Accustomed to blows of all kinds, Carl felt relieved that her frigid shroud had been finally lifted, and with a smile he reached for his cap. Conversation is merely a tenuous or sturdy protection given to an instinctive like or dislike, and with their first words people unconsciously reveal the attitude toward each other which they will afterward try to excuse and defend with great deliberation. Carl hated the woman in front of him, not because she had slighted his work, but because she held to him an attenuated and brightly burnished hypocrisy that was like a shriveled mask incessantly polished by her words. He could have imagined her stamping upon a hyacinth as though she were conferring a careful favor upon the petals and calyx. Mary Aldridge, on her part, disliked the straight lines of intent which she could sense beneath his terse questions and missed the bland insincerities of those smoothly adjusted postures known as good manners. Life to her was a series of stiffly draped and modulated curves, violated only by rare moments of guarded exasperation and anger. “Would you advise me to stop writing?” asked Carl. “No, indeed,” she answered, with her first small smile. “Your work is rather promising and you seem to be quite young. Some of it reminds me of Arthur Symons. Of course, I don’t think that you will ever become a great poet, but we need lesser voices as well as greater ones, you know.” “Would you mind if I asked you to stop using that word ra-ather and try a little spontaneous directness?” asked Carl, blithely. She rose suddenly and addressed the other woman, ignoring his words as though they had been a trivial insult. “I’ve just remembered that I must meet Mr. Seeman at three,” she said. “I’m afraid that I shall have to leave you with this impulsive gentleman.” Carl stood up, but the other woman revealed with an unrestrained smile that she was actually aware of his presence. “Won’t you stay awhile?” she asked. “We can talk a bit over your work, if you care.” Carl looked at her with suspicion and interest--a trace of gracious attention in this place. He resolved to explore the seeming phenomenon and settled back in his chair, while Mary Aldridge, with a barely audible farewell, walked out of the office. “Don’t you think you were a little crudely sarcastic in your last remark to Miss Aldridge?” asked Clara Messenger. “I like an axe sometimes,” said Carl, “although I don’t worship it monotonously. For certain purposes it works far better than the swifter exuberance of a stiletto. Unless a person is unassumingly frank to me I don’t feel that he has earned a delicate retort.” “Why, it’s impossible to live in the world with a code like that. One would have to become a hermit.” “No, even hermits are never absolutely isolated. Living on another planet would be the only remedy, I guess.”