THE

HE house stood up, a high, sickly yellow segment in a low, shabby street just off the Elevated. Wilton Durand, in his dark coat of foreign cut and with his dark goatee, steered his way disdainfully among the active litter of alien children on the sidewalk, and entered it with an air of bitter resignation. Nothing could have drawn a figure so cultivated, exotic, and sensitive into this raw, tall slab except the fact that it contained his home. He raised his ironic eyes to the pressed-tin ceiling of the hallway, then dropped them with a wry, slight twisting of the mouth as one who can at least bow to the inevitable with grace and distinction. He climbed the stairs past wholesale showrooms and lofts filled with mangles and linoleum.

"Linoleum! Mon Dieu!" he muttered, and clutched the portfolio of manuscript under his arm. Could anything be more incongruous than linoleum and Wilton Durand?

He reached the top of the long flight a little breathless, and paused outside his door to regain himself. Standing there, he thought not so much of the misfortune that had overtaken him that afternoon as of the most effective way to break the news to his wife. It was not a bad situation, dramatically. He smoothed his hair with long fingers, as if for a stage entrance, then took out his key. Unfortunately, the door was opened by his wife.

over the fireplace a Japanese torii in ivory was flanked by Russian-bronze candlesticks; the buff walls were filled with good etchings by little-known men. He moved down to the windows at the end and stood staring out over the geraniums, over the roofs and chimneys, at a tree he could just make out in Gramercy Park.

Behind him, he heard her follow him into the room, and turned reluctantly. He saw with annoyance how attractivelooking she still was. She was hardly young any longer, but her mouse-colored hair and small, pale face should certainly hold a delicate charm for anyone of the least artistic feeling. As to her slim little high-breasted figure-half like a nymph, half like a faun-undoubtedly there were things in the Luxembourg not nearly so good. Beneath this loveliness, however, there was nothing, absolutely nothingnothing, at least, that could be of any help to him. She might have been an admirable wife for a haberdasher. Unfortunately, he was a dramatic critic. She wilted under his stare. Obviously it was time for him to speak.

"Well, my dear," he said, with an air of forced jauntiness, "I have disturbing news for you. The Superman has suspended publication."

"Oh, Wilton!"

"Quite correct, my dear," he answered, with some irritation, and brushed by her.

The room was long and narrow, like a sail loft. Two large old Spanish tables were heaped with books and tobacco;

"But it's much the worse for us," said Mrs. Durand. "We have no money."

"Whereas the public always has. True. But that makes it all the more incredible why they should not have spent it on The Superman."

"But what shall we do?"

"Never fear. The Superman disintegrates" he laid a hand on his heart theatrically and made a dry grimace "but the man resurges. Pardon the epigram, which I see leaves you bewildered and me no nearer a solution. The first step in any case is to have tea." He sank down in a deep, shapeless chair.

His wife turned as if to speak. She seemed to wait for him to encourage her, to wait with a touch of appeal and misery in her quiet eyes. He looked away until he heard her go into the kitchenette.

Lying back, he listened to the comfortable gurgle of water as she filled the teapot; he heard the striking of a match, the methodical click of a knife on a plate; she was slicing lemon. There was the rustle of paper and small reverberations from the bread box.

Slowly his air of highly quizzical assurance left him. His glasses, which he had cocked on his thin, high-arched nose, fell off and dangled on their ribbon. His gray eyes were faded. He fumbled on the table for a cigarette and lit it, but it drooped listlessly from the middle of his sensitive, drooping mouth; its very smoke drifted downward and hung lifeless on the floor. It appeared as though he had exhausted himself in his spirited and touching effort to carry his misfortune gayly before his wife. He himself felt this to be the case and raised a slender, veined hand to his brow.

As the methodical sounds in the kitchenette kept on, however, his thoughts changed. His wife would shortly reappear and he knew that he would look on her without a thrill. In fact, quite the

reverse.

He had taken her silence for profundity when he wooed her years ago, and, artist that he was-he smoothed back his wavy hair-he had endowed her with a thousand mysterious powers. But in the following years the truth finally bore down all his hopes and dreams. She was nice, gentle, lovely to look at but simply lacking in mentality; that is to say, mentality of the sort

he demanded, of the sort he needed in his work, in his life; it was hopeless. She couldn't understand what he was saying, much less understand the man he was; she couldn't follow him. It dragged on him intolerably to talk to her a man of his sort needed response, comprehension. And now this sudden misfortune, this incredible vanishment of The Superman, a serious thing for a man of his age and specialized training, instead of drawing them together, made him feel only how incapable of helping him she was. He raised both hands to his brow and sank his head between them.

A tinny rattle sounded from the kitchenette. Mrs. Durand, carrying a tea tray, pushed open the door. Mr. Durand sat up quickly, put his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and cocked a whimsical eye.

She looked pretty in her dark-blue dress, her slim body straining back a little against the tray and gently swaying. She slid the tray upon the crowded table, pushing a corresponding area of magazines and books off the opposite edge. Wilton Durand picked them up from the floor.

"As Sir Isaac Newton has so justly observed," he remarked, "all actions and reactions are equal. A square foot of tea displaces a square foot of art. Life is a compromise. Will you have this chair?"

"I'm afraid the lemon is a little shriveled, dear." She poured out the tea. "And there seem to be a good many leaves in the cup.'

"The symbolism is excellent. We will sit, drinking the lees of life, and contemplate our downfall."

"Tell me about it!"

"You anticipate an epic. Unfortunately, I have nothing to offer but a burlesque. The magazine was from the first designed to appeal to people of taste and culture."

"Yes, I know."

"Unfortunately, our success was complete. As a result there were practically no readers. Outside the editors, of course."

She struggled to catch the drift of what he was saying. She was a little pitiful in her humble and futile effort, a little pitiful and invincibly stupid. She decided to speak.

"But it went so well-for five years. And they paid you quite a lot."

"Yes, they did-if the comparison be made with other magazines rather than with the value of my services, but let that pass. We were able to keep going by means of Dancey, the editor. I thought you knew—"

"Is he going to make some changes, then?"

"He is going to make a change more fatal than all other changes combined. He has decided that it will be less expensive to take the editor into the family business-blankets, I believe. In vain we have tried to persuade him that The Superman is entering on a splendid. a splendid career of steadily diminishing losses. In vain we have tried to show him that his son's incompetence is even more dangerous than he supposed. The old gentleman is adamant. We shut up shop." "Perhaps be was angry at what you said about his son."

"What?"

"That he was dangerous or something."

Durand peered over his glasses, smiled with heavy benignity, and sighed. "That remark, my dear, was, so to speak, an extra touch thrown off in the heat of fancy. I felt it necessary to complete the burlesque."

"Then you didn't say that to the old gentleman?”

Durand shook his head sadly. "No, my dear, we did not."

"You shouldn't say such things, Wilton. ton. It sounds horrid-telling an old man such dreadful things about his son."

"But, my dear-" He stared helplessly at her placid, anxious face, at her impenetrable expression. He stuck a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and gave a wry grin. "I congratulate you on the impregnability of your moral position."

She flushed and dropped her eyes.

Lying back in his chair, Durand blew rings of smoke and watched her gather up the tea things. He watched her disappear. She was still graceful, and even charming, too, in a way-if one didn't know her mind. Surely in the ten years they had been married she might have learned to know him-him, a man who liked to carry off life's knocks with a dash, a rather engaging dash of epigram. If he had only married a clever woman they would have sat together just now and made their misfortune into a sparkling comedy. But if he had married a clever woman there would have been no misfortune. With his ability and a woman to bring it out he would long before this have put himself above the reach of fate.

Why had he married her? Her grace, her silence, her name, Moira, had snared him. Moira! Was ever such a stupid girl called Moira before? girl called Moira before? There ought to be a law against giving people such misleading names. misleading names. One might as well have called him Henry.

Next day he arranged a boutonnière of pansies, took his walking stick and broad felt hat, and went down to his club. He could manage for two months on what he had saved, but it would be