not to cry out- made him look like a large skinny old monkey.	1832.9505612069254
They all surrounded him, the family circle, Theresa and George as solemn as if they were watching the cat have kittens, and Cousin Emma running back and forth with a kettle of hot water which she poured steaming into a white enamelled pan.	1192.7562067039921
"Can you think of anything to do"?	30.375338381605577
she kept repeating.	47.317420316728594
"I hate to call the doctor but if this keeps up I'll just have to!	308.4276097366907
Can you think of anything to do"?	30.375338381605577
"You might treat it like the hiccups", said Papa.	91.96650453449435
"Drop a cold key down his back".	80.11168330143697
"I just hope this happens to you someday", said Cousin Elec, who was not at his best.	221.14481414261004
"Poor Cousin Elec", George said.	108.7037565493688
He was younger than Theresa she remembered looking down and seeing his great round eyes, while at the same time she was dimly aware that her mother and father were not unamused.	405.33176858660426
"Poor Cousin Elec".	77.64016546863594
Now, here they both were, still the same, George full of round-eyed woe, and Cousin Emma in despair.	268.33775588196505
Theresa shifted to a new page.	76.21611335090337
"Of course George's letter continued, there are practical problems to be considered.	276.29679922411606
Cousin Emma is alone in that big old house and won't hear to parting from it.	242.15324345882996
Robbie and Beryl tried their best to persuade her to come and stay with them, and Anne and I have told her she's more than welcome here, but I think she feels that she might be an imposition, especially as long as our Rosie is still in high school.	3907.2080747127684
The other possibility is to make arrangements for her to let out one or two of the rooms to some teacher of good family or one of those solitary old ladies that Tuxapoka is populated with- Miss Edna Whittaker, for example.	917.3133435957335
But there is more in this than meets the eye.	73.36444693357578
A new bathroom would certainly have to be put in.	41.22074027761406
The wallpaper in the back bedroom is literally crumbling off h".	158.1620294654683
Theresa skipped a page of details about the house.	1200.5353913118106
"I hope if you have any ideas along these lines you will write me about them.	323.8560802682402
I may settle on some makeshift arrangements for the summer and wait until you return in the fall so we can work out together the best h".	511.4424708878709
I really shouldn't have smoked a cigarette so early in the day, thought Theresa, it always makes me sick.	261.0948898413064
I'll start sneezing in a minute, sitting on these cold steps.	226.7560094430339
She got up, standing uncertainly for a moment, then moving aside to let go past her, talking, a group of young men.	525.0139541930133
They wore shoes with pointed toes, odd to American eyes, and narrow trousers, and their hair looked unnaturally black and slick.	943.1356512379085
Yet here they were obviously thought to be handsome, and felt themselves to be so.	1119.5600046564346
Just then a man approached her with a tray of cheap cameos, Parker fountain pens, rosaries, papal portraits.	545.5690070599632
"No", said Theresa.	18.190931117261595
"No, no"!	12.565735380139811
she said.	3.4828079357982547
The man did not wish to leave.	30.2122333389472
He knew how to spread himself against the borders of the space that had to separate them.	140.02966385824183
Carrozza rides in the park, the Colosseum by moonlight, he specialized h. Theresa turned away to escape, and climbed to a higher landing where the steps divided in two.	959.544685581395
There she walked to the far left and leaned on a vacant section of banister, while the vendor picked himself another well-dressed American lady, carrying a camera and a handsome alligator bag, ascending the steps alone.	1107.5441478297696
Was he ever successful, Theresa wondered.	142.13245452412053
The lady with the alligator bag registered interest, doubt, then indignation; at last, alarm.	284.0007974492916
She cast about as though looking for a policeman this really shouldn't be allowed!	316.5148811743698
Finally, she scurried away up the steps.	62.39688559120672
Theresa Stubblefield, still holding the family letters in one hand, realized that her whole trip to Europe was viewed in family circles as an interlude between Cousin Elec's death and "doing something" about Cousin Emma.	1859.5819574381803
They were even, Anne and George, probably thinking themselves very considerate in not hinting that she really should cut out "one or two countries" and come home in August to get Cousin Emma's house ready before the teachers came to Tuxapoka in September.	692.6087527733089
Of course, it wasn't Anne and George's fault that one family crisis seemed to follow another, and weren't they always emphasizing that they really didn't know what they would do without Theresa?	2218.3946561730827
The trouble is, Theresa thought, that while everything that happens there is supposed to matter supremely, nothing here is supposed even to exist.	260.0411318772314
They would not care if all of Europe were to sink into the ocean tomorrow.	203.4081267727659
It never registered with them that I had time to real all of Balzac, Dickens, and Stendhal while Papa was dying, not to mention everything in the city library after Mother's operation.	1142.4811162379135
It would have been exactly the same to them if I had read through all twenty-six volumes of Elsie Dinsmore.	680.4336442155317
She arranged the letters carefully, one on top of the other.	23.2417360789192
Then, with a motion so suddenly violent that she amazed herself, she tore them in two.	438.57161439164554
"Signora"?	20.324827059120516
She became aware that two Italian workmen, carrying a large azalea pot, were standing before her and wanted her to move so that they could begin arranging a new row of the display.	794.3296928543871
"Mi diapiace, signora, ma h insomma h".	389.92656276046296
"Oh h put it there"!	48.35013911072001
She indicated a spot a little distance away.	75.96360111305997
I knew it as surely as everybody in Westfield- that Lucille was a husband stealer.	209.1536891803046
You can't keep that kind of information quiet in a town of only 4000-plus.	585.236167402789
And I've been told that just about every town, no matter what its size, has its Lucille Warren.	193.81893189319604
Just as it has its Susan Dolan, though nobody'd ever bothered to tell me that.	2509.452326406232
Susan Dolan, that's me.	61.091977307692254
They even talked about Lucille down at the Young Christians' League where I spent a lot of time in Bible classes and helping out with the office work for our foreign mission.	673.292622351665
I never heard my folks talk about her, though.	57.83377849955233
They were good-living religious people, and I can truthfully say I never heard them spread any gossip about anybody.	561.8966153787725
Even if they ever did say anything about people like Lucille Warren, I know they wouldn't have dreamed of saying it in front of me.	545.3123359403845
My folks and my faith protected me from things like that.	435.0123332296687
And so I was really upset the first time I discovered that my boy friend Johnnie was seeing Mrs warren.	330.4382277666133
I asked him about it one night while we were sitting in his truck.	204.52440675212924
I asked him if it was true.	25.34786713557128
He gave me a straight, honest answer.	53.57599296479628
"Look, Sue baby", he'd said.	51.63026188361095
Much as I love you- well, a guy's a guy and Lucille's willing to- to come across.	229.3590441570393
Honest, kitten, that's all it is- I don't even like Lucille much".	575.6557913174053
I guess it was at that moment that I realized what I was up against in the person of Lucille Warren.	1823.5610949932677
But it didn't seem fair.	63.22650855998794
My love for Johnnie was young and clean- how could I possibly compete with a woman like that, who didn't hesitate to use her sex.	424.92896533156716
Johnnie was a trucker with a small lumber outfit in a town about twenty miles away, and he was also pretty good at anything in the carpentry line.	1469.5620737769689
It was a vivid, sharp February morning that Johnnie first made his appearance in my back yard, bringing some stuff Dad had ordered.	464.35481252102363
I wasn't in the habit of batting my eyes at delivery men, but the moment I saw Johnnie, I knew he was different.	500.1492956202251
He wasn't only different- he was it.	32.390138416653514
He had an easy masculine grace about him, the kind that kids don't have, but that I had sometimes admired in other older men.	727.4177504743859
His smile was quick, and his eyes held some promised secret that made my knees go limp.	367.9884336553529
The most unbelievable thing about the chance meeting was that he seemed interested in me, too.	309.41567721794956
I could hardly believe such good luck was mine.	107.3407213359324
And now Lucille Warren had gotten a look at him.	103.07094907751906
I guess she was between affairs or something, but anyway, she had set her sights on Johnnie, my Johnnie.	335.92152809432764
I didn't like it one bit.	31.438336300559648
But what could I do?	9.565329377135965
A man had to have his release- at least that's what the boys used to say in high school- and I wasn't providing it for Johnnie.	676.0577606335305
Neither was his wife.	12.813113414290722
She wouldn't have, even if he'd asked her.	1527.258083076185
But he wouldn't ask her- he wasn't the kind of man who would force his wife to submit to him against her will.	344.9364828961732
And he wouldn't leave her either- he'd told me that.	129.30398396407037
He was too honorable to leave his wife penniless and leave those helpless children without their daddy.	373.94735631322953
Johnnie loved me and wanted me.	91.23688352844299
But the only love I was giving him was the pure kind.	69.6086819888486
It was weeks before we even kissed for the first time.	40.8351578176534
Against my folks' wishes, we'd been seeing each other for short rides in the truck.	513.9872757342694
The rides were tame enough- mostly we talked.	148.08573494935183
But by the time the first crackling of spring came around, we both knew we were hopelessly in love.	135.87026816388686
Yet even then we did nothing much but talk, and maybe neck a little.	128.28494108189295
"It's so crazy", I told him once.	37.12457560335767
"I always imagined I would probably end up marrying a minister or somebody like that.	242.18282628899289
Somebody with no vices.	49.151130677118815
You know".	4.861206247136512
"And you fall for a lumber jockey".	60.49300360443147
"Who drinks far too much".	250.9829059744847
"And smokes too much".	28.786060904068783
"And", I was ticking off the items on my fingers, "swears too much and goes out with the boys, whoever they are, too much, and who never goes to church and won't even listen when I try to persuade him to come back to the fold".	3213.347299980467
He examined his nails carefully.	51.98472306557929
"I could walk out the door".	24.6660637101368
"Don't you dare".	17.52537276450599
"And never show my face or my truck around here again".	168.5072040928446
He still wasn't looking at me.	38.863033921355544
"You wouldn't".	11.515395576220508
"Or I could visit Lucille Warren".	75.18892202048518
"You wouldn't.	11.515395576220508
Please!	17.25817145328027
You wouldn't".	11.515395576220508
He shrugged noncommittally.	46.75317660024317
"I might".	6.168934895600777
And now he was seeing her.	80.42790398255498
He'd just admitted it to me.	317.1853154190978
I huddled miserably beside him in the truck.	122.28231101675857
It was all my doing- his seeing her.	45.79581212136076
Johnnie and I had been innocent in our love, and that was the way I wanted to keep it.	681.5239921892714
At first, Johnnie hadn't understood- how could he, not being a religious person like me?	229.3852118903497
But then he had said, "All right, kid, if that's how you want it, that's how it'll be".	707.4976522905822
But what had I done, trying to keep us pure?	209.90789728163708
I had driven him into the arms of that scheming woman.	97.13761869512312
I had just the same as delivered him into the hands of the Devil!	288.50173048468395
So one week later, I surrendered to him in the little motel on Route 10.	315.6628768413169
My very first time.	17.303864437567565
I was desperate to hold him, to give him whatever in this world he wanted or needed, and to keep him from the clutches of Lucille Warren.	2494.7267786379507
And, though at the time I blushed to admit it even to myself, there was in me a growing desire, a sexual awareness, that Johnnie had set in motion, an awareness that no other man had ever triggered.	757.2659196559015
I wanted him, with a terrifying fierceness.	277.81334663224
Astonishingly enough, it was my own voice I heard there in the darkness, begging this man to make love to me.	736.7368795013424
"Love me, Johnnie".	32.57716552791821
"I will, kitten"!	30.232702413488887
Outside, in the summertime fields behind the motel, a thousand crickets serenaded us.	254.37237759207562
"Will you always love me this way"?	49.71038488696246
"Uh huh.	8.19324333777912
Always".	10.480650031067317
"Mmm".	16.05296361890169
And I snuggled closer to the man l loved.	250.10635030014438
It was as blissful and fulfilling a night as any bride ever experienced.	149.07216824306954
I had had no wedding ceremony, no witnesses, no certificate of marriage, but I had all the joy that goes with them.	321.2347357968004
"Johnnie h?	26.00860612886322
"It can't be wrong, can it?	40.52580609760229
Not really".	8.112080513646216
Johnnie rose on one elbow.	111.5845504434718
"Stop worrying.	32.60897746060601
It's never wrong if love is real".	58.91483938131937
I took great comfort from his words, and smiled to myself in the darkness.	121.52481684815919
Infinite peace, complete contentment.	113.03392860718934
Idiot's delight, I later discovered.	89.37020681380997
I felt no conflict between what I was doing and my strict religious upbringing.	262.79729761811205
I had always resisted the passes made at me by other kids, and many times I had thought about my love for Johnnie who, being thirty, brought a maturity to love that the kids around town could know nothing about.	440.105285708485
I had also thought a lot about how God must look on true love, and so in a way I was keeping my promise to God, my promise to remain pure until I was married.	485.0133939315328
I was practically a bride, after all.	30.73984181218227
There would have been a ceremony if it had been possible.	39.5458226829298
Of this, I had no doubt.	902.2888251116666
Wouldn't Johnnie do practically anything in the world to insure my happiness?	360.00024103182847
Of course he would.	8.042102080701417
He'd not only told me so, he'd proved it.	112.97372785165807
It wasn't Johnnie's fault that he was hopelessly tied down to that frightful woman who did her best to make his life unbearable.	1050.5345227820717
Just because he was honorable enough to want to continue supporting his two children, as any decent man would, that was no reason he should be denied his own small share of happiness too.	561.2573562945304
And if I could contribute to that, I'd do it.	214.3255029706513
The cost didn't matter.	16.165242948947164
No price is too high when true love is at stake.	113.00483154349244
And I had no doubts about how true this love was.	94.86816625622735
I'd never even petted with a boy, and after I met Johnnie he never touched me for the longest while, not until I all but threw myself at him.	735.1382916694698
He was plenty attentive, all right, but he behaved like a gentleman, and I figured that, emotionally, I was closer to his age than to my own eighteen and a half.	894.2801474459087
What could a mere twelve years matter?	86.25386432434786
It wasn't, I was sure, a difference in age that came between people, but a difference in maturity.	235.09630690239229
And hadn't I rescued him from Lucille Warren?	240.66240021505863
She'd have gotten him, if I hadn't stopped her.	403.8957394853401
After all, Lucille Warren was a husband-stealer from way back.	105.44801682992579
But I'd been a good girl and now God was blessing me with the gift of this magnificent man and the wondrous love we shared.	1031.6977694998475
It was only fitting that we seek out whatever joy our union might bring.	196.33826587215572
"Love me"?	18.00510064884557
"Uh-huh.	38.228413660078274
Love you".	13.141330009020248
"Always and always, Johnnie"?	67.6876429294856
"Always".	10.480650031067317
"Mmm".	16.05296361890169
Convention time in Boston.	28.662440280610724
A chill wind in the air and the narrow streets packed with snow.	430.9331094067754
From the entire eastern half of the nation they'd be coming, members of the Young Christians' League, and I'd been chosen to represent our chapter.	839.1441404552871
I had mixed emotions about going.	46.45885519126437
I'd been seeing Johnnie almost a year now, but I still didn't want to leave him for five whole days.	660.9668453475356
But I had looked forward so much to being with this church group.	98.60693261856959
I hadn't been doing as much work as I used to in Westfield and I felt funny about that and wanted to work harder than ever.	564.8160913289643
I wanted to just throw myself into the good works of this fine group.	102.5586958616711
So I went to Boston.	27.472086308428658
The first meeting was held in Faneuil Hall, a great big place where we were able to meet members from all the other states.	1434.9467304643297
My cousin Alma, at whose home I was staying during the convention, introduced me to a group of young people from Rhode Island.	430.80074230200177
One of them was a very friendly, lovely fellow named Ronald, a boy about my age with slick, blond hair and dancing blue eyes.	705.8408010298646
He looked very different from Johnnie- in fact, he looked sort of like me.	302.7883373937877
I thought so, and he mentioned it, and Alma said so too.	217.68021578600573
After the meeting, there was going to be a party at someone's house.	74.26287474313024
I assumed Alma would get me there, but in the confusion of the meeting breaking up, we were separated.	782.3409299473338
Outside the hall, I anxiously looked around for her, then all at once there was a hand on my elbow.	556.6281056038562
"Hey, there, beautiful twin of mine", Ronald said.	116.35649719368321
"Need a pumpkin to get to the party"?	261.09383720026267
I couldn't help laughing with him.	37.4217762473493
"Well, I should find Alma"- I began.	152.3056258275414
"Alma, Schmalma.	51.41832996850104
Come along with me".	19.523817756592635
I went.	5.191033967501787
By the time we arrived, the party was already going strong.	390.81940051402654
A couple of the girls were laughing rather shrilly and I realized they were drinking.	664.42277853112
My folks wouldn't dream of having alcohol in the house, so my first taste of it had been- of course- with Johnnie.	943.1993277626774
I hadn't liked it at first- it was bitter and burning.	130.76317652959665
But when Johnnie disguised the taste with ginger ale, I enjoyed it.	249.69481964583954
Of course I enjoyed 'most anything if I did it with Johnnie.	108.46620313036253
Johnnie h I suddenly realized he'd been totally out of my thoughts all evening.	703.1321206899786
But that was only natural, I decided; surely he was still resting snugly in my heart.	195.45369067612427
"I don't see Alma anywhere", I said.	126.64583782323791
"She's invisible tonight.	47.244690108194625
C'mon, let's find out where they're keeping the glasses".	123.41764214287295
I drew back.	17.174365740107238
"I- I don't think so, Ronald.	70.25684630231292
Not for me".	35.071161192512974
"Aw, come on".	27.99936108240892
"No- really".	15.388209181688154
He shrugged.	11.679230940171202
"Okay.	7.786428610600051
But at least come along while I get lubricated".	82.23706437829618
The kitchen was jammed.	31.627954241722676
Strange faces, most of them, and I wasn't even sure all of them had come from the League meeting.	484.02146078947266
Under normal circumstances, he had a certain bright-eyed all-American-boy charm, with great appeal for young ladies, old ladies, and dogs.	359.15449563432935
Today, he looked like an Astronaut who had left his vitamin pills on the bureau and spent six months in space hollow eyes, hollow cheeks, hollow stomach.	805.1099851015822
Breakfast, he thought.	14.51807258871939
A shot of orange juice would make everything seem better.	171.55496420581676
He looked around his little Eden bureau, bed, table, chair, two-burner stove.	259.7656292930027
Then he remembered.	10.733021040058953
"You share a refrigerator", Mrs Kirby had said, and somehow, at midnight, after the long drive from New York in pelting rain, that had sounded reasonable.	367.36649065213754
In the cold light of day, it seemed a lunatic arrangement.	181.0521381099457
Share bath, maybe- but share refrigerator?	270.7203552545939
She had explained it- something about summer people's eating out and not enough space in the units.	194.7400296678312
And where was the thing?	19.57414711200043
He remembered seeing it last night, when he put away his small store of bachelor-type eatables.	2275.3480784905005
Ah, yes- his half of a refrigerator stood outside, on the "curving veranda" between Unit Number Three and Unit Number Four.	1181.225078864894
It was still raining, and Mrs Kirby's cottages bloomed through the gray haze like the names they bore, vivid blue and green and magenta.	815.124926721688
Charlie downed his orange juice and one of the long, skinny green pills, his spirits as damp as the day.	660.1566524852356
This vacation had seemed like a good idea last week, when his doctor had prescribed it.	549.6282493183861
"Take a full month", the doctor had said.	357.55824221018736
"Lots of sun, lots of rest.	38.16338931149012
The red pills are a vitamin-and-iron compound.	124.55102426890966
This is a sleeping capsule.	25.021284362089858
The others will make you a little more comfortable until you get it licked.	932.1512525820164
You young men get to be my age, you won't take flu so lightly".	488.9036009869021
Charlie had accepted the diagnosis without comment.	110.1183067877842
The doctor could call it anything from flu to beriberi; but Charlie knew what was wrong with him and knew, too, that there was no pill to cure it.	434.24925967229916
He had loved and lost Vivian Wayne to somebody else, had watched her marry the somebody else, and had caught a bear of a cold by kissing the bride good-by forever, which was really piling it on.	558.8261405299403
He had caught, too, like an ailment, a confirmed distrust of women.	159.31435266799815
Once burned- scalded, really, because Vivian had given him every encouragement- forever shy.	517.6833135698392
From now on, his was going to be a man's world the North Woods, duck blinds at dawning, beer and poker and male secretaries.	1253.074318810285
Meanwhile, he had this miserable cold, and as he leaned against the refrigerator, watching the rain make sandy puddles at his feet, the doctor's prescription for lots of sun seemed like a hollow mockery.	1635.6433785055083
In these damp circumstances, he was an odds-on bet to develop pneumonia.	202.1248852593583
He looked up to see Mrs Kirby, awesome in a black-and-yellow polka-dotted slicker, bearing down on him.	851.1800442745773
"Three-day blow"!	53.91345371682178
she bellowed triumphantly.	58.15607655955284
He had noticed before that the natives seemed to regard really filthy weather as a kind of Pyhrric victory over the tourists.	271.29391482743375
"Fine, day after tomorrow", she added.	83.19951690488097
"I hope so", he said.	43.25482801507833
"I've got this cold.	11.089217851188453
Thought I'd bake it out in the sun".	875.432534795886
"Ah".	9.610819792753604
She studied him briefly.	40.26890188075271
"You've got a peaked look.	17.23072736086315
Better get in out of the wet".	33.137060109923
Charlie forbore to mention that the wet was somewhat universal, Peony being less than weatherproof.	518.280849256301
As for its being fine, day after tomorrow, he had the unhappy conviction that it would never be fine again, with Vivian lost to him forever.	318.3763946632965
He could imagine her at this minute, honeymooning in Nassau with what's-his-name, lounging on golden sands, looking forward to a life of unalloyed bliss.	1438.0658533711628
All Charlie could look forward to was a yellow pill at noon, a salami sandwich for lunch, and a lonely old age- if he lived that long.	757.3002955962957
He leafed through the light reading provided by Mrs Kirby for her guests four separate adventures of the Bobbsey Twins At the Seashore, At the Mountains, On the Farm, and In Danger and several agricultural bulletins on the treatment of hoof-and-mouth disease in cattle, hideously illustrated.	1014.9619222436816
He dozed, only to dream of Vivian, and woke, only to crash into the night table, bruising his other shin.	374.7197282876048
He took a yellow pill, only to choke on it, and went for the salami, only to find something alive in the refrigerator- something pink and fuzzy.	591.5177418123681
His first thought was that Mrs Kirby, in her mania for color, had dyed a cat and that cat had somehow managed to open the refrigerator door and climb in; but on further investigation, the thing proved to be a sweater, of the long-hair variety that sheds onto men's jackets- pale, pale pink and, according to the label, size thirty-four.	746.2192132046607
He thought about it for a minute, could find no reasonable explanation for the presence of a sweater in the refrigerator, got the salami, bread, and a Bermuda onion, and put the whole thing out of his mind.	380.62731417444945
Next morning, he found a note in the refrigerator.	43.70804730734866
"Would you mind wrapping your onion"?	114.02704255235203
said this note.	21.85702454338531
"The smell permeates everything"!	62.72122732224244
Everything being the sweater, a lipstick case, and a squirt bottle of Kissin' Kare pink hand lotion.	1434.785015345137
The note paper was pink, too, and the handwriting small and dainty and utterly feminine.	550.6358349067959
Not that he had supposed, considering the evidence, that he was sharing this refrigerator with a member of the Beach Patrol.	635.0497831164815
He scrawled "Sorry" across the bottom of the note and then, against his better judgment, added "Don't you eat"?	240.08822201262035
He didn't want to encourage anything here; but on the other hand, he didn't want her swiping his salami.	752.5674870739693
"Not onions", came the answer the following day.	114.49694566927441
"Ugh".	16.05296361890169
Must have really smelled up her sweater, he thought, and wondered idly just why she kept the sweater fast-frozen.	1216.695773375988
But then, as he well knew, women are not guided by logic or common sense.	527.3089226432835
Take Vivian.	29.142224302846234
Yes, take Vivian.	32.204341103996605
Somebody had.	11.289837447097351
Now, if this were Vivian next door to him and if, for some obscure female reason, she kept her clothes in the refrigerator, they would not be pink.	459.83162903431236
They would be black or white or horse-blanket plaid, chic and splashy, like Vivian herself.	365.46207031688186
Pink, Vivian once had told him, was for baby girls, and grown-up girls who wore pink were subconsciously clinging to their infancy.	3856.7135532566217
"Why does this girl keep a sweater in the refrigerator"?	127.15422349790876
he mused aloud.	66.78190752700161
Eh"?	17.372674381654033
It was Mrs Kirby, making her toilsome way along the veranda, laden with a clattery collection of mops, brushes, and pails.	552.4153711825032
"What's that you say"?	35.86466130272949
"Oh, nothing.	9.516979755383273
Just glad the rain's stopped".	69.0948467225178
"Oh, yes.	9.574954286734124
Just look at that sky.	34.46047610840634
Be a scorcher by afternoon".	50.40517865863214
"I hope so.	8.894711653297147
I've got this cold".	11.089217851188453
"So you said".	8.87013948168843
She scrutinized him.	22.247635225434603
"My, you're peaked.	36.016976291859905
You want to watch out that you don't get burned to an ash, first sunny day.	254.15865763684724
I must remember to warn the girl next to you in Larkspur.	129.62199393325457
That pale kind's the worst".	53.02946548870401
That pale kind, Charlie thought.	63.22366993459218
Hardly an inviting description.	51.45202845419364
But then, neither was peaked.	33.693754738781976
He could hear Mrs Kirby now, warning her pale guest against sunburn.	369.21891022446005
"I spoke to the fellow next door, too", she might say.	103.33571501828018
"He's that peaked kind".	39.267028936706346
Surely there was a better word.	73.78119897588084
Charlie looked in the mirror.	34.776094503535326
Run-down, iron-poor.	59.96617618562048
He looked more closely.	20.129126102969547
Frail, feeble- peaked.	101.99457279373689
Clearly, two damp days with the Bobbsey Twins had done him no good.	176.16778754181703
The sun, blazing hot as prophesied, was far from kind to Mrs Kirby's varicolored properties.	274.44617008185594
When Charlie came up from the beach for his four-o'clock pill, the whole establishment gaudy enough when seen through mist and fog looked like a floodlit modern painting- great blocks of dizzy color, punctuated at regular intervals by the glaring white of five community refrigerators.	1329.4742884903183
This weekend, he thought, he would look around for some more subdued retreat, with Cape roses, maybe, at the door.	324.15673167197923
He could not imagine a flower's being brave enough to grow beside Peony, Larkspur, and the rest.	486.78994795783245
The sweater was gone from the refrigerator, and in its place was a large plastic bag, full of wet pink clothes.	945.996905021688
No wonder she was so pale, wearing all those cold clothes.	141.64622431229617
He got a red pill and a beer and then, on impulse, transferred the rest of his salami to her side of the refrigerator and scrawled "Be my guest" on the wrapping.	413.79576383495686
It gave him a good feeling.	333.81425083951666
"M-m-m.	48.966693430382776
Thanks", was her answer the next day.	38.21355695992081
The note was propped against his pill bottles and bore a postscript "You're not at all well, are you"?	395.84282303967484
"I've got this cold", he wrote.	61.45474219127458
Not that it was any of her business.	88.57564609714582
"It's none of my business", said the next note, "but my aunt Elsie used to take lemon juice and honey in hot water for a cold, and she lived to be ninety-six.	1125.7155428541064
I mean, she's still living, and she's ninety-six.	118.37914015308772
Why don't you try that"?	15.774634350139184
"I don't have a lemon".	15.384199648667446
He had to write very small to get it on the bottom of the scrap of paper.	695.6004345502819
By the next morning, she had turned the paper over.	61.09731298897585
"Gee, neither do I".	41.43091705528708
Charlie grinned.	26.07985731949674
She didn't sound like a pale girl.	57.46700539369313
She sounded a little like a redhead.	79.07937248608283
But then, redheads are often pale.	56.204875248279635
He stuck his head in Mrs Kirby's little rental office.	199.01177238938152
"I guess that redhead next to me took your advice.	117.92915925630858
I haven't seen her on the beach".	364.0944500059567
"You won't, if you're looking for a redhead.	67.40626748696378
She's got browny hair".	76.37466852681827
He spent that afternoon on the beach, looking for a pale, browny-haired girl in a pink bathing suit.	625.4788800016242
There were pink bathing suits on blondes, and browny-haired girls in red or black or green bathing suits.	579.878659343168
There were a sprinkling of daring bikinis and a preponderance of glorified tank suits.	289.5579824727472
Up on a dune, he saw a girl, all by herself, sitting on a camp stool before an easel and absorbed in her painting.	388.8042846839489
He paid little attention to her because she was a redhead and because she was wearing white- one of those bulky, turtle-neck sweaters.	876.9694557608435
On the beach, there were pale girls and not-so-pale girls.	223.3959208745502
And he saw them all as he walked up and down.	139.03446587711522
At two that morning, he was still walking- up and down Peony, up and down the veranda, up and down the silent, moonlit beach.	626.6564744895718
Finally, in desperation, he opened the refrigerator, filched her hand lotion, and left a note.	2275.3346298451333
"I've got this sunburn", said the note, "and I used some of your hand lotion.	407.5610375771648
Hope you don't mind".	39.00482091218456
"Of course I don't mind", she answered.	120.63571778753582
"You're having a miserable time, aren't you?	48.5441420960075
Use all the lotion you want, and for goodness' sake, stay in out of the sun for a couple of days".	759.0331434763169
This was a very warm, sympathetic girl, he decided.	669.0209096226408
Sympathy is a fine quality in a woman.	63.197090273045994
Now Vivian, for instance, was not too long on sympathy.	489.68375444259647
She felt, and said, that sympathy only made people feel sorry for themselves; it was a tough world, and you had to be tough to hold your own.	2193.0749658160694
He didn't know what was so tough about Vivian's world, slopping around Nassau with what's-his-name.	1082.374142897277
Suppose what's-his-name got a sunburn?	180.0523631881726
Charlie couldn't see Vivian offering any hand lotion.	460.07864439531016
She might peel him, once the worst of the agony was over.	113.24199878928619
Charlie spent the next two days in his pajama bottoms, waiting for the fire in his back to subside, and used generous quantities of the hand lotion.	552.6938806495549
Correspondence passed back and forth.	52.408754193933795
"How's your sunburn now?	78.4190416857856
The only thing, this lotion has glycerin in it, and that whitens the skin, so if you're so anxious to get a tan, you may not want to use it".	1723.4625386818748
"I'm not that anxious, but maybe that's why you're so fair".	237.8603017303645
"That Mrs Kirby!	49.80777855480092
I'll bet she told you I was puny, too.	46.54446287116163
How's your cold"?	34.98356263882306
"Broiled out.	19.39732614738542
She didn't say you were puny.	53.4071611607979
Are you?	4.681535044702013
What's puny"?	36.292883332146324
"Puny goes with pale and peaked.	154.04768184246146
Do you have anything to read while you're shut up?	119.44940625849674
There are two things here about Surviving in the Wilderness, and a book called 'Tom Swift and His Speedy Canoe'; but the picture of Tom Swift is pretty sinister.	584.3576423347156
Also the canoe".	17.362566639035137
There was a crowd in the stands for a change and the sun was hot.	56.17547253449554
The new Riverside pitcher turned out to have an overhand fast ball that took a hop.	1809.7094996316027
For a few innings the Anniston team couldn't figure him out.	108.91614218438963
Then, in the fifth, Anniston's kid catcher caught onto a curve and smacked the ball into left center field.	2581.4788158932015
Eddie Lee, Riverside's redheaded playing manager, ran after the ball but it rolled past him.	529.216652284541
Phil Rossoff cut over to center from left field to get the relay.	309.63627658649085
Eddie caught up with the ball near the fence and threw it to Phil.	246.72071661164298
"Third!	14.51233182375046
Third base"!	31.26282701257893
Eddie shouted.	35.066976865631176
Phil spun around and made an accurate throw into Mike Deegan's hands on third base.	564.8858802570851
Mike caught the ball just as the catcher slid into the bag.	199.68670443842151
But the Anniston boy had begun his slide too late.	119.97044027466
He came into the bag with his body and Mike Deegan brought the ball down full in his face.	836.5730873274546
"You bastard"!	29.896202372249775
the Anniston catcher screamed.	101.77290912629647
He jumped to his feet and started to throw punches.	45.536308046448575
Mike Deegan tossed his glove away and began to swing at the catcher.	410.3570917598919
This brought in everybody from both sides, while the spectators stood up and added to the uproar.	533.4142640771305
The fighters were separated in a few minutes.	29.088764632706315
The game was resumed.	17.81580071919366
But Mike Deegan was boiling mad now.	159.13929750817522
When the inning was over he cursed the Anniston catcher all the way into the dugout.	409.5351317032438
Phil Rossoff, coming in from left field, stopped at the water fountain for a drink.	261.1605120759299
Mike Deegan was standing beside it, facing the field.	162.10889016103872
He was eyeing the Anniston catcher warming up his pitcher before the inning began.	300.21146910996924
"Keep your eyes open, sonny"!	129.00924626158496
Mike yelled to the catcher.	76.07802685388593
"You're in for trouble".	13.691634789809406
The Anniston catcher did not reply with words.	113.71928318532522
He simply turned to Mike and smiled.	57.25793851263151
This so infuriated Deegan that he spun around and said "I'll get that little bastard.	279.5259922624983
So help me God, I'll get him".	41.675596008108855
Phil Rossoff said "Why don't you leave him alone"?	436.8414631124085
"Mind your own goddamn business", Mike Deegan said.	297.8438481511222
Phil shrugged.	30.94847813739824
He stepped into the dugout, wondering why Deegan was always looking for trouble.	305.7279184895539
Maybe the answer was in his eyes.	74.04825893229456
When Deegan smiled his eyes never fit in with his lips.	171.20274049850067
In the last of the sixth inning Mike Deegan got up to bat and hit a fast ball over the left fielder's head.	1219.5525875401945
By the time the fielder got his hands on the ball Deegan was rounding third base and heading for home.	349.96041066194715
The left fielder threw and it was a good one.	31.395433238136587
But Mike had no chance of being tagged.	88.75427526315517
The Anniston catcher was straddling home plate.	156.87505320196948
All Deegan had to do was slide, fall away, but instead, he rammed into the catcher.	443.0188660339963
Both fell heavily to the ground.	29.685102171454094
Only Mike got to his feet.	19.43971870609289
He went back to touch home plate, turned and walked to the dugout without looking back.	205.85579728881828
The Anniston players and their manager ran out on the field.	193.45785928877862
They poured water over their catcher's face.	110.05453239703736
He did not move.	6.174313963360313
Then the manager called for a doctor.	14.617262042138075
The Riverside physician came down to look over the injured ballplayer.	191.70282433144243
Then, quickly, and a little nervously, the doctor ordered a couple of ballplayers to carry the catcher into the dressing room.	483.12313126221926
Mike Deegan was sitting on the bench, watching.	1092.0320935116554
When the ballplayers started to carry the catcher off the field he said "That ought to teach the sonofabitch".	314.69231363347336
Phil Rossoff, seated next to Deegan, got up and moved to the other end of the bench.	294.77957097195974
The Anniston manager was coming over to the Riverside dugout.	330.9353112523009
He was followed by four of his men.	92.67463685264096
It began to look as if something was going to happen.	45.83621332322883
Mike sat quitely watching the manager come nearer.	340.28828176033716
Eddie Lee moved over to Mike Deegan's side.	254.5040225171889
No one said a word.	11.13357523065377
The Anniston manager came right up to the dugout in front of Mike.	161.15590613789487
His face was flushed.	18.05883049540172
"Deegan", the manager said, his voice pitched low, quivering.	428.12472936196457
"That was a rotten thing to do".	108.67204794733709
"For God's sake", Mike said, waving the manager away.	127.99853913621949
"Stop it, will you?	141.1077278015811
Tell your guys not to block the plate".	89.18930325691096
"You didn't have to ram him".	35.79051215237731
"That's what you say".	10.789429048924656
The Anniston manager looked at Eddie Lee.	129.30577231703538
It was a cold and calculated look.	25.61347572594131
He turned and went back across the field to his dugout.	81.53649349590384
He called in the pitcher who had been pitching, and a big, heavy, powerfully built right hander moved out to the mound for Anniston.	550.1211694800054
The game started again and in the eighth inning Mike Deegan came up to bat.	416.3999147020709
Everyone in the ball park seemed to be standing and shouting.	254.47150360000933
The first ball the hefty pitcher threw came in for Mike's head.	209.5567498810314
Deegan fell into the dirt, the ball going over him.	265.9206006119761
He arose slowly and brushed himself off.	86.34439255793285
He got back into the batter's box and on the next pitch dropped into the dirt again.	361.62679194012065
"Hit the bum"!	67.83534233830194
somebody yelled from the Anniston bench.	122.06780169718971
In the Riverside dugout Frankie Ricco, shortstop, whispered into Phil's ear "There's gonna be a fight".	865.3008675529513
"Look at those bastards"!	177.7283806262755
Charlie Haydon, a pitcher, said.	76.75255470299501
"They're looking for trouble".	19.16265135550591
Mike was slow getting into the box this time.	93.75771149030066
When he finally did he had to duck his head quickly away as the pitch came in.	154.35201107437283
"Listen"!	16.405269599087717
he shouted to the pitcher.	18.12045126294561
"One more and I'm coming out there"!	48.666901158564066
"I'll be waiting"!	17.27725975075642
the pitcher yelled back.	63.97271748344831
Mike Deegan pounded the rubber plate with the end of his bat.	266.3959620295634
He stood flat-footed in the box, but not very close to the plate now.	435.98313424256787
The pitcher wound up and the ball came in straight for Mike's head.	180.65886730487654
Deegan dropped, got up, turned and, holding the bat with both hands up against his chest, began to walk slowly out to the mound.	412.690681815593
The pitcher tossed his glove away and came towards Mike Deegan.	390.9557991050409
They were both walking towards each other, unhurried.	78.64552233443393
Riverside and Anniston players rushed out on the field.	253.4524092495778
In the next moment, it seemed, the infield was crowded with spectators, ballplayers, cops, kids and a dog.	187.91677159068874
There was much shouting and screaming.	33.081272729458476
Fights sprang up and were quickly squelched.	221.6226928563452
Mike and the Anniston pitcher were pulled away before they even came together.	277.5491842652464
Phil Rossoff and two other Riverside players did not go out on the field when the fighting started.	640.854782242584
After the game, Phil was taking off his sweatshirt in the dressing room when Mike Deegan came in.	321.1308607505315
"It's a helluva thing", Mike said, looking at Phil, "when a guy's own team-mate won't come out and help him in a fight".	439.7494419295615
Phil sighed and pulled the wet sweatshirt over his head.	764.7649915823845
Frankie Ricco sat down on the bench near Phil.	2462.4674498956915
The other players were undressing quietly.	66.73704434014265
Eddie Lee had not come in yet.	80.04731807928962
Mike went over to Phil and stood over him.	107.58080328563467
"Why the hell didn't you come out when you saw them gang up on me"?	282.23209891923455
"I didn't think it was necessary".	387.2043419452582
"Well!	3.743683010093217
Now that's just fine!	53.33881497026641
You didn't think it was necessary".	409.2293657774369
Mike placed both his hands on his hips.	151.8079599912436
He pushed his jaw forward.	23.642816631598986
"Listen, wise guy, if you think I'm gonna do all the fighting for this ball club you're crazy".	675.8601764797991
Mike had a good two inches over Phil and Phil had to look up into Mike's face.	807.3442958461461
"I didn't ask you to fight for the ball club", Phil said slowly.	141.67049858620229
"Nobody else did, either".	29.398361714262467
"You trying to say I started the fight"?	75.08385847511921
"I'm not trying to say anything".	63.2355917523606
Phil turned away and opened his locker, and then he heard Mike Deegan say "You're yellow, Rossoff"!	800.9733403474274
and Phil banged his locker door shut and spun around.	419.5075572581838
But before anything could happen Frankie Ricco was between them and Eddie Lee had come into the dressing room.	977.4201618542406
"Phil, come into my office", Eddie said.	111.38777394765741
Phil followed Eddie into the office and shut the door.	459.91166562187874
He sat down before Eddie's desk.	75.70579987729725
"I'm doing you a favor", Eddie said quickly.	67.951441315496
"You get your unconditional release as of today".	77.35736349210067
Phil's eyes widened just a trifle.	196.4392057893044
"The best thing for you to do", Eddie said, "is go home.	1136.408167958139
You don't belong in professional baseball".	44.3314449345082
Phil had to clear his throat.	55.08334423035063
"Is this because of what happened out there"?	50.122340696793614
"No", Eddie said.	20.051115977153746
"But it does confirm what I've suspected all along".	232.4176481824775
Phil stood up.	32.0773003573453
"Listen!	16.405269599087717
This is the second time h" "Sit down, sit down", Eddie said.	450.9519350550711
"I'm not saying you're yellow.	37.95662157883832
I am saying you're not a professional ballplayer".	52.930034084471124
Eddie Lee leaned forward over the desk.	154.77235810649225
"Now listen to me, Phil.	34.57708797229756
I'm not steering you wrong.	23.66682697571876
You haven't got the heart for baseball".	43.06938615127261
Phil shook his head and Eddie frowned.	731.8486040334387
Suddenly his voice grew hard.	59.35849985117696
"What the hell do you think baseball is?	44.09898486700167
You're not in the big leagues, but if you can't give and take down here what the hell do you think it'll be like up there"?	242.83980976451554
Phil started to say something but Eddie cut him short.	213.04362901877343
"Now don't tell me what a good ball player you are.	129.8354345963694
I know you've got talent.	25.805826924236957
But what you haven't got is the heart to back up that talent with.	87.20946066674624
The heart, Phil.	21.10891615292736
You just haven't got the heart for pro-ball, and that's it".	275.29346820091826
Dazed, Phil said "I don't get it.	98.53920313467788
My batting average h" Eddie stood up abruptly, then sat down just as abruptly.	534.5216081634813
"What difference does your batting average make?	150.60386260693616
Or your fielding average.	48.09504490255046
Or even the way you run bases.	58.21558747742131
I tell you when it's necessary to hurt in order to win- you won't do it.	353.1160579027251
That's what I mean by no heart for the game.	55.30694079808253
Baseball's no cinch.	73.46258625650705
Deegan had no business ramming into that kid out there.	223.396489631498
He did it because he knows for each guy he puts out of commission that's one less who might take his job away later on.	417.5969660626222
What the hell do you think baseball is?	44.09898486700167
A sport?	15.924102999250128
It's a way of life, goddamit!	34.56409721772156
And you've got to be ready to cut to ribbons anybody who want to take your way of life away from you"!	1424.0105197200219
He's wrong!	28.7110176525926
Phil thought.	19.12756993329941
It's only his opinion.	22.77333228606244
There were other clubs in this league.	36.254820742134434
He stood up slowly.	9.00515427138368
He was a little pale and shaky.	95.63713480583051
His lips felt glued together.	68.52770292486235
"I think you're wrong, Eddie", he said finally.	720.8868589946226
Eddie nodded.	27.281667182720426
"Okay.	7.786428610600051
You'll get your pay in the morning".	61.74932552044814
Phil turned and left the room, hearing Eddie say "Someday you'll see I was right".	259.99348583539495
Phil shut the door behind him.	105.87325254353357
Outside in the dressing room, Frankie Ricco sat on the bench dressed in his street clothes.	666.7058110386479
"What happened"?	6.126574568554337
Frankie asked.	16.133373164917824
Phil said "I got my release".	89.58799850606638
"You crazy"?	19.630437232526504
Phil shrugged.	30.94847813739824
"What for"?	6.740474763003205
Phil sighed.	28.654413291193087
Frankie shook his head.	27.79038456294849
"I don't get it".	9.77924533842394
"I don't know", Phil said.	16.114937028846963
They were silent for a few moments.	21.6355093029338
Then Frankie said "What are you gonna do"?	151.05845357725414
Phil started to take his clothes off and Frankie sat down on the bench again.	1398.3154980993065
Phil took off one shoe and stared at it.	454.6793845637678
"Don't take it like this", Frankie said.	63.35790468980913
"Hell, plenty of guys get let out and come back later.	186.78966393954312
The leagues are full of guys like that".	51.96291623410316
Phil was very quiet.	33.23531873149851
"What are you gonna do, Phil"?	86.26039691304231
Phil did not answer.	25.452604648903797
"Why not try another club"?	51.10555389979371
Phil looked up.	30.386988570415678
What the hell right did Eddie have saying a thing like that?	93.84684565377202
"Springfield's in tomorrow", Frankie said.	80.67287322450206
"Talk to Whitey Jackson".	49.81660904022265
He just didn't know what he was talking about, saying a thing like that.	826.1502040187253
"Will you do it, Phil"?	43.256428696164555
"Do what"?	10.309839147511946
"Ask Whitey for a job".	229.21631037844253
Phil nodded.	27.752968242283238
"Sure", he said.	9.554098136502404
"Springfield come in tomorrow"?	71.91178286885689
Frankie nodded.	23.18334423141542
"I'll speak to Whitey".	28.316120923655706
"Atta boy".	23.165853589550483
"I'll talk to him, all right".	74.22200824000812
"Don't worry", Frankie said.	137.63131220648665
"You'll get a job there.	149.76727911645796
He needs outfielders bad".	37.348944201817204
"I'm not worried about it", Phil said.	38.47284269463227
"That's the way to talk.	61.64185927432932
What else did Eddie have to say"?	70.5003891197811
"Nothing", Phil said.	25.668301210331336
Richard's next interest seemed the product of his insularity.	131.4227432167567
His broad reading took him into certain by-ways of religion and the subject of religion began to fascinate him.	322.195255006497
When he was twelve he took to reading St Augustine and Aquinas, then Lao-tse, Confucius, Mencius, Suzuki, Hindu tomes by endless Krishnaists and numerous socio-archaeological papers.	1164.9357306258466
For his birthday, because Richard had seen them in a store and asked for them, his mother bought him the Zend-Avesta and a little image of the Indian god, Acala.	602.7334703134499
And one day, on her own, his mother came home with a present entitled The Book of the Dead, which she suspected Richard would enjoy.	780.7539118628955
He was enormously happy with her gift and smiled, then went to his room to read.	755.0401763180373
At dinner one night, when he was fourteen, Richard announced, "There is only one god".	448.5458188154723
"Did you think there were two"?	43.986528670522496
grinned his father.	21.274218308040112
"You don't understand", Richard said gloomily.	61.80058087276746
Through quiet laughter his mother said, "Don't speak to your father like that, Richard".	270.1417484819654
Richard seldom spoke anyhow and he didn't speak to his parents about religion again.	306.4657417751096
His interest in the formal study of religion waned when he was sixteen and he substituted for it an interest in Asian affairs.	409.252941187336
Although he still didn't speak to anyone, he grew fond of saying, "The future lies in Asia", when the opportunity arose, and when he graduated from high school his parents sent him to New York to give him a foundation, they said, for his life in Asian studies.	1137.491718786773
Richard was a solitary student in New York and acquired, in his remoteness, a thorough if bookish knowledge of Asian lore, literature, life, politics and history.	402.8622512566457
He was awarded a fellowship to continue his studies in Tokyo and he packed up his clothes, the biwa upon which he had been practicing and his image of Acala, and left to spend a week at home before leaving the country.	579.0839610299503
The week at home was not comfortable.	41.88648154068665
His mother, who had seen little of him for four years, appeared worried about his sailing off by himself for an Orient which, she herself having slight knowledge of it, had to be distrusted.	424.8435930741286
She seemed to work to grow close to her son in the few days he spent at home, talking to him about some of the more pleasant moments of his childhood and then trying to talk to him about those things in which he alone was interested.	556.0179029952881
"Do you still have The Book of the Dead"?	71.1731676622122
she asked him and, laughing, she added, "I was nervous about buying a book with a title like that, but I knew you'd like it".	980.9680233059493
"Yes", he lied to shorten the conversation, "I still have it".	74.31930328431329
He was no longer able to relax in the presence of his parents and found it difficult to keep up a conversation with his mother or father, no matter the subject.	363.5771684158652
As for The Book of the Dead, it along with his other books on religion had been incarcerated in a furnace in the basement of the building in which he had lived in New York.	1606.2913960749383
He had dusted each of the books carefully and carried them all to the basement and, trembling at having to open the big furnace, given them up to the flames.	350.7186799826728
Then he sped from the dark basement and returned to his room and cried.	319.0365525384833
Richard left America with his clothes, his biwa and his image of Acala and, on the freighter which took him to Japan, he plucked at the biwa, trying to make the sounds he wrought resemble an ancient Japanese tune he had once heard.	1407.2767057092663
During his second week at sea he brought the curious melody out of the instrument and suddenly wanted to force the biwa to remain at just that moment in its history when it had given him pleasure.	549.6501498603176
He stole from his cabin late that night and crept out into a gusty North Pacific wind and dropped the biwa into the water.	927.3579654746512
It was so dark that he didn't see it hit the water and the noisy rush of the ocean kept him from hearing it.	310.2926823250968
It was as though the biwa had been eaten up by the wind.	169.5224214604104
In Tokyo Richard took up a life similar to that which he had lived in New York, except that he had replaced his biwa with a friend.	688.4597478609909
An American student named Charlotte Adams had refused to take notice of his evident aversion to people and had at last succeeded in getting him to talk to her.	467.4480925840359
He had nothing much to say to her but that he said anything seemed to please her and he accompanied her on some of her unusually searching tours of Tokyo.	506.32999282399146
In Charlotte, Richard saw a frankness and a zest for doing things which, after a fashion, he envied.	418.10520288709927
In time, he grew to depend upon her occasional company and she at length was able to encourage him to participate in more social activity.	300.8620473864597
She convinced him that he ought to be a member of some of the small tea-drinking parties she held at her rooms and in the end he complied with her wishes, although it was only rarely that he added anything to the random conversations.	438.6558506192447
At one such gathering Charlotte announced, "I was at Ryusenji today.	396.9995916052999
Have you ever been to Ryusenji"?	53.53413196850692
No one had.	6.824283451238048
"Well, it's at Fudomae and there was a tan young man, quite naked, taking a shower in the pool.	195.32357101456373
I was thoroughly startled".	33.37121852796987
Richard thought it a more promising remark than any made during the last conversation, but Charlotte's manner during the gatherings was more flippant and superficial than when she was alone with him and he was sure her remark would lead to nothing much better than the pointless words which had preceded it.	3840.6418045618975
Three of the four persons present, all foreign students in Tokyo, had been playing a game of judging popular Japanese foods by the In and Out system, an equation in which Zen philosophy was used as the modifier.	822.9798762157944
Soba, udon and tea were In because they could be taken noisily.	649.6773778748649
Sushi was Out because it was pretentious.	138.82498082552257
Sashimi was In, Samuel Burns had suggested, because it was too far Out to stay Out, even if it was a little pretentious.	1386.342688426518
Richard had kept his eyes down throughout the game, the very sound of the chatter nearly painful to his ears.	444.5897238596486
"He wasn't the least bit disturbed by my watching him", said Charlotte.	180.33804914688747
"Did you watch him"?	24.272453167509564
asked a red-haired girl named Ceecee Witter.	318.39205399773306
"I shouldn't have been able to do that".	67.92817792721151
"Well I was able to do it", Charlotte said with no sign of irritation.	224.65574077592763
"For a minute, anyhow.	25.606305918124324
I'm surprised no one has been there.	21.934293686951605
I've been there a number of times.	8.586974375202724
Sam, I thought you knew everything about Tokyo.	118.89670145663095
You've never been to Ryusenji"?	90.35596178230982
"I've heard about it", Samuel Burns said.	43.216730771034406
"There's a little place there called Lovers Mound dedicated to Gompachi and Komurasaki".	415.5385540805304
"Yes, a little parkish place", Charlotte said, and concluded, "Anyhow, it's all very nice.	417.1991092849796
And the man who brought sweet potatoes into Kanto is buried there, next to a beautiful seated statue of Fudo.	469.89159360684414
Oh, that's what I meant to tell you.	68.00686843493641
This is the interesting part, Richard", she had a bothersome habit of trying to pull him into the talking.	162.37745831698666
"There was that fellow out there in the bitter cold"- "My God, it was cold today", said Samuel Burns.	243.63978628319524
"Twenty-two or twenty-three".	79.64340985167779
"And the water would be still colder", Ceecee seemed to shiver at the thought of it.	679.3745355495329
"And your golden god", said Samuel Burns, "probably went right home and poured himself into a boiling bath.	577.9101840510042
It would kill one of us".	16.848708399039786
"But the point is", Charlotte said, "there he was, freezing, naked in a little stream of water at Ryusenji, all in worship of Fudo, the god of fire".	387.13828622022214
Richard's dark eyes came up and seemed for the tiniest moment to reflect sharp light.	351.74180619348175
It was true; Fudo, the god of wisdom, was also thought of as the Japanese version of Acala.	156.94608024448047
The conversation went on but Richard stopped listening.	87.85297768651576
He found himself trying to remember something, but he couldn't decide even the nature of what it was he worked to recall.	184.76252210679573
He had almost given up when he realized that the dropping of his biwa into the icy jowls of the black Pacific was the memory for which he had been searching.	296.9967855983598
Perhaps he sensed some connection between the incident on the freighter and the ascetic at Ryusenji, he was unable to put it together.	401.12004395945837
That night, after leaving Charlotte's apartment, Richard walked about for a time before returning to his room.	496.9641424965417
When he at last did go to his room, he couldn't sleep and instead paced up and down before his little image of Acala, thinking first of Charlotte's tale of the man at Ryusenji, then of his biwa and the invisible Pacific waters.	2168.250299350634
And the next morning, not sure of why he went, he took the train to Fudomae and walked to Ryusenji.	1408.868362140821
He was surprised by the sharp sensation he experienced as he approached the pool which Charlotte had mentioned.	239.33328312381173
He went through a gate to stand at the edge of the water and gazed at the two thin falls which dropped from large spigots high at the back of the pool.	923.4788945828406
On the hillside above was caged what might have been an incarnation of Fudo, or perhaps a demon.	471.6787910969114
The strange creature, housed in wire, made him shudder.	153.47808923640224
The sensation he so overwhelmingly realized was one which told him he had been there before but he knew he had not, and could not recall any place he had visited to be likened to the limpid green water or the little fountain-falls or the green demon imprisoned beyond his reach.	4789.81260031897
He left the pool and climbed the steep stone stairs to the temple, and the sense of familiarity with the place would not leave him.	271.24317529778506
Into a little well before the temple he dropped a hundred-yen coin and then he had an urge to sound the bell before the temple, to take hold of the rope and crash it against the circle of bronze; but the spirit he wished to call out would not, he knew, come in the person of the temple priest.	1346.6432728846012
Instead, he walked around the temple and mounted still another flight of stairs and stood before the seated Fudo at their head.	513.0011467972004
The black Fudo seemed to stare rigidly back at him and Richard's eyes were caught by the Fudo's in fascination, and then Richard was shocked as, all at once, flames shot out from the sharp features of Fudo's face and there was a terrible metallic scraping sound, as if the large statue were about to burst from some pressure within it.	854.0527544964109
Then the flames were gone, the stillness fell upon the severe black face and Richard began to tremble violently.	381.6548978590292
Suddenly he emptied his pockets of all his coins and dropped them into the box before the seated Fudo and hurried back down both stairways and away from the temple, never looking back.	1077.7745441265583
He walked all the miles back to his room.	44.22198211865424
He seemed to have picked up a virus that day, because the next morning he had a small cough and felt a bit hot.	611.0204490003104
He stayed home, reading and refusing to think about his frightening experience at Ryusenji.	612.1097047027304
But the process of refusing to think about it was an active reminder in itself and he couldn't rid himself of a consciousness of it throughout the day.	195.18178535169667
The cold lingered, making sleep difficult that night, and he remained in bed still the next morning, now unable to keep from thinking about the inexplicable sight of burning metal, the wretched sound, the unbearable feeling of having been to a remote Tokyo temple at some earlier time in his life.	941.700908237628
All of the elements of the experience were impossible and yet the reality of them was heavy upon him and he resolved never again to visit the temple at Fudomae.	949.017482594592
I was thinking of the heat and of water that morning when I was plowing the stubble field far across the hill from the farm buildings.	776.4495972397915
It had grown hot early that day, and I hoped that the boy, my brother's son, would soon come across the broad black area of plowed ground, carrying the jar of cool water.	557.7555298722336
The boy usually was sent out at about that time with the water, and he always dragged an old snow-fence lath or a stick along, to play with.	1233.6290158422821
He pretended that the lath was a tractor and he would drag it through the dirt and make buzzing, tractor sounds with his lips.	398.23465766139975
I almost ran over the snake before I could stop the tractor in time.	144.21008844535726
I had turned at the corner of the field and I had to look back to raise the plow and then to drop it again into the earth, and I was thinking of the boy and the water anyway, and when I looked again down the furrow, the snake was there.	3845.446402509914
It lay half in the furrow and half out, and the front wheels had rolled nearly up to it when I put in the clutch.	464.4362301790889
The tractor was heavily loaded with the weight of the plow turning the earth, and the tractor stopped instantly.	1188.1485644605475
The snake slid slowly and with great care from the new ridge the plow had made, into the furrow and did not go any further.	520.331930358282
I had never liked snakes much, I still had that kind of quick panic that I'd had as a child whenever I saw one, but this snake was clean and bright and very beautiful.	1727.8602986987614
He was multi-colored and graceful and he lay in the furrow and moved his arched and tapered head only so slightly.	326.94503145208074
Go out of the furrow, snake, I said, but it did not move at all.	2029.6760902448455
I pulled the throttle of the tractor in and out, hoping to frighten him with the noise, but the snake only flicked its black, forked tongue and faced the huge tractor wheel, without fright or concern.	1122.173789056745
I let the engine idle then, and I got down and went around the wheel and stood beside it.	403.0643558556783
My movement did frighten the snake and it raised its head and trailed delicately a couple of feet and stopped again, and its tongue was working very rapidly.	874.0547368550431
I followed it, looking at the brilliant colors on its tubular back, the colors clear and sharp and perfect, in orange and green and brown diamonds the size of a baby's fist down its back, and the diamonds were set one within the other and interlaced with glistening jet-black.	1077.9995786960762
The colors were astonishing, clear and bright, and it was as if the body held a fire of its own, and the colors came through that transparent flesh and skin, vivid and alive and warm.	2882.87522741515
The eyes were clear and black and the slender body was arched slightly.	144.3069413452596
His flat and gracefully tapered head lifted as I looked at him and the black tongue slipped in and out of that solemn mouth.	2197.375269522677
You beauty, I said, I couldn't kill you.	115.09099308016467
You are much too beautiful.	25.579633853780674
I had killed snakes before, when I was younger, but there had been no animal like this one, and I knew it was unthinkable that an animal such as that should die.	969.2611221732831
I picked him up, and the length of him arched very carefully and gracefully and only a little wildly, and I could feel the coolness of that radiant, fire-colored body, like splendid ice, and I knew that he had eaten only recently because there were two whole and solid little lumps in the forepart of him, like fieldmice swallowed whole might make.	3176.3002615572213
The body caressed through my hands like cool satin, and my hands, usually tanned and dark, were pale beside it, and I asked it where the fire colors could come from the coolness of that body.	600.7511260497291
I lowered him so he would not fall and his body slid out onto the cool, newly-plowed earth, from between my pale hands.	482.06479938267285
The snake worked away very slowly and delicately and with a gorgeous kind of dignity and beauty, and he carried his head a little above the rolled clods.	442.2996915245767
The sharp, burning colors of his body stood brilliant and plain against the black soil, like a target.	219.72211312911688
I felt good and satisfied, looking at the snake.	67.16915569983273
It shone in its bright diamond color against the sun-burned stubble and the crumbled black clods of soil and against the paleness of myself.	611.7039585897405
The color and beauty of it were strange and wonderful and somehow alien, too, in that dry and dusty and uncolored field.	959.678351977936
I got on the tractor again and I had to watch the plow closely because the field was drawn across the long hillside and even in that good soil there was a danger of rocks.	2890.383771270139
I had my back to the corner of the triangular field that pointed towards the house.	188.06089908076214
The earth was a little heavy and I had to stop once and clean the plowshares because they were not scouring properly, and I did not look back towards the place until I had turned the corner and was plowing across the upper line of the large field, a long way from where I had stopped because of the snake.	1465.4204202579135
I saw it all at a glance.	36.42682090081893
The boy was there at the lower corner of the field, and he was in the plowed earth, stamping with ferocity and a kind of frenzied impatience.	1638.9221958242842
Even at that distance, with no sound but the sound of the tractor, I could tell the fierce mark of brutality on the boy.	946.3987828196147
I could see the hunched-up shoulders, the savage determination, the dance of his feet as he ground the snake with his heels, and the pirouette of his arms as he whipped at it with the stick.	672.9095903650922
Stop it, I shouted, but the lumbering and mighty tractor roared on, above anything I could say.	315.74340654438504
I stopped the tractor and I shouted down to the boy, and I knew he could hear me, for the morning was clear and still, but he did not even hesitate in that brutal, murdering dance.	441.72042912374735
It was no use.	7.110546397356791
I felt myself tremble, thinking of the diamond light of that beauty I had held a few moments before, and I wanted to run down there and halt, if I could, that frenetic pirouette, catch the boy in the moment of his savagery, and save a glimmer, a remnant, of that which I remembered, but I knew it was already too late.	1167.0768212019163
I drove the tractor on, not looking down there; I was afraid to look for fear the evil might still be going on.	211.77600206722047
My head began to ache, and the fumes of the tractor began to bother my eyes, and I hated the job suddenly, and I thought, there are only moments when one sees beautiful things, and these are soon crushed, or they vanish.	756.9822172131218
I felt the anger mount within me.	272.3949709127007
The boy waited at the corner, with the jar of water held up to me in his hands, and the water had grown bubbly in the heat of the morning.	1826.1701205527793
I knew the boy well.	90.84887680849576
He was eleven and we had done many things together.	68.38292654851023
He was a beautiful boy, really, with finely-spun blonde hair and a smooth and still effeminate face, and his eyelashes were long and dark and brushlike, and his eyes were blue.	682.1672721667136
He waited there and he smiled as the tractor came up, as he would smile on any other day.	615.5894531522654
He was my nephew, my brother's son, handsome and warm and newly-scrubbed, with happiness upon his face and his face resembled my brother's and mine as well.	542.4131138247609
I saw then, too, the stake driven straight and hard into the plowed soil, through something there where I had been not long before.	466.8201414050864
I stopped the tractor and climbed down and the boy came eagerly up to me.	684.7028550426108
"Can I ride around with you"?	52.337198024868286
he asked, as he often did, and I had as often let him be on the tractor beside me.	1975.663126407328
I looked closely at his eyes, and he was already innocent; the killing was already forgotten in that clear mind of his.	299.6630232347904
"No, you cannot", I said, pushing aside the water jar he offered to me.	126.40806065391112
I pointed to the splintered, upright stake.	94.92065554265962
"Did you do that"?	14.643994671754326
I asked.	2.845731170704088
"Yes", he said, eagerly, beginning a kind of dance of excitement.	162.61647633546045
"I killed a snake; it was a big one".	1270.4676289571444
He tried to take my hand to show me.	128.01353493164112
"Why did you kill it"?	28.8801343288348
"Snakes are ugly and bad".	67.4204580150077
"This snake was very beautiful.	37.878321904710795
Didn't you see how beautiful it was"?	89.24048096906279
"Snakes are ugly", he said again.	80.9720268464546
"You saw the colors of it, didn't you?	58.56615481076261
Have you ever seen anything like it around here"?	94.45955572301439
"Snakes are ugly and bad, and it might have bitten somebody, and they would have died".	782.6011741319645
"You know there are no poisonous snakes in this area.	63.14451758801731
This snake could not harm anything".	65.7267208031114
"They eat chickens sometimes", the boy said.	73.03802341451922
"They are ugly and they eat chickens and I hate snakes".	139.4303202028102
"You are talking foolishly", I said.	34.72156834574102
"You killed it because you wanted to kill it, for no other reason".	432.6267291128334
"They're ugly and I hate them", the boy insisted.	157.1674815410091
"Nobody likes snakes".	38.09533985498437
"It was beautiful", I said, half to myself.	34.156438154411326
The boy skipped along beside me, and he was contented with what he had done.	1174.5471014780564
The fire of the colors was gone; there was a contorted ugliness now; the colors of its back were dull and gray-looking, torn and smashed in, and dirty from the boy's shoes.	411.0026941704153
The beautifully-tapered head, so delicate and so cool, had been flattened as if in a vise, and the forked tongue splayed out of the twisted, torn mouth.	514.9550426061771
The snake was hideous, and I remembered, even then, the cool, bright fire of it only a little while before, and I thought perhaps the boy had always seen it dead and hideous like that, and had not even stopped to see the beauty of it in its life.	1097.1380476558957
I wrenched the stake out, that the boy had driven through it in the thickest part of its body, between the colored diamond crystals.	2523.067688774305
I touched it and the coolness, the ice-feeling, was gone, and even then it moved a little, perhaps a tiny spasm of the dead muscles, and I hoped that it was truly dead, so that I would not have to kill it.	1160.8541240208158
And then it moved a little more, and I knew the snake was dying, and I would have to kill it there.	306.1641602673296
The boy stood off a few feet and he had the stake again and he was racing innocently in circles, making the buzzing tractor sound with his lips.	702.338069657597
I'm sorry, I thought to the snake, for you were beautiful.	40.09516734795514
I took the broken length of it around the tractor and I took one of the wrenches from the tool-kit and I struck its head, not looking at it, to kill it at last, for it could never live.	732.8717708880336
The boy came around behind me, dragging the stake.	105.51630117808428
"It's a big snake, isn't it"?	40.555860217634084
he said.	39.76416012412371
"I'm going to tell everybody how big a snake I killed".	115.58194811135681
"Don't you see what you have done"?	127.20282819289609
I said.	42.92455568231413
"Don't you see the difference now"?	15.281727009387959
"It's an ugly, terrible snake", he said.	56.91163271616303
He came up and was going to push at it with his heavy shoes.	254.4342607663596
I could see the happiness in the boy's eyes, the gleeful brutality.	243.66777041050068
"Don't", I said.	9.199062886282695
I could have slapped the boy.	29.142846195409128
He looked up at me, puzzled, and he swayed his head from side to side.	128.33906124305003
I thought, you little brute, you nasty, selfish, little beast, with brutality already developed within that brain and in those eyes.	627.540303694683
I wanted to slap his face, to wipe forever the insolence and brutal glee from his mouth, and I decided then, very suddenly, what I would do.	871.3091848873964
Cady didn't come unglued easily, but this had not been a day of glad tidings.	1884.547180433747
Tax worries, production worries, personnel worries, and the letter from Hanford College, his own alma mater, a real snapper.	699.4140884122666
Hanford realized he had enrolled his son four years ago.	700.0244604334973
Yes, the boy's credentials were in order- scholastic transcript, character references, picture, health record, successful college boards.	389.0112919338707
But due to the many applicants on file, would he co-operate and write a personal letter giving them his son's motivation, interests and his qualifications for leadership?	790.858895240552
Cady Partlow lit his pipe with no comfort.	310.13530208524986
This was it.	5.989281616185151
This was the letter which would or would not enroll his son, David, in Hanford.	142.32948884276854
His son who had never held an office in any organization in the eighteen years of his life.	475.4658068368449
His son who did not know whether he wanted to be doctor, lawyer, merchant or chief.	230.47611769748383
He wondered if he had played it wrong.	34.578796890274184
Maybe he should have kept in touch.	41.96743064531013
Gone back for reunions.	63.94274199358857
But he had been busy building a business, being a big man in his own town just as he had been a big man at Hanford, Class of 1935.	474.0827110702373
Besides, Cady Partlow knew he wasn't the old-grad-type.	245.29046218122707
It wouldn't help anyway.	38.856872719907685
Look at Pete Alcorn, who hadn't missed a Hanford ball game in fifteen years.	349.1971618276061
Pete's son was rejected.	48.82345825170677
Hanford College, Little Ivy League, had no room for football players with low grades.	472.3287189696859
Cady looked at his own son's scholastic record with pride.	687.7850518708866
Good solid B average with a sprinkling of A's in math and science.	216.73506380560153
Imagine his son being that good in science!	115.8970702159796
Mr Partlow could still feel a cold sweat on his slightly gray temples as he remembered what a near thing chemistry had been for him at Hanford.	1352.7941453164651
But then, he hadn't studied very hard.	48.99372759136654
Getting elected president of the student body took a lot of time and politicking.	558.6676861517562
He put down his pipe and started to type.	70.3304674858313
"In response to your letter, I can in good conscience recommend my son, David, in the field of leadership".	113.09640834530259
He stopped and looked at the picture of his son, the picture on his desk which had changed with the years from a laughing baby to a candidate for Hanford College.	709.8765616382009
He didn't have to be told his son looked like him.	147.5014617305745
David had the same gray eyes, high cheekbones, dark hair and a certain rugged ugliness.	387.86607564273453
Height, 6'.	188.64765721827123
Weight, 160.	41.76466173355061
Health, excellent.	20.367280973065352
He turned back to the typewriter with a little more confidence.	150.9227965192961
"His interests range from astronomy and geology to electronics, tennis and swimming.	192.52426194439462
His chief motivation for enrolling at Hanford is the desire to"- Mr Partlow banged his fist on the keyboard, ruining the letter.	530.347033255984
He paced to the window and looked at the city he had helped to build.	543.3409354400472
How do you tell a college president that your son doesn't know what he wants to do?	4413.974727227834
That you have refused to drive him into the family business or push him into a profession so you can say at the club, "Of course David has known since he was twelve he wanted to be an engineer"- or a lawyer, or an editor?	959.210959954042
How do you tell a college like Hanford that your son has a vast potential, that he will find himself?	1405.058906962902
Just give him time, give him a chance.	56.23092973874183
Cady snapped the Venetian blind shut and slammed himself down before the typewriter, rolled in a fresh sheet, and gave his letter the same savage attention he bestowed on a salesman who needed to have the bucket taken off his thick head.	1426.7024565520983
What a production to make of a letter commending your own son!	154.3502163386617
His eyebrow went up in amusement at his soul-searching panic.	258.04737320102413
He told Hanford his son wanted to go into the field of electronics.	5541.327332621147
He told Hanford his son had participated in numerous high-school activities.	198.8731598552627
He belonged to a social club, a civic group, little theater, swimming team, and had been president of the student forum as well as treasurer of the science club.	1280.303880160724
He finished with a flurry of good wishes to Hanford College and signed the letter.	164.68378153458974
There, that did it.	12.592853189885362
Then he met the grave eyes of his wife, Anne, from the photograph next to David's.	309.02204128139255
He shoved the unsealed letter into his coat pocket.	182.05386881307263
Better show it to Anne and see if he had omitted anything.	153.42779860340283
After all, his wife had written most of his letters for him in those first lean days of Partlow Products.	1197.2129260335748
Anne had a way with words.	40.95154396407354
Half of it was natural, half was Smith College.	173.38519491188424
Yet the whole of Anne was something she had never learned in any college.	131.03713529738766
A woman had it or she didn't.	35.82223828702548
Anne had it.	12.99698256746731
She said what she meant and let it be.	169.54249314284064
She never got on his back.	30.258258071383086
He could take the advice or leave it.	105.66508227573978
He whistled as he locked the office and grinned as he got on the elevator.	294.08364039233965
"You look like you just heard a real gasser, Mr Partlow".	251.38770054345756
Cady looked at Tom, who had taken him up and down for fifteen years.	111.07456900760513
"I was just thinking how things have changed.	174.10306283925692
When I went to college they begged you to come.	62.937126756244844
Be our guest!	46.88926214271392
It's our pleasure!	39.64582298314517
Now you have to be well rounded, firm in motivation and pre-packed with knowledge"!	362.3312794985185
Tom slid open the door to the lobby.	58.555445699438195
"That's a fact, Mr Partlow.	47.14960323615042
My John applied to six colleges before he got in".	107.50381674362208
"Going to State"?	25.119320600690756
"No.	3.389188185682365
He's president of the rocket club here, you know.	250.73864174966874
Always messing around with science stuff.	145.2964493362853
Real bright along those lines, you might say.	138.66801043573227
He got a science scholarship to Yale".	48.202788957721054
"Oh", said Mr Partlow, "that's fine, Tom.	119.66282377387796
Just fine".	11.16085013156299
As he drove home through the thinning traffic, Cady felt the unease growing.	288.07389824671793
He hadn't told anyone, but he, too, had applied to five colleges for David.	110.7289591854157
They had all turned down his son.	33.75067754365764
Weakness in leadership.	28.925171208014785
So sorry.	12.912484409961838
Limited interests.	18.05265439399826
So sorry.	12.912484409961838
No clear motivation.	24.885215359257554
So sorry.	12.912484409961838
He suddenly realized when he walked into his own pretty darned expensive house that he needed the Martini Anne had waiting for him.	858.8897257691103
But tonight his drink tasted like branch water and even his favorite meal of steak and tossed salad gave no surcease from the growing weight of the letter in his pocket.	1846.4468061592522
Nor did looking at Anne ease the tension as it usually did.	133.94981043260074
He liked looking at Anne.	33.93433249270358
Most people did.	10.260335445717677
He liked her blond hair and the sprinkle of freckles across her nose.	195.5620987603511
From those navy-blue eyes she saw things as clearly and honestly as David did.	333.12073654162356
She always could sense the shag end of a woolly day.	134.60275709551578
"Board meeting tonight, Cady"?	150.3423045304817
"No, I begged off.	21.0613923192287
Work to do".	10.477255432783288
"Can I have the car, dad"?	75.81026162639301
"Why not let him take it, Cady?	85.41520746945974
I know it is midweek, but it's only eight days before commencement.	1092.7149540301277
Let's forget the rules".	26.158615459494843
Cady, deep in thought, neither heard nor answered.	166.5634545522398
David grinned.	23.631345319655935
Carefully he put down his steak knife and said loudly, "Mr Chairman"!	421.8653521272368
Cady Partlow's head came up like that of the proverbial fire horse.	270.4668140270763
"I'm sorry, Dave.	10.546807391990082
The car?	7.983186608515147
Of course you can have it".	14.732573880889502
Dave ate two pieces of pie as he did everything else, slowly, methodically and with interest.	304.2945546980878
"Hear anything from Hanford yet, dad"?	339.7614982593272
Cady begged the question.	44.246681508671735
"Don't worry about it, Dave.	20.314502288029917
Your acceptance will come through".	44.23475621830206
Dave shrugged on his sports coat and picked up the car keys.	298.92088622527694
"Don't be too sure, dad.	55.13184284411139
Charles Burke got turned down by Dartmouth and he is a straight-A student".	803.3385634718157
Anne said it wasn't surprising because Charles was antisocial, a lone wolf, and completely one-sided.	503.5960384119534
"I can hardly say the same about you, Dave"!	66.0499890950816
Dave kissed her lightly.	78.70750051581173
"Girls, my dear parent, are here to stay!	464.95404886050795
Get my old man to bed early.	75.09430417793678
He looks a little bit frayed".	67.1077551587935
Anne waited until the door had slammed and picked up the coffeepot.	257.09917224081
"Let's go into the library.	17.472450980431432
You do seem somewhat tattered".	64.79085675195152
Cady trailed her with the coffee cups and settled into his favorite chair in the comfortable book-lined room.	538.3696332381716
"I didn't know I looked so dilapidated"!	354.07655173856136
"Wrong word, darling.	69.23845340803516
Your fur has been rubbed the wrong way and you show it.	149.82428042542506
Need any help"?	29.267278254413977
"In a way, yes.	8.646674065503765
Hanford College hasn't decided on Dave's application yet.	351.45631005527815
They want a letter from me on his motives, interests and leadership.	102.0346715424664
Here's what I wrote".	30.167031576866606
Cady handed her the letter, drank his coffee and waited with what he suddenly realized was belligerence.	537.0349702143279
Already he could feel Anne's questioning eyes.	140.7268404333703
"I know you wrote this in a hurry, but, Cady, Dave was only acting president of the student forum for a few days.	240.17143696695166
That was when half the school was down with flu".	56.22620895191183
"But he was president".	8.278224325955698
"And he wasn't really elected treasurer of the science club.	274.72653964573965
He just took over the week Bill Daley was in the state basketball play-off".	346.8068515591959
Cady stuck his jaw out.	105.18922192439979
"The fact remains he was treasurer".	32.59130559860998
"And the swimming team.	20.397567464088493
No, Cady, he made second team.	61.93796738546884
Just missed the first".	117.64338915142328
"A team is a team", insisted Cady.	77.9204107099418
"Anything else"?	22.359023658480012
"Yes", she said quietly.	26.765489794257157
"I don't think you've been quite honest, Cady.	1261.8557330106128
It isn't like you.	12.249531114084611
David's interests.	24.41668794941624
Astronomy.	16.05296361890169
He was mad about stars at the age of nine.	53.811869384151265
Geology, You and Dave used his rock collection for the bottom of the fishpond six years ago!	366.48416750022733
Those aren't his interests now".	46.80999383709087
"What do you suggest"?	14.574384793568113
"Just say he likes swimming, tennis, chess and music".	173.99890045867983
"Music!	15.390433896569828
He hasn't been to a symphony concert all season".	74.0662435305736
Anne smiled.	22.161802927088697
"But he plays bass with Chief Crazy Horse and his Five Colts"!	478.67998935217634
"You mean that rock-and-roll combo?	66.9773193505732
Even in that he never solos like Jack on guitar or Rich on sax.	584.6999008316509
He's- he's just there, that's all".	50.30999898151828
"Yes, he's just there.	25.93318563004938
He keeps the beat going.	34.99563062377394
He likes to play bass because he doesn't have to solo.	147.9051482347533
He doesn't like to rise and shine.	54.33472007070173
Don't worry, Cady, he'll be back in the Beethoven fold by next year".	795.200479736357
Cady appeared slightly mollified.	154.5605021656012
"All right.	3.3441791718922933
But I refuse to be brutally honest and mention Chief Crazy Horse and his Five Colts".	914.4202374833548
Anne laughed and Cady felt the tension loosen its grip on the back of his neck.	504.17077454638087
"Maybe I am padding it a bit, Anne", he said.	304.012783900371
"But you know how hard it is to get a boy into a good college.	798.6352297621548
He has to have leadership as well as grades".	137.65048789405824
Anne folded the worrisome document.	115.94245567721528
"Did you know he is advertising his ham-radio equipment for sale this weekend?	281.0401453964812
He hasn't used it now for several years.	34.774300449187876
Can you really say his motivation for college is electronics"?	157.86924479886088
Cady felt the jolt as though he had stepped off the curb on his heel.	596.7528262360476
"And what would you say he wants to do?	697.3123531775715
Just what"?	6.867263501670969
"It's Dave who is applying to Hanford College.	133.23299979943718
Why don't you ask him"?	19.1924574548249
For once Cady Partlow wished Anne would yell at him so he could yell back.	545.0044221989052
"I have talked to him, but you know I've never tried to push him into any profession.	1642.066459712945
I won't be guilty of trying to run his life".	59.65369608051675
Anne picked up the towel she was hemming for the hospital guild.	313.3663070764505
"Just because your father tried to make a banker out of you, you've leaned over backward to keep your hands off.	823.7834734009017
But subconsciously you've wanted him to conform to your mold.	311.55694234762
You want him to be a leader of men, like you".	136.34504690111007
Cady put the well-worn chip back on his shoulder.	179.3994271458917
"Dave has qualities of leadership.	40.614310880706846
He just hasn't developed them yet.	52.37719068775858
Give him time".	17.71133443634611
He never will, Cady.	29.33856720193649
Not the kind of leadership you mean, working with lots of people.	94.67520348897622
All your wishful thinking won't change that.	101.57452170493445
Remember what you used to say in the Army?	472.4344076386956
You can't run a war with ninety-nine generals and one private"!	192.55042037181906
Cady walked the block to the mailbox, almost ashamed of himself for arguing with Anne.	297.04865774244826
Martin felt it was incredible that the situation had come to exist at all.	118.26073491047099
And once begun, had grown to such monstrous proportions.	107.37107423549465
The pair of white cotton shorts ruled his life.	111.31397505716288
Lying awake at night, he could see them, laid out on the floor of his mind.	178.84295835626926
When he rose in the morning, the image was still there.	286.8491652896112
He had always been a messy and negligent man.	670.9050719032124
In his bachelor days, his bedroom had been strewn with clothes which his mother, or later the hotel maid, generally saw fit to put in order.	645.9486858825564
No doubt Dolores resented following in their footsteps.	118.70513547709318
But it was fun those first days, kidding about the trail of garments he left littered across the rug.	473.2221934348627
There was an assertive maleness in his grinning refusal to pick them up.	345.0789188974894
Half slyly he enjoyed seeing her stoop to lift the things.	289.80776218474307
He remembered the first time he saw her, standing across the room at a party.	220.56095041487856
The smooth curve of her neck, very white against hair which curled against it like petals.	335.5419966441002
Her hair was the color of those blooms which in seed catalogues are referred to as "black", but since no flower is actually without color contain always a hint of grape or purple or blue- he wanted to draw the broad patina of hair through his fingers, searching it slowly for a trace of veining which might reveal its true shade beneath the darkness.	2101.407430362775
So he sought her out, and spoke to her, and thought of his hand in her hair.	483.9409014869032
Or against her back, pressed on the column of vertebrae, which held her so magnificently straight and unyielding, until the segments of bone made tiny sharp cracking noises, like the snapped stem of a tulip.	785.9323734305207
But, to put it bluntly, nothing snapped.	111.63752708271117
Yet that had not seriously troubled him, not then.	72.75849046381782
They married.	9.210035480833355
More he could take at leisure.	48.74085542869287
All Martin thought he needed was time to what better use could time be put?	219.43250818825737
He saw later that they had made their marriage too quickly.	205.87534487797112
There was too little occasion beforehand for resistance, the brave strong delights of emotional clash and meeting.	324.9193101113167
They had left themselves too much to discover.	179.3729739498742
But, at the start, his new life felt invigorating.	162.56209555492254
Good.	7.682297108484888
It was on the tenth day after the wedding how could it have been so soon?	549.584246970825
that he dropped the shorts on the floor.	56.92713223791999
"Now, I'm not going to pick up those shorts"!	122.05877754792478
Martin gave her a teasing pat.	133.9044415294009
"I think you'll get tired of them there".	58.62540919757422
In the morning the shorts were where he had left them.	353.3129260862381
He smiled to himself, and decided not to mention them till Dolores did.	111.36677224492459
It was almost too easy.	73.39983486857079
For he had just remembered tonight they were having their first guests.	150.33720232935067
The shorts would not be on the floor when he came home that evening.	732.5059611859442
He was wrong.	6.43631557858902
The rest of the bedroom had been groomed to a superhuman neatness, but in the middle of the carpet lay the disheveled shorts.	298.2798939559524
They gave the room a strange note of incongruity, like a mole on a beautiful face.	328.613218391272
He saw that Dolores intended to wait until the last minute, thinking he would get nervous.	326.0563252002205
Quietly he determined to foil her.	80.86037594385049
I can be as stubborn as she can, he thought; my nerves are as strong.	134.9708507923344
She'll rush to the bedroom when the doorbell rings.	235.5589419492243
It rang.	15.076807806293026
Ten minutes early.	25.309408357946182
Martin was standing a few feet from the front door.	1646.2768222208433
He swung around, eyes toward the bedroom, some fifteen feet away.	142.79930465848093
Dolores stood motionless in the doorway.	75.6824629645433
He could not cross the living room, brush past her, and bend down to retrieve the shorts.	171.68751830349876
Martin turned his back.	30.23507777391217
He strode to answer the bell.	39.78016473830477
Bill's hat was deposited in the hall closet.	418.63450879691396
With the most casual and relaxed manner in the world, Dolores led Anthea to the bedroom.	206.9330557143317
Martin strained his ears.	42.88861614547836
At first he could not be sure.	19.938724844499337
Then he caught just enough to know that the shorts were still there.	163.43291201033563
A glissade of giggles slid over their voices.	155.57472225737592
All evening Anthea favored him with odd, coy looks.	255.77499745227558
Clearly she had been instructed "not to say a word".	671.2019606899426
For some reason, this ellipsis in the conversation spread until it swallowed up every other topic.	178.37061007872478
At last there was a void no one could fill.	73.91827569194297
The Brainards went home early.	49.142207509532454
Martin realized, later on, that he should have "had it out" with Dolores that night.	66.81838839689881
As violently as possible.	20.84555589301626
But he was so taken aback, he could not believe any rage of his would make her give in.	172.6551944907219
On the contrary, it would only weaken his position if he fumed, while she stayed calm and adamant.	194.16360478107788
And if he surrendered after raving at her.	50.17972747025636
h He shivered.	22.34525535199797
Suppose he ran up the white flag altogether?	134.5360309103844
At once.	5.190546414119423
He considered the sober possibility.	36.21101258614058
In his head was the echo of those titters with Anthea.	137.32075585458807
There was something about private feminine whisperings which always made him feel scabrous and unclean.	540.8825942698519
He remembered his mother gossiping with her neighborhood women friends, lowering her voice to a penetrating hoarseness which might be trusted to carry to the head of the stairs, where he crouched listening.	710.8185878225563
He could even recall the last time he sat there.	69.5862956583109
She was talking about him that time, because he had done some bad thing, something she disliked, but "Afterwards Martin said he was sorry.	1287.138054679701
He apologized so sweetly, I couldn't keep being annoyed with him".	206.24253159994677
It wasn't even true that he'd said he was sorry that time; he had in fact said simply that he wished the thing hadn't happened, which was as honest as he could put it.	882.5944405888973
But his mother told the story over and over, till her "Martin said he was sorry" was as much a part of her as the shape of her thin, pallid ears.	274.86712720352716
The battle had to be fought.	57.1450654567383
Let the best sex win.	43.27917437938929
But his resolution hardly seemed to help.	42.23486533331181
If the situation had been bad, it now got worse.	75.72658697236109
About this time people began "dropping in", considering that the newly married had been left alone long enough.	253.40161342982987
Angrily Martin wished they had delayed the wedding and gone on a trip- preferably one that lasted months- instead of deciding not to postpone the date until he could get away.	1027.5675074465364
Here they were at the mercy of anyone who chose to come by.	402.8507014479941
These stray people nearly always insisted on Dolores showing them around the apartment.	286.86789993149245
Of course, the tours of inspection included the ever-present shorts.	57.108950328676634
It was curious how the different visitors took this.	61.98735777558292
Some tried to ignore the blot on the bedroom's countenance.	181.23862811639256
Others asked.	11.38740897443995
Quite a few laughed.	32.543145961070046
To them all Dolores told a lighthearted and witty tale.	178.33620823511373
"It's a little contest Martin and I have", she would begin gaily, carrying the anecdote through a frothy and deceptive course.	696.7926828163296
While he waited in the living room.	15.990636520867996
Once Martin went along.	38.332934846553954
They entered the bedroom, and Dolores said nothing.	69.54019095356183
Then one of the guests showed his merriment.	50.11344789336575
"You were in a hurry, weren't you"?	152.9423155989108
Martin would have liked to break the man's neck.	88.21245343105717
Dolores smiled; she let the interpretation stand.	116.09476062385407
Now Martin heard himself give a snort of mock good nature.	233.27232823835556
With her eyes Dolores dared him for the truth, ready to begin It's a little contest- Never again did he enter into the ritual of showing the apartment.	457.1608135621159
They kept up a rigid pretense of speaking relations.	123.58415655243597
But Martin seldom felt the impulse to talk about anything.	136.27266705759388
What to talk about?	21.472733061890185
Dolores kept picking up any of his clothes except the fatal shorts which he left about, but he had been robbed of pleasure in scattering his possessions.	1184.6836502708206
He fell into the habit of putting his clothes in drawers and closets, so his life might impinge as little as possible on hers.	489.21416849900834
The shorts alone remained.	34.68326554314502
In his moments of worst agony, Martin imagined what his friends were saying.	220.43138298135753
The sound of their amazement.	18.50151024248273
Bizarre He could hear the word.	57.31507410301704
The most bizarre situation.	23.30390625595597
We were up to visit them and h He had thought her exactly what he wanted.	134.89547095256992
Six weeks of marriage and I'm using the past tense, he told himself furiously.	200.37151862909516
Pursuing his idea, he saw that it would be impossible to leave her now.	311.8027175903536
Everyone would know why; he would cut a supremely ridiculous figure.	215.5980381189878
He was trapped.	13.970013000657653
Day and night Martin could not drag his mind from the dilemma he had made for himself.	201.71223215944954
His mind scurried frantically, seeking an exit.	174.51557804754145
Alternately he had periods of hostile defeatism in which he determined sullenly, morosely, to live out his life in this fashion.	1726.4968556915564
Nothing would change, nothing would ever change.	70.7510991715856
When the solution finally came to him, one night while he was in bed, he was so shaken by its simplicity that he could only wonder why it had not occurred to him before.	2585.326535833566
In a frenzy of excitement, he considered his plan.	67.14752280370361
Beside his shorts, he would place something of hers.	173.8264519263805
Instantaneously he would have won an immeasurable moral victory, for if she picked up, say, a pair of her panties, she might just as well lift his shorts lying alongside- the expenditure of energy was almost the same.	855.4620297278971
He felt that it would be a particular humiliation to Dolores to pick up her own underwear which he had laid on the floor.	1041.537371739122
Furthermore, he could go on repeating the maneuver endlessly every time he went in the bedroom, he could drop a slip or a brassiere, or maybe a girdle, next to his shorts.	1424.344117552368
Sooner or later, Dolores would crack.	136.4884721333406
On the other hand, if she didn't remove her own things, it would be difficult to explain to the parade of guests which traversed the apartment.	243.54622711839536
Martin guessed that Dolores would not be so eager to tell the next installment of her story.	569.5045259777232
The tale, he thought, would become less gay.	64.11359389362745
She had used his rumpled shorts as the very image of his childishness, his lack of control, his general male looseness, while she remained cool, airy, and untouched, the charming teacher who disciplined an unruly body.	681.6154166139377
To have her underclothes linked with his on the floor would draw her visibly into a struggle both bitter and absurd.	386.0649726843949
Something in the back of his mind was aware that the magnificence of the plan lay in his faith, that the idea would work because he believed in it, since his courage and virility were involved, because it was truly his.	852.6001276054753
The knowledge kept him from analyzing his scheme to death, and took him through the last hours of that night in a peace of exalted fanaticism.	1302.9161586934313
The next morning, while Dolores was out of the room, he went to her bureau drawer, took out a pair of nylon lace pants, and tenderly dropped them next to his shorts.	1483.2184188584956
He sat down on the bed.	1524.4272541117277
In a surprisingly short time, Dolores appeared.	75.09037041089243
To his delight, her eyes focused at once upon the two garments.	195.52966461682718
Slowly and deliberately she reached down and touched the lace with her fingers, then hesitated for about a second.	318.8200560211638
Ah, he thought, she's going through the chain of reasoning which says she might really just as well pick up my shorts too.	419.1839617029527
He saw that in a moment she had grasped all the implications of a plot which had been weeks in occurring to him.	751.37891997046
Extending her fingers another inch, she caught up the shorts, and swiftly left the room.	256.9208970864955
She did not look at him, but he noticed that her face was flushed and her eyes unsteady.	358.47280358712237
They breakfasted together, but Martin did not refer to his triumph, and Dolores found a great deal to do in the kitchen, bobbing up and down from the table so that talk was impossible.	645.4859630981275
Well, Martin thought, That'll save.	77.03682934747354
He left for work in high spirits.	145.13920090126555
As he relaxed that day, Martin realized how tense he had been these past weeks.	230.43801024501772
He found that he no longer hated Dolores he knew how much he had hated her, and he was surprised at a resurgence of an affectionate feeling.	648.4382153787907
"Good old A-Z", Cap said.	64.76730177564441
"You know, I've got one of your cars at home.	184.57517925893058
as a prominent industrialist, you ought to be interested in his nibs' support group.	434.1333107122223
Isn't his racket down your alley"?	197.58391155725576
Once it was, William thought.	30.26484090548931
But not any more.	72.44666893553612
A rush of memory swept him back, and he forgot Cap.	132.47323694296313
How did he start on such a ride to brief glory?	139.01053566276
Simply enough, through the inadvertent agency of his brother-in-law.	61.34107613613082
General Hershey's draft and Doc Eddyman and Cap were responsible for his first eminence, but Fearless Freddy Bryan could take credit, if he cared to and he did, for the second time.	2594.850048786554
Freddy needed a job, having been detached from a rather dangerous career in real estate and skyscraper financing by Gerry, and it was up to Arthur Willis to provide him with one.	527.0700523098255
Mr Willis bought Zenith Plastic Products, a skeleton corporation of sorts which had undergone many vicissitudes and whose principal assets were a couple of electronics plants on Long Island engaged in working out government contracts, and installed Freddy in an executive position.	1688.0118055471828
Shortly after, Freddy had his usual proliferation of bold ideas.	151.14426805393816
Willis listened patiently, and once in a while William was exposed to them at a family gathering; he generally heard Freddy's suggestions without interest, being absorbed by his own prospering concerns.	1137.5241902838936
Probably Mr Willis was influenced toward deeper involvement by familial loyalty and a concern for his grandchildren.	1224.1071338119245
Gerry began to aid Freddy with her father, prodded, no doubt, by Joan's open contempt for Freddy and William's irritating competency.	2290.7746706101607
Another factor must have been the eventual disposal of Willis' fortune; she unquestionably assumed that the more he was entwined with Freddy, the more likely he was to reward Freddy richly upon his death.	1493.4032150013404
Whatever the reasons, Willis and Bryan started expanding Zenith.	133.28397131898961
They acquired another electronics factory, a specialized ceramics company, an organization that built- very experimentally- high-speed research calculators.	482.04335357735545
Since they were hunting for national defense contracts, Adam Herberet, a man of surprising resources, entered the combination as a silent partner because of his political connections.	644.2404957466488
Feeling his power, Freddy looked for additional worlds to conquer.	298.3400456562845
Heavy industry, slanted toward inexhaustible government coffers, attracted him.	430.45917120791205
The Allstates Auto Company, a medium-sized firm which manufactured four-wheel-drive vehicles and other off-road equipment, had recently constructed an over-large, modern plant in a burst of misguided optimism.	787.7255022746824
Cursed with a shaky management and dissatisfied stockholders, it was ripe for amalgamation, and Freddy's instinct was to keep growing by stock mergers and small expenditure of cash, and never mind inevitable consequences.	931.0741593674579
With Herberet's blessing, he was convinced that Allstates' Wisconsin folly would be ideal for conversion to airplane sub-assembly, tanks, missiles or ordnance of some kind.	927.7244503803296
At that point William came into the picture.	26.797466658688037
Although not much desiring the account, he had been appointed advertising head of Zenith.	335.6503502899631
Freed of routine by having his own firm and a complaisant partner, his work in New York had given him a broader overall knowledge of business administration and corporate structure; and if he wasn't entirely committed to what he did, he was at least fascinated by the chance of wider opportunities.	1383.0485600612594
Mr Willis, eager to have him allied with the family, wanted advice beyond the confines of his field, and William set out on a serious study of the situation, including trips to Wisconsin and Washington.	2322.3378501282227
In the end, he said "I'm not enchanted by the proposition, sir.	120.70427878943768
I know a guy named Jack Hamrick, a very bright young engineer who was with Chrysler, and I took him with me to Allstates.	1036.796659725038
It's his expert opinion that the plant isn't well suited to what you have in mind.	680.4474000253297
The conversion will cost a fortune.	44.11662050757528
Besides that, I'm acquainted more or less with the defense hardware situation through my contacts in the Air Force.	833.8248379564477
I think Adam Herberet is guilty of being too hopeful and better informed on defense financing than on the technical side.	616.7963450071278
Missiles have thrown everything up for grabs, and nobody seems to be sure where we go from here.	489.20060178878305
The future of manned aircraft is in doubt, which affects government procurement, and jet transports have revolutionized the airline trade- one jet can take the place of three compound-engine planes.	2040.355940086115
This means the aircraft companies are going to tear into the government market, looking for anything they can get and making the competition tough.	265.28385000261267
Here are a few facts and figures I've assembled.	261.7491488350295
Can't you stay with what you have and wait till the dust settles"?	345.03401117065266
Willis glanced at the bound pages given him and shrugged.	241.18172150774356
"Well", he said, "there is Freddy, you know h. And Gerry.	211.82214070542668
Freddy is deeply committed to our plans already.	150.31923840577508
He assures me he has people to handle the money raising, and Ham Richert, my lawyer, says the legal aspects of the wedding of Zenith and Allstates are no problem.	741.8302054854972
I don't like to exhibit the deadly dampening effect of an elderly man's caution".	457.1531463486825
"Yes, I appreciate that.	14.351620318594769
I wish you wouldn't tell Freddy I'm lukewarm; I've caused him trouble before, and he's beginning to resent me.	717.5885634617251
If we don't take care, the sisters will be entering the fray on opposite sides, brandishing their cudgels".	816.9773978200272
"Which is a frightful prospect, Bill".	60.54000733627639
Willis laughed.	33.42619430842442
"One shouldn't mix commercial affairs with patriarchy, but in this case I have no choice h. Let me think about it.	532.5932326136689
I'm most grateful to you, so grateful I wish you were my principal aide instead of Freddy".	270.23551369436666
Not to William's surprise, Freddy, Adam and Hamilton Richert prevailed; allied to them was Gerry, devoting much time to swaying her father, and Joan dismissed all thought of the project and William was unwilling to interfere further.	1961.822709583864
Zenith absorbed Allstates, stock transfers were arranged, and Freddy became president of the hyphenated combination.	640.693740351901
Through Jack Hamrick, William fell into the world of automobile promotion and got several accounts for Shoals and Clay.	989.0128576122856
He forgot about A-Z till, unhappily, he and Hamrick were proved correct.	300.94337314211805
Freddy's backing dropped away from him and Mr Willis was forced to make up the deficit.	835.5098435072275
Adam, beset by changing defense conditions and the open secret that he was part of the new corporation, couldn't deliver from his end.	639.1432616937961
The Wisconsin plant turned out to be a white elephant.	68.55175256422243
Stock Willis held in abundance fell sharply in value.	245.3938582794608
Confronted by a grim future, Freddy lost his nerve and plumped for a drastic liquidation.	443.0273959342182
Once more Willis summoned William.	79.71416854458377
"You were right", he said- "you and your engineer- and I'm in something of a bind.	74.45906866123028
Freddy's solution doesn't appeal to me.	94.7870343973535
In addition to other defects, I'm a stubborn man and hate to admit to the common garden variety of bad judgment.	152.94149396655504
Will you see if you can help me"?	69.39384060349325
William spent a long week end closeted with Hamrick.	235.75179459172568
His recent experience in motor car advertising, a love for cars of themselves, the existence of A-Z's useless Wisconsin set-up, exposure to exciting conceptions of Hamrick's that nobody would buy, and the coincidental recent failure of a respected but out-dated small-car manufacturer called Ticonderoga Motors had given him an idea of such dimensions he was almost afraid to broach it.	2722.91293850065
Initially, Hamrick's reaction to A-Z going into the passenger car market was discouraging.	305.31277866044013
He thought the financing, the advertising, the production of new models, the founding of a nationwide chain of dealerships was simply too difficult.	277.31079761615695
Then he caught fire.	19.96923847083909
If A-Z could buy Ticonderoga cheaply and use their presses and dies and other equipment, if William could hit precisely the right promotion note, if the money hurdle was not insurmountable h. They took nearly a month to investigate, marshal statistics, and put their arguments down in black and white.	3073.550951455539
Taking Hamrick with him, William went to Mr Willis.	191.38439375403166
He was surprised and dubious, but impressed by the engineer and the report.	78.75536340614634
"Your alternative is breathtaking", he said, "and, I'm frank in saying, a bit mad.	860.9882570334581
I wish I was younger and less timid h. Well, I can't resolve this myself.	395.8177006671708
I'll have to call in the brain trust.	26.657677909353882
Are you willing to run the gantlet?	65.47062880917258
I can't guarantee you a sympathetic audience".	60.99419351553584
"We'll be in there swinging", William said, "but in a way, sir, you've got to decide it yourself.	232.5858616987771
You have the controlling interest and the principal expenditure is yours- and, besides, nobody else is going to have the courage.	383.21133420021647
If they follow anyone, it'll have to be you".	148.67464405421023
He paused.	8.085450972689422
"I should explain there's more here for me than advocating my little dream, there's you.	263.88998579457143
You mustn't take a fall, or publicly back away.	131.28241861319884
I hate that.	53.37148790830016
You're- you're Arthur Willis h. Forgive the hearts and flowers theme".	323.31718620309374
"I rather like the music", Willis replied quietly.	396.6741470271348
"Thank you".	16.456663926397862
At the meeting, attended by Freddy, Richert, Herberet and the A-Z executive staff, with Mr Willis presiding, William and Hamrick did indeed run the gantlet.	1104.843845887421
From shock and incredulity, most of the listeners went on to open resistance and animosity.	158.68844953368014
"Oh, my God", Ham Richert said, "a little child shall lead them.	422.90425836158533
Move over, General Motors".	291.5884323457011
"It's absurd, Bill", Freddy said, from a pale face.	147.00787596720662
"You're leading Dad down the garden path".	80.46749835918223
"Your garden, God damn it"!	87.94288536728142
William said.	10.023923439700939
"I don't enjoy family quarrels", Adam said.	80.6093429749567
"Nor crazy relatives.	35.1924422147544
We're here to transact business.	69.14439931483226
Can't we put an end to this, Arthur"?	79.62573019664785
"Hear me out, please", William begged.	155.28983703381357
"I'm an advertising hustler, I admit, but I have to get hot once in a larger sphere.	392.62737271559786
Sure, Ticonderoga went broke in the low-priced market bucking the Big Three.	372.7491530405126
Their cars weren't small enough, they didn't have the power, they were old-fashioned.	1573.3163780139419
They tried to sell 'em on economy and simple merit.	101.8685871736758
We've arrived at an age for romance and snobbery.	90.44022077920536
We've all been rich and spoiled long enough to hate the machine age.	122.25291727444313
Look what those little European jobs are doing.	98.64404081054008
We'll woo the consumer with a product, not bludgeon him with chromed excess length and weight.	230.13985401792283
Let's make it moonlight and the call of far places and a seduction, at reasonable rates.	189.814981425764
Ticonderoga folded a few minutes too soon, before the tide changed, still honest and stupid- and the network of dealers the company had is around waiting to be signed up again- waiting for us, ready-made.	681.0221706433533
We've got rid of the steam yachts and Georgian houses, and the bloated, too-expensive automobile is next.	369.0025899756715
Why not come down smartly in the world, in a chic fashion, with an Allstates-Zenith"?	1203.4535973206441
He swayed them somewhat, but the debate raged on.	108.0959318031441
Financing emerged as the main obstacle.	394.3356860079392
Mr Willis made it evident that he had contributed his maximum.	317.0161339317161
"Nobody will underwrite it, I'm telling you", Freddy said.	105.19560041302566
"I know what I'm talking about in that department".	111.82642908974942
"There's plenty of risk money", Ham Richert added, "but not for anything this risky".	809.8221071205448
"All right", William said.	20.11749851505915
"We'll try to swing the deal on that basis.	106.02828114361024
If we can't raise the capital, we're through.	49.75848607564819
Nothing has been lost.	43.304968821310474
You're up against it anyhow.	29.637007009403384
Why won't you give me a chance"?	79.78275167735406
A silence fell.	21.48263760920501
Heads instinctively turned in Willis' direction.	221.01211291533397
He smiled at William and slowly rubbed his hands together.	77.07933018631034
"I feel I must answer the question", he said, "since the onus later, if any, should fall on me- I don't relish recriminations spread broadcast outside my family h. I'm not giving you a chance, Bill, but availing myself of your generous offer of assistance.	828.9779498652497
Good luck to you".	21.23447616189419
"All the in-laws have got to have their day", Adam said, and glared at William and Freddy in turn.	595.567189228413
Sweat started out on William's forehead, whether from relief or disquietude he could not tell.	474.59759209089736
Across the table, Hamrick saluted him jubilantly with an encircled thumb and forefinger.	538.2376333567955
Nobody else showed pleasure.	50.72863672563773
Spike-haired, burly, red-faced, decked with horn-rimmed glasses and an Ivy League suit, Jack Hamrick awaited William at the officers' club.	1229.5128417572137
"Hello, boss", he said, and grinned.	61.95825369162509
"I suppose I can never expect to call you 'General' after that Washington episode".	729.2800947212845
"I'm afraid not".	6.311850519850136
It was among these that Hinkle identified a photograph of Barco!	207.7278270766104
For it seems that Barco, fancying himself a ladies' man and why not, after seven marriages?	327.50661477785997
, had listed himself for Mormon Beard roles at the instigation of his fourth murder victim who had said "With your beard, dear, you ought to be in movies"!	1452.0796616832217
Mills secured Barco's photograph from the gentleman in charge, rushed to the Hollywood police station to report the theft, and less than five minutes later, detectives with his picture in hand were on the trail of Cal Barco.	1110.9024965270453
On their way, they stopped at every gas station along the main boulevards to question the attendants.	402.4752513517613
Finally, at Ye Olde Gasse Filling Station on Avocado Avenue, they learned that their man, having paused to get oil for his car, had asked about the route to San Diego.	798.8945411128287
They headed in that direction and, at San Juan Capistrano by-the-Sea came upon Barco sitting in the quaint old Spanish Mission Drive-in, eating a hot tamale.	578.9908481622012
At the moment, Barco's back was to the road so he didn't see the detectives close in on his convertible which, in their quest for the stolen lap rug, they proceeded to search.	770.4817602212437
The robe, however, was missing, for by that time Barco had disposed of it at a pawnshop in Glendale.	242.87684433119153
The detectives placed Barco under arrest and, without informing him of the nature of the charge, took him back to Hollywood for questioning.	451.1793573978639
Thus it was that Barco, apprehended for mere larceny, now began to suspect that one or another of his murders had been uncovered.	540.2984532679578
During the return trip, Barco kept muttering to himself in meaningless phrases, such as "They're under sand dunes h They're better off, I tell you h I saved their souls".	1119.847745043358
The detective, commenting on Barco's behavior, felt that he merely belonged among the myriad citizens of our community who are mentally unhinged- that he was a more or less harmless "nut"!	1007.8636695279409
However while in his cell awaiting trial for theft, Barco, in a fit of apprehension, made an attempt to take his own life.	353.4767763560649
The attempt had failed because, when endeavoring to cut his wrists, this murderer of seven women had fainted at the sight of blood.	659.9158671098396
The jail authorities- attaching no particular significance to the episode- offered Barco whisky to revive him; but the old fellow, a lifelong teetotaler, refused it, and no more was thought of the matter.	2483.645470616216
Then it was that District Attorney Welch entered the case.	98.040916554855
A man of vaulting ambition, with one eye on the mayorship of Los Angeles, nothing ever escaped him which might possibly lead to personal publicity.	650.655143067586
It was reported to Welch's office that a thief in the city jail had attempted suicide.	226.20149984464172
Welch wanted to know why.	1066.2910227235664
No one knew.	5.33980884853523
Now Welch had a pet theory that everyone is guilty of breaking more laws than he ever gets caught at.	458.2123279541041
The suicide attempt looked to him like an opportunity to put his theory to the test.	327.75938592087834
So he paid a call on Barco in his cell and began their chat by stating bluntly "Barco, we've got the goods on you!	372.0851189626502
It'll be a lot better if you come clean".	46.353990519765986
At first Barco was evasive and shifty.	116.33286689112221
But with Welch's relentless pursuit of the subject, Barco finally "broke" and started confessing to one murder after another.	772.2401235757249
By the time Barco reached the count of three, the situation seemed to Welch almost too good to be true.	167.32444255747143
But if true, it was the case of which he had dreamed, the case which would throw him into headlines all over America as the hero of a great murder trial.	495.29247765481927
Welch summoned jail officials to Barco's cell.	326.0246562547699
But to Welch's chagrin, the police captain pooh-poohed Welch's credulity in Barco's confession.	918.8879544623964
Barco was clearly a "nut".	64.18872116043674
It required strength, bravado, daring to commit murder.	119.20443463991134
"That worm a murderer?	66.32201550249668
Ridiculous"!	28.826365438569706
Then, for the first time since his arrest, a glint of spirit lit Barco's eyes.	96.71622801370758
His manhood had been attacked.	63.941114608443115
He stiffened and rose to his feet.	36.31213626479805
He'd show them!	19.90310056167728
"Is that so"?	11.81616266956288
he queried.	25.53828611539912
"Well, for ten years I've been murdering women.	95.9742984149957
I can lead you to every one of the bodies, and there ain't four, nor five, nor six of 'em- there's seven!"	949.7751143483335
The next day the police captain, in derision, organized what he termed "Welch's Wild Goose Chase".	454.4302284308599
For indeed it seemed incredible that anyone could go on committing murder for ten years and not get caught at it, even in Hollywood.	1104.5163071639493
The searching party consisted of the police captain, Welch, Barco, policemen with shovels, newspaper reporters, and cameramen.	529.3489088147802
Barco, his state of apprehension gone, never to return, had assumed a matter-of-factness which remained his principal attitude from that time on.	323.08228911042335
He directed the cortege of autos to the sand dunes near Santa Monica.	377.5977560406191
Stopping the cars at a fork in the road, he got out, paced off a certain distance to a spot between two shrub-covered sand hills, and indicated a location.	1199.6026124184405
Orders were given to dig.	63.17940269285228
Nothing was found.	8.200722628030915
Welch was worried.	38.07420807065067
The police captain chortled.	51.5838979177896
The newspaper boys cracked jokes and again Barco's pride was aroused.	343.1393311778246
With greater precision he again paced off a location, this time a little more to the left.	469.7562042814982
With quibs and gibes, the policemen again started digging.	239.56227399992514
Welch was on edge.	32.126865430514705
The captain was remarking that it was a nice day for a picnic when finally one of the shovels struck an object.	252.87506983455236
"There's something here"!	33.243553656923524
said the digger.	32.35092875147236
Joking stopped and everyone gathered around.	97.40797895763687
The digger, thrusting about with his shovel, now raised into view a package crudely wrapped in one of the murderer's Hollywood sport shirts.	777.7093246692157
Although it was a mere fragment of the victim's remains, it was enough.	1819.6201868775522
Welch was wild with delight.	74.71816582732744
His elation grew as Barco's seven disclosures brought to light one reward after another.	465.54460862752677
Now did Welch truly become the man of the hour, and everything that followed in the procedure of Justice was a new triumph for him.	540.1743930152523
It went to his head, and his ambition increased.	149.94585117876647
It was apparent that Welch was in cahoots with Marshall and would use his power as DA to drag every possible sensation into the case.	361.37357188860676
Every new scandal which would provide more "copy" for Marshall's pen would thus mean more publicity for Welch.	735.5960212418789
I knew that both these cynics were waiting with impatience for the dramatic moment when Viola was called to the stand.	1818.9282012014153
Once there, the DA with devilish cleverness would provide Marshall with headlines "Viola's Multiple Romances"h "Viola Lake an Addict"h "Downfall of Another Film Idol"!	4670.011498500377
It would be fine publicity for the man who was willing to walk to the mayor's throne over the broken reputation of a helpless girl!	1708.412801448869
I studied Welch closely as the trial progressed for any hint which might give me a lead as to how he might be thwarted.	863.1659877231439
It wasn't long before I sensed that there was something deeper than overvaulting ambition back of his desire for Viola's destruction.	798.0119604710345
He was bitter and resentful toward her, personally resentful.	150.29153097984113
A dreadful fear entered my consciousness that perhaps he had entertained aspirations toward Viola's favors- or, even more serious perhaps, that he had attained a share of them and had then been superseded by some luckier chap.	1784.823117653952
I did not rest until I had tracked the mystery down.	93.08197471202013
Well, here it is.	11.289294058200596
One day over a year before, there had been a cocktail party in an apartment of a downtown hotel.	65.54941790837607
Viola had been urged to attend, by telephone, and not knowing the host or the character of the party, she had gone.	289.12597047486355
She arrived late and as she entered the party, noted that gentlemen seemed to be in the majority; the air was thick with smoke, empty bottles were in evidence, and several of the guests were somewhat the worse for liquor.	671.9359951409405
Naturally, Viola had no wish to remain, but she felt she couldn't leave so soon after her arrival, in all politeness to her host.	409.6125446284882
And it so happened that adjacent to a couch on which she had taken refuge was a small table on which she noted a vase of red rosebuds; while projecting from beneath the couch were a pair of feet which, as Fate would have it, belonged to District Attorney Welch.	1578.7543322122563
As Viola sat there, a playful impulse overcame her to remove the shoes and socks from the unidentified feet and, as a prank, insert rosebuds between the toes.	656.793203028851
A little later the district attorney woke up, emerged from under the couch, looked at his watch, and realized he had an engagement that very hour to address a meeting of the Culture Forum on "The Civic Spirit of the Southland", in the Byzantine room of the hotel where his wife, as president of the forum, was to preside.	504.89390860907304
He made his way to his host's bedroom where he carefully brushed himself off, neatly arranged his hair, and painstakingly selected his hat from the many on the bed.	3049.359900666135
Then, noting neither the absence of his footwear nor the presence of the rosebuds, he made his way to the Byzantine room and, with his usual dignity, mounted the rostrum.	1589.906879921432
The effect on the intellectuals among his audience may well be imagined.	94.81864850464905
The incident, aside from reflecting on Welch's political career, had all but wrecked his home life.	271.9445138040343
He never rested until he discovered who the culprit was, and when he did, he vowed vengeance on Viola Lake if ever the chance came his way.	1522.2501254403464
And here it was!	17.04412621198793
By such innocent actions are human tragedies sometimes set in motion.	218.55356413201366
During these first days of the trial I didn't have as much time to commiserate with Viola as I should have liked.	658.8677605253757
In the first place, it was difficult for us to meet.	94.57313622694569
We couldn't be seen together, for the tongue of Scandal was ever ready to link our names, and the tongue of Scandal finds but one thing to say of the association of a man with a girl, no matter how innocent.	685.7585955397734
I couldn't invite Viola to our house, for Mother snobbishly refused to receive her.	325.26507041324453
Now the Czarship had not affected my own sense of social values, but Mother had attained a reflected glory through it, which had opened the doors of Los Angeles-Pasadena Society to her.	1617.3403014873925
There, Mother was received by the scions of aristocratic lines which are dominated by the Budweisers of beer derivation, the Chalmers of underwear origin, and the Heinzes whose forbears founded a nationally famous trade in pickles.	1624.373863488622
I hated being dragged into the salons of these aristocrats.	150.7944873761825
But Mother insisted, for it is seldom indeed that anyone remotely connected with the cinema is ever received in their exclusive midsts.	497.79915122270097
In fact, it was not until the King of Spain had visited at Pickfair that Mary and Doug were beckoned to cross the sacred barriers which separate Los Angeles and Pasadena from the hoi-polloi.	839.6243877842886
Mother even went so far as to trump up for me matrimonial opportunities with Pasadena debs who had been educated abroad, and with those of the more lenient Los Angeles area where a debutante was a girl who had been to high school.	3515.9752615350603
But at long last came a time when I broke away from Mother and her society "chi-chi" in order to spend a cosy evening with Viola and her chaperon at her home.	737.7916356391462
However, such a hotbed of gossip had grown up during the trial, that every precaution had to be taken to keep my visit from being whispered to the world, Society, and even, alas, to my own mother.	807.4947523529435
When I arrived at Viola's I was shown, to my surprise, into the kitchen.	185.60578598820427
Viola greeted me, in checked apron, ladle in hand, and explained it was the cook's night out and that she herself was preparing dinner.	1485.6449767717802
I sat and watched proceedings.	33.51099580343682
There was to be roast chicken with dressing, giblet gravy, asparagus, new peas with a sprig of mint, creamed onions, and mashed potatoes- all chosen, prepared, and cooked by Viola herself.	906.515332894961
I realized that Hamlet was faced with an entirely different problem, but his agony could have been no greater.	1670.2658400884454
The most that was accomplished was adding Mrs Beige's tray to the dish pile, and by means of repeated threats, on an ascending scale, seeing that the girls dressed themselves, after a fashion.	422.69568068088535
I was saved from making the decision as the phone rang, and the girls were upon me instantly.	138.69568846856575
Here's a household hint if you can't find your children, and get tired of calling them, pick up the phone.	429.0609685728156
No matter if your children are at the movies, in school, visiting their grandmother, or on a field trip in some distant city, they will be upon you magically within seconds after you pick up the phone.	335.36480563350943
Jennie and Miranda twined themselves around me, murmuring endearments.	573.991269694597
Louise climbed onto a stool and clutched the hand with which I was trying to hold the phone, claiming my immediate attention on grounds of extreme emergency.	1157.9942438130784
Somehow managing to get out a cool, poised, "Won't you hold on a second, please", I covered up the mouthpiece, and with more warmth and less poise, gave a quick lecture on crime and punishment, mostly the latter, including Devil's Island and the remoter reaches of Siberia.	2098.282404323842
I promised to illustrate the lecture, if they so much as breathed till after the call was completed.	558.4609000361469
Speaking into the phone again and recognizing the caller, I resumed my everyday voice.	308.97308062134454
Soon we were deep in a conversation that was interrupted many times by little things like Jennie's holding her breath and pretending to black out, Miranda's dumping the contents of the sugar bowl on the table, and various screeches, thuds, and giggles.	2652.043691366234
Under the circumstances, I had difficulty keeping up with the conversation on the phone, but when I hung up I was reasonably certain that Francesca had wanted to remind me of our town meeting the next evening, and how important it was that Hank and I be there.	951.9743367148168
I discovered that the girls had shrewdly vacated the kitchen, and were playing quietly in the living room.	432.43366086944536
It seemed that I would be the gainer if I accepted the peace and quiet, instead of carrying out my threats.	714.4206506590242
Resolving to get something done, I started in on the dishes.	147.9499443181593
No.	3.389188185682365
I'm not saying it right.	16.302519041487265
What I meant to say was that I started to start in on the dishes by gathering them all together in the kitchen sink.	338.29805574480866
They looked so formidable, however, so demanding, that I found myself staring at them in dismay and starting to woolgather again, this time about Francesca and her husband.	655.9558195222085
How about them, I thought.	311.34522179713304
Francesca and Herbert were among the few people we knew in Catatonia.	535.285996407249
We didn't even know them till about a month after we moved- at that time, they had called on us, after I met Fran at a PTA meeting, and had taken us in hand socially.	985.9256833865863
They had been kind to us and we were indebted to them for one or two pleasant dinners, and for information as to where to shop, which dentist, doctor, plumber, and sitter to call not that there was much of a choice, since Catatonia was just a village; the yellow pages of the telephone book were amazingly thin.	1265.532517413907
They were "personalities".	10.730837134386533
Herb, an expert on narrow ties, thin lapels, and swatches, was men's fashion editor of Parvenu, the weekly magazine with the tremendous circulation.	699.8372888922646
Fran and he had met about two years after she had arrived in Manhattan from Nebraska, or was it Wyoming?	2140.9256736891675
She was the daughter and sole heiress of either a cattle baron or an oil millionaire and, having arrived in New York with a big bank roll, became a dabbler in various fields.	670.8460315033495
She patronized Greenwich Village artists for awhile, then put some money into a Broadway show which was successful terrible, but successful.	556.3086967985741
It was during her "writing" period that she and Herb met and decided that they were in love.	602.4069917285041
They were married at a lavish ceremony which was duly recorded in Parvenu and all other magazines and newspapers, and then they honeymooned in Bermuda.	727.3209294646397
No, not Bermuda.	18.63012649906178
Bermuda was not in style that year.	44.37327325832261
They had honeymooned in Rome; everyone was very high on Rome that year.	129.39437311579974
They had bought their house in Catatonia after investigating all the regions of suburbia surrounding New York; they had chosen Catatonia because of its reputation for excellent schools, beaches, and abundance of names.	715.0330805798621
"You are bound to get involved with people when you have children", Fran had told me at our first meeting, "so it is good to know that those with whom you get involved are not just dreary little housewives and dull husbands, but People Who Do Things".	602.280746906104
I admired their easy way of doing things but I couldn't escape an uneasiness at their way of always doing the right things.	292.3353458270582
Their house was a centuries-old Colonial which they had had restored guided by an eminent architect and updated, and added on to.	536.7639859987864
It had a gourmet's corner instead of a kitchen, a breakfast room, a luncheon room, a dining room, a sitting room, a room for standing up, a party room, dressing rooms for everybody, even a room for mud.	407.9648349237718
It was all set up so there would be no dust anywhere and so that their children would color in the coloring room, paint in the painting room, play with blocks in the block house, and do all the other things in the proper rooms at exactly the right time.	1253.7537304164312
Their two boys were "well adjusted" and, like their parents, always did the right thing at the right time and damn the consequences.	319.7550625593215
Francesca and Herbert considered themselves violently nonconformist and showed the world they were by filling their Colonial house with contemporary furniture and paintings and other art objects expensive, but not necessarily valuable, contemporary things.	956.732969085887
Fran flaunted her independence by rebelling against the Catatonia uniform of Bermuda shorts and knee-length socks by wearing Bermuda shorts and knee-length socks in color; bright pinks and plaids and vivid stripes.	2842.3729175247936
Sometimes she even wore the uniform in solid, unrelieved black, and with her blonde hair cut so closely, wearing this uniform, she strongly resembled a member of the SS.	527.2362151634264
No one could dislike them, I thought.	101.25756883464203
Sometimes, though, they did not seem quite human.	111.69364074792215
It seemed, indeed, that their house was not so much a home, but rather a perfect stage set, and that they were actors who had been handed fat roles in a successful play, and had talent enough to fill the roles competently, with nice understatement.	3146.6587721653977
Practically the only enthusiasm they showed was when they were discussing "names"; even brand names.	506.26387242433634
You should hear the reverence in Fran's voice when she said "Baccarat" or "Steuben" or "Madame Alexander".	590.65359907086
She always let it be known that there was wine in the pot roast or that the chicken had been marinated in brandy, and that Koussevitzky's second cousin was an intimate of theirs.	851.1731370366103
I wouldn't have wasted time puzzling over this couple were it not for my fear that all the other inhabitants of Catatonia were equally unreal.	692.7417300781643
I couldn't feel at home among them.	133.54243277478434
Besides Francesca, there was Blanche.	81.10471385441826
Francesca was pleasant and charming, but Blanche was sweet.	175.97335493350084
Yes, Blanche was very, very sweet- being in her company was like being drowned in warm, melted marshmallows.	375.44640687861187
I had once been a witness when Blanche had smiled and said with only minimum ruefulness, "Oh, my souffle has collapsed".	464.3483459355419
Anyone knows how a real, red-blooded woman would react to such a catastrophe!	380.2047410252927
If Blanche had been honest, she would have yelled, slammed at least a couple of doors, and thrown a few little, valueless things.	247.407618144804
But dear me, no; not Blanche.	69.89229604801743
After five minutes with Blanche, one might welcome the astringency of Grazie, who was a sort of Gwen Cafritz to Francesca's Perle Mesta.	1212.2493142658705
Francesca and Grazie were habitual committee chairmen and they usually managed to be elected co-chairmen, equal bosses, of whatever PTA or civic project was being launched.	1177.065138071727
They were inseparable, not because they were fond of each other, but because they wanted to keep an eye on each other, as they were keen rivals for social leadership.	11490.195558587728
Grazie was mean quietly mean, and bitterly, unfunnily sarcastic.	374.5654417721891
She it was who had looked to see if I was wearing shoes upon learning that I couldn't drive.	264.1219908701714
Grazie had a small, slick head and her hair and skin were the color of golden toast.	693.6489226567759
She lived in an ultra-modern house whose decoration, appointments, paint, and even pets were chosen to complement her coloring; the pets were a couple of Siamese cats.	789.8230297295472
Her uniform was of rich, raw silk, in a shade which matched her hair, skin, housepaint, and cats, and since she was so thin as to be almost shapeless, she rather resembled a frozen fish stick.	1145.3207763601763
The husbands of these women and others I had met in Catatonia were distinguished only in that they were, to me at least, indistinguishable.	673.3888648291149
I couldn't tell one from the other.	364.49830742444607
Like Herbert, they were all in communications radio, television, magazines, and advertising.	123.37185432498657
One or two were writers of books; all were fellows of finite charm.	115.7351324350995
Each had developed a hair-trigger chuckle and the habit of saying "zounds"!	336.4226258726606
in deference to country-squirehood.	114.34523645219618
I never thought I'd live to hear people chuckle and say "zounds"!	324.79048181465186
in real life.	15.235863396334945
I wouldn't have missed it for anything.	41.860476560966134
They were "sincere"- men of the too-hearty handclasp and the urgent smile.	150.4909908043628
These boys acknowledged an introduction to anybody by gently pressing one of his hands in both of theirs, while they gazed, misty-eyed with care, into the eyes of the person they were meeting.	1355.5219943526242
Could such unadulterated love, for a total stranger, be credited?	486.84854340005114
They were always leaping to light cigarettes, open car doors, fill plates or glasses, and I mistrusted the whole lot of them to the same degree that I mistrusted bake shops that called themselves "Sanitary Bake Shops".	2631.779632886739
"O Pioneers!"	49.03483332767768
I thought, and wondered what kind of homesteads such odd pioneers would establish in this suburban frontier; pioneers who looked like off-duty gardeners even at parent-teacher conferences and who never called the school principal "Mister".	2753.3414889797045
I sighed, thinking that among other things, people here seemed to be those who would have to cut down if they earned less than $85,000 yearly; people who would give their teeth for a chance to get on "Person to Person"; people who thought it was nice to be important, but not important to be nice; who were more ingratiating than gracious, more personalities than persons.	1941.6409301352696
In my estimation, they were people who read Daphne du Maurier, and discussed Kafka; well, not discussed him exactly, but said, "Kafka"!	1074.9919895865833
reverently and raised their eyes, as if they were at a loss to describe how they felt about Kafka, which they were, because they had no opinions about Kafka, not having read Kafka.	3366.2966688497045
They were, I felt, people invariably trying to prove not who, but what they were, and trying to determine what, not who, others were.	370.64433210065425
Becoming aware that it was nearly lunchtime, I brought myself back to the tasks at hand.	260.7664317416256
I made plans for the afternoon- doing the breakfast and luncheon dishes all at once, making the beds, and then maybe painting the kitchen.	255.0970886488996
Then, I remembered that the girls had had a banana for dessert every day for the last week.	1935.2420232103984
"BANANAS"!	28.826365438569706
Jennie had shouted each time.	76.23555491250404
"They're not dessert!	21.20216862148557
They're not even food.	12.933492873015114
They're just something you're supposed to put on cereal for breakfast".	260.0329270268717
I dug around and found a mix, and was able to surprise them with a devil's-food cake with chocolate icing.	323.0240369743784
Sometimes I think you need only one rule for cooking if you can't put garlic in it, put chocolate in it.	281.34051952442206
The cake was received in a stunned silence that was evidence in itself of the dearth of taste thrills Mama had been providing.	393.59567908546416
Then Jennie closed her eyes, stretched forth her arms, and said "Take my hand, Louise; I'm a stranger in paradise".	903.0598915513673
Needless to say, I was furious at this unparalleled intrusion upon free enterprise.	250.7429039806065
How dared they demand to "snoop" in private financial records, disbursements, confidential contracts and agreements?	651.9530022158285
"It is as though", I said on the historic three-hour, coast-to-coast radio broadcast which I bought following Father Coughlin and pre-empting the Eddie Cantor, Manhattan Merry-go-round and Major Bowes shows "That Man in the White House, like some despot of yore, insisted on reading my diary, raiding my larder and ransacking my lingerie!"	4189.756643464048
My impassioned plea for civil rights created a landslide of correspondence and one sponsor even asked me to consider replacing the Eddie Cantor comedy hour on a permanent basis.	1063.9675284167997
But what quarter could a poor defenseless woman expect from a dictator who would even make so bold as to close all of the banks in our great nation?	503.2923818472569
The savage barbarian hordes of red Russian Communism descended on the Athens that was mighty Metronome, sacking and despoiling with their Bolshevistic battle cry of "Soak the rich'!	1527.0564024866878
After an unspeakable siege, lasting the better part of two months, it was announced that the studio "owed" the government a tax debt in excess of eight million dollars while I, who had always remained aloof from such iniquitous practices as paying taxes on the salary I had earned and the little I legally inherited as Morris' helpless relict, was "stung" with a personal bill of such astronomical proportions as to "wipe out" all but a fraction of my poor, hard-come-by savings.	1113.6339694657506
I was also publicly reprimanded, dragged through the mud by the radical press and made a figure of fun by such leftist publications as The New Republic, The New Yorker, Time and the Christian Science Monitor.	662.3507230270013
It was then that I availed myself of the rights of a citizen and declared the income tax unconstitutional.	145.7676285894272
The litigation was costly and seemingly endless.	88.19092631232174
I fought like a tigress but by the time I appealed my case to the Supreme Court 1937, Mr Roosevelt and his "henchmen" had done their "dirty work" all too well, even going so far as to attempt to "pack" the highest tribunal in the land in order to defeat little me.	1452.6480717660409
Presidential coercion had succeeded not only in poisoning the courtiers, "toadies" and sycophants of the "bench" against me, but it had been so far-reaching as to discourage any lawyer in the nation from representing me!	4515.9080806290385
I was ready, like Portia, to present my own brief.	114.5633017514728
But the Supreme Court wouldn't even hear my case!	171.760979181596
My plea was unanimously voted down and "thrown out".	519.0961464748947
Again, my name was on all the front pages.	60.87982589471948
I was, it seemed, persona non grata in every quarter, but not entirely without a staunch following of noted political thinkers and students of jurisprudence.	2011.754738888712
As Charles Evans Hughes said, "Miss Poitrine's limitations as an actress are exceeded only by her logic as a litigant".	733.0069709210001
Albert Einstein was quoted as saying "The workings of the woman's mind amaze me".	381.68783716915414
Henry Ford spoke of me as "utterly astounding".	158.2764012389293
Heywood Broun wrote "Belle Poitrine is the most original thinker since Caligula", and even FDR had to concede that "if the rest of this nation showed the foresight and patriotism of Miss Poitrine, America would rapidly resemble ancient Babylon and Nineveh".	1569.1764549697004
Not only were the court costs prohibitive, but I was subjected to crippling fines, in addition to usurious interest on the unpaid "debts" which the governmen claimed that Metronome and I owed- a severe financial blow.	757.8436282992569
Nor, as Manny said, had the notoriety done my career "any good".	180.67063989113186
My enemies were only too anxious to level against me such charges as "reactionary", "robber baroness", and even "traitor"!	685.3797234496623
Traitor indeed!	56.57346476498028
I point now with pride to the fact that, long ere the Committee on Un-American Activities, the Minute Women, the Economic Council and other such notable "watchdog" organizations were so much as heard of, I was Hollywood's leading bulwark against communism, fighting single-handedly "creeping socialism" against such insuperable odds as the Fascio-Communist troops of the NRA, PWA, WPA, CCC and an army of more than twenty-two million mercenaries whom FDR employed secretly, through the transparent ruse of regular "relief" checks.	2863.207934732251
Needless to say, my art suffered drastically during this turbulent period.	109.69229375366685
Could it do otherwise?	32.430158070377544
Even though I have always had a genius for "throwing myself" into every role and "playing it for all it's worth", no actress can be expected to do her best work when her fortune, her reputation, her livelihood, her home and her nation itself are all imperilled.	715.0201200467795
Such sweeping distractions are hardly conducive to "Oscar" winning performances.	431.16642188557114
I tried my hardest, with little help, may I say, from my husband and leading man, but somehow the outside pressures were too severe.	391.6901443281288
Having through my unflagging effort and devotion achieved stardom, a fortune and a world-renowned wife at an age when most young men are casting their first vote, Letch proceeded to neglect them all.	626.9398352733353
Never a "quick study", he now made no attempt to learn his "lines" and many a mile of film was wasted, many a scene- sometimes involving as many as a thousand fellow thespians- was taken thirty, forty, fifty times because Miss Poitrine's co-star and "helpmate" had never learned his part.	775.5881283517275
Each time Letch "went up" in his "lines", I was the one to be patient, helpful and apologetic while he indulged in outbursts of temperament, profanity and abuse, blaming others, going into "sulks" and, on more occasions than I care to count, storming off the "set" for the rest of the day.	1335.3770181716054
As for his finances, I was never privileged to know exactly how much money Letch had "salted away".	649.8933109821177
It was I who paid for our little home, the food, the liquor, the servants- even Letch's bills at his tailor and the Los Angeles Athletic Club.	483.8220847763596
Never once did he buy me a single gift and for our third anniversary he gave me a dislocated jaw.	782.5091688026038
But that is another story.	14.999219905349321
As for his private monies, they were rapidly dissipated in drinking, gaming and carousing.	311.0075378936973
More than once I was confronted by professional gamblers, "bookies", loan "sharks", gangsters, "thugs" and "finger men"- people of a class I did not even know existed- to repay my husband's staggering losses, "or else h" I shuddered to think that someone so dear to me could even associate with such a sinister milieu.	1347.9585174715542
And at three different times during our turbulent marriage strange girls, with the commonest of accents, telephoned to announce to me that Letch had sired their unborn children!	977.7716004590742
Having the deepest of maternal instincts, my heart fairly bled when I thought of the darling pink and white "bundles from heaven" I would have proudly given my husband.	908.4882356322702
"Ah, you're too old", was invariably his ungallant and untrue retort whenever I suggested "starting a family".	359.83061283187413
Letch had made it abundantly clear that he did not care for the company of my own precious daughter.	716.7844595066018
I now felt it wiser to keep Baby-dear in school and- during the summers- at a camp run by the Society of Friends all year around.	309.85602892302427
Her presence only made Letch more distant and irritable and, in the hurry of buying Chateau Belletch, I had neglected to consider a room for Baby-dear, so there was no place to put her, anyhow.	1239.9783692828091
I sometimes feel that God, in His infinite wisdom, wants us to have these inexplicable little lapses of memory.	340.11685015161703
It almost always works out for the best.	113.0999688858592
Yet I adored this man, Letch Feeley, why, I cannot say.	479.2413934008986
With faint heart and a brave smile, I endured his long absences from Chateau Belletch, his coldness, his indifference, his slights and his abuse.	757.5076350336665
The times I can recall when I was publicly humiliated by him- lovely dinner parties in our Trianon Suite where the collation was postponed and postponed and postponed, only to be served dry and overcooked at a table where the host's chair was vacant; a "splash party" at the new pool, which I had built in the hope of keeping Letch away from public beaches, when Letch and a certain Aquacutie stayed underwater together for the better part of an hour; a lovely Epiphany party at Errol Flynn's, on which sacred occasion Letch stole away with an unknown "starlet", leaving me "high and dry" to get home as best I could.	3519.9579300668975
These are but a sampling of the insults I endured.	57.95745517222207
As Mrs Letch Feeley, was it any wonder that I, once the social arbiter of Filmdom, was excluded from the smart entertainments given by the Astaires, the Coopers, the Gables, the Colmans, the Rathbones, the Taylors, the Thalbergs and such devout, closely knit families as the Barrymores and the Crosbys?	1167.2804833356645
As Letch's antisocial conduct increased, our invitations decreased and my heart was in my mouth whenever I played hostess at a fashionable "screenland" gathering.	1140.5494696231008
Between 1935 and 1939 Letch and I made ten films together, each less successful, both artistically and commercially, than the one before it.	723.9156737193771
Our last joint venture, Sainted Lady, a deeply religious film based on the life of Mother Cabrini, and timed so that its release date would coincide with the beatification of America's first saint in November, 1938, was a fiasco from start to finish.	1036.1110211050939
As I was playing Mother Cabrini, the picture was actually "all mine", with nearly every scene built around me.	296.59710303819884
But in order to keep Letch in the public eye and out of trouble, I wrote in a part especially for him- that of a dashing ruffian who "sees the light" and is saved by the inspiring example of Mother Cabrini.	1181.8594559167498
And did he appreciate my efforts on his behalf?	143.88424028427642
Did he trouble to memorize the very small part which I had "tailor-made" to his specifications, a role eventually cut down to three short speeches?	807.4662916040387
Did he show the rest of the cast- numbering four thousand- the consideration of arriving at the studio punctually- or even at all?	391.2147625944969
He did not!	7.6107636011068935
The "shooting" went on for eight months!	77.7096887558091
Most of our working days were spent on the telephone calling "bookies", illegal gambling dens, a certain "residential club for young actresses", more than a hundred different bars or the steam room of the athletic club.	828.865123015378
Whenever he deigned to appear at the studio he was "hung over", uncooperative, rude and insulting.	914.9012752306638
He made many tasteless, irreverent and unfunny remarks, not only about me in the title role, but about religion in general.	269.83106548337116
By the time the film was released we were three million dollars over-spent, war was imminent and the public apparently had forgotten all about Mother Cabrini.	392.9062465457455
Thanks to Letch Feeley and the terrible strain he imposed on me, the notices were few and unfavorable.	337.8329163992849
Only George Santayana seemed to understand and appreciate the film when he wrote "Miss Poitrine has perpetrated the most eloquent argument for the Protestant faith yet unleashed by Hollywood".	1404.7948249347548
But it was small consolation.	25.49758036672897
In a rare fit of anger and spite, I "farmed out" my own husband to a small and most undistinguished studio to make one picture as a form of punishment.	676.1935069972099
An actor must have discipline.	47.481661606944954
The film was called The Diet of Worms, which I felt was just what Letch deserved.	557.9649902048728
It turned out to be a life of Martin Luther, of all things!	335.58003434602887
It was a disaster!	16.32727354258114
In clothes, Letch simply did not project.	98.53880664570787
He was laughed off the screen.	25.721191864652237
At the same time, however, I availed myself of the services of that great English actor and master of make-up, Sir Gauntley Pratt, to do a "quickie" called The Mystery of the Mad Marquess, in which I played a young American girl who inherits a haunted castle on the English moors which is filled with secret passages and sliding panels and, unbeknownst to anyone, is still occupied by an eccentric maniac.	1658.9941687039557
It was a "potboiler" made on a "shoestring" and not the sort of film I like, as all I had to do was look blank and scream a great deal.	391.58742255552374
My heart was not in it, but, oddly enough, it remains the most financially successful picture of my career.	1117.5597874258767
I watched it on television late one night last week and it "stands up" remarkably well, even twenty years later.	436.9279365074391
Letch had returned from his debacle unrepentant and more badly behaved than before.	381.9257964347805
I really loved that boy, and, in a feverish attempt to preserve our marriage and to try to revive the wonderful, wonderful person Letch had once been, I took my troubles to Momma, hoping that her earthy advice would help me.	1351.6352988181234
"If I could only think of something at the studio, near me, to absorb his boundless energy", I said.	143.56846802454282
"What is Letch interested in"?	44.69648853745111
"Bookies, booze and babes", Momma said bluntly.	341.2715531002594
Her reply stung me, but this was too important to let my hurt make any difference.	637.8914313617082
"I can't turn the studio into a gambling hell or a saloon", I said.	123.93588899038203
Up to date, however, his garden was still more or less of a mess, he hadn't even started his workshop and if there was a meadow pond in the neighborhood he hadn't found it.	1740.4990151243762
It wasn't his fault that these things were so.	188.7004193734073
The difficulty was that each day seemed to produce its quota of details which must be cleaned up immediately.	258.3121815805086
As a result, life had become a kind of continuous make-ready.	55.316621781655925
Once he disposed of these items which screamed so harshly for attention, he could undertake the things which really counted.	387.50624654479844
Then, at last, his day would fall into an ordered pattern and he would be free to read, or garden or just wander through the woods in the late afternoon, accompanied by his dogs.	680.3413712565546
His dogs?	15.720354573140915
He had almost forgotten them, although they had played such an important part in his early dreams.	237.55061346401789
Then they had always been romping around him on these walks, yelping with delight, dashing off into the bushes on fruitless hunting expeditions, returning to jump up on him triumphantly with muddy paws.	1776.0995244938424
Dogs did something to one's ego.	85.74005770608966
They were constantly assuring you that you were one of the world's great guys.	200.39593862467925
Regardless of how much of a slob you knew yourself to be, you could be certain they would never find out- and even if they did it would make no difference.	2403.2865356575235
Now it became increasingly apparent that there were to be no dogs in the picture.	304.90205089735196
What in the world were you going to do with a lot of dogs when you left for town on Monday afternoons?	944.2690732246668
You certainly couldn't take them into the little apartment and if you tried to farm them out for two or three days every week they would become so confused that they would have nervous breakdowns.	703.8085386240934
Why in the world couldn't he live in one place the way everyone else seemed to?	170.78031204296752
It worried him, this inability to get the simplest things done in the course of a day.	181.0300893228674
He would wake up in the middle of the night and fret about it.	214.978364247152
How in the world had he formerly found time to build up a business, raise a family, be on half a dozen boards, work actively on committees and either go out in the evening or plow through the contents of a bulging brief case?	1309.1198848273725
Was it possible that as people grow older the nature of time changed?	145.25571660395923
Could it be that it speeded up for the aged in some mysterious way, as if a bored universe were skipping through the end of the chapter just to get it over with?	758.9005334244697
Or was the answer less metaphysical?	57.46333819367604
Did older people work more slowly?	78.49695463756788
Did it take a man of sixty-five longer to write a letter, shave, clean out a barn, read a newspaper, than a man of thirty?	1473.2392680338758
Did men become perfectionists as they grew older, polishing, polishing, reluctant to let go?	544.0175701238586
It might be that certain people were born with a compulsion to complicate their lives, while others could live blissfully motionless almost indefinitely, like lizards in the sun, too indolent to blink their eyes.	971.2826151559788
Perhaps it was his misfortune, or good fortune, whichever way one looked at it, to belong to the former group, and he was struggling unconsciously to build up pressure in a world which demanded none, which was positively antagonistic to it.	1830.8761732730827
And then again perhaps the reason why he couldn't find time to do any of the things he had planned to do after retirement reading, roaming, gardening, lying on his back and watching the clouds go by, was because he didn't want to do them.	1484.1151735587314
There was no compulsion behind them.	20.631106168635263
They could be done or left undone and nobody really gave a damn.	363.6819041857069
During all his busy life he had only done things which had to be done.	67.03379962145625
This habit had become so fixed over the years that it seemed futile to do anything for which no one was waiting.	2941.763393363173
He looked at the luminous dial of his wrist watch.	83.23014050972857
It was five minutes after four.	29.92340149649111
On some distant farm a rooster crowed and, far down the valley, an associate answered.	302.20291588220084
He turned over impatiently and pulled the sheet over his head against the treacherous encroachment of the dawn.	294.1730857353491
24 AT LEAST HE COULD BUY THE equipment for his workshop.	855.6113098671552
Thus committed, action might follow.	50.90382992022369
He went down to Mills and Bradley's Hardware Store and bought a full set of carpenter's tools, including a rotary power saw and several other pieces of power machinery that Mr Mills said were essential for babbiting and doweling, whatever they were.	1052.185986927818
He also bought a huge square of pegboard for hanging up his tools, and lumber for his workbench, sandpaper and glue and assorted nails, levels and T squares and plumb lines and several gadgets that he had no idea how to use or what they were for.	1140.0800643127411
"There", said Mr Mills.	24.1078855488283
"That'll get you started.	84.44137265619521
Best not to get everything at once.	48.60168454666936
Add things as you find you need 'em".	97.80083346755194
He didn't even ask the cost of this collection.	50.2893165584835
After all, if you were going to set up a workshop you had to have the proper equipment and that was that.	515.636553363823
When he returned home, the station wagon loaded with tools, Jinny had gone with a friend to some meeting in the village, using the recently purchased second car.	2471.201214452572
He was glad.	6.662058188161616
It gave him a chance to unload the stuff and get it down to the cellar without a barrage of acid comments.	246.94072520065288
He had made such a fuss about buying that second car that he knew he was vulnerable.	308.3606696951894
He piled everything neatly in a corner of the cellar and turned to stare at the blank stone wall.	640.5730988394447
That was where the pegboard would go on which he would hang his hand tools.	346.42905456236497
In front of it would be his workbench.	328.81322774305573
The old nightmare which had caused him so many wakeful hours came charging in on him once more, only this time he couldn't pacify it with a sleeping pill and send it away.	510.74550543953086
How in the world did one attach a pegboard to a stone wall?	192.96413380781732
How did one attach anything to a stone wall, for that matter?	69.69877529938653
After the pegboard there would be the paneling.	261.91608921575033
He sat down on an old box and focused on the problem.	171.8775403039141
Perhaps one bored holes in the stone with some kind of an electric gadget.	872.4037892405485
But then, when you stuck things into the holes, why didn't they come right out again?	947.6596066813407
It all seemed rather hopeless.	39.885588167322354
He turned his attention to the workbench.	38.01230232349811
Perhaps that was the first thing to do.	95.44896786880162
A workbench had a heavy top and sturdy legs, but how did you attach sturdy legs to a heavy top so that the whole thing didn't wobble like a newborn calf and ultimately collapse when you leaned on it?	2106.741465131954
Mr Mills had done some figuring on a scrap of paper and given him the various kinds of boards and two-by-fours which, properly handled, would, he had assured him, turn into a workbench.	488.97324718093466
They lay on the cellar floor in a disorderly pile.	263.3396962650131
Mr Crombie poked at it gingerly with his foot.	202.88262219347655
How could anyone know what to do with an assortment like that?	57.18897024456214
Perhaps he had better have someone help him put up the pegboard and build the workbench- someone who knew what he was about.	339.4746718031857
Then at least he would have a place to hang his tools and something to work on.	247.87027034969483
After that everything should be simpler.	40.340178139627774
He went upstairs to phone Crumb.	82.9727087670924
To his amazement he reached him.	48.00936601701453
Mr Crumb was laid up with a bad cold.	80.54194458597146
He didn't seem to think that attaching a pegboard to a stone wall was much of a problem and he tossed off the building of the worktable equally lightly.	2449.3348082851803
The only trouble was that he himself was tied up on the school job.	377.73733344770704
That was why he hadn't been able to finish the porch.	134.7932170502277
No, he didn't know of any handyman-carpenter.	142.42933679917624
There wasn't any such thing any more.	22.363775381830262
Carpenters all wanted steady work and at the moment every mother's son for twenty miles around that could hammer nails for twenty-five dollars a day was working on the school job.	586.5911429179557
There was a fellow named Blatz over Smithtown way.	116.14701010517707
Nobody liked to hire him because you never could tell when he was going to be taken drunk.	589.7904428038069
Mr Crumb would probably see him at Lodge Meeting the next night.	186.63943871591385
If he was sober, which was doubtful, he'd have him get in touch with Mr Crombie.	235.7736578722798
Mr Blatz had been at least sober enough to remember to telephone and he turned out to be the greatest boon that had come into Mr Crombie's life since he moved to Highfield, in spite of the fact that he didn't work very fast or very long at a time, and he didn't like to work at all unless Mr Crombie hung around and talked to him.	938.3256130101504
He said he was the lonely type and working in a cellar you saw funny things coming out of the cracks in the wall if they wasn't nobody with you.	741.944179654018
So Mr Crombie sat on a wooden box and talked in order to keep Mr Blatz's mind from funny things.	432.30677559652145
At the same time he watched carefully to see how one attached pegboards to stone walls, but Mr Blatz was usually standing in his line of vision and it all seemed so simple that he didn't like to disclose his ignorance.	942.415924307934
While Mr Blatz was putting up the pegboards and starting the workbench, Mr Crombie told him of this idea about paneling the whole end of the cellar.	533.9687673622822
Mr Blatz agreed that this would be pretty.	2705.3487073851106
Without further discussion he appeared the next morning with a pile of boards sticking over the end of his light truck and proceeded with the paneling, which he then stained and waxed according to his taste.	408.1032843509497
"Now", he said, "we got to put in some outlets for them power tools; then a couple of fluorescent lamps over the workbench an' I guess we're about through down here".	442.589878545322
It all did look very efficient and shipshape.	108.89479794656381
There was no question of that.	124.52786696062138
"By the way", said Mr Blatz, packing his tools into a battered carrier, "them power tools needs extra voltage.	472.0620757229153
I guess you know about that.	27.394253664587197
Before you use 'em the light company's got to run in a heavy line and you'll need a new fuse box for the extra circuits.	279.09231587245813
That ain't too bad 'ceptin' the light company's so busy you can't ever get 'em to do nothin'".	696.9839406468033
Instead of being depressed by this news, Mr Crombie was actually relieved.	169.09871158168517
At least the moment was postponed when he had to face the mystery of the power tools.	193.91426270334904
He followed Mr Blatz up the cellar stairs.	127.28434315458256
As usual, Mrs Crombie was standing in the midst of a confusion of cooking utensils.	188.97962259933567
Mr Blatz sat down in the only unoccupied kitchen chair.	2076.908763442054
"Well", he said, "got your man fixed up nice down there.	104.28758544612329
He oughta be able to build a new house with all them contraptions".	141.73770644480706
Mr Crombie watched his wife with an anxious expression.	173.26489170274053
"I was just sayin' to him that I'm all ready now for anything else you want done".	152.81149687087648
Mr Crombie couldn't remember his saying any such thing.	186.61213858975378
"Oh, that's wonderful", cried Mrs Crombie.	136.64590489111652
"I have a thousand things for you to do.	303.2128647674237
Doors that won't open, and doors that won't close and shelves and broken h" "But those are the things I built the workshop for", protested Mr Crombie.	595.5593953827614
"Those are the things I can do, now that I'm set up".	170.7892584939114
"I've been waiting to get these things done for months", she said.	57.59635773588067
"We won't live long enough if I wait for you, besides which you don't need to worry- there'll be plenty more".	331.55501310427127
But the discussion was academic.	20.744059320914793
Mr Blatz was already taking measurements for a shelf above the kitchen sink.	292.524596277747
AMBIGUITY Nothing in English has been ridiculed as much as the ambiguous use of words, unless it be the ambiguous use of sentences.	323.3459885177857
Ben Franklin said, "Clearly spoken, Mr Fogg.	197.18552135598813
You explain English by Greek".	29.606911313130855
Richard Brinsley Sheridan said, "I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two".	356.916035318535
And a witty American journalist remarked over a century ago what is even more true today, "Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't understand his own meaning".	1541.4063322547152
There are many types of ambiguity and many of them have been described by rhetoricians under such names as amphibology, parisology, and other ologies.	1167.9908774957514
In common parlance they would be described as misses- misinterpreters, misunderstanders, misdirectors and kindred misdeeds.	621.7299862705147
One species of ambiguity tries to baffle by interweaving repetition.	311.8370490638995
"Did you or did you not say what I said you said, because Jane said you never said what I said"?	502.8824989594862
Another woman, addressing Christmas cards, said to her husband "We sent them one last year but they didn't send us one, so they probably won't send us one this year because they'll think we won't send them one because they didn't last year, don't you think, or shall we"?	1751.9952464525047
Such ambiguous exercises compound confusion by making it worse compounded, and they are sometimes expanded until the cream of the jest sours.	564.4281141946522
Ambiguity of a non-repetitious kind describes the dilemma one girl found herself in.	251.77419597666432
"I'm terribly upset", she told a girl-friend.	83.71547193969175
"I wrote Bill in my last letter to forget that I had told him that I didn't mean to reconsider my decision not to change my mind- and he seems to have misunderstood me".	1098.4758657017296
Evidently Bill was another of those men who simply don't understand women.	553.4153195231537
Another case involves a newspaper reporter who tripped up a politician.	239.76621152576826
"Mr Jones, you may recall that we printed last week your denial of having retracted the contradiction of your original statement.	418.4239435046387
Now would you care to have us say that you were misquoted in regard to it"?	376.6967839796756
Questions like this, framed in verbal fog, are perhaps the only kind that have ever stumped an experienced politician.	443.48152170160455
They recall Byron's classic comment "I wish he would explain his explanation".	309.9285423609594
Similarly, when a reporter once questioned Lincoln in cryptic fashion, Lincoln refused to make any further statement.	260.57574057079995
"I fear explanations explanatory of things explained", he said, leaving the biter bit- and bitter.	279.325424466333
The obscurity of politicians may not always be as innocent as it looks.	123.1051034706913
"Senator", said an interviewer, "your constituents can't understand from your speech last night just how you stand on the question".	615.6531583926635
"Good"!	13.795128993882576
replied the Senator.	19.6189345444253
"It took me five hours to write it that way".	139.08778654885623
The misplaced modifier is another species more honored in the observance of obscurity than in the breach.	319.8521078391219
This creates an amusing effect because its position in a sentence seems to make it apply to the wrong word.	1890.6869609380822
A verse familiar to all grammarians is the quatrain "I saw a man once beat his wife When on a drunken spree.	527.4312221826275
Now can you tell me who was drunk- The man, his wife, or me"?	1232.9565130926226
The "wooden-leg" gag of vaudeville, another standby of this sort, had endless variations.	289.25317200429356
""There's a man outside with a wooden leg named Smith".	88.93423355568015
"What's the name of his other leg""?	58.293685488922335
Another stock vaudeville gag ran "Mother is home sick in bed with the doctor".	1168.1023341294285
When radio came in, it continued the misplaced modifier in its routines as a standard device.	247.09245064918554
""Do you see that pretty girl standing next to the car with slacks on"?	184.19073027081583
"I see the girl but I don't see the car with slacks on"".	273.24822737256693
In recent years gagwriters have discovered this brand of blunder and thus the misplaced modifier has acquired a new habitat in the gagline.	464.21564413209967
In one cartoon a family is shown outside a theater with the head of the family addressing the doorman "Excuse me, but when we came out we found that we had left my daughter's handbag and my wife's behind".	1592.5533846103099
Journalism supplies us with an endless run of such slips.	249.55958069952254
Not long ago a newspaper advised those taking part in a contest that "snapshots must be of a person not larger than f inches".	833.7616195780141
Classified ads are also chockfull of misrelated constructions.	445.6276087827516
Readers of the Reader's Digest are familiar with such items which often appear in its lists of verbal slips, like the ad in a California paper that advertised "House for rent.	675.2346649649593
View takes in five counties, two bedrooms".	142.06302516023797
Since brevity is the soul of ambiguity as well as wit, newspaper headlines continually provide us with amusing samples.	456.89585383777
"Officials Meet on Rubbish.	101.40469974396115
Many Shapes in Bathtubs.	68.63330350768335
Son and Daughter of Local Couple Married".	270.22857641545954
Apart from misplaced modifiers and headlinese, journalism contributes a wide variety of comic ambiguities in both editorial and advertising matter.	566.9196452641605
A weekly newspaper reported a local romance "h and the couple were married last Saturday, thus ending a friendship which began in their schooldays".	560.6115697758964
An item in the letters column of a newspaper renewed a subscription, adding "I personally enjoy your newspaper as much as my husband".	706.2721716348216
Then there was the caterer's ad which read "ARE YOU GETTING MARRIED OR HAVING AN AFFAIR?	3762.5910484360284
We have complete facilities to accommodate 200 people".	68.76675085109397
The newspaper too is the favorite habitat of the anatomical.	93.33371539198622
This slip is so-called because its semi-ambiguous English always seems to refer to a person's anatomy but never quite means what it seems to say.	2178.0958230555966
Samples He walked in upon her invitation.	92.84211857109695
She kissed him passionately upon his reappearance.	194.34056386990474
He kissed her back.	29.017208714321217
Not without good reason has the anatomical been called jocular journalese.	289.1179068376933
In news items a man is less often shot in the body or head than in the suburbs.	1745.5397145398604
"While Henry Morgan was escorting Miss Vera Green from the church social last Saturday night, a savage dog attacked them and bit Mr Morgan on the public square".	1951.6213581429913
Such items recall the California journalist who reported an accident involving a movie star "The area in which Miss N- was injured is spectacularly scenic".	859.989789216714
The double meaning in the anatomical made it a familiar vaudeville device, as in the gags of Weber and Fields.	305.86278382897444
When a witness at court was asked if he had been kicked in the ensuing rumpus, he replied, "No, it was in the stomach".	380.1267309561837
Strangely enough, this always brought the house down.	101.16116160730705
Apart from journalese and vaudeville gags, the anatomical is also found in jocular literature.	298.77865429569067
A conscientious girl became the secretary of a doctor.	73.9812700442174
Her first day at work she was puzzled by an entry in the doctor's notes on an emergency case.	290.4076735210568
It read "Shot in the lumbar region".	84.53003924692189
After a moment of thought, her mind cleared and, in the interest of clarity, she typed into the record "Shot in the woods".	139.78005462232906
There are many grammatical misconstructions other than dangling modifiers and anatomicals which permit two different interpretations.	430.0291252984279
At the home of a gourmet the new maid was instructed in the fine points of serving.	131.87514128256726
"I want the fish served whole, with head and tail", the epicure explained, "and serve it with lemon in mouth".	230.54589487911528
The maid demurred.	24.795006241077644
"That's silly- lemon in mouth", she said.	78.33923696700758
But since the gourmet insisted that it is done that way at the most fashionable dinners, the girl reluctantly agreed.	821.9715092662776
So she brought the fish in whole, and she carried a lemon in her mouth.	106.89507647714255
Another specimen of such double-entendre is illustrated by a woman in a department store.	464.6708326984043
She said to the saleslady, "I want a dress to put on around the house".	204.58945377837267
The puzzled saleslady inquired, "How large is your house, Madam"?	352.78238929569807
This saleslady was a failure in the dress department and was transferred to the shoe department.	154.02819158052503
When a customer asked for alligator shoes, she said, "What size is your alligator"?	323.69690079587724
The comic indefinite comprises an extensive class of comedy.	201.13293341660128
One species is restricted to statements which are neither explicit nor precise regarding a particular person, place, time or thing.	366.1541355247599
A woman met a famous author at a literary tea.	108.37734521704643
"Oh, I'm so delighted to meet you", she gushed.	31.15794435306782
"It was only the other day that I saw something of yours, about something or other, in some magazine".	242.03101790166943
This baffling lack of distinct details recalls the secretary whose employer was leaving the office and told her what to answer if anyone called in his absence.	679.0671648808094
"I may be back", he explained, "and then again, I may not".	8036.5585921748525
The girl nodded understandingly.	57.952614686510586
"Yes, sir", she said, "is that definite"?	151.70590811115184
An old-fashioned mother said to her modern daughter, "You must have gotten in quite late last night, dear.	690.7761077662384
Where were you"?	11.78165508438
The daughter replied, "Oh, I had dinner with- well, you don't know him but he's awfully nice- and we went to a couple of places- I don't suppose you've heard of them- and we finished up at a cute little night club- I forget the name of it.	2248.445516115158
Why, it's all right, isn't it, Mother"?	224.29004842789402
Her woolly-minded parent agreed.	120.62365892077088
"Of course, dear", she said.	13.809815993655123
"It's only that I like to know where you go".	567.5258045062468
No less ambiguous was the indefinity of a certain clergyman's sermon.	157.89905190612058
"Dearly beloved", he preached, "unless you repent of your sins in a measure, and become converted to a degree, you will, I regret to say, be damned to a more or less extent".	2043.4811166360716
This clergyman should have referred to Shakespeare's dictum "So-so is a good, very good, very excellent maxim.	728.9569090632233
And yet it is not.	41.93132523859483
It is but so-so".	14.421372937277738
Indefinite reference also carries double-meaning where an allusion to one person or thing seems to refer to another.	955.4215002838142
A news item described the launching of a ship "Completing the ceremony, the beautiful movie star smashed a bottle of champagne over her stern as she slid gracefully down the ways into the sea".	861.0932903973628
This is not unlike the order received by the sergeant of an army motor pool "Four trucks to Fort Mason gym, 730 tonight, for hauling girls to dance.	590.6585628841191
The bodies must be cleaned and seats wiped off".	131.22259742443467
A politician was approached by a man seeking the office of a minor public official who had just died.	417.37486434351933
"What are my chances for taking Joe's place"?	391.46762628155716
he asked.	3.0139882038473726
"If you can fix it up with the undertaker", returned the politician, "it's all right with me".	129.20336688557452
The manager of a movie theater received a telephone call from a woman who was equally indefinite.	389.0640199088808
"What have you got on today"?	44.76910564452467
she inquired.	19.383884283194288
"A blue suit", he answered.	44.460277875606124
"Who's in it"?	21.016322315687678
she continued.	14.443224302751178
"I am", he said.	13.408507597571122
There was a short pause for reflection.	84.69942241070376
"Oh", said the woman, "I've seen that picture already".	48.09466262072403
Another brand of indefinite reference arises out of the use of the double verb.	292.885377732144
When a question contains two verbs, the response does not make clear which of them is being answered.	194.8540437532952
The moonlit night was made for romance, and he had been looking at her soulfully for some time.	1965.122247384289
Finally he asked, "Do you object to petting"?	127.38350341777794
"That's one thing I've never done", she said promptly.	753.4354306053938
He thought a moment, then inquired, "You mean petted"?	94.65742440545299
"No", she smiled, "objected".	31.860664207704993
Replies to requests for character reference are notorious for their evasive double-entendre.	548.6542602541953
It would be hard to find anything more equivocal than "I cannot recommend him too highly".	214.69768278791577
Another less ambiguous case read as follows "The bearer of this letter has served me for two years to his complete satisfaction.	1415.7062812441857
If you are thinking of giving him a berth, be sure to make it a wide one".	210.03093014534915
In the comedy of indefinite reference, it-wit occupies a prominent place because of its frequent occurrence.	229.68717989108993
Ambiguity arises when the pronoun it carries a twofold reference.	298.6785258927174
Two friends were talking.	30.949927590732063
One said, "When I get a cold I buy a bottle of whiskey for it, and within a few hours it's gone".	395.0330370439481
The speaker referred to the whiskey but his friend thought he meant the cold.	128.65356661795775
It-wit is a misnomer because it covers slips as well as wit.	220.55057368779822
An excited woman was making an emergency call over the phone "Doctor, please come over right away.	417.8957533336277
My husband is in great pain.	26.40330947876851
I CALLED the other afternoon on my old friend, Graves Moreland, the Anglo-American literary critic- his mother was born in Ohio- who lives alone in a fairy-tale cottage on the Upson Downs, raising hell and peacocks, the former only when the venerable gentleman becomes an angry old man about the state of literature or something else that is dwindling and diminishing, such as human stature, hope, and humor.	1084.5091738591043
My unscientific friend does not believe that human stature is measurable in terms of speed, momentum, weightlessness, or distance from earth, but is a matter of the development of the human mind.	589.2440968601665
After Gagarin became the Greatest Man in the World, for a nation that does not believe in the cult of personality or in careerism, Moreland wrote me a letter in which he said "I am not interested in how long a bee can live in a vacuum, or how far it can fly.	2296.0416203725345
A bee's place is in the hive".	57.09074542705027
"I have come to talk with you about the future of humor and comedy", I told him, at which he started slightly, and then made us each a stiff drink, with a trembling hand.	1748.248811946694
"I seem to remember", he said, "that in an interview ten years ago you gave humor and comedy five years to live.	1106.1633814505224
Did you go to their funeral"?	49.297742547128024
"I was wrong", I admitted.	31.62348274597249
"Comedy didn't die, it just went crazy.	186.40017467511518
It has identified itself with the very tension and terror it once did so much to alleviate.	392.5693768580282
We now have not only what has been called over here the comedy of menace but we also have horror jokes, magazines known as Horror Comics, and sick comedians.	857.7602121631
There are even publications called Sick and Mad.	98.53847446767573
The Zeitgeist is not crazy as a loon or mad as a March hare; it is manic as a man".	301.8034633286621
"I woke up this morning", Moreland said, "paraphrasing Lewis Carroll.	329.12502957187417
Do you want to hear the paraphrase"?	29.79588395395939
"Can I bear it"?	30.86920001359508
I asked, taking a final gulp of my drink, and handing him the empty glass.	184.39424429007403
"Just barely", he said, and repeated his paraphrase "The time has come", the walrus said, "To speak of manic things, Of shots and shouts, and sealing dooms Of commoners and kings".	621.828770289156
Moreland fixed us each another drink, and said, "For God's sake, tell me something truly amusing".	1894.8237571525444
"I'll try", I said, and sat for a moment thinking.	240.46575723369014
"Oh yes, the other day I reread some of Emerson's English Traits, and there was an anecdote about a group of English and Americans visiting Germany, more than a hundred years ago.	839.714803919242
In the railway station at Berlin, a uniformed attendant was chanting, 'Foreigners this way!	336.54545920635553
Foreigners this way'!	57.15674656416028
One woman- she could have been either English or American- went up to him and said, 'But you are the foreigners'".	572.3310219515382
I took a deep breath and an even deeper swallow of my drink, and said, "I admit that going back to Ralph Waldo Emerson for humor is like going to a modern musical comedy for music and comedy".	1905.7790967324017
"What's the matter with the music"?	275.5872460139334
Moreland asked.	23.567840164135237
"It doesn't drown out the dialogue", I explained.	85.46088900271559
"Let's talk about books", Moreland said.	106.01490804795614
"I am told that in America you have non-books by non-writers, brought out by non-publishers for non-readers.	375.0216897575515
Is it all non-fiction"?	43.73595664551367
"There is non-fiction and non non-fiction", I said.	65.08347126737618
"Speaking of nonism the other day, in a story about a sit-down demonstration, the Paris Herald Tribune wrote, 'The non-violence became noisier'.	548.6654873214918
And then Eichmann was quoted as saying, in non-English, that Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews was nonsense".	273.40605479430826
"If we cannot tell evil, horror, and insanity from nonsense, what is the future of humor and comedy"?	206.93246065419942
Moreland asked, grimly.	73.80567169107738
"Cryptic", I said.	17.329239573981408
"They require, for existence, a brave spirit and a high heart, and where do you find these?	150.34778749789567
In our present era of Science and Angst, the heart has been downgraded, to use one of our popular retrogressive verbs".	660.3610837011327
"I know what you mean", Moreland sighed.	720.4338868685157
"Last year your Tennessee Williams told our Dilys Powell, in a television program, that it is the task of the playwright to throw light into the dark corners of the human heart.	628.2580576122621
Like almost everybody else, he confused the heart, both as organ and as symbol, with the disturbed psyche, the deranged glands, and the jumpy central nervous system.	432.51519684445645
I'm not pleading for the heart that leaps up when it beholds a rainbow in the sky, or for the heart that with rapture fills and dances with the daffodils.	566.2987169885555
The sentimental pure heart of Galahad is gone with the knightly years, but I still believe in the heart of the George Meredith character that was not made of the stuff that breaks".	768.3023751003026
"We no longer have Tom Moore's and Longfellow's 'heart for any fate', either", I said.	165.6413780707394
"Moore and Longfellow didn't have the fate that faces us", Moreland said.	270.90952957720054
"One day our species promises co-existence, and the next day it threatens co-extinction".	669.6610381458389
We sat for a while drinking in silence.	70.00414814096813
"The heart", I said finally, "is now either in the throat or the mouth or the stomach or the shoes.	268.7198262684357
When it was worn in the breast, or even on the sleeve, we at least knew where it was".	121.26958760441721
There was a long silence.	46.39619943204484
"You have visited England five times in the past quarter-century, I believe", my host said.	121.0091304372635
"What has impressed you most on your present visit"?	130.57910471229297
"I would say depressed, not impressed", I told him.	32.942978111342995
"I should say it is the turning of courts of law into veritable theatres for sex dramas, involving clergymen and parishioners, psychiatrists and patients.	991.4258461937097
It is becoming harder and harder to tell law courts and political arenas from the modern theatre".	212.3003613156785
"Do you think we need a new Henry James to re-explore the Anglo-American scene"?	477.94676260080047
he asked.	3.0139882038473726
"Or perhaps a new Noel Coward"?	88.52309446604907
"But you must have heard it said that the drawing-room disappeared forever with the somnolent years of James and the antic heyday of Coward.	300.93234114611164
I myself hear it said constantly- in drawing-rooms.	100.86287696535229
In them, there is usually a group of Anglo-Americans with tragicomic problems, worthy of being explored either in the novel or in the play or in comedy and satire".	470.56199104445665
I stood up and began pacing.	974.5231205582315
"If you are trying to get us out of the brothel, the dustbin, the kitchen sink, and the tawdry living-room, you are probably wasting your time", Moreland told me.	486.6019636669341
"Too many of our writers seem to be interested only in creatures that crawl out of the woodwork or from under the rock".	255.18084409239165
"Furiouser and furiouser", I said.	44.35433299026539
"I am worried about the current meanings of the word 'funny'.	552.4045560538726
It now means ominous, as when one speaks of a funny sound in the motor; disturbing, as when one says that a friend is acting funny; and frightening, as when a wife tells the police that it is funny, but her husband hasn't been home for two days and nights".	1649.6009288587047
Moreland sat brooding for a full minute, during which I made each of us a new drink.	290.8442300661193
He took his glass, clinked it against mine, and said, "Toujours gai, what the hell"!	992.3482050107564
borrowing a line from Don Marquis' Mehitabel.	246.57854169160692
"Be careful of the word 'gay', for it, too, has undergone a change.	566.9431178534236
It now means, in my country, homosexual", I said.	131.15063920099507
"Oh, I forgot to say that if one is taken to the funny house in the funny wagon, he is removed to a mental institution in an ambulance.	2797.8429990638892
Recently, by the way, I received a questionnaire in which I was asked whether or not I was non-institutionalized".	543.8096188570084
MY HOST went over and stared out the window at his peacocks; then he turned to me.	1226.1190388971181
"Is it true that you believe the other animals are saner than the human species"?	216.37228852912185
"Oh, that is demonstrable", I told him.	24.39496706978703
"Do you remember the woman in the French Alps who was all alone with her sheep one day when the sun darkened ominously?	1609.8568043690432
She told the sheep, 'The world is coming to an end'!	101.68358658243118
And the sheep said- all in unison, I have no doubt- 'Ba-a-a'!	163.94784216888326
The sound mockery of sheep is like the salubrious horse laugh".	217.92018374627065
"That is only partly non-nonsense", he began.	72.03780794962995
"If you saw the drama called Rhinoceros", I said, "think of the effect it would have on an audience of rhinos when the actor on stage suddenly begins turning into a rhinoceros.	276.5396341860887
The rhinos would panic, screaming 'Help'!- if that can be screamed in their language".	298.3314006506601
"You think the Russians are getting ahead of us in comedy"?	496.50151670527134
Moreland demanded.	29.46582071851244
"Non-God, no", I said.	35.71347568591763
"The political and intellectual Left began fighting humor and comedy years ago, because they fear things they do not understand and cannot manage, such as satire and irony, such as humor and comedy.	774.3792674131034
Nevertheless, like any other human being upon whom the spotlight of the world plays continually, Khrushchev, the anti-personality cultist, has become a comic actor, or thinks he has.	410.5426323880585
In his famous meeting with Nixon a couple of years ago he seemed to believe that he was as funny as Ed Wynn.	1388.7557823124257
But, like Caesar, he has only one joke, so far as I can find out.	895.0601369069399
It consists in saying, 'That would be sending the goat to look after the cabbage'.	159.93464715027707
Why in the name of his non-God doesn't he vary it a bit"?	139.49882619617034
"Such as"?	10.119343928802536
Moreland asked.	23.567840164135237
"Such as 'sending the cat to guard the mice', or 'the falcon to protect the dove', or most terribly sharp of all, 'the human being to save humanity'".	627.2352294165953
"You and I have fallen out of literature into politics", Moreland observed.	320.57082045745636
"What a nasty fall was there"!	60.32853032846644
I said.	42.92455568231413
Moreland went over to stare at his peacocks again, and then came back and sat down, restively.	792.4801050336237
"The world that was once foot-loose and fancy-free", he said, "has now become screw-loose and frenzy-free.	209.71480549196787
In our age of Science and Angst it seems to me more brave to stay on Earth and explore inner man than to fly far from the sphere of our sorrow and explore outer space".	1114.1494654056685
"The human ego being what it is", I put in, "science fiction has always assumed that the creatures on the planets of a thousand larger solar systems than ours must look like gigantic tube-nosed fruit bats.	2335.340650876295
It seems to me that the first human being to reach one of these planets may well learn what it is to be a truly great and noble species".	265.7547124335005
"Now we are leaving humor and comedy behind again", Moreland protested.	252.27478567082542
"Not in the largest sense of the words", I said.	1776.905796312418
"The other day Arnold Toynbee spoke against the inveterate tendency of our species to believe in the uniqueness of its religions, its ideologies, and its virtually everything else.	475.28697807719254
Why do we not realize that no ideology believes so much in itself as it disbelieves in something else?	258.0122609304763
Forty years ago an English writer, W L George, dealt with this subject in Eddies of the Day, and said, as an example, that 'Saint George for Merry England' would not start a spirit half so quickly as 'Strike frog-eating Frenchmen dead'"!	2937.938300030108
"There was also Gott strafe Angleterre", Moreland reminded me, "and Carthago delenda est, or if you will, Deus strafe Carthage.	3373.259532935009
It isn't what the ideologist believes in, but what he hates, that puts the world in jeopardy.	336.1937850199208
This is the force, in our time and in every other time, that urges the paranoiac and the manic-depressive to become head of a state.	1118.6373868439061
Complete power not only corrupts but it also attracts the mad.	212.96655589173028
There is a bitter satire for a future writer in that".	100.93603916375196
"Great satire has always been clearly written and readily understandable", I said.	176.3751917084316
"But we now find writers obsessed by the nooks and crannies of their ivory towers, and curiously devoted to the growing obscurity and complexity of poetry and non-poetry.	570.3008340130397
I wrote a few years ago that one of the cardinal rules of writing is that the reader should be able to get some idea of what the story is about.	770.5932460571643
One day, the children had wanted to get up onto General Burnside's horse.	4200.687293937581
They wanted to see what his back felt like- the General's.	310.89030382414415
He looked so comfortable being straight.	44.53557816746167
They wanted to touch the mystery.	36.68403052357252
Arlene was boosting them up when the policeman came by.	137.39576478937562
He was very rude.	22.444005888937223
Arlene had a hard voice, too, this time.	189.40971266375342
The policeman's eyes rather popped for a second; but then Arlene got another tone in a hurry, and she said, "If it wasn't for these dear children"-.	1206.9127756881458
The policeman got a confused, funny look on his face, and he had answered kind of politely, "Now, look here, lady I know you got to entertain these kids and all.	870.2179504155831
But this is a public park and it's a city ordinance that the statues cannot be crawled on".	247.09036195656589
Arlene was so ashamed that she hung her head when she said, "Yes, sir".	262.199272675431
The policeman walked on, but he looked back once.	86.01926319837993
That had happened on the day when two other unusual things had occurred.	631.8470251840135
Arlene had taught them a new way to have fun in their little private area; and they had told their mother about the tumbles.	345.8731910729692
In matters of exact information, that kept her one step behind developments; and so they were consistently true to their principles.	484.0143009442364
"Never mind", Arlene had said, after the policeman had left, having pursued the usual unco-operative course of grownups.	358.71335941161055
"Never mind.	5.815112130702706
I know something that is much more fun that we can do on our little lawn".	192.62358981311667
"What is it"?	3.2041059019629534
asked the children, whose reflexes and replies were invariably so admirably normal and predictable.	651.381249221278
Maybe that was why they were cordial and loyal towards the unpredictability of Arlene.	283.0396143362383
"Just you wait", advised Arlene, echoing the dialogue in a recent British movie.	306.0903507917538
And when they had got to their little lawn, they had had a most twirlingly magnificent time.	1122.5091533141917
First, Arlene had put them through some rapid somersaults.	180.896262858664
They had protested that that wasn't any surprise.	79.64395222108334
"Just you wait", said Arlene again, as though she were discovering the pleasantly tingling insinuations of that handy little sturdy statement.	771.3078566930803
"This is a warm-up".	12.20111564989234
"Is it anything like cooked-over oatmeal"?	146.5264949208191
asked one of the children.	16.5768904672879
"Not the least bit", Arlene snapped.	106.66852033511303
One of the many things that was so nice about her was that she always took your questions seriously, particularly your very, very serious questions.	508.26939117735424
Those were especially the ones that all other grownups laughed at loudest.	187.61271263662442
She would sometimes even get a little hard on you, she took you so seriously.	154.4663957265092
But not hard for very long.	19.376652617436978
Just long enough to make you feel important.	681.2220974571612
"Now", said Arlene, eventually, making them both sit in formation on a big root of a live oak, the sort of root that divided itself and made their bottoms sag down and feel comfortable.	566.7223747099335
"Now, we're going to be like what General Burnside and his horse make us think of".	304.57520226115514
The children looked at each other and sagged their bottoms down even more comfortably than ever.	172.3442835336994
Their curiosity went happily out of bounds.	78.66438631876652
Then, Arlene threw herself backwards and wiggled in a way that was just wonderful.	262.8254253648799
She held herself that way and turned her head towards them and laughed and winked.	233.64156353067855
"Imagine being able to laugh and wink when you're like the top part of that picture frame at home", one of them said.	350.67688802752025
They both laughed and winked back.	55.68105284528883
"I'm General Burnside's horse, upside down", Arlene said, sort of gaspingly, for her even she had to breathe kind of funny when she was in that position.	556.4528801253108
She made General Burnside's horse's belly do so funny when it was upside down.	1097.351507013665
Then, she was back on her feet, winking and smiling that enormous smile she had lots of wonderful big teeth that you never would have suspected she had when she was not smiling.	1502.0431936550603
And she would wink and throw kisses.	84.08627593191179
They both tried to keep smiling and winking for a long time, but it made their lips and eyelids tremble.	370.5563099927192
But they kept on clapping for a long, long time.	27.400755799317086
"This time", Arlene said, and she even kept on wiggling a little bit while she was just talking, "you're going to tell me what I am and what I'm doing.	606.7308473613098
It all has something to do with General Burnside and his horse".	198.78102517687543
This time, it was so grand; they could tell exactly what it was.	464.49495824934326
It was General Burnside's horse running in a circle.	89.27088197316154
His legs shook, and the shaking went right on up his body through his hips to his shoulders.	426.75393927464455
"That's the General's horse", one of them cried out.	70.57553416914027
The other remarked, in a happy laughter, "That's a funny old horse".	144.26060467414086
The first one said, "He sure does shake.	55.553489972167874
He's old".	10.935798110871554
Then there was the General kissing his wife.	143.4331095661949
They had to be told that one.	133.12092777116467
But it was even funnier after they had been told.	96.49979629640758
Their father, when he came back from those many business trips, just bumped their mother on the forehead with his lips and asked if anybody had thought to mix the martinis and put them in the electric icebox.	1031.6763065677017
But not General Burnside.	35.51709887787047
He was the funniest man.	20.07195140081354
He never could keep still, even when he didn't move his feet.	235.83843898399857
Then, they had to get up and be General Burnside.	425.36901325804706
Or his horse.	16.26813794753206
All they could think of was to run around in circles, kicking their legs out.	162.71286387224143
It wasn't very funny.	22.887371745670915
Then, they said General Burnside was going to jump over his horse's head; and they did some somersaults.	367.9837760626073
But that wasn't very funny, either.	44.53272894060439
"You ought to shake", Arlene advised them.	113.25684022996629
And Arlene showed them how to begin.	77.59701738504259
She also taught them to sing "I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate".	325.68498151821507
That helped a lot.	19.43534166244178
They were clumsy, but they were beginning to catch on.	57.999718425478314
They also caught on a little bit on how to smile a lot without your lips trembling.	280.0706220649966
"Imagine you won't get your allowance if you're caught not smiling- or smiling with your lips trembling too much", Arlene suggested.	652.5841784323708
That helped a great deal.	25.929125436012463
They were a little late in getting home.	120.90613466493485
"I'm sorry, Mrs Minks", Arlene said in a tone so low you could hardly hear it.	102.50301951197326
My mother constituted herself the voice of all of us.	139.43916771534236
"It's perfectly understandable, Arlene", my mother said in a friendly way.	249.50379504784385
"I suppose you all were playing and forgot"?	249.33928234870902
"Yes, ma'am", the children chorused heartily.	77.9782626346305
We couldn't help laughing.	54.42438990254242
The children rushed off to get rid of their sweaters; and Arlene began tapping the kitchen door open.	351.5205695188972
"Arlene's a good girl", my uncle remarked to us; but he said it too soon, for it came out just before the tap to which the door responded.	674.3861276141638
That tap had a slight bangish quality.	114.06627518249519
"She really is a dear little thing", my mother agreed.	120.50802095628855
Her upper lip lifted slightly.	98.09949625113991
She was biting into a small red radish; and that action always caused her to lift her lip from the sting of the thing.	313.73528834598557
Also, she lived in continual fear of finding a white worm curled up in a neat, mean little heap at the white center of the radish.	879.7456127782019
She would try to see over the bulge of her cheeks and somewhat under her teeth to the place where she was biting.	437.31562696893883
It never worked, naturally; but it made her look unusual.	101.81029804932267
Also, when she had bitten off half of the small radish, she found the suspense unbearable; and she would snatch the finger-held half of the radish out to where she could inspect it.	1135.2368444500455
One could hear a very faint, ladylike sigh of relief.	463.8325895257729
Actually, it was inaudible to anyone not expecting it.	78.13682411824455
But the warm joy of her brown eyes was open to the general public.	139.13912167475561
Later on, the children told her further about somersaulting.	753.6415593567434
"It must be awfully good for them.	109.57386994134498
And awfully kind of Arlene", she told us later.	139.1603022602537
"But do you know something curious"?	176.16713940805974
she added.	14.16055318949836
"I reached into that funny little pocket that is high up on my dress.	184.41219015653306
I have no notion why I reached.	21.546577034886713
And I found a radish.	32.021588592798715
Was it an omen?	38.78060017842114
I thought for a second.	14.478993235702568
But I would not pamper myself in that silly way.	251.56919406412166
I opened the window and threw the radish out".	83.34090228209993
Then, my mother blushed at this small lie; for she knew and we knew that it was cowardice that had made one more radish that night just too impossible a strain.	428.389864471603
Arlene became indispensable; nobody could have told why.	181.50560169042515
But she was.	34.67563615786216
It was in the air.	16.206832461284133
A friend of my father's came to dinner.	38.829855221207964
He was passing through town and phoned to say hello.	123.83839750904608
As a result, he was persuaded out to dinner.	16.153651498203264
As a matter of fact, this happened every four or five months.	27.13286266915473
Sometimes, he coincided with my father's being at home.	86.35134688602227
Sometimes, as at this juncture, he did not.	92.21663391774506
But he was always persuaded out.	66.58638951209711
he liked children, in a loathsome kind of way; the two youngest in our family always had to be brought in and put through tricks for his entertainment.	1442.5324685600356
When he had left, I could never remember whether he had poked them in their middles, laughingly, with a thick index finger or whether he was merely so much the sort of person who did this that one assumed the action, not bothering to look.	728.7123017583269
The children loathed him, too.	28.071771306988726
This evening, they were pushed in from the breakfast room, with odds and ends of dessert distributed over them.	310.07704587119696
There had been some coconut in it, for I remember my mother's taking a quick glance at a stringy bit of this nut on the cheek of one of them and then putting down her radish with a shiver.	2131.4552853795626
They were pushed gently into the room by Arlene- whose only part appearing were hands that crept quickly back around to the kitchen side of the door.	821.0132504411868
We had just sat down.	28.563552361965147
"Tell Mr Gorboduc what you're doing these days", my mother advised the children, ceremonially.	370.91470158035395
There was an air of revolt about the children- even irreverence for their own principles.	266.3768780480529
This could be told chiefly from a sort of head-tossing and prancing, a horselike balkiness of demeanor.	517.3123889710934
Possibly, the coconut-containing dessert had brought up bitter problems of administration.	221.6557642989267
But, at the beginning, this stayed just in the air.	24.685666964155608
"We go to the park with this nice lady", one of them said.	300.40397007911974
"We have good times".	13.401834423373097
This happy bulletin convulsed Mr Gorboduc.	162.9543596687472
"You do"?	6.8148240746126785
he asked, between wheezes of laughter.	210.82579057652114
He was forced to wipe his eyes.	35.82203731998446
"You don't step on the flowers, do you?	52.687427337228634
Eh"?	17.372674381654033
One of the children maneuvered out of range of the poking index finger.	195.7187511416687
"No", he said.	24.934875115483344
"We don't".	5.499837727196079
Mr Gorboduc took a swig of his sherry.	175.26952953384202
He was so long thinking that my mother had time to inspect her sherry for dregs.	234.70360287578373
Usually, this was done when attention was diverted by someone else's long, boring story.	285.9516421259526
But this time she was nervous she was open.	205.50505407150186
Mr Gorboduc was finally in command of his mind again.	113.16387131167093
"Tell me- what do you do at the park"?	112.78799025319636
he asked.	3.0139882038473726
This was delivered in a forthright way, without coyness and over-pretended interest- an admirable way with children.	467.39755083411217
Only, unfortunately, he could not remove from his voice a nagging insinuation of the direct command.	189.54539454252452
This nettled the children into the revelation of exact truth, a sacrifice of their secret superiority over grown people, but a victory in the wide fields of perpetration and illegitimate accomplishment.	863.4143632094326
"We bump", one said; and the other went on to development of the idea.	321.45981341196455
"We grind, too", he said.	15.22297698724132
My mother was beside herself with curiosity.	49.86352260796393
"Say that again", she pleaded.	53.238235297395974
She laughed a little and tossed the dregs rakishly around in her glass.	240.68841386667816
"You what"?	8.616796539006655
She could see that Mr Gorboduc was intrigued; the hostess in her took over.	198.76554527448204
She was rollickingly happy.	27.93535107899009
"You what"?	8.616796539006655
My uncle looked at Mr Gorboduc.	124.29887693917176
He read Henry James and used to pretend profundity through eye-beamings at people.	330.70180884506294
Mr Gorboduc looked down.	46.20943067778913
He would not look up.	13.40557240739981
He was very funny about the whole thing.	46.81904952609233
PUERI AQUAM DE SILVAS AD AGRICOLAS PORTANT, a delightful vignette set in the unforgettable epoch of pre-Punic War Rome.	2351.3022390526794
Marcellus, the hero, is beset from all sides by the problems of approaching manhood.	533.2345353675246
The story opens on the eve of his fifty-third birthday, as he prepares for the two weeks of festivities that are to follow.	257.5603241563706
Suddenly, a messenger arrives and, just before collapsing dead at his feet, informs him that the Saracens have invaded Silesia, the home province of his affianced.	560.2676908419663
He at once cancels the celebrations and, buckling on his scimitar, stumbles blindly from the house, where he is hit and killed by a passing oxcart.	1775.9766475948124
THE ALBANY CIVIC OPERA's presentation of Spumoni's immortal Il Sevigli del Spegititgninino, with guest contralto Hattie Sforzt.	4476.238905301885
An unusual, if not extraordinary, rendering of the classic myth that involves the rescue of Prometheus from the rock by the US Cavalry was given last week in the warehouse of the Albany Leather Conduit Company amid cheers of "Hubba hubba" and "Yalagaloo pip pip"!	1904.3001692660623
After a "busy" overture, the curtain rises on a farm scene- the Ranavan Valley in northern Maine.	401.1913987647487
A dead armadillo, the sole occupant of the stage, symbolizes the crisis and destruction of the Old Order.	834.993675586868
Old Order, acted and atonally sung by Grunnfeu Arapacis, the lovely Serbantian import, then entered and delivered the well-known invocation to the god Phineoppus, whereupon the stage is quite unexpectedly visited by a company of wandering Gorshek priests, symbolizing Love, Lust, Prudence and General Motors, respectively.	2156.069696089776
According to the myth, Old Order then vanishes at stage left and reappears at extreme stage right, but director Shuz skillfully sidesteps the rather gooshey problem of stage effects by simply having Miss Arapacis walk across the stage.	1201.335889315726
The night we saw it, a rather unpleasant situation arose when the soloist refused to approach the armadillo, complaining- in ad-lib- that "it smelled".	813.17635535745
We caught the early train to New York.	28.377097292117465
THE DHARMA DICTIONARY, a list of highly unusual terms used in connection with Eurasian proto-senility cults.	767.7037486420805
It's somewhat off the beaten track, to be sure, but therein lies its variety and charm.	144.91825571972382
For example, probably very few people know that the word "visrhanik" that is bantered about so much today stems from the verb "bouanahsha" to salivate.	730.6235734443997
Likewise, and equally fascinating, is the news that such unlikely synonyms as "pratakku", "sweathruna", and the tongue-twister "nnuolapertar-it-vuh-karti-biri-pitknoumen" all originated in the same village in Bathar-on-Walli Province and are all used to express sentiments concerning British "imperialism".	1732.148068797005
The terms are fairly safe to use on this side of the ocean, but before you start spouting them to your date, it might be best to find out if he was a member of Major Pockmanster's Delhi Regiment, since resentment toward the natives was reportedly very high in that outfit.	2382.2620777566385
THE BREEZE AND CHANCELLOR NEITZBOHR, a movie melodrama that concerns the attempts of a West German politician to woo a plaster cast of the Apollo Belvedere.	1571.4980530140426
As you have doubtless guessed already, the plot is plastered with Freudian, Jungian, and Meinckian theory.	371.04252823955426
For example, when the film is only four minutes old, Neitzbohr refers to a small, Victorian piano stool as "Wilhelmina", and we are thereupon subjected to a flashback that informs us that this very piano stool was once used by an epileptic governess whose name, of course, was Doris the English equivalent, when passed through middle-Gaelic derivations, of Wilhelmina.	1203.8033185759055
For the remainder of the movie, Chancellor Neitzbohr proceeds to lash the piano stool with a slat from a Venetian blind that used to hang in the pre-war Reichstag.	518.1459326647772
In this manner, he seeks to expunge from his own soul the guilt pangs caused by his personal assaults against the English at Dunkirk.	586.4382766325326
As we find out at the end, it is not the stool symbolizing Doris, therefore the English that he is punishing but the piece of Venetian blind.	656.2849423224944
And, when the slat finally shatters, we see him count the fragments, all the while muttering, "He loves me, he loves me not".	581.532030400591
After a few tortuous moments of wondering who "he" is, the camera pans across the room to the plaster statue, and we realize that Neitzbohr is trying to redeem himself in the eyes of a mute piece of sculpture.	1778.6386732125834
The effect, needless to say, is almost terrifying, and though at times a bit obscure, the film is certainly a much-needed catharsis for the "repressed" movie-goer.	661.9592171314176
THE MUSIC OF BINI SALFININISTAS, CAPITAL LP 63711-R, one of the rare recordings of this titanic, yet unsung, composer.	743.6457083730035
Those persons who were lucky enough to see and hear the performance of his work at the Brest-Silevniov Festival in August, 1916, will certainly welcome his return to public notice; and it is not unlikely that, even as the great Bach lay dormant for so many years, so has the erudite, ingenious SalFininistas passed through his "purgatory" of neglect.	6347.307225364862
But now, under the guidance of the contemporary composer Marc Schlek, Jr, a major revival is under way.	3086.6055155983095
As he leads the Neurenschatz Skolkau Orchestra, Schlek gives a tremendously inspired performance of both the Baslot and Rattzhenfuut concertos, including the controversial Tschilwyk cadenza, which was included at the conductor's insistence.	1203.042603482484
A major portion of the credit should also go to flautist Haumd for his rendering of the almost impossible "Indianapolis" movement in the Baslot.	591.8955237441594
Not only was Haumd's intonation and phrasing without flaw, but he seemed to take every tonal eccentricity in stride.	540.1708684533606
For example, to move as the score requires from the lowest F-major register up to a barely audible N minor in four seconds, not skipping, at the same time, even one of the 407 fingerings, seems a feat too absurd to consider, and it is to the flautist's credit that he remained silent throughout the passage.	908.6528330797659
We would have preferred, however, to have had the rest of the orchestra refrain from laughing at this and other spots on the recording, since it mars an otherwise sober, if not lofty, performance.	1034.8035592802482
As Broadway itself becomes increasingly weighted down by trite, heavy-handed, commercially successful musicals and inspirational problem dramas, the American theatre is going through an inexorable renaissance in that nebulous area known as "off-Broadway".	1412.6859435768936
For the last two years, this frontier of the arts has produced a number of so-called "non-dramas" which have left indelible, bittersweet impressions on the psyche of this veteran theatregoer.	1207.060341096602
The latest and, significantly, greatest fruit of this theatrical vine is The, an adaptation of Basho's classic frog-haiku by Roger Entwhistle, a former University of Maryland chemistry instructor.	917.5143642736713
Although the play does show a certain structural amateurishness there are eleven acts varying in length from twenty-five seconds to an hour and a half, the statement it makes concerning the ceaseless yearning and searching of youth is profound and worthy of our attention.	1052.3486310280698
The action centers about a group of outspoken and offbeat students sitting around a table in a cafeteria and their collective and ultimately fruitless search for a cup of hot coffee.	564.7807748069799
They are relentlessly rebuffed on all sides by a waitress, the police, and an intruding government tutor.	3182.737710804115
The innocence that they tried to conceal at the beginning is clearly destroyed forever when one of them, asking for a piece of lemon-meringue pie, gets a plate of English muffins instead.	2705.9776663720863
Leaving the theatre after the performance, I had a flash of intuition that life, after all as Rilke said, is just a search for the nonexistent cup of hot coffee, and that this unpretentious, moving, clever, bitter slice of life was the greatest thing to happen to the American theatre since Brooks Atkinson retired.	2431.6837288039906
Aging but still precocious, French feline enfant terrible Francoisette Lagoon has succeeded in shocking jaded old Paris again, this time with a sexy ballet scenario called The Lascivious Interlude, the story of a nymphomaniac trip-hammer operator who falls hopelessly in love with a middle-aged steam shovel.	4236.695771241686
A biting, pithy parable of the all-pervading hollowness of modern life, the piece has been set by Mlle Lagoon to a sumptuous score a single motif played over and over by four thousand French horns by existentialist hot-shot Jean-Paul Sartre.	2393.858773136877
Petite, lovely Yvette Chadroe plays the nymphomaniac engagingly.	672.4155581322649
Ever since Bambi, and, more recently, Born Free, there have been a lot of books about animals, but few compare with Max Fink's wry, understated, charming, and immensely readable My Friend, the Quizzical Salamander.	1626.9352482667916
Done in the modern style of a "confession", Fink tells in exquisite detail how he came to know, and, more important, love his mother's pet salamander, Alicia.	16189.626757011682
It is not an entirely happy book, as Mrs Fink soon becomes jealous of Alicia and, in retaliation, refuses to continue to scrape the algae off her glass.	469.0053315626357
Max, in a fit of despair, takes Alicia and runs off for two marvelous weeks in Burbank Fink calls it "the most wonderful and lovely fourteen days in my whole life", at the end of which Alicia tragically contracts Parkinson's disease and dies.	1076.675311504721
This brief resume hardly does the book justice, but I heartily recommend it to all those who are engages with the major problems of our time.	451.8091436687735
Opera in the Grand Tradition, along with mah-jongg, seems to be staging a well-deserved comeback.	342.26097974246164
In this country, the two guiding lights are, without doubt, Felix Fing and Anna Pulova.	573.6464965475524
Fing, a lean, chiseled, impeccable gentleman of the old school who was once mistaken on the street for Sir Cedric Hardwicke, is responsible for the rediscovery of Verdi's earliest, most raucous opera, Nabisco, a sumptuous bout-de-souffle with a haunting leitmotiv that struck me as being highly reminiscent of the Mudugno version of "Volare".	1591.3844119549979
Miss Pulova has a voice that Maria Callas once described as "like chipping teeth with a screw driver", and her round, opalescent face becomes fascinatingly reflective of the emotions demanded by the role of Rosalie.	1789.089489640402
The Champs Elysees is literally littered this summer with the prostrate bodies of France's beat-up beatnik jeunes filles.	1066.7991554268003
Cause of all this commotion squat, pug-nosed, balding, hopelessly ugly Jean-Pierre Bravado, a Bogartian figure, who plays a sadistic, amoral, philosophic Tasti-Freeze salesman in old New-Waver Fredrico de Mille Rossilini's endlessly provocative film, A Sour Sponge.	3953.075687178623
Bravado has been alternately described as "a symbol of the new grandeur of France and myself" De Gaulle and "a decadent, disgusting slob"!	1849.9215011170797
Norman Mailer, but no one can deny that the screen crackles with electricity whenever he is on it.	664.5715828791314
Soaring to stardom along with him, Margo Felicity Brighetti, a luscious and curvaceously beguiling Italian starlet, turns in a creditable performance as an airplane mechanic.	1780.427278591426
The battle of the drib-drool continues, but most of New York's knowing sophisticates of Abstract Expressionism are stamping their feet impatiently in expectation of V for Vindication Day, September first, when Augustus Quasimodo's first one-man show opens at the Guggenheim.	1244.4861324019573
We have heard that after seeing Mr Quasimodo's work it will be virtually impossible to deny the artistic validity and importance of the whole abstract movement.	580.5476187765041
And it is thought by many who think about such things that Quasimodo is the logical culmination of a school that started with Monet, progressed through Kandinsky and the cubist Picasso, and blossomed just recently in Pollock and De Kooning.	1001.5287408799466
Quasimodo defines his own art as "the search for what is not there".	2267.7161231910454
"I paint the nothing", he said once to Franz Kline and myself, "the nothing that is behind the something, the inexpressible, unpaintable 'tick' in the unconscious, the 'spirit' of the moment resting forever, suspended like a huge balloon, in non-time".	1003.5946995742531
It is his relentlessness and unwaivering adherence to this revolutionary artistic philosophy that has enabled him to paint such pictures as "The Invasion of Cuba".	476.1232145036444
In this work, his use of non-color is startling and skillful.	102.09821481897313
The sweep of space, the delicate counterbalance of the white masses, the over-all completeness and unity, the originality and imagination, all entitle it to be called an authentic masterpiece.	382.682098786685
I asked Quasimodo recently how he accomplished this, and he replied that he had painted his model "a beautiful shade of red and then had her breathe on the canvas", which was his typical tongue-in-cheek way of chiding me for my lack of sensitivity.	861.7100598976
DEAR SIRS LET ME BEGIN by clearing up any possible misconception in your minds, wherever you are.	975.1499937459873
The collective by which I address you in the title above is neither patronizing nor jocose but an exact industrial term in use among professional thieves.	1029.997465771014
It is, I am reliably given to understand, the technical argot for those who engage in your particular branch of the boost; ie, burglars who rob while the tenants are absent, in contrast to hot-slough prowlers, those who work while the occupants are home.	791.5621600886657
Since the latter obviously require an audacity you do not possess, you may perhaps suppose that I am taunting you as socially inferior.	1016.8736723051871
Far from it; I merely draw an etymological distinction, hoping that specialists and busy people like you will welcome such precision in a layman.	546.1761708990979
Above all, disabuse yourselves of any thought that I propose to vent moral indignation at your rifling my residence, to whimper over the loss of a few objets d'art, or to shame you into rectitude.	817.7447770037722
My object, rather, is to alert you to an aspect or two of the affair that could have the gravest implications for you, far beyond the legal sanctions society might inflict.	814.9472694083112
You have unwittingly set in motion forces so malign, so vindictive, that it would be downright inhumane of me not to warn you about them.	308.6564116163371
Quite candidly, fellows, I wouldn't be in your shoes for all the rice in China.	231.28682960686874
As you've doubtless forgotten the circumstances in the press of more recent depredations, permit me to recapitulate them briefly.	648.668505777291
Sometime on Saturday evening, August 22nd, while my family and I were dining at the Hostaria dell' Orso, in Rome, you jimmied a window of our home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and let yourselves into the premises.	2685.254804031201
Hastening to the attic, the temperature of which was easily hotter than the Gold Coast, you proceeded to mask the windows with a fancy wool coverlet, some khaki pants, and the like, and to ransack the innumerable boxes and barrels stored there.	1471.9146241224894
What you were looking for unless you make a hobby of collecting old tennis rackets and fly screens eludes me, but to judge from phonograph records scattered about a fumed-oak Victrola, you danced two tangos and a paso doble, which must have been fairly enervating in that milieu.	3122.143275047067
You then descended one story, glommed a television set from the music room- the only constructive feature of your visit, by the way- and, returning to the ground floor, entered the master bedroom.	860.9585370740708
From the curio cabinet on its south wall and the bureaus beneath, you abstracted seventeen ivory, metal, wood, and stone sculptures of Oriental and African origin, two snuffboxes, and a jade-handled magnifying glass.	1233.629656326228
Rummaging through a stack of drawers nearby, you unearthed an antique French chess set in ivory and sandalwood, which, along with two box Kodaks, you added to your haul.	1566.2116246990165
Then, having wrapped the lot in an afghan my dog customarily slept on, you lammed out the front door, considerately leaving it open for neighbors to discover.	608.4290257373515
So much for the tiresome facts, as familiar to you, I'm sure, as to the constables and state troopers who followed in your wake.	250.2036122924422
The foregoing, aided by several clues I'll withhold to keep you on your toes, will pursue you with a tenacity worthy of Inspector Javert, but before they close in, gird yourselves, I repeat, for a vengeance infinitely more pitiless.	884.5821296205938
Fourteen of the sculptures you took posses properties of a most curious and terrifying nature, as you will observe when your limbs begin to wither and your hair falls out in patches.	1885.7602738242963
In time, these minor manifestations will multiply and effloresce, riddling you with frambesia, the king's evil, sheep rot, and clonic spasm, until your very existence becomes a burden and you cry out for release.	946.4805512160664
All this, though, is simply a prelude, a curtain-raiser, for what ensues, and I doubt whether any Occidental could accurately forecast it.	658.4559835351101
If, however, it would help to intensify your anguish, I can delimit the powers of a few of the divinities you've affronted and describe the punishment they meted out in one analogous instance.	923.0272236039971
Hold on tight.	26.76882382363259
First of all, the six figures of the Buddha you heisted- four Siamese heads, a black obsidian statuette in the earth-touching position, and a large brass figure of the Dying Buddha on a teakwood base.	505.78432366967536
Now, you probably share the widespread Western belief that the Lord Buddha is the most compassionate of the gods, much more so than Jehovah and Allah and the rest.	1231.895784453451
'Fess up- don't you?	89.51618995262075
Well, ordinarily he is, except as the Wheel of the Law specifies toward impious folk who steal, disturb, or maltreat the Presence.	1035.3896833732972
Very peculiar retribution indeed seems to overtake such jokers.	391.8810749881528
Eight or ten years ago, a couple of French hoods stole a priceless Khmer head from the Musee Guimet, in Paris, and a week later crawled into the Salpetriere with unmistakable symptoms of leprosy.	8381.133603561653
Hell's own amount of chaulmoogra oil did nothing to alleviate their torment; they expired amid indescribable fantods, imploring the Blessed One to forgive their desecration.	2025.3965730847208
Any reputable French interne can supply you with a dozen similar instances, and I'll presently recount a case out of my own personal experience, but, for the moment, let's resume our catalogue.	1948.6581328976383
Whether the pair of Sudanese ivory carvings you lifted really possess the juju to turn your livers to lead, as a dealer in Khartoum assured me, I am not competent to say.	657.6047454225319
Likewise the ivory Chinese female figure known as a "doctor lady" provenance Honan; a friend of mine removing her from the curio cabinet for inspection was felled as if by a hammer, but he had previously drunk a quantity of applejack.	1379.3553784373814
The three Indian brass deities, though- Ganessa, Siva, and Krishna- are an altogether different cup of tea.	475.9280509951001
They hail from Travancore, a state in the subcontinent where Kali, the goddess of death, is worshiped.	334.2122332672037
Have you ever heard of thuggee?	49.29120320400456
Nuf sed h. But it is the wooden sculpture from Bali, the one representing two men with their heads bent backward and their bodies interlaced by a fish, that I particularly call to your attention.	578.596704277005
Oddly enough, this is an amulet against housebreakers, presented to the mem and me by a local rajah in 1949.	226.09364964076102
Inscribed around its base is a charm in Balinese, a dialect I take it you don't comprehend.	450.9207991446918
Neither do I, but the Tjokorda Agoeng was good enough to translate, and I'll do as much for you.	340.4590089845469
Whosoever violates our rooftree, the legend states, can expect maximal sorrow.	573.7685864330554
The teeth will rain from his mouth like pebbles, his wife will make him cocu with fishmongers, and a trolley car will grow in his stomach.	654.5142710713865
Furthermore- and this, to me, strikes an especially warming note- it shall avail the vandals naught to throw away or dispose of their loot.	2900.755993849198
The cycle of disaster starts the moment they touch any belonging of ours, and dogs them unto the forty-fifth generation.	391.13893977175115
Sort of remorseless, isn't it?	65.40460403214256
Still, there it is.	10.927321548394628
Now, you no doubt regard the preceding as pap; you're tooling around full of gage in your hot rods, gorging yourselves on pizza and playing pinball in the taverns and generally behaving like Ubermenschen.	1421.3411071735977
In that case, listen to what befell another wisenheimer who tangled with our joss.	388.682069907094
A couple of years back, I occupied a Village apartment whose outer staircase contained the type of niche called a "coffin turn".	706.6586891021718
In it was a stone Tibetan Buddha I had picked up in Bombay, and occasionally, to make merit, my wife and I garlanded it with flowers or laid a few pennies in its lap.	601.3687615323713
After a while, we became aware that the money was disappearing as fast as we replenished it.	350.93367933922593
Our suspicions eventually centered, by the process of elimination, on a grocer's boy, a thoroughly bad hat, who delivered cartons to the people overhead.	644.0659162768441
The more I probed into this young man's activities and character, the less savory I found him.	200.7554711376099
I learned, for example, that he made a practice of yapping at dogs he encountered and, in winter, of sprinkling salt on the icy pavement to scarify their feet.	1842.6149356541482
His energy was prodigious; sometimes he would be up before dawn, clad as a garbage collector and hurling pails into areaways to exasperate us, and thereafter would hurry to the Bronx Zoo to grimace at the lions and press cigar butts against their paws.	2318.368112536324
Evenings, he was frequently to be seen at restaurants like Enrico Paglieri's or Peter's Backyard drunkenly donning ladies' hats and singing "O Sole Mio".	2372.7323912188135
In short, and to borrow an arboreal phrase, slash timber.	982.6991723924572
Well, the odious little toad went along chivying animals and humans who couldn't retaliate, and in due course, as was inevitable, overreached himself.	1015.2737312231675
One morning, we discovered not only that the pennies were missing from the idol but that a cigarette had been stubbed out in its lap.	367.4350788990611
"Now he's bought it", said my wife contentedly.	113.13478453944293
"No divinity will hold still for that.	52.6412560844201
He's really asking for it".	173.49715708011064
And how right she was.	15.952067052704077
The next time we saw him, he was a changed person; he had aged thirty years, and his face, the color of tallow, was crisscrossed with wrinkles, as though it had been wrapped in chicken wire.	1218.8327682022316
Some sort of nemesis was haunting his footsteps, he told us in a quavering voice- either an ape specter or Abe Spector, a process-server, we couldn't determine which.	970.5826160670688
His eyes had the same dreadful rigid stare as Dr Grimesby Roylott's when he was found before his open safe wearing the speckled band.	658.7057495101507
The grocery the youth worked for soon tired of his depressing effect on customers, most of whom were sufficiently neurotic without the threat of incubi, and let him go.	868.0574292162739
The beautiful, the satisfying part of his disintegration, however, was the masterly way the Buddha polished him off.	187.08799373080706
Reduced to beggary, he at last got a job as office boy to a television producer.	469.3700047860269
His hubris, deficiency of taste, and sadism carried him straightaway to the top.	190.6483362300041
He evolved programs that plumbed new depths of bathos and besmirched whole networks, and quickly superseded his boss.	690.1264403660762
Not long ago, I rode down with him in an elevator in Radio City; he was talking to himself thirteen to the dozen and smoking two cigars at once, clearly a man in extremis.	1846.6561059066514
"See that guy"?	25.12051048903007
the operator asked pityingly.	82.296742150732
"I wouldn't be in his shoes for all the rice in China.	151.50921232172055
There's some kind of a nemesis haunting his footsteps".	122.73430699639158
However one looks at it, therefore, I'd say that your horoscope for this autumn is the reverse of rosy.	335.4432534294462
The inventory you acquired from me isn't going to be easy to move; you can't very well sidle up to people on the street and ask if they want to buy a hot Bodhisattva.	1132.258718560145
Additionally, since you're going to be hors de combat pretty soon with sprue, yaws, Delhi boil, the Granville wilt, liver fluke, bilharziasis, and a host of other complications of the hex you've aroused, you mustn't expect to be lionized socially.	1291.5710155259992
My advice, if you live long enough to continue your vocation, is that the next time you're attracted by the exotic, pass it up- it's nothing but a headache.	734.7168595183497
As you can count on me to do the same.	77.7008375896708
compassionately yours, S J PERELMAN REVULSION IN THE DESERT THE DOORS of the D train slid shut, and as I dropped into a seat and, exhaling, looked up across the aisle, the whole aviary in my head burst into song.	1291.054241169054
She was a living doll and no mistake- the blue-black bang, the wide cheekbones, olive-flushed, that betrayed the Cherokee strain in her Midwestern lineage, and the mouth whose only fault, in the novelist's carping phrase, was that the lower lip was a trifle too voluptuous.	1472.5858872937308
From what I was able to gauge in a swift, greedy glance, the figure inside the coral-colored boucle dress was stupefying.	1460.5057318286315
462.81717604751435