nt parties, the amounts of gin
consumed, it wasn't precisely gloom that enveloped them. Charles
Abbott searched his mind for a definition, for light on a subject dark
to a degree beyond any mere figure of speech. Yes, darkness
particularly described Howard. The satirical bitterness of his
references to the "glorious victory in France" was actually a little
unbalanced. The impression Abbott had received was of bestiality
choked in mud. His nephew was amazingly clear, vivid and logical, in
his memories and opinions; they couldn't, as he stated them in a kind
of frozen fury, be easily controverted.

What, above everything else, appeared to dominate Howard Gage was a
passion for reality, for truth--all the unequivocal facts--in
opposition to a conventional or idealized statement. Particularly, he
regarded the slightest sentiment with a suspicion that reached hatred.
Abbott's thoughts centered about the word idealized; there, he told
himself, a ray of perception might be cast into Howard's obscurity;
since the most evident fact of all was that he cherished no ideals, no
sustaining vision of an ultimate dignity behind men's lives.

The boy, for example, was without patriotism; or, at least, he hadn't
a trace of the emotional loyalty that had fired the youth of Abbott's
day. There was nothing sacrificial in Howard Gage's conception of life
and duty, no allegiance outside his immediate need. Selfish, Charles
Abbott decided. What upset him was the other's coldness: damn it, a
young man had no business to be so literal! Youth was a time for
generous transforming passions, for heroics. The qualities of absolute
justice and consistency should come only with increasing age--the
inconsiderable compensations for the other ability to be rapt in
uncritical enthusiasms.

Charles Abbott sighed and raised his head. He was sitting in the
formal narrow reception room of his city house. The street outside was
narrow, too; it ran for only a square, an old thoroughfare with old
brick houses, once no more than a service alley for the larger
dwellings back of which it ran. Now, perfectly retaining its quietude,
it had acquired a new dignity of residence: because of its favorable,
its exclusive, situation, it was occupied by young married people of
highly desirable connections. Abbott, well past sixty and single, was
the only person there of his age and condition.

October was advanced and, though it was hardly past four in the
afternoon, the