His irritation was transmitted to me. I was angry that from our conversation had been deleted any reference to ourselves except as we figured in the grim farce of existing Society, by the denunciation of which he made me cherish my desire to know what it was before it was annihilated utterly by the revolution. The word “society,” even though I was sophisticated enough to realize that he used it in its larger sense, was reflected on my mind as “Boston Society.” But while Nathan had no doubt that if, in his life-scheme, he decided to include me he could convince me of the truth of his cosmopolitanism, so I believed he would sacrifice his crotchets to my own. Each of us regarded the other as a child; each smiled inwardly and with indulgence at the other’s self-deceptions. And when I said, partly to tease him, that I still admired Miss Pride, he patted my hand comfortingly as if to say all was not lost, that he himself would remove the scales from my eyes.

Now and again, I was exhilarated by what he said of Paris. “My genius will bloom in a shabby bistro,” he said. “In the beginning, I will have only friends, rum, bock, and market girls. But later, having fame, I will, if I want her, have a bonafide Faubourg duchesse.”

Without realizing that the source of my rage was jealousy of that imaginary duchess, I blurted out, “Oh, I’m sick of George Moore.”

“Give me three reasons,” he demanded.

“I’m not interested. But no one with that much conceit can be decent.”

“Decent? What language they teach them in school nowadays! I suppose you think an artist ought to be a humble worm? Humble, like you? You, Sonia Marburgovna, are the most self-conceited baggage I have ever known.”

“I?”

“Yes, you,” he mocked me. “For example, on the night you made that melodramatic, also fraudulent, also imbecilic Lady-of-the-Lake voyage around the Point to deposit an imaginary corpse in the Atlantic Ocean, did you not later lap up for flattery what was intended as advice? Did you not, when I absent-mindedly exaggerated your nature and called you deep, believe that you really were deep?”

I blushed and did not reply. We had turned into the street where the Brunsons lived, and Nathan stopped. “I won’t go any farther. As it is, I’m close enough to smell the putrefaction. Since you won’t—or as you are deluded into thinking, you can’t—go to Red’s now, would you like to after you have finished cleaning up their swill?”

I had not drunk beer since my father went away, and I was curious to know what it tasted like and what its effect would be. I was elated at the thought of the evening we might spend in the dark, disreputable saloon that advertised tables for ladies. Encouraged by the beer (and bock beer was in now), perhaps we would be able to revive the mood in the fog. But when Nathan added, “Shall I call for you here or at home?” the image of my home and its drugged occupant made me catch my breath as I realized with abject shame that I had not thought of my mother since the moment Dr. McAllister, changing the subject, had asked me why I had used Miss Pride’s name.