--a normal-seeming, kindly individual who wore his linen and his
features with a certain politely exotic air--the air of an identity.

The day's vacuous items in his life passed quickly, its frantic routine
ebbing into a lull toward mid-afternoon. Returning from a final uproar
in the composing room, Dorn looked good-humoredly about him. He was
ready to go home. Arguments, reprimands, entreaties were over for a
space. He walked leisurely down the length of the shop, pleased as
always by its atmosphere. It was something like the streets, this
newspaper shop, broken up, a bit intricate, haphazard.

A young man named Cross was painstakingly writing poetry on a
typewriter. Another named Gardner was busy on a letter. "My dearest...."
Dorn read over his shoulder as he passed. Promising young men, both,
whose collars would grow slightly soiled as they advanced in their
profession. He remembered one of his early observations: "There are two
kinds of newspapermen--those who try to write poetry and those who try
to drink themselves to death. Fortunately for the world, only one of
them succeeds."

In a corner a young woman, dressed with a certain ease, sat partially
absorbed in a book and partially in a half-devoured apple. "The Brothers
Karamasov," Dorn read as he sauntered by. He thought "an emancipated
creature who prides herself on being able to drink cocktails without
losing caste. She'll marry the first drunken newspaperman who forgets
himself in her presence and spend the rest of her life trying to induce
him to go into the advertising business."

Turning down the room he passed the desk of Crowley, the telegraph
editor. A face flabby and red with ancient drinking raised itself from a
book and a voice spoke,

"Old Egan gets more of a fool every day." Old Egan was the make-up man.
Dorn smiled. "The damned idiot crowded the Nancy story off page one in
the Home. Best story of the day." Crowley ended with a vaguely conceived
oath.

Dorn glimpsed the title of the book on his desk, _L'Oblat_. Crowley had
been educated for the priesthood but emerged from the seminary with a
heightened joy of life in his veins. A riotous twenty years in night
saloons and bawdy houses had left him a kindly, choleric, and respected
newspaper figure. Dorn caught his eye and wondered over his sensitive
infatuation of exotic writing. In the pages of Huysmans, De Gourmont,
Flaubert, Gautier, Symons, and Pater he seemed to have found a subtle
incens