ave
half forgotten why, and the younger ones have never really known: it's
simply become a tradition to cut me. And traditions that have lost their
meaning are the hardest of all to destroy."

Ide sat motionless while she spoke. As she ended, he stood up with
a short laugh and walked across the room to the window. Outside, the
immense black prospect of New York, strung with its myriad lines of
light, stretched away into the smoky edges of the night. He showed it to
her with a gesture.

"What do you suppose such words as you've been using--'society,'
'tradition,' and the rest--mean to all the life out there?"

She came and stood by him in the window. "Less than nothing, of course.
But you and I are not out there. We're shut up in a little tight round
of habit and association, just as we're shut up in this room. Remember,
I thought I'd got out of it once; but what really happened was that the
other people went out, and left me in the same little room. The only
difference was that I was there alone. Oh, I've made it habitable now,
I'm used to it; but I've lost any illusions I may have had as to an
angel's opening the door."

Ide again laughed impatiently. "Well, if the door won't open, why not
let another prisoner in? At least it would be less of a solitude--"

She turned from the dark window back into the vividly lighted room.

"It would be more of a prison. You forget that I know all about that.
We're all imprisoned, of course--all of us middling people, who don't
carry our freedom in our brains. But we've accommodated ourselves to our
different cells, and if we're moved suddenly into new ones we're likely
to find a stone wall where we thought there was thin air, and to knock
ourselves senseless against it. I saw a man do that once."

Ide, leaning with folded arms against the windowframe, watched her in
silence as she moved restlessly about the room, gathering together
some scattered books and tossing a handful of torn letters into the
paperbasket. When she ceased, he rejoined: "All you say is based on
preconceived theories. Why didn't you put them to the test by coming
down to meet your old friends? Don't you see the inference they would
naturally draw from your hiding yourself when they arrived? It looked as
though you were afraid of them--or as though you hadn't forgiven them.
Either way, you put them in the wrong instead of waiting to let them put
you in the right. If Leila had buried herself in a desert do yo