The Cuyler girl asked timidly if the Bible really said such a thing. She was losing the thread of what she had set out to say to me. I could see her fighting to hold on. “All of you make such jokes,” she advanced. “One must joke,” I threw out carelessly. Especially, I added in my mind, when one is beginning to understand. I cautioned myself: “Old girl, you’ve got to understand. You’ve got to understand the two sides; for don’t you always drag in that there are two sides? There’s the side of Eva, and there’s the side of the Van Suydams: there’s the side of us, and there’s the side of New York. You might start--by way of a drastic change!--by understanding yourself. Why--for instance--are you about to be detestable to this good-natured young woman? Is it because you’re envious of her security? She gets that security from having always kept in touch with her home. You could have stayed at home; Eva could have stayed at home: your precious crowd could have stayed at home. Why didn’t you?” There we were: we were transplanted and sickly, and I was turning to bite the hand that fed me. We paused at a street crossing, and the lights changed, and I felt Anthony Bloodgood’s hand at my elbow symbolically guiding me for the passage of the--Red Sea, I decided in despair: it had become vitally necessary that I laugh. Anthony looked down--very far down--to my face, and enquired solicitously: “Did I rush you too fast?” “Yes!” I said. But it was the life that I had selected, and not Anthony Bloodgood, which was rushing me too fast. The Lord God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, back to the land from whence they had come. If one read the Bible when one was upset, it applied to the most modern of problems. An author takes colour from the land of his birth, but mainly, it seemed to me today, he derives from the land of his people the calm strength through which he is enabled to go on. I glanced at these two satisfied persons who, because they believed that nothing in the world was so good as New York, had never considered moving away. Encouraged by my attention, Gertrude hurried on: “Eva has a way of saying to Nick ‘When I work, I work’.”