went on with a cold impassive irony. “We were not rich people… a big family growing up with only a small income to support us. They were all good people,” he said quietly. “My father was superintendent of a small farm-machinery plant, and before that they were farming people, but they sent me to school, and after that to college. I was the’bright boy’of the town”—again the weary irony of his voice was evident—“the local prodigy, the teacher’s pet…. Perhaps that is my destiny; to have something of the artist’s heart, his soul, his understanding, his perceptions—never to have his power, the hand that shapes, the tongue that can express—oh, God! Eugene! is that to be my life—to have all that I know and feel and would create rot still-born in my spirit, to be a wave that breaks for ever in mid-ocean, the shoulder of a strength without the wall—my God! My God! to come into this world scarce half made up, to have the spirit of the artist and to lack his hide, to feel the intolerable and unspeakable beauty, mystery, loveliness, and terror of this immortal land—this great America—and a skin too sensitive, a hide too delicate and rare—” his voice was high and bitter with his passion—“to declare its cruelty, its horror, falseness, hunger, the warped and twisted soul of its frustration, and lacking hide and toughness, born without a skin, to make an armour, school a manner, build a barrier of my own against its Hortons—”
“And is that why—?” the other boy began, flushed, and quickly checked himself.
“Is that why—what?” said Starwick, turning, looking at him. Then as he did not answer, but still remained silent, flushed with embarrassment, Starwick laughed, and said: “Is that why I am an affected person—a poseur—what Horton calls a’damned little æsthete’—why I speak and act and dress the way I do?”
The other flushed miserably and muttered:
“No, I didn’t say that, Frank!”
Starwick laughed suddenly, his infectious and spontaneous laugh, and said:
“But why not? Why shouldn’t you say it? Because it is the truth. It really is, you know,” and almost mockingly at these words, his voice assumed its murmured and affected accent. Then he said quietly again:
“Each man has his manner—with each it comes for his own reason—Horton’s, so that his hearty voice and robust way may hide the hatred in his eyes, the terror in his heart, the falseness and pretence in his pitiable warped small soul. He has his manner, I have mine—his for concealment, mine
