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He had lurched back to the Felman apartment, “dropping beauty” with an incisive exuberance to the astonished neighbors seated around the doorstep, and commanding them to examine his gifts. As he sat at the dining-room table now, he remembered this episode, and similar ones, with a gust of half-rebellious shame.

“This has been my only triumph so far—a whiskey bottle raised beneath the stars, on a summer evening, and reigning over an idle riot of words,” he said to himself with an exhausted self-hatred. “Am I going to be contented with this thwarted joke? And yet——”

Levy stepped into the room and provided a slightly unwelcome ending to this secret sentence. Short and slender, his blue serge suit clinging to him like an emblem of shrewd victory, he made an excellent period to the labors of thought. Upon his small, light tan face a twirled-up black moustache curved to a diminutive swagger and his bending nose seemed to be vainly attempting to caress the moustache—an unnecessary affirmation. His black eyes incessantly drove little bargains beneath the shine of his black hair.