he best
sounding-boards. Do you object to being reduced to an acoustic? Yes, sex
is a sort of irritant to the vocabulary. It's amusing to converse
profoundly with a pretty woman whose sole contributions to any dialogue
are a bit of silk hose and an oscillation of the breasts."

"You make me forget I'm a woman and agree with you."

"Because you're another kind of woman. The reflector. Or acoustic. I
prefer them. I sometimes feel that I live only in mirrors and that my
thoughts exist only as they enter the heads of others. As now, I speak
out of a most complete emptiness of emotion or idea; and my words seem
to take body in your silence--and actually give me a character."

"I always think of you as someone hiding from himself," she answered.
Dorn smiled. They were old friends--a union between them.

"There's no place of concealment in me," he said after a pause. He had
been thinking of something else. "But perhaps I hide in others. After
talking like this I come away with a sort of echo of what I've said. As
if someone had told me things that almost impressed me. I talk so damned
much I'm unaware of ever having heard anybody else but myself express an
opinion. And I swear I've never had an opinion in my life." He became
silent and resumed, in a lighter voice, "Look at that man with whiskers.
He's a notorious Don Juan. Whiskers undoubtedly lend mystery to a man.
It's a marvel women haven't cultivated them--instead of corsets. But
tell me why you've disdained art as an ideal. You're curious. It's a
confessional I should think would appeal to you. I'm almost interested
in you, you see. Another hour with you and you would flatter me into a
state of silence."

Dorn paused, somewhat startled. Her dark lips parted, her eyes glowing
toward the end of the street, the girl was walking in a radiant
abstraction. She appeared to be listening to him without hearing what he
said. Dorn contemplated her confusedly. He frowned at the thought of
having bored her, and an impulse to step abruptly from her side and
leave became a part of his anger. He hesitated in his walking and her
fingers, timorous and unconscious of themselves, reached for his arm. He
wondered with a deeper confusion what she was dreaming about. Her hand
as it lay on his forearm gave him a sense of companionship which his
words sought clumsily to understand.

"I was saying something about art when you fell asleep," he smiled.

Rachel threw back her head as if she we