I said drily that it might be that he was deliberately trying to get himself out of touch with the age. “You’re sorry that you aren’t sorry that jealous husbands no longer flog gentlemen callers. You feel it to be the correct impulse; and you haven’t been able to stem the stream that’s swept our generation beyond it. You’ve turned the clock back--perversely--and its ticks are muffled in your re-adjusted hearing. I mean--you did, of your own accord, step out of Washington Square. Why do you try, in your mind, to step back?” But his clock ticked steadily, and he was helpless. He wondered, he said, if anyone in our crowd had the chance, or wished for the opportunity, to lead private lives. Chatter hit on every nerve in his body. The topics selected applied to him, to Eva, to the two of them in conjunction--to all life, he decided almost wildly. Life was dreadful because, when one needed all strength, all intelligence, in order to see a way through, one was weakened by the cumulative effect of idle remarks that irritated already raw nerves. I said: “You shouldn’t be the one to feel such things. This is your home town.” He seemed numbed by statements such as this. It was necessary to explain to Nicholas, always, I said to myself with annoyance. “New York does something to us who come here from outside.” He exclaimed with real indignation: “Eva married me. And a wife becomes what her husband is. Eva is now a New Yorker.” I contented myself with settling back in my corner of the taxi and from my huddle remarking that at any rate most of us were bad off. “Our gills have dried, you might say.” I liked this simile more than did he; I noticed that he frowned. We went on our way in silence. The great towers leaned over us, threatening us. He took it up again. “I fail to see what you’re driving at.” I drawled: “Maybe I don’t see, myself. It’s the result of the weather. It’s depressing weather.” Having let us in with his latchkey, he set me the example of tiptoeing up the stairs. He might have spared me this anticipatory alarm, for Eva was not at home. I saw that he was at once agitated. It amused me to observe that through association with us he had developed a theatrical attitude towards situations: he went straight to her writing-table, and on his now pale face there was a look of terror. Had there been a note propped against her typewriter, I was convinced that before opening it he would have thought of shooting himself. There was, of course, no note, and he glanced swiftly at me and smiled. I said, casually: “I had feared, you know, that you had got the idea that you were in love with Eva because you were dazzled by the fact of her being, as she undoubtedly is, a famous person.”