Flappers and Philosophers

rock, began climbing the cliff together. The first shelf was ten feet up, wide, and furnishing a natural diving platform. There th

ppy?" he as

no

all day that you and I are somewhat alike. We're both rebels-only for di

nty-

s an utterly devastating débutante and you were a

of Congress," he

iness. I didn't know what I wanted. I went from man to man, restless, impatient, month by month getting less acquiescent and more dissatisfied. I used to sit sometimes c

ed Carlyle

rose su

ant to try this del

doubling up in mid-air and then straightening out and enteri

er voice floa

day and most of the night.

interrupted. "What o

shocking people; wearing something quite impossible and quite charming to a fancy-dress party, going

rds, and then he heard her hurried breathin

in!" sh

ledge, but after a second frightened he heard her light laughter from another shelf ten feet up. There he joined

d then when I'd begun to feel that after all life was scarcely worth livin

and her words c

hing that attracted me. I began separating courage from the other things of life. All sorts of courage-the beaten, bloody prize-fighter coming up for more-I used to make men take me to prize-fights; the déclassé woman sailing through a ne

r and held a matc

tal and physical inferiors, most of them, but all intensely desiring to have me-

were beaten and yo

ev

igure against the sky; then describing a dark parabola plunked

loated up t

ife-not only overriding people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness of li

ds her head, with the damp yellow hair slick

really built, after all, on a pride of birth. You were bred to that defiant attit

zing abstractedly at the white moon; he was farther bac

e-that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes

before joy and hope and all that came ba

bed with some difficulty to the next le

led back "then

t till he c

here! You'll break your

laug

ot

an-like, radiating a pride in her young perfe

like a dolphin's tail, and we're going to think we'll never hit the silver down there

had not realized that the dive was nearly forty feet. It seemed an et

ght watery laughter curled up the side of the cliff