where."

Private introspection had become a bore to him. What was the use of
thinking if there was nothing to think about? And there was nothing. His
violences of temper, his emotions, definite and at times compelling, had
always seemed to him as words--pretences to which he loaned himself for
diversion. He was aware that neither ideas nor prejudices--the residues
of emotion--existed in his mind. His thinking, he knew, had been a
shuffle of words which he followed to fantastic and inconsistent
conclusions that left him always without convictions for the morrow.

There was a picture in the street for him on this summer morning. He was
a part of it. Yet between himself and the rest of the picture he felt no
contact.

Into this emptiness of spirit, life had poured its excitements as into a
thing bottomless as a mirror. He gave it back an image of words. He was
proud of his words. They were his experiences and sophistications. Out
of them he achieved his keenest diversion. They were the excuse for his
walking, his wearing a hat and embarking daily for his work, returning
daily to his home. They enabled him to amuse himself with complexities
of thought as one improvising difficult finger exercises on the piano.

At times it seemed to Dorn that he was even incapable of thinking, that
he possessed a plastic vocabulary endowed with a life of its own. He
often contemplated with astonishment his own verbal brilliancies, which
his friends appeared to accept as irrefutable truths of the moment.
Carried away in the heat of some intricate debate he would pause
internally, as his voice continued without interruption, and exclaim to
himself, "What in hell am I talking about?" And a momentary awe would
overcome him--the awe of listening to himself give utterance to
fantastic ideas that he knew had no existence in him--a cynical magician
watching a white rabbit he had never seen before crawl naively out of
his own sleeve. Thus his phrases assembled themselves on his tongue and
pirouetted of their own energy about his listeners.

Smiling, garrulous, and impenetrable--garrulous even in his silences, he
daily entered his office and proceeded skillfully about his work. He
was, as always, delighted with himself. He felt himself a man ideally
fitted to enjoy the little spectacle of life his day offered. Emotion in
others invariably roused in him a sense of the ludicrous. His eyes
seemed to travel through the griefs and torments of his fell