MOSQUITOES
PROLOGUE
I
“The sex instinct,” repeated Mr. Talliaferro in his careful cockney, with that smug complacence with which you plead guilty to a characteristic which you privately consider a virtue, “is quite strong in me. Frankness, without which there can be no friendship, without which two people cannot really ever ‘get’ each other, as you artists say; frankness, as I was saying, I believe—”
“Yes,” his host agreed. “Would you mind moving a little?” He complied with obsequious courtesy, remarking the thin fretful flashing of the chisel beneath the rhythmic maul. Wood scented gratefully slid from its mute flashing, and slapping vainly about himself with his handkerchief he moved in a Bluebeard’s closet of blonde hair in severed clots, examining with concern a faint even powdering of dust upon his neat small patent leather shoes. Yes, one must pay a price for Art....
Watching the rhythmic power of the other’s back and arm he speculated briefly upon which was more to be desired—muscularity in an undershirt, or his own symmetrical sleeve, and reassured he continued:
“. . .frankness compels me to admit that the sex instinct is perhaps my most dominating compulsion.” Mr. Talliaferro believed that Conversation—not talk: Conversation—with an
intellectual equal consisted of admitting as many so-called un-
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