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 little presents for each other: for Marthe a vanity case, a handkerchief, a bottle of perfume; for him cigarettes, a matchbox, a diverting toy. They sat and talked about their neighbors, about the trifling incidents of their own days, while Marthe nervously broke matches or tore little squares of paper in a heap on the table. Then often, without preparation, they were at the very heart of life, oddly in agreement about the true, the good, and the beautiful.

"There are only two kinds of people," said Marthe one evening, and Grover again marvelled at the directness of her sources of knowledge, "those who are honest and those who are not. The honest build; the others demolish. Both are necessary, for you can't have a Yes unless there is a No to prove it by. The strong people are those who are either utterly honest to the end, or utterly dishonest to the end. Honest people who stoop to dishonesty under pressure of circumstances, or dishonest people who can be cowed into honesty are the weaklings of the earth. To be honest is a career in itself; it's easy enough to tell the truth once you know it, but how many know it apropos of anything? If you are honest with yourself, life holds no terrors; if you lie to yourself you're doomed. What makes life such a burden for people like you and me is that we find so little echo in the world about us to the verities that ring so clearly within us. Only lies, or flippancies come back to us, and there's no