Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/222

 *they had died or they had married the conventional some one-else: and it did not matter the beard of an onion to the pudgy pasty man that Felix Kennaston had come to be. He had possessed, or else of his own volition he had refrained from possessing, all these brightly-colored moth-brained girls: but he had loved none of them as he had always known he was capable of loving: and at best, these girls were dead now, or at worst, they had been converted into unaccountable people

Kathleen was returning from the South that day, and Kennaston had gone into Lichfield to meet her train. The Florida Express was late by a full hour; so he sat in their motor-car, waiting, turning over some verses in his torpid mind, and just half-noticing persons who were gathering on the station platform to take the noon train going west. He was reflecting how ugly and trivial people's faces appear when a crowd is viewed collectively—and wondering if the Author, looking down into a hot thronged street, was never tempted to obliterate the race as an unsuccess