The painters peopled the world with a new variety of fruit and tree to surprise you with the bitterness of what was known for its sweetness and the sweetness of what was known for its bitterness, for they all deny the world as it is and take you back to the settings and scenes of your dreams. You slip out of a Party into the past or the future.

This meandering led the Chess Player to stray from his geometrical duties, and he was not able to prevent a suicide. It was Lillian who stood alone on a square; Lillian who had begun the evening like an African dancer donning not only all of her Mexican silver jewelry but a dress of emerald green of a starched material which had a bristling quality like her mood.

She had moved from one to another with gestures of her hands inciting others to foam, to dance. She teased them out of their nonchalance or detachment. People would awaken from their lethargies as in a thunderstorm; stand, move, ignite, catching her motions, her hands beating a meringue of voices, a soufflé of excitement. When they were ready to follow her into some kind of tribal dance, she left them, to fall again into limpness or to walk behind her enslaved, seeking another electrical charge.

She could not even wait for the end of the Party to commit her daily act of destruction. So she stood alone in her square defended by her own bristles and began: "No one is paying any attention to me. I should not have worn this green dress: it's too loud. I've just said the wrong thing to Brancusi. All these people have accomplished something and I have not. They put me in a panic. They are all so strong and so sure of themselves. I feel exactly as I did in my dream last night: I had been asked to play at a concert. There were so many people. When I went to play, the piano had no notes, it was a lake, and I tried to play on the water and no sound came. I felt defeated and humiliated. I hate the way my hair gets wild. Look at Stella's hair so smooth and clinging to her face. Why did I tease her? She looked so tremulous, so frightened, as if pleading not to be hurt. Why do I rush and speak before thinking? My dress is too short."

In this invisible hara-kiri she tore off her dress, her jewels, tore off every word she had uttered, every smile, every act of the evening. She was ashamed of her talk, of her silences, of what she had given, and of what she had not given, to have confided and not to have confided.