PARTISAN REVIEW
and foolish lady (rich and no poet) who had started
The Mask,
another Little Magazine, a better hobby, he thought, than psycho–
analysis, or-but those were, he discovered, the only two indulgences
of wealthy females he could, in the heat, call up.
The first issue had presented a mildly related series of essays on
the theme of the title: "God as Mask," "The City .as Mask," etc. He
had wanted to do "The Mask as Mask," but even drunk, the charm–
ing lady had demurred. He had settled for "The Face as Mask," re–
serving its irony for private consumption, relishing as always the
misrepresentation of himself. For he knew that in the end no face
lied; even his own brooding rat's profile, his dim eyes were meanings
he could not deny.
But it was into this Article that the three girls had read the evi–
dence of spiritual kinship that had prompted their letter. Warren
would not permit himself to remember precisely any of its phrases,
but he felt again in his flesh the stilted desperation of its appeal, the
cry of imagined recognition, and "Desolation!" he said aloud on
the last step.
"What? What?" the voice cried from below, and Warren realised
that through his meditation it had been shouting (bored, impatient,
always delicately nasal ) , "Who's there? Who's there I say! Who's
there?" He had rung a first-floor bell for the answering buzzer that
released the hall door, not wishing to advise the girls of his coming.
He preserved the fiction of choice, would not admit he had dissipated
all possibilities of retreat. "Is there anybody there?" the voice tried
again, and Warren crouched back against one wall, panting, enjoying
for a moment the play of concealment and flight. "What the hell,"
it said wearily, "kids!" and a door slammed.
He was at their door now, and he bent to read their forgotten
names in the faint light leaking through where the door had warped
from the frame. Hilda Reznick (that was it; he had written on a
postcard, not quite sure why, "Dear Hilda, I shall be there. W.") ;
Rose Ban£ or was
it
Bamp, some truncated un-name not decipherable
in the near darkness; Bea Goodside; and he bowed even further for–
ward to listen for a little. In the moment of eavesdropping, crouched
and intent, he seemed at prayer.
"Ub-bub soon?" someone said.
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