The dense branch swung back to the bush from my relaxed hand as five o’clock rang out from the Catholic church. “Golly, I’m late,” I said.

Nathan stepped to one side and with a gallant gesture offered me the outside of the walk. He said, “I know you think it’s impolite of me to walk on the inside. I do it intentionally because I do not believe in bourgeois etiquette. Probably you want to hurry because you are afraid of the bawling-out you’ll get from that bourgeois ignoramus who has the egregious impudence to call you her ‘servant.’ I have no doubt that if I invited you to stop in at Red’s café for a Budweiser draft, you would refuse. I’m not reproaching you. You’re merely victimized, a helpless cog in the machinery of social corruption.”

“I would stop at Red’s,” I said, “but it’s so late already and I promised to be on time tonight. They’re having company.”

Nathan’s full lips curled in a sneer. “Don’t go into detail, I can get the picture. I can just see their company. Does that illiterate trollop, the daughter of the house, still infect the atmosphere with her noisome presence?”

I told him that Betty was at school in New York. “As it should be,” he said, nodding gravely. “There she will learn the elegant antics of the capitalistic prostitute. Oh, lofty ideal!”

He was lagging, coming to a full stop occasionally to convey his italics or exclamation marks by kicking a paling of the white fence, and if I quickened my pace, he pulled me back by the elbow, saying, “Where’s the fire? Courage!”

I was nervous and bewildered by his talk, and although when his fingers closed over my arm as he detained me, the contact softened my bones and caused me to float without exertion, I could not help being disappointed that we dwelt in worlds so far apart. “Nathan, are you a Communist again?” I asked him.

“Again? When was I not? Oh, wait a second. Do you mean am I a member of the Communist Party? Or do you mean am I a dialectical materialist? Am I a Marxist, is that what you’re asking me?”

I could only shake my head at his terms.

“No, I belong to no party, faction, or school of thought. But I hate the bourgeoisie because they are the enemies of freedom. I am a revolutionist, yes; I am a nonconformist, yes. But no, I am not a Communist, I am a cosmopolitan. Sonie”—he turned to me with a serious stare—“I am going to Paris.”

“When?” I asked.

“Typical,” he said irritably. “Typical of an unimaginative woman to try to pin me down about when. Next you’ll ask me where I propose to get the money and if I intend to live in the thirteenth arrondissement.”