Page:Strange Interlude (1928).djvu/21

Rh

terday prep school  Easter vacation  Fatty Boggs and Jack Frazer  that house of cheap vice  one dollar! why did I go? Jack, the dead game sport how I admired him! afraid of his taunts he pointed to the Italian girl  “Take her!”  daring me  I went  miserably frightened  what a pig she was! pretty vicious face under caked powder and rouge surly and contemptuous  lumpy body  short legs and thick ankles  slums of Naples  “What you gawkin’ about? Git a move on, kid” kid! I was only a kid ! sixteen test of manhood  ashamed to face Jack again unless  fool! I might have lied to him! but I honestly thought that wench would feel humiliated if I oh, stupid kid! back at the hotel I waited till they were asleep then sobbed  thinking of Mother  feeling I had denied her  and myself  forever!

[Mocking bitterly]

“Nothing half so sweet in life as love’s young dream,” what?

[He gets to his feet impatiently]

Why does my mind always have to dwell on that? too silly no importance really  an incident such as any boy of my age

[He hears someone coming quickly from the right and turns expectantly. ''enters, a pleased relieved expression fighting the flurried worry on his face. He is a small, slender man of fifty-five, his hair gray, the top of his head bald. His face, prepossessing in spite of its too-small, over-refined features, is that of a retiring, studious nature. He has intelligent eyes and a smile that can be ironical. Temperamentally timid, his defense is an assumption of his complacent, superior manner of the classroom toward the world at large. This defense is''