“‘Must you always go when Teddy calls?’ asked Dean.
“I nodded and explained,
“‘He only calls like that when he wants me especially and I have promised I will always go if I possibly can.’
“‘I want you especially!’ said Dean. ‘I came up this evening on purpose to read The Alhambra with you.’
“Suddenly I felt very unhappy. I wanted to stay with Dean dreadfully, and yet I felt as if I must go to Teddy. Dean looked at me piercingly. Then he shut up The Alhambra.
“‘Go,’ he said.
“I went—but things seemed spoiled, somehow.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
“I have been reading three books Dean lent me this week. One was like a rose garden—very pleasant, but just a little too sweet. And one was like a pine wood on a mountain—full of balsam and tang—I loved it, and yet it filled me with a sort of despair. It was written so beautifully—I can never write like that, I feel sure. And one—it was just like a pig-sty. Dean gave me that one by mistake. He was very angry with himself when he found it out—angry and distressed.
“‘Star—Star—I would never have given you a book like that—my confounded carelessness—forgive me. That book is a faithful picture of one world—but not your world, thank God—nor any world you will ever be a citizen of. Star, promise me you will forget that book.’
“‘I’ll forget it if I can,’ I said.
“But I don’t know if I can. It was so ugly. I have not been so happy since I read it. I feel as if my hands were soiled somehow and I couldn’t wash them clean. And I have another queer feeling, as if some gate had been shut behind me, shutting me into a new world I don’t quite understand or like, but through which I must travel.
“Tonight I tried to write a description of Dean in my Jimmy-book of character sketches. But I didn’t succeed.
