felt as if he were sitting on a lady's lap. And though Horace
couldn't have named the quality of difference, there was such a
quality--quite intangible to the speculative mind, but real,
nevertheless. Hume was radiating something that in all the two
hundred years of his influence he had never radiated before.

Hume was radiating attar of roses.



II


On Thursday night Horace Tarbox sat in an aisle seat in the fifth
row and witnessed "Home James." Oddly enough he found that he
was enjoying himself. The cynical students near him were annoyed
at his audible appreciation of time-honored jokes in the
Hammerstein tradition. But Horace was waiting with anxiety for
Marcia Meadow singing her song about a Jazz-bound Blundering
Blimp. When she did appear, radiant under a floppity flower-faced
hat, a warm glow settled over him, and when the song was over he
did not join in the storm of applause. He felt somewhat numb.

In the intermission after the second act an usher materialized
beside him, demanded to know if he were Mr. Tarbox, and then
handed him a note written in a round adolescent band. Horace read
it in some confusion, while the usher lingered with withering
patience in the aisle.

"Dear 0mar: After the show I always grow an awful hunger. If you