“Ah,” I said suddenly, “she called you that?”

“Yes.  If she had been a man I should have thrashed her.  But in a moment I knew that she had spoken the truth.”

“But Jerry, a coward is one who is afraid.  How could you be afraid of something you didn’t know about?”

“But I know now.  She told me very little, Roger, but I’ve guessed the rest.”

He went on in this vein for awhile and at last grew calmer.  And the result of it all was a promise on my part to answer more frankly all his questions, to subscribe to two newspapers and some magazines, and to begin on the morrow a course of reading which would prepare the way for his contact with the world.  He seemed satisfied and at last went to bed with his old cheery “Good night, Dry-as-dust.”

After all, I had gotten out of it well enough.  Only a few months remained for him within the wall and with the exception of the newspapers, my plans for him were really little changed.  I may as well confess at once that my delay in broadening his point of view was selfish.  I had made such a beautiful thing that I was as proud of it as any painter of his masterpiece.  Until the present moment I had been true to my own ideals.  What was to follow must be a concession to convention.

But I entered frankly enough into the new scheme of things and set Jerry a course in modern fiction in books carefully chosen and before the summer was gone and the autumn far advanced Jerry had read at least a shelf-full of volumes.  He went through them avidly and asked few questions.  Love between the sexes he now accepted as a matter of course, but he hadn’t the slightest conception of what it meant and told me so.  He had passed the morbid age between boyhood and manhood, his head in the air, his gaze upon the stars, and what he read now did not trouble him.

And as the months flew by without the expected revelation, I breathed more freely.  His heart was so clean that the suggestion of forbidden things made no impression upon it.  He already accepted suffering, sin, disease, as part of the lot of a too complex society, but he made few comments upon his reading and these were perfunctory.  He was so free from guile that I actually believe he could have been given access to any library without fear of contamination.

In November Jack Ballard arrived for a visit of a few days and announced that his father had bought a house in New York which was to be ready for occupancy after Jerry’s birthday.  As Jack is to occupy a prominent place in these pages, I may as well announce at once that at this time he had reached the age of thirty-five, had kept most of his hair, was slightly inclined to corpulency, and wore gay cravats which matched his handkerchiefs, shirts and socks, the “sartorial symphony,” as he described it.  He still kept office hours from two to three on Thursdays and refused all efforts on the part of his father to make him take life other than as a colossal joke.  He had not married, though I do not doubt that there were many who would have nabbed him quickly enough.