ng
fierce, and when you go they are just like any other dances. Bum
drawings of naked women on the walls done by artist yaps, decorations
of purple cows, pirates' dens--that's the kind of dope they have."

The Sea Siren was already beginning to fill up when Clay descended
three steps to a cellar and was warily admitted. A near-Hawaiian
orchestra was strumming out a dance tune and a few couples were on the
floor. Waitresses, got up as Loreleis, were moving about among the
guests delivering orders for refreshments.

The Westerner sat down in a corner and looked about him. The walls
were decorated with crude purple crayons of underfed sirens. A statue
of a nude woman distressed Clay. He did not mind the missing clothes,
but she was so dreadfully emaciated that he thought it wise for her to
cling to the yellow-and-red draped barber pole that rose from the
pedestal. On the base was the legend, "The Weeping Lady." After he
had tasted the Sea Siren fare the man from Arizona suspected that both
her grief and her anaemia arose from the fact that she had been fed on
it.

A man in artist's velveteens, minus a haircut, with a large, fat, pasty
face, sat at an adjoining table and discoursed to his friends.
Presently, during an intermission of the music, he rose and took the
rest of those present into his confidence. With rapt eyes on the
faraway space of distant planets he chanted his apologia.

"I believe in the Cosmic Urge, in the Sublimity of my Ego. I follow my
Lawless Impulse where the Gods of Desire shall drive. I am what I Am,
Son of the Stars, Lord of my Life. With Unleashed Love I answer the
psychic beat of Pulse to Pulse, Laughter, Tears and Woe, the keen edge
of Passion, the Languor of Satiety: all these are life. Open-armed, I
embrace them. I drink and assuage my thirst. For Youth is here
to-day. To-morrow, alas, it has gone. Now I am. In the Then I shall
not be. Kismet!"

The poet's fine frenzy faded. He sank back into his chair, apparently
worn out by his vast mental effort.

Clay gave a deep chuckle of delight. This was good.

"Heap much oration," he murmured. "Go to it, old-timer. Steam off
again. Git down in yore collar to it."

To miss none of the fun he hitched a little closer on the bench. But
the man without the haircut was through effervescing. He began to talk
in a lower voice on world politics to admiring friends who were basking
in his reflected glory.

"Bourgeois to the