Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/301

Rh much truth in many of the things he had been saying. He was quite right in suspecting that I was a sort of whip-top, that I could only keep my balance by being kept forever in motion. He was also right in suspecting that I'd always nursed a secret and absurd ache for grandeur, a sort of vague homesickness for some splendor which I couldn't quite define. Often, even as a youngster, I'd imagined myself a changeling. Many a lonely hour of my childhood had been spent in devising romantic fictions as to my origin and ancestry. But every rose-crowned avenue of romance had led me wearily back to Minetta Lane. Yet I'd always loved beautiful things, and hungered to explore beautiful houses, and yearned foolishly after even beautiful clothes.

It was because Bud Griswold had first brought me into touch with these things, I remembered, that I had been weak enough to swing in with him. He had brought me into touch with them crazily and accidentally, perhaps, but it had seemed the only way open to me. Bud had never been able to give me a home. But he'd been able to let me come up like a spoon-bill to breathe in the tawdry beauty of a big hotel. He'd been able to rent splendor, for at least an hour, by dining in state, for instance, at the Biltmore. But we were always renters, and nothing more.