The young man gave himself much mental trouble in getting at the secret of this American life. And, in the last analysis, it seemed unreal--unreal because it was temporary; because the old was going and the new had not yet come; because it was like the wooden houses and the temporary bridges, and the provisional social conventions, and the thin fashionable veneer of neo-conservatism--it was suffered to remain until the people found time and resolution to make a change. XXII. VANE, however, did not carry his analysis quite so far as this. He found that it was unreal; there he stopped; the why was too heavy a burden for him. He was ready and anxious enough to make it real; but still, all through his life, the substance of life itself had kept eluding him, and left the shadow in his hand. Many of the girls (at Cinerea every woman under thirty is a girl)--many of the girls were reading novels, American summer stories, written by girls about other girls, and revelling in the summer life of girls. Vane borrowed some of these and read them. They were so prettily written, so charming, so awfully true, he was told; and he liked not to confess that they gave him but a little passing amusement, which was followed by much mental depression. It was all true and real, then? Was Vane himself something of a prig? John Haviland did not think so. But these stories seemed to him more immoral, or at all events, more corrupting, than many a French romance ending in adultery. There was in them an ignorance of all that is highest in life, a calm, self-satisfied acceptance of a petty standard. The strength of crime implies the strength of virtue, but the negation of both is hopelessness. In defence of Vane, it might be said that he was really not in the mood for pleasure at this time.