Page:The Criterion - Volume 4.djvu/67

 with conscious grace and precision, as though he were acting the part of a man who helps himself to whisky and soda, on the stage. He took a sip; then elaborately acted the part of one who takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose.

'Don't they make one believe in birth control, all these people,' continued the professional drunkard. 'If only their parents could have had a few intimate words with Stopes! Heigh ho.' He uttered a stylized, Shakespearean sigh.

Buffoon, thought Gregory. And the worst is that if one called him one, he'd pretend that he'd said so himself, all the time. And so he has, of course, just to be on the safe side. But in reality, it's obvious, the man thinks of himself as a sort of Musset or up to date Byron. A beautiful soul, darkened and embittered by experience. Ugh!

Still pretending to be unaware of the professional boozer's proximity, Gregory went through the actions of the man who sips.

'How clear you make it!' Mrs. Labadie was saying, point blank, into the young mathematician's face. She smiled at him; the horse, thought Gregory, has a terribly human expression.

'Well,' said the young mathematician nervously, 'now we come on to Riemann.'

'Riemann!' Mrs. Labadie repeated, with a kind of ecstasy; 'Riemann!' as though the geometrician's soul were in his name.

Gregory wished that there were somebody to talk to, somebody who would relieve him of the necessity of acting the part of unaware indifference before the scrutinizing eyes of Paxton. He leaned against the wall in the attitude of one who falls, all of a sudden, into a brown study. Blankly and pensively, he stared at a point on the opposite wall, high up, just below the ceiling. People must be wondering, he reflected, what he was thinking about.