surrounded him. When he wrote, his fables and vignettes never dealt with the life he was acquainted with; always they were in the nature of a release from it. This side of his nature, it is probable, was due to the Welsh strain in his blood. Henry Johns, his father, was descended from a Welsh family which had settled in Pennsylvania; Gareth was named after his grandfather. His grandmother, however, had been Pennsylvania Dutch, and Gareth's father had derived his character from her. Gareth, too, was beholden to her for the hard, practical side of his curiously blended disposition.
From his father, who was unnaturally reticent especially in regard to questions of sex, Gareth had learned nothing. A weaker character, under these circumstances, turned into the world later to shift for himself, might have sunk in the sea of experience. But Gareth had no intention either of becoming a sciolist or of living without touching life. One definite act, he felt (and the result proved that he was correct in this assumption) would completely release his imagination. Therefore, without taking any obvious initiative himself, without, even, any desire, simply through curiosity, he had, on two occasions, accepted the readily proffered attentions of Clara Barnes. There was nothing sweet about the memory of these moments; rather they had made him harder, more sophisticated. They had, in a sense, been responsible for his oppugnancy towards his
