me selfish as the devil. I'd
rather be that than be a bran-stuffed automaton that's never human
enough to hunger. But of course you're naturally a Puritan and always
will be one, no matter what you do. You're a good sort-- I'd trust you to
the limit--you're sincere and you want to grow. But me--my Wanderjahr
isn't over yet. Maybe some time we'll again-- I admire you, but--if I
weren't a little mad I'd go literally mad.... Mad--mad!"

He suddenly undid the first button of her blouse and kissed her neck
harshly, while she watched him, in a maze. He abruptly fastened the
button again, sprang up, stared out at the wraith-filled darkness over
the river, while his voice droned on, as though it were a third person
speaking:

"I suppose there's a million cases a year in New York of crazy young
chaps making violent love to decent girls and withdrawing because they
have some hidden decency themselves. I'm ashamed that I'm one of
them--me, I'm as bad as a nice little Y. M. C. A. boy--I bow to
conventions, too. Lordy! the fact that I'm so old-fashioned as even to
talk about 'conventions' in this age of Shaw and d'Annunzio shows that
I'm still a small-town, district-school radical! I'm really as
mid-Victorian as you are, in knowledge. Only I'm modern by instinct, and
the combination will always keep me half-baked, I suppose. I don't know
what I want from life, and if I did I wouldn't know how to get it. I'm a
Middle Western farmer, and yet I regard myself about half the time as an
Oxford man with a training in Paris. You're lucky, girl. You have a
definite ambition--either to be married and have babies or to boss an
office. Whatever I did, I'd spoil you--at least I would till I found
myself--found out what I wanted.... _Lord!_ how I hope I do find myself
some day!"

"Poor boy!" she suddenly interrupted; "it's all right. Come, we'll go
home and try to be good."

"Wonderful! There speaks the American woman, perfectly. You think I'm
just chattering. You can't understand that I was never so desperately in
earnest in my life. Well, to come down to cases. Specification A--I
couldn't marry you, because we haven't either of us got any money--aside
from my not having found myself yet. Ditto B--We can't play, just
because you _are_ a Puritan and I'm a typical intellectual climber. Same
C--I've actually been offered a decent job in the advertising department
of a motor-car company in Omaha, and now I think I'll take it."

And that was al