and they had produced the same result; but still, huddled under the tree, he continued to write, much like a dying man who has no choice save to gasp for breath, only in his case it was a ghost that struggled to avoid a second death. The ghost was seeking to escape a final extinction. He wrote until the lengthened shadow of the tree told him that he must return to the house; but it took him at least ten minutes before he could censure his face and control his breath. At last, with the thinly passive mask once more adjusted and held by the slenderest of threads, he walked from the garden. At supper he met his cousin, Dr. Joseph Rosenstein, who was living at the Edleman home and who treated him with a suspecting affability. The presence of a poet is always a vague challenge to those people who feel that he is somehow at variance with the complacent finalities of their lives, but who cannot draw the difference into a clearer antagonism. For this reason they try to cover their distrust with a nervous and questioning amiability. After jovially advising Carl to write a sonnet to a doctor, protesting to a great admiration for the prettiness of poetry, and asking Carl whether he didn’t think that practical people were also of some use in the world, Rosenstein deserted the farce and began to discuss the technical details of an operation with Dr. Edleman. Bertha Edleman uttered some placid remarks concerning the possibility of Carl’s writing short stories that would bring him a great deal of money; inquired after his parents in a detailed but listless way; and then, with more vigor, commenced to speak of engagements, marriages and divorces within her immediate circle. Dr. Edleman, by turns waggish and blunt, presided over the groups of corrupted words. Since Carl was anxious not to provoke these people, he stooped to the task of uttering pleasantly obvious remarks in a timid and deliberate fashion, and since they secretly felt that his work gave him a rank lower than theirs, they liked the subdued and abashed manner in which he spoke. CHAPTER XVIII. After that evening he managed to protect his loneliness with clever words. He told the Edlemans that he was looking for material for short stories and that he intended to roam about the city; and, elated at his purpose, they did not object. Since most of his relatives were still displaying their dignity, jewelry, and card-playing abilities at northern summer resorts, he found it easy to be alone.