"Now, Fanshaw, you shan't heckle Wenny," said Nan laughing. The orchestra had struck up Funiculi, Funicula with great vigor. Wenny was looking at the girl who played the violin. Something in the tilt of the chin was painfully like Nan, only all the features were heavier, the lips coarser and less intense; many men had kissed them perhaps. To kiss Nan's lips. No, I mustn't think of all that. I will drive it out of me, down into me. Tonight it's calm; cold I must be, to weigh everything. In spite of him the tune filled his mind with streets full of carnival, scampering, heavybreasted women pelting him with flowers. "The ladies' three-piece band is doing itself proud tonight," he shouted boisterously. Like this always, these dreams. I must put an end to them. It's on account of these dream women I've not made Nan love me; everything has slipped by. What's the good of dreams? It's hard actuality I want, will have. Yama, yama, blare of brass bands, red flags waving against picture postcard scenery, brown oarsmen with flashing teeth and roses behind their ears, and Nan; both of us lolling on red cushions. Bay of Naples and musical comedy moonlight and a phonograph in a flat in a smell of baby carriages and cabbage grinding out love songs. O, the mockery of it. "Gee, what a horrible tune." "Hacknied, I should say, Wenny, but it's rather jolly, and when they play it on those boats on the Grand Canal it's almost thrilling..." "To Cook's tourists and little schoolma'ams from Grand Rapids." "Isn't it a little like sour grapes that we should be so scornful of them?" put in Nan gently. "I'm not scornful of them. I am them... We are just like them. Can't you see what I mean, Nan? I can see that they are ridiculous and pitiful. How much more ridiculous and pitiful we must be." "But from that point of view everything must be ... well, just ashes; everybody ridiculous and pitiful," said Nan slowly with a flash in her eyes. "I'm willing to admit that in a sense, I suppose, yet certain things are dreadfully important to me--my friends, my music, my career, my sense of fitness. I don't see that those things are ridiculous... Of course, one can make oneself sound clever by making fun of anything, but that doesn't change it any way." The hot light in her eyes, flushing her cheeks, her parted lips, were a stab of pain for him. "O I can't say what I mean?" muttered Wenny. "Do you know what you mean?" said Fanshaw. "Perhaps not." "And you forget what you're so fond of talking about Wenny." "What?" "The gorgeousness of matter. That's your pet phrase."