“No--not the girl. And you’re wrong. Really, I had a deliciously dull time.” She did not press the matter. “Daydon says I ought to move now I’ve won that prize. He says no one will visit a studio so near Third Avenue.” “Are you going to?” “I am not.” “I am glad, Cornelia. Just because you have begun to have money is no reason for spending it all on rents.” “That’s just what most New Yorkers do, is it not?” They both laughed, and were silent. “What you said has a lot of truth in it,” Tom spoke at last. And his sister knew he had pounced on her observation as a text. He was comfortable now. He had been just a bit uneasy, questioned about his trip. There was the sign of a release from nervousness in the brightening of his eyes and the slower puff of his cigarette--the way he curled up his legs, limbered his arms and began to talk. Cornelia watched him with a vague amusement and a subtle reservation. She would let him have his speech; then she would pin him back to his trip and the thing in it which made him nervous. In this mood she listened. “Really,” he said, “the true inwardness of New York’s rising sky-line has been the passion of New Yorkers for high rents. Have you ever thought of that? What a handy substitute for other, remoter standards they have found in the price of housing? Of course the gullible talk of the fact that New York is a crowded island. They forget the miles of dilapidated and discarded masonry within hail of their stylish towers. Some day the historian will understand. He will say this: ‘Money was so deep their worship that they mis-prized all treasures of life which did not blatantly announce it. They left their walls empty of beauty, their larders empty of health, their houses empty of grace, in order to pay high rents to the lords of land. These fabulous sums were the pride and the decoration of their lives. The height of New York rentals and the high buildings that were their symbols became the chief expression of Metropolitan Art!’” He laughed. Cornelia kept silent. “The historian will finish in this tone: ‘Surely these were a foolish people, ripe for destruction.’” “Give me another cigarette, Tom.” She was resolved not to help him along. Tom came to silence. He felt her mood. “Well, what is it?” he asked. “You had better look out, brother mine. You could easily get to be a typical New Yorker. I hate talk.” “What I said wasn’t true?” “Yes. But it was talk.” “Oh, boo! Don’t be so serious.” “Weren’t you?” “Of course not. I was speaking the truth. Even, I was prophesying. To be serious at such a game is to risk being a fool.” “Most of your talk, Tom, is a side-stepping of something in you you want to hide. I have noticed that.” Cornelia was half up on her couch, facing him straight. Now, she was ready to pin him. “It’s a bad convenience, dear,” she went on, “putting up all these brittle outer observations when some one threatens to get under your skin. You do it so well.”