Page:Mosquitos (Faulkner).pdf/45

 ideals. You believe in ideals at that age, you know. Which is all right, as long as you just believe in them as ideals and not as criterions of conduct. But after a while you join more things, you are getting older and more sedate and sensible; and believing in ideals is too much trouble so you begin to live up to them with your outward life, in your contacts with other people. And when you’ve made a form of behavior out of an ideal, it’s not an ideal any longer, and you become a public nuisance.”

“It’s a man’s own fault if the fetich men annoy him,” the Semitic man said. “Nowadays there are enough things for every one to belong to something.”

“That’s a rather stiff price to pay for immunity, though,” Fairchild objected.

“That need not bother you,” the other told him. “You have already paid it.”

Mr. Talliaferro laid aside his fork. “I do hope he’s not offended,” he murmured. Fairchild chuckled.

“At what?” the Semitic man asked. He and Fairchild regarded Mr. Talliaferro kindly.

“At Fairchild’s little joke,” Mr. Talliaferro explained.

Fairchild laughed. “I’m afraid we disappointed him. He probably not only does not believe that we are bohemians, but doubts that we are even artistic. Probably the least he expected was to be taken to dinner at the studio of two people who are not married to each other, and to be offered hashish instead of food.”

“And to be seduced by a girl in an orange smock and no stockings,” the ghostly young man added in a sepulchral tone.

“Yes,” Fairchild said. “But he wouldn’t have succumbed, though.”