He continued to offer the benevolent adulterations of his advice, and as Carl listened he suddenly thought of a high-school teacher who had once rebuked him for bringing to class a theme entitled “Women Who Walk the Streets,” and with a vaporously swinging amusement in his heart he almost felt human again. This fantasy could hold a blustering smirk now and then--its only extenuation. But the nearness vanished as his uncle’s voice became a swindling monotone, angering him with its formal pretense of life. Carefully, and with a ghostlike insincerity that bribed his voice with lightness, he gave words that could hold this man at arm’s length. The strain of adapting his words to the intelligence of the man beside him brought him a closer relation to the bickering phantasmagoria of men and their motives without in any way summoning his own thoughts and emotions. Dr. Edleman felt that his nephew was skillfully attempting to defend a selfish past and bringing into the service of this motive a graceful keenness of mind, but beyond this point Carl’s words were unable to affect him. “I have always admired your brilliancy,” he said, “and I only wish that you would use it in the right way. A young man must pay some attention to the desires and opinions of older people. It will be a glad day for me when I see that you are using your talents to bring happiness to other people. A glad day.” Carl gave a sigh to the grave dullness that marched forth in his uncle’s voice and meditated upon the curious differences in sound with which people petted their limitations and discretions. These differences were known as words, and when they pleased a great number of people they were hailed as symbols of genius or power, but Carl could see no distinction between any of them. Like a horde of tired servants, they pranced to the prides and hatreds of men and then returned to their common grave, and only their exact arrangement gave them a flitting assumption of life. “What is the difference between this old man and myself? Several keys to false doors of thought and emotion, misplaced or lost in his youth and found in mine.” Through reiterating these plausibilities he tried to give bulk and texture to the fantasy of existence.