have inspired it.

But as Jack prattles on, and Jack's wife smiles over her embroidery
frame, it comes over you that, despite all the kindly communion of the
evening, you are an outsider there. You ask yourself bitterly whether
there is such a thing as constancy in man, whether there is such a thing
as true comradeship or affection. For fifteen years, from your freshman
year at high school, you and Jack have been what the world calls
friends. What are you now? Jack still calls you friend; apparently that
is the reason why you have just dined with him and his wife. But in
reality you are not there as his friend. You are there as the guest of
this newly-constituted social unit, this new family. You are there not
as a person, but as part of an institution.

And just when you are ready to accept the new situation you are swept
away by the unreality of the entire arrangement. It is inconceivable
that Jack should have thrown you over for this alien person whom he
calls wife. Your habits and Jack's are so much alike; your tastes, your
outlook upon life. You used to play the same games at college, sing the
same songs, smoke the same tobacco, wear each other's clothes, and now
Jack has thrown you over for one with whom in the nature of things he
can have none of those habits in common. It is not merely puzzling; it
grows almost absurd. You shake your head over it some time after you
have said good-night, and the bride has told you that as a dear friend
of Jack's, they always will be pleased to have you call.

XXI

THE PERFECT UNION OF THE ARTS

I have never had the slightest reason to doubt Harding's truthfulness.
The following episode, I remember, was told with more than Harding's
usual gravity. I can do nothing better than to give it here in Harding's
own words so far as I can recall them:

On the third day after his arrival, my guest, Muhammad Abu Nozeyr, said
to me, "O Harding Effendi, I desire greatly to witness a presentation of
what you and the wife of your bosom, on whom both be peace, have often
referred to as Grand Opera."

I replied, with involuntary astonishment. "Son of a hundred sheiks,
forgive my seemingly derelict hospitality. But I should have asked you
before this to go to the opera with us, if I had not thought that the
principles of your faith were opposed thereto. For you must know, O
Father of the Defenceless, that our women go there unveiled even as the
women of the people that you see on o