The automobile stopped before the Edleman home, which was a large two-story structure--a partial reproduction of the Colonial period modified to conform to the more exuberant inclinations of an Alsatian Jew. Four broad, high wooden pillars, painted white, rose over a wide veranda and ended in a slanting roof of black slate, and the walls were of red brick courted by an abundance of vines. A large garden, with tons of fruit trees and brilliant episodes of flowers, surrounded the house and was enclosed by a level hedge of shrubs and a low iron fence. An impression of dreamlessly cluttered luxury, verging in spots upon bland somnolence, proclaimed the empty heart of the place, but it was almost a distinct flattery to Carl, who had grown tired of aggressive angles and plain surfaces. Here, at least, the mirage held a sleek flirtation with bunches of color and burdened curves. His aunt Bertha, a short, stout woman in a gown of brown taffeta and white lace, welcomed him in a babbling and languid fashion and showed him to his room. She was a softly shallow woman whose major interests were card parties and the lingering intricacies of gossip. The flabby roundness of her face was in the last grip of middle age and her mind was as scanty and precisely glistening as the greyish-brown hair that slanted back from her low forehead. After the dinner, she hurried off to the mildly mercenary rites of a bridge whist party and Carl was left to wander idly around the garden. He sat on the grass beneath a persimmon tree and played with lazy, cruel thoughts in which he slapped a man’s face or tortured a woman’s cheek, still moved by his old mania to profane the empty dream which life had become to him, forcing it into a vigorous duplicate of reality.