"A pack of fools and fourflushers," he muttered to himself and their words--paraphrases of his original denunciations for the most part--nauseated him. The word "bunk" crept into his thought as he read their speeches and interviews. He would like to stop the whole thing, to stand up and say it was all a tempest in a teapot and that there was no menace or ogre or Goliath; that the whole thing was made out of whole cloth. Then the entire business would collapse and the men threatening him for the leadership would be left high and dry. ... Doris looked up as he entered. She was a silent-looking woman. Her face wore its pallor like a mask. She greeted her brother without expression. Her luxurious body seemed without life, her hands gesturing as if they were weighted. The sensuous outlines of her which brought to mind the odalisques of Titian found a startling contrast in the immobility of her manners. She was thirty and in the half-lighted room she seemed like a beautiful, burning-eyed paralytic. "Tired?" her brother asked as he sat down. This was of late his usual greeting. She looked tired always, and until she began to talk, she looked as if she were dumb or blind. But when she talked her eyes lighted. She shook her head to his question. He had come filled with troubles and confessions but her black eyes, centered on him, disturbed him. He had become used to the sardonic weariness of her face. But there were times when he felt as if something were happening to her that he couldn't understand. Her eyes would burn and seem to shut him out as if she could look at him without seeing him. Her complete inanimation startled him. He knew he could sit talking all night and she would never move nor ask a question. Long ago she had been a little like that. Never asking questions but sitting among others as if she were alone. But now it was more marked. There was something wrong with Doris. What she needed was to go out more. She was getting too self-centered, brooding too much. Basine, as he sat studying the window and the profile of his sister, kept remembering how she used to be. That was years ago when they had all lived at home. And this poet Lindstrum whom everybody was talking about, used to call on her. She had been in love with him. But that was long ago--eight, nine, ten years ago. It couldn't be that. And it couldn't be that she was "in trouble," because she had been like this for years now. He remembered her youth. Her silence then had been different. It had been alive. And now she sat around like a corpse and if it wasn't for her eyes moving occasionally you might think her actually dead. Sometimes this thought did frighten him as he sat watching her. She was dead! He would restrain himself from jumping up to see and sit listening to hear her breathe.