And so the story was flashed on the front page of every newspaper in the country, with the result that father dug another pit.

And so tale succeeded tale.  Fred grew to accept most of them with large dashes of salt.  Not that he doubted the broader strokes with which the effects were achieved, but he mistrusted that many of the finer shadings had been discreetly painted out.  He was learning that there was nothing so essentially untruthful as a studied veracity...  Had not he tricked himself with just such carefully heightened details?  What he had mistaken for a background of solid truth had proved nothing but pasteboard scenery flooded with a semblance of reality achieved by skillful manipulation of spotlights.  He had been satisfied with the illusion because he had wished for nothing better.  And at this moment he was more desolate than any in this sad company, because he seemed the only one who had lost the art of escaping into a world of lies.  He had no more spotlights to manipulate.  He sat in a gloomy playhouse and he heard only confused voices coming from the stage.  He was not even sorry for himself.  Whether he was sorry for others he could not yet determine.

One afternoon at the close of the first week, as he was walking back to Ward 1 with Monet, following one of these inevitable experience meetings, he turned to the youth and said: 

“You have been here three times now.  Have you never thought of escape?”

Monet shrugged.  “Yes ... in a way.  But I’m no great hand at doing things alone.”

They walked on in silence.  Finally Fred spoke.

“Suppose you and I try it sometime? ...  It will give us something to think about...  But we’ll go slow.  It will just be a game, you understand.”

Monet’s eyes lit up and his breath came quickly between his parted lips.  “You’re splendid to me!” he cried.  “But the others—­you seem to hate them.  Why?”

Fred kicked a fallen branch out of his path.  “They whine too much!” he muttered.

The boy was right, he did hate them!

At the office he found that a package had come for him in the mail, and a letter.  Both had been opened by the authorities.  He read the letter first.  It was from Helen.  She had heard that cigarettes were a great solace to men in his situation, and so she had sent him a large carton of them.  She expressed the hope that everything was going well, and she filled the rest of her letter with gossip of the Hilmers.  Mrs. Hilmer was a little better and she was wheeling her out on fine days just in front of the house.  The nurse had gone and she was doing everything.  But these people had been so good to her!  What else was there left to do?  She ended with a restrained dignity.  She offered neither sympathy nor reproaches.  Fred had to concede that it was a master stroke of implied martyrdom.  He flung the letter into the nearest wastebasket.  He had an impulse to do the same thing with the cigarettes, but the thought of Monet’s pleasure in them restrained him.  He took the package to the dormitory.  Monet had gone up before him.