help him, Marie Bashkirtseff,—he knew just what they had been through. He often wished to ask other young men if they had similar sensations on reading similar books, but he refrained, for they might say Yes, which would make him feel silly and spoil it all; or they might say No, which would make him look silly and lay him open to the suspicion of harboring a superiority complex. As to that, he knew the perils of reasoning from false analogy, for he had read, not entirely in vain, the Professor Thanet's classic work on Logic. And yet—
He saw the last patch of golden light vanish from the clean street outside Miss Pearn's windows; the Debussy tune, sad but sprightly, came scampering back into his brain. If Boston were only Paris! And if there had never been a Dryden or a Shakespeare or a Holy Roman Empire to cumber the ages and bring examinations down upon the heads of an educable posterity! He recklessly decided to spend the evening with Rhoda. They would have dinner at the Tuscany and order a bottle of chianti. Quite as if there were no new suits to pay for.
Mortimer Pearn didn't drink tea, but his sister's guests were allowed to look in on him before departing. He spent most of his life upstairs in the library, a room that fitted him like an old garment with generous pockets for prehistoric statuettes and heavy-looking volumes on what Rhoda called "nothing at all." Rhoda wasn't sure which of the ologies her uncle
