THE SHAPE OF FEAR

TIM O'CONNOR -- who was de-
scended from the O'Conors with
one N -- started life as a poet
and an enthusiast. His mother
had designed him for the priesthood, and at
the age of fifteen, most of his verses had an
ecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other,
he got into the newspaper business instead,
and became a pessimistic gentleman, with a
literary style of great beauty and an income
of modest proportions. He fell in with men
who talked of art for art's sake, -- though
what right they had to speak of art at all
nobody knew, -- and little by little his view
of life and love became more or less pro-
fane. He met a woman who sucked his
heart's blood, and he knew it and made no
protest; nay, to the great amusement of the
fellows who talked of art for art's sake, he
went the length of marrying her. He could
not in decency explain that he had the tra-
ditions of fine gentlemen behind him and
so had to do as he did, because his friends
might not have understood. He laughed at
the days when he had thought of the priest-
hood, blushed when he ran across any of
those tender and exquisite old verses he had