ake
time off from the eternal frolic. I'm glad when there's a strike or a
row and I dig out of town to stay in a commercial hotel. I have to get
away from the whole tinsel show. And yet it was what I wanted, was
willing to play modern Faust to any Wall Street Mephistopheles----"

"And you are sure it wasn't a Mephistopheles?"

"Of course not--for that much I can draw a deep breath and give
thanks--it was my own luck."

"Other times, other titles," she murmured.

"One time you told me what you thought of the future of American
women, the all-round good fellows of the world--do you remember? I
wish you had not told me. It's just another thing to irritate. I'm
driven mad by trifles--I'm starved for a big tragedy; that's the way
this craving for a fortune and a good time is playing boomerang. I'm
so infernally weary of hearing about the cut-glass slipper heels of
some chorus girl and so hungry to hear about a shipwreck, a new creed,
a daring crime that----"

"You foolish, funny boy," she said, taking pity on his involved
analysis, "don't you see what you have done? It's quite the common
fate of get-rich-quick dreamers; you merely symbolized your goal by
Beatrice Constantine, she stood for the combined relationships of
wife, comrade, lady luxury--and you captured your goal, and the
greater effort ceased. You have had time to examine your prize in
microscopic fashion. It isn't at all what you intended--but it is
quite what you deserve. No one can make a lie serve for the truth--at
all times and for an indefinite period. There is bound to come a
cropper somewhere--usually where you least expect it. And you lied to
yourself in the beginning, a passive sort of falsehood, in merely
refusing to see the truth and groping for the unreal. You had to
justify your race for wealth, so you said, 'Oho, I'll love a
story-book princess and let that be my incentive. Story-book
princesses are expensive lovelies and you have to have money bags to
jingle before their fair selves!' So you became more and more
infatuated with the fairy-book princess who happened to be in your
pathway--and it was Beatrice. She made you feel that anything your
slightly mad and quite unrealizing young self might do was proper.
Just as the boy with a new air rifle deliberately sets up a target to
shoot away at because the savage in him must justify hitting something
besides the ozone, so you have merely wooed and won your own falsehood
and disillusionment."