She smiled; Tom straightened his legs and met her gaze. He knew her direction. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “Why? Just because you don’t?” This was a true shot. He acknowledged it. “Very well,” he spoke dryly. “There was a boy--a mere boy--up there. From New England. For some curious reason he upset me. I don’t like to talk about him. I do want to see him again. It’s all rather odd because he was really quite dull. We had damn little to say.” In a flash Cornelia’s mood changed. Her perceptions had controlled her--the acute and angular and severe in her. Now she was seated toward him on the couch; it was as if dominion had passed over to her eyes that were large on her brother. She spoke tenderly: “It’s not a girl yet, is it, Tom?” “You know it never is. Girls can’t disturb me. I can master women. I am cool and sure before them. But so I was with this--this fellow. Yet it seems, as I look back--quite irrationally, mind you--it seems as if we had had a contest and he had won.” He paused. “You probably _talked_ to him--flaming revolutionary talk.” Tom shrugged. “And he was shocked.” “Precisely,” Tom burst in. “He was the shocked one--the dominated one, the silenced. Then, why this foolish desire to see him again and throw him on his back?” “It has been troubling you?” “I have imaginary conversations with him. I walk up and down Broadway with him, and say: ‘See! what a Gehenna this country’s greatest city is?’ I take him to theaters and gloat and declare ‘Trash, eh? They call it art in New York.’ Even at my office. I show him through my papers. ‘All chicanery,’ I announce. ‘That’s what you want to enter, is it?’ I shame myself before him.” “Think it over, Tom,” Cornelia followed his silence. “You should be able to find out the thing that is troubling you.” Tom sat a bit diminished on the floor. Sedulously he flicked the ash from his cigarette, each vestige of the ash; his fingers close to the hot, red tip. He looked up: “This chap has something I lack and want: a sort of pure sincerity. He’ll go far--and be miserable as the devil.” “Look out! Aren’t you the one who is afraid of misery?” “True. I want him to give me the saving treasure. I want to give him the saving moderation. Then we could both be saved.” Cornelia laughed. “What _are_ you talking about now?” But Tom was very sober. “He is all wings. He has no eyes. He’ll dash himself against the sun. I am all eyes. I see everything. But where are my wings? I’ll freeze to death from far away, seeing the sun.” He got up. He paced the room. “Oh, this is nonsense. You are right. I liked him because he was a naïve, country lad. I was afraid I had hurt his innocence----” “You are dying to kill it.” Tom stopped and faced his sister. “That’s not quite fair, Cornelia. Not kill it. Steal some of it, perhaps.” He was talked out of his mood. He was light-hearted and full of interest for a thousand things. It was a trifle after all.