Hereafter keep clear of men like Graylock and like me.
We're both of a stripe--the same sort under our skins.
I've known him all my life. It all depends upon the
opportunity, the circumstances, and the woman. And, what
is a woman between friends--between such friends as
Graylock and I once were--or between the sort of friends
we have now become? Keep clear of such men as we are.
We were boys together.


For a week or two he kept his door locked and lived on what the
janitor provided for him, never going out of the studio at all.

He did no work, although there were several unexecuted commissions
awaiting his attention and a number of sketches, clay studies, and
one marble standing around the studio in various stages of progress.
The marble was the Annunciation. The head and throat and slender
hands were completed, and one slim naked foot.

Sometimes he wandered from one study to the next, vague-eyed,
standing for a long time before each, staring, lost in thought.
Sometimes, in the evening he read, choosing a book at random among
the motley collection in a corner case--a dusty, soiled assortment
of books, ephemeral novels of the moment, ponderous volumes which
are in everybody's library but which nobody reads, sets of
histories, memoirs, essays, beautifully bound and once cared for,
but now dirty from neglect--jetsam from a wrecked home.

There had been a time when law, order and neatness formed the basis