208
PARTISAN REVIEW
thought, for her mental life was made up of such dichotomies. But
if
it were simply sex and the genetic symbol, then she and Sheila–
weren't they a little teeny bit, oh, foolish, or irrelevant, or something?
Had their perceptions failed, weren't they in touch? Or
if
it were
life and immortality and
all
those other things, then what had that
to do with sex? Which was it? The ankh said nothing, and
it
was
the first time Gretchen felt she could not communicate with it.
That summer was a lovely one, even
in
New York. The city can
have a dusty, charming kind of ease, in spite of the heat: evenings
are tremulous, and poignant; and especially for girls of Gretchen's
age, the feeling of being bare-armed and bare-legged and wearing
light, fresh, starched cotton dresses,
is
so much a part of the sum–
mer's quality that it demands notice. Gretchen was very sunburnt–
that, too, was part of the whole feeling-and her hair was cut very
short and generally she looked much better than she had during the
winter. She had tried to dye a blond streak in her hair, but it wasn't
at all successful.
It
turned out to be a strange lion-color, instead of
the pale silvery yellow she had intended, and for a painter to be so
wrong on color-! But Byron thought it rather original nevertheless,
and after a while the children at the day camp where Gretchen taught
arts
and crafts stopped teasing their counselor. By the end of the
summer it was no longer quite so noticeable, and as it faded more
Gretchen began to be actually pleased with the effect.
Girls of sixteen--or seventeen: Gretchen had had a birthday–
have moods, as everyone knows. They are by turns delighted with
themselves or horrified; and often one feeling produces the other. It
is
not to be expected that they always know why they are in a certain
mood, why the feeling of delight with one's self can so easily change
to that horror, and be a horror at that very delight. Indeed, the
mood
is
that much more poignant
if
one can connect it with nothing
at all. To know the reason for it is in a sense"to be deprived of a
surrender
to
it; one is practically forced to do something about the
reason, and not luxuriate in the abandon of an unknown feeling.
And to do something
is
more difficult. Gretchen would have been
unique, even unnatural, had she not felt the poetry of moods. And
she had not learned what it was possible to do if one did know their
reasons.
