in
the hell of his own choosing. No! Far better to pick out a hell for
him ... a hell removed discreetly from the gaze of the scornful. ...
And there was Wainright, who, like Monet, had a father. He had married
a Runway Girl of the Bearcat Follies ... the sort that patters down
from the stage to imprint carmine kisses and embarrassment upon the
shining pate of the first old rounder that has an aisle seat. Well,
father could not have that, either. He was impatient with the whole
performance. Indeed, a less impatient man would have waited and
watched Wainright, junior, wind himself in the net which his own hands
had set. Instead, he went to the trouble of digging a pit for his son
which hastened the inevitable, but did not cure the folly... Wainright
had escaped, too, quite casually, one fine spring day when he had been
sent out to the barn to help milk the cows. The Runway Girl, in need
of publicity, had telegraphed the details to her press agent,
following receipt of her husband's letter telling of his exploit. A
Runway Girl whose husband-lover broke jail, so to speak, for her, had
professional assets that could not be gainsaid.

And so the story was flashed on the front page of every newspaper in
the country, with the result that father dug another pit.

And so tale succeeded tale. Fred grew to accept most of them with
large dashes of salt. Not that he doubted the broader strokes with
which the effects were achieved, but he mistrusted that many of the
finer shadings had been discreetly painted out. He was learning that
there was nothing so essentially untruthful as a studied veracity...
Had not he tricked himself with just such carefully heightened
details? What he had mistaken for a background of solid truth had
proved nothing but pasteboard scenery flooded with a semblance of
reality achieved by skillful manipulation of spotlights. He had been
satisfied with the illusion because he had wished for nothing better.
And at this moment he was more desolate than any in this sad company,
because he seemed the only one who had lost the art of escaping into a
world of lies. He had no more spotlights to manipulate. He sat in a
gloomy playhouse and he heard only confused voices coming from the
stage. He was not even sorry for himself. Whether he was sorry for
others he could not yet determine.

One afternoon at the close of the first week, as he was walking back
to Ward 1 with Monet, following one of these inevitable experi