Booth Tarkington

“ In all my life I never met such a pretentious little bundle of vanity! If there's one kind of idiot I hate more than another, it's an intellectual prig without the intellect!”
Renfrew was solidly befuddled, for here was something no one could have explained to him so that he could understand it. And yet in a corner of the clubhouse, a hundred feet from the dancing pavilion, an elderly gentleman at a table was telling a story illuminating just such a matter. ”

“ I was only saying it to you, like this, without anyone around.”
“But why were you saying it to me?”
“Why?” he repeated, his puzzlement obviously increasing. “Well, I thought it would be—I mean I suppose they do.”
“Who do?”
“Why, everybody that—that—I mean when it happens like this.”
“Something seems to be the matter with you,” Muriel said, with a frankness not infrequent in the conversations of young people who live across the street from one another. “You were trying to explain why you called me 'Dear,' but you're getting incoherent.” ”

“ I care no more than the winds that play what my mirror shows me than the winds that play!
“'Vanitas! Vanitas! Omnium vanitas,' the sage quoth, and I, too, scorn vanitas..... To care what my mirror shows me or costumes and equipages and the family position would be nothing but vanitas. But what is my real self, that self intime?
“As I look about me and see beneath the surface of the other girls I find that some are often guilty of hypocricy, and though others may be less so, all live only in the present they read nothing.. they chatter and laugh..... and are merely shallow. ”

“ I mean she probably thought it wasn't in good taste to call him 'Dear,' the way you do, Muriel.”
But at this, Muriel made gestures of desperation. “I don't call your grandfather 'Dear,' do I? He's dead, isn't he?'
“Yes,” said Renfrew. “I meant the way you think it isn't good taste to call people 'Dear.'”
“Do you?” she asked. “Do you think it's good taste to call people 'Dear'? Have you decided to go about calling everybody 'Dear'?” ”

“ Du Barry was taken that way, she made a great and piteous to do: she gave everybody clearly to understand that she was about to be killed and didn't want to die. The mob straightway became so sick with pity that the route of the tumbrils had to be changed. Nevertheless it is probable that many of the condemned had actually suffered more than Mme. Du Barry, and if these had made their feelings as evident as she did, no doubt the Terror would have been sooner destroyed.
“Oh, my!” was the utmost eloquence Renfrew had attained even in Muriel's presence. “Oh, my!” ”

“ Renfrew assented meekly. “Are you a radical for instance about—about music, too?”
“Yes. There's only one single composition of the really non-revolutionary type that I can endure, you see. It just happens to be my favorite of all musical compositions.”
“What's the name of it?”
“Rachmaninoff's 'Prelude.'”
“Oh!” Renfrew said blankly. “It's your favorite, is it?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Green. “It still makes me feel, you see.”
Renfrew's disquieted gaze was little reassured by this reply, but for some moments he appeared to meditate; then he asked: “Have you been anywhere else: since you got in? ”

“ You take little Miss Eliot for quite an impressive person, no doubt,” he said.
“You didn't?” Renfrew cried.
MR. GREEN permitted himself to laugh shortly. “It seemed to me you were rather discouraging about my going over there, Renfrew; and I hadn't talked to her five minutes before I saw you were right. Then her mother asked me to lunch—”
“Her mother did?”
“Yes, and I couldn't get out of it, on the spur of the moment; but I made an escape right afterward, and found old Joe Myers a great relief.” ”

“ The self I show to others of the outer world is a self that is like a masque of my self intime. That outer self of mine is considered rather inscrubatle I believe. I know as well as anybody what my mirror shows me and once a man told me in bitterness he believed I was full of vanity..... ”

“ So alone in universal shallows?
Is it I? Is there another anywhere
In distant wastes and other shallows?
If there were, would that be You?”
This “You” to whom she addressed her inquiry was a being still undefined, that misty “One who will understand,” the possibility of whose simultaneous presence in the world she had surmised at sixteen. ”

“ Mr. Green may have just grasped Muriel's hand with an air of permanence. The outside of the house, even at such a moment, expresses nothing whatever; whereas it ought to crack from foundation to roof and fall apart in uproarious lamentation.
ON the third evening after the day of Mr. Green's call, Renfrew dismally bestirred himself to drive to a Country Club dance, and almost the first person he beheld upon his arrival was Gus-Keith himself. ”

“ Renfrew went on briskly, “Joe Myers is the one you'd take the greatest interest in. He's started out in business for himself, and everybody says it's wonderful the way he handles insurance and real estate. ”

“ If Muriel had seen him then, his sufferings would have left her unmoved, not because of any hardness of her heart, but on account of Renfrew's lacking the talent just mentioned. People who have the usually instinctive art of making their unhappiness understood by others obtain remarkable consolations, and history would be pleasanter reading if its great agonies had been better expressed to contemporaries. The tumbrils of impassive nobles went down the Rue St. ”

“ Renfrew protested. “He's worked up his whole business for himself in only a couple o' years, and he's considered the most rising young man in town. I shouldn't be surprised you could write up an article or something, about him, Gus, if you—”
“No, thanks,” Mr. Green said coldly. “I don't write about that sort of thing—not precisely! I'm not interested in the Rotarian type of complex.”
“What on earth is that?”
“Never mind,” the caller returned. “Do you suppose I'd find Muriel Eliot in if I went over there now?”
“Well, I—” Renfrew shook his head |nervously. ”

“ Muriel stood beside him, on the smooth floor of an open pavilion, and both were talking busily to a group gathered about them during a pause in the dancing.
“Oh, my!” Renfrew thought, halting in the darkness beyond the pavilion. “Announcing it already!”
And he turned to go away, but bravely checked the impulse. “Oh, my!” he thought. “I've got to get used to it. I might as well begin.” Then, with all the fortitude he had, he went up the steps to the dancing floor, and joined the group about his lovely neighbor and her new friend.
“How d'ye do, Gus—Keith, that is?” he said, giving Mr. ”