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Terry offered him a hand up, and the spectators, without comment or curiosity, went about their business. As Finch started for his room, he asked: "Who was that?"

"Why," said Terry, "that was Eulalie."

"I gathered that from what you said. Eulalie—I mean which Eulalie?"

"Orange Eulalie Mrs. His second-class wife, o' corse. Hope he's makin' out better handlin' her than what I did. She shore was one active armful when she was married to me,"

"Sorry; I didn't mean—"

"Tha's all right, Wudden nothing I could do 'bout it. She was only my second-class wife anyway, an' she just got ambitious for some more status, not gettin' tired of me a-tall. Done toP me so herself when she deevorced me. Corse I told her Orange wouldn't get nowhere, on account of he is a lousy poor banker, and all the status she'd get out of him, second class, would put her level with his cook. But Eulalie, once she gits an i-dea ..." Armstrong Terry finished the sentence with a wave of the hand to indicate his helplessness in such a situation. "Real mistake I made was not givin' her a first-class marriage with contract and everything. She couldn't have got shet of me so easy. But as 'twas she jest put me in a picklernent."

"I'm in something of a picklement about Amaranth, Mrs. myself," said Finch, as they reached the door. "I've been trying to figure out a rhyme for her name all morning, but just when I think I have something approaching it, it's gone like Sisyphus' boulder."

"Shore is too bad," said Terry. "I'd swap off for your tennis practice, except I ain't no poet, and besides ef they found out I'd been a-helpin' you, they might think I was gettin' plumb irrational, and reclassify me."

"Have to be reclassified some time won't you? You can't go on being a professional athlete forever."

"Oh, Lord have mercy, I s'pose not. There's Hogarth Jack Athalete up in Cincinnati, he must be fifty-two and still rollin' right along. Once you git them examiners after you ... Eulalie, she had some trouble like that once, fore we was married, and lost a lot of status. Ef you don't find no rhyme for Amaranth, why don't you put Eulalie in your poem?"

"After that crack she made about my age?"

"Aw, that wudden nothing. Jest Eulalie's way. Any-hoo it'd make ol' Orange just wiggle."

"I might do it at that," mused Finch.

Three:

The dead silence that fell when Arthur Cleveland Finch stood up to read his poem after being called on puzzled and disconcerted him a little, until it occurred to him that it would hardly be rational to applaud any performer until he had put on his act. Certainly the rest of the "orgy" had been on a basis of complete reason; it turned out to be a rather staid, if somewhat large dinnerparty, differing from those he had seen in the past chiefly by the absence of penguin-like dinner jackets. Even the drinks were hardly likely to produce any outbursts of uninhibited irrationality; they consisted of wine heavily diluted with water in the classical fashion.

Finch looked out over the assemblage of calm faces and read sonorously:

"Many the wonders I this day have seen: The sun, when first he kist away the tears That filled the eyes of morn—the laurell'd peers Who from the feathery gold of evening lean;— The ocean with its vastness, its blue green, Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears,— Its voice mysterious, which who so hears Must think on what will be, and what has been. E'en now, dear heart, while this for you I write, Cynthia is from her silken curtains peeping So scantly, that it seems her bridal night, She saw her half-discovered revels keeping. But what, without the present thought of thee, Would be all wonder, dearest Eulalie?"

The silence that followed Finch's reading, as head turned toward head, was gradually filled by a scund as of fifty radiator-valves being turned on at once. Then, instead of applause there was a tentative snicker which gradually rose to an immense roar of laughter and talk. The laughers, Finch observed, were partly looking at Orange, partly at him.

"Youse—" bellowed the banker, standing up and pointing an accusing finger, though his figure was far too stout and round to make him a good doomsman—"youse—of all the—"

Someone slapped Orange on the back. The unhappy man coughed and took two steps toward Finch, and for a moment the poet thought he was about to become the victim of a physical assault. Past the banker's pudgy figure he caught a glimpse of a bony face wearing an expression of fury even more intense than Orange's own, and judged this must be his patron's first-class wife.

"No," growled the banker. "Must remain rational. One —two—three—four—five—" he retraced the two steps and subsided into his chair, glaring across a buzz of conversation. "Damndest thing I ever heard ..." "... awful insult to Orange Amaranth '..." "Ocean with its vastness! What ocean did he ever ..."

"All right," said Orange in a clear tone, standing up again. "I'm-in full control of myself now. Nobody can say that I did not resist great temptation to behave in ah irrational manner. Now, Finch Arthur Poet, get out of this room! Leave my orgy!"

"But why?" asked Finch.

"Go!" said Orange, striking his "doom" attitude again. "Under the law I cannot dismiss you as a client, but I can and shall bring charges."

Finch took a big gulp of the watered wine, shrugged and went, noticing that people avoided his eyes as he left the room. It was his own fault, of course. If he had paid any attention to the obvious laws of custom in these surroundings, he should have known that irresponsible conduct of any kind would not be looked upon with kindness, or even forgiveness. Perhaps he had been living too long in an irrational world, the world of Leo Pushman and Tiridat Arirninian.

Thinking of that old scoundrel gave his meditation another twist. Had he put hashish in the kuskus? No— hardly. There was something very odd about the way this dream went on and on through time and space. In a real hashish dream, one's sense of the temporal and spatial relations stretched this way and that, like a rubber band. There was no such variation here; objects enjoyed their normal relationship to one another and time ran on at an unvarying pace.

Well, what about Tiridat—or Armstrong Terry, if they really were the same. Perhaps he, Arthur Finch, was indulging in that risky form of mental gymnastics, the long-distance conclusion-jump. Was there any real evidence to support the idea that Terry was or was not Tiridat; or for that matter, any evidence but unreliable memory to support the idea that this world was anything but real?

The carnelian cube—if that object itself were real, if it were not also a part of the unreliable memory—might be mixed up in it somehow. He wondered if it existed here. Could one find a real object in an unreal world? If so, Terry would certainly have it.

In the lower corridor, he asked a passing girl for the location of Armstrong Terry's quarters, pushed a bell and was told to enter. Terry was sprawled on his bed with his feet up, doing nothing whatever. As he perceived Finch, the athlete folded his long legs and rolled off the couch.

"The suggestion was not a good one," said Finch grimly.

"Huh? What suggestion."

"About writing the sonnet to Orange Eulalie instead of Amaranth. He got mad and threw me out of the orgy, and everyone laughed. Says he's going to bring charges."