Then of a sudden Horace Tarbox rose slenderly and began to pace the room with his hands in his pockets. This was his other gesture. "I don't care for this," he said as if he were talking to himself--"at all. Not that I mind your being here--I don't. You're quite a pretty little thing, but I don't like Charlie Moon's sending you up here. Am I a laboratory experiment on which the janitors as well as the chemists can make experiments? Is my intellectual development humorous in any way? Do I look like the pictures of the little Boston boy in the comic magazines? Has that callow ass, Moon, with his eternal tales about his week in Paris, any right to---" "No," interrupted Marcia emphatically. "And you're a sweet boy. Come here and kiss me." Horace stopped quickly in front of her. "Why do you want me to kiss you?" he asked intently, "Do you just go round kissing people?" "Why, yes," admitted Marcia, unruffled. "'At's all life is. Just going round kissing people." "Well," replied Horace emphatically, "I must say your ideas are horribly garbled! In the first place life isn't just that, and in the second place. I won't kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can't get rid of habits. This year I've got in the habit of lolling in bed until seven-thirty---" Marcia nodded understandingly. "Do you ever have any fun?" she asked. "What do you mean by fun?" "See here," said Marcia sternly, "I like you, Omar, but I wish you'd talk as if you had a line on what you were saying. You sound as if you were gargling a lot of words in your mouth and lost a bet every time you spilled a few. I asked you if you ever had any fun." Horace shook his head. "Later, perhaps," he answered. "You see I'm a plan. I'm an experiment. I don't say that I don't get tired of it sometimes--I do. Yet--oh, I can't explain! But what you and Charlie Moon call fun wouldn't be fun to me." "Please explain." Horace stared at her, started to speak and then, changing his mind, resumed his walk. After an unsuccessful attempt to determine whether or not he was looking at her Marcia smiled at him. "Please explain." Horace turned. "If I do, will you promise to tell Charlie Moon that I wasn't in?" "Uh-uh." "Very well, then. Here's my history: I was a 'why' child. I wanted to see the wheels go round. My father was a young economics professor at Princeton. He brought me up on the system of answering every question I asked him to the best of his ability. My response to that gave him the idea of making an experiment in precocity. To aid in the massacre I had ear trouble--seven operations between the age of nine and twelve. Of course this kept me apart from other boys and made me ripe for forcing. Anyway, while my generation was laboring through Uncle Remus I was honestly enjoying Catullus in the original.