"I only lived there until I was twelve," Fanshaw was saying. In his ears rang the phrase: An' I gave her one swell time. "Then my father died and Mother moved East. She'd always wanted to live in Boston. The day we were settled in our little house in Brookline she brought me in on the car to see the Abbey paintings. She was bound I'd take to the arts." "By the way, how is your mother now?" "About the same, Wenny. Poor lamb, I'm afraid she never will get much better. She's so patient about it." They were out of the square walking past dwelling houses set back from the road. A smell of leaves and autumnal earth came to them. In Fanshaw's mind was the picture of a grey head against a pillow, heavy despairing wrinkles from the nose to the ends of the mouth where was a wry peevish twitch of pain; his mother shapeless in a lilac dressing gown propped up in the easy chair in the library amid a faint stale smell of cologne and medicines. "I wonder if it will always be like this, this meaningless round of things. It would have been if I hadn't met you, Wenny." "D'you mean I'm a horrible example to keep you on the straight paths of virtue?" said Wenny harshly. He shook off Fanshaw's hand that was on his arm and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. "When I'm with you I feel as if there were something I could do about life. Remember the passage about 'to burn with a hard gemlike flame'?" Wenny grunted. "We must get something graceful and intense into it if we die in the attempt. I haven't the energy.... I'm going to talk about myself, you can't stop me, Wenny.... Mother has a curio cabinet. You know it, in the corner ofthe drawing room with a shepherd à la Watteau painted on the panel. Out in Nebraska when I was little I used to spend hours looking at the things: a filigree gondola from Venice, the Sistine Madonna in mosaic, carved wooden goats from Switzerland, the Nuremberg goose boy ... you know all those desperate little Mid-Victorian knick-knacks put in the cabinet so that they won't have to be dusted. I think my mind is like that. It opens. You can put things in and they stay there, but nothing moves. That's why I am so appropriate to the groves of Academe.... You're dynamic." "A damn bundle of frustrations, that's all I am Fanshaw if you only knew. Funny how we each think the other has the inside dope on things.... My father had it about God or thought he did. He was sure of himself anyway." "But you are sure of yourself." "The hell I am.... Let's have a drink. I am fearfully thirsty." "What you wanting a soda?"