“Here we’ve been tramping around all day, seeing stupid people, and you waste Mart’s time with your old arguments about beauty and words,” said Helen with a jocose disgust. “I’m getting famished. Let’s go home.” “I forgot to tell you, Carl--I’m having a party at the apartment this evening,” said Martha. “That strange, interesting Russian you met yesterday is coming--Alfred Kone. And Jarvin who runs the literary page on the Dispatch. You’ll come with us now, won’t you?” “Yes, I’m interested in Kone. He carries a certain revolving electricity around with him. His words and gestures are abruptly flashing like showers of sparks. I’m almost tempted to find out where the sparks come from.” “He’s a natural pagan,” said Martha with an admiring sigh. “Don’t you love that European air about him! It’s something that you wouldn’t like if you could put your finger on it--something elusive and graceful, and sophisticated.” “Is it possible that you mean that Kone is intricately redundant?” said Carl, carelessly. “Carl, you always talk in such a careful, unearthly way,” said Helen, with a combat of irritation and wonder in her voice. “With most people talk is a weak, thin wine,” said Carl. “They drink endless cups of it and at last they become mildly intoxicated. I prefer to achieve drunkenness with less effort.” The incongruous love-song of the conversation continued as they departed for the Apperson apartment. Carl became morbidly jovial as though striving to goad himself into a mood, but underneath his words he was sad as he side-stepped Helen’s heavy lunges. “I have never actually had youth--that glistening mixture of blunders, sighs, cruel laughters, and a pleasant sadness that does not cut too deeply,” he said to himself as he listened to the obviously proud youth of the two women. CHAPTER XIII. Kone had already arrived at the apartment and was waiting on the front porch. His heavy body, of medium height, held the arrogant bulge of muscles beneath his light grey suit and his pale brown face cradled a wraith of bitter alertness--a sneer attempting to break through the concealing flesh. He had a short flattened nose, thick lips, and the eyes of a forced and sprightly demon, and the dark abundance of his eyebrows receded into a low forehead, which in turn ended in a mass of black hair brushed backward. He had come to America some six years before this late Autumn evening; had first worked as a porter in a department store; had mastered English with a miraculous speed; and was now studying at a neighboring university and earning a living by teaching Russian to classes of children. In place of that violently disguised boredom commonly known as a heart he seemed to have an over-perfect dynamo that made him a mechanical wild-man--there was a sharp, strained persistency in all of his movements and the fact that he never deigned to falter in his words and gestures gave him an aspect of well-maintained artificiality. He threw his vivid grin to Carl.