subtlety of dissection, such a wealth of sudden, baring illuminations—and all that cloaked, softened in a haze of gentle scepticism that left nothing of dogmatic asperities. I compared it with the snorting, imperial utterances of my German Professor at college. It was French, that's what it was, in its breadth, its charity, its continual attenuation and inter-correction, its horror of the dictatorial, the pedantic. But don't think that he animated himself in this. No, he kept his immovable—I came near saying "silent," and really, even while he spoke, he gave an impression of silence—his immovable, detached calm. All this, it came as from another man. It was another man, the past man. He was not creating now; he was merely re-reading the creations of the past man, objectively, too, with a certain mild astonishment at the performance.
"You must have studied deeply," I said, one night, as I sat, still dazzled, long after he had spoken his last word.
He looked at me hazily. "I have my Harvard Ph.D.," he said, absent-mindedly. "I lectured afterward."
"Then, for God's sake," I blurted out, tortured by the vision of that life calmly ruining itself; "for God's sake, what are you doing here?"
His eyes turned absolutely inside out. From their
