inoffensive and kittenishly plump. Let them be, I thought.

But what about Cornball? How would his genteel arrogance take all this? Well, fortunately Josie and her girl friend tried to consider Cornball's feelings. The two of them behaved like simple roommates. They had Cornball to dinner, entertained him, kept things neutral. Cornball couldn't see the light but he was getting upset because he couldn't get closer to Josie. The conviction was so firm in his own mind by then that he loved Josie, that he couldn't help but believe that Josie loved him. She had to love him.

In the end, there was really nothing the two girls could do but open the door. Since Cornball couldn't take the least hint, they'd given him the fullest. That's when Cornball decided to renew our lapsed correspondence. There were some things I needed to know.

He went back to Toronto and took up the syrup business again and sat down and wrote me a long, informative letter. I ignored it. Then when Cornball saw that the stern, moralistic approach wasn't going to get him anywhere, he realized it wasn't moralism he wanted at all or even love, but life. He wanted me to tell him about my life. My life. Well, hell, what could I say? I put him off, and then put him off some more. But every month or so the letter would come.

-Did I know what a hell of a thing it was to live in the suburbs and sell syrup? Yes, in my imaginative eye I did. At least I knew what it was to live in the suburbs; and that wasn't news. -Well, then, I couldn't let him down; if I'd just write him a little, even once a month would do.

So I wrote him and talked about what was on my mind. It happened to be books. It had been years since he'd read much, but he wanted me to send him something. I don't like to let books out of my library, but I sent him some. He didn't like them. He wanted me to explain a few passages. I didn't care. to explain the passages; I may not even have understood them myself. Instead I asked him, if he was so damn unhappy why didn't he go back to music? -It was too late for that, didn't I understand? He had a wife and kids.

I realized soon that his letters not only did not interest me, they irritated me. They almost repelled me. Why, I wondered? Why does he bother me so much? Why, especially, when his letters, his style, had gradually taken on the form of a literary curiosity. He wrote in formal periods; there was a pathetic staunchness to his sentences. Their structure was both bold and apologetic; his tone showed that he was a person just finding his mind or just losing it. He spoke forwardly, personally, but thought reticently: "... If I may be permitted one last nostalgic thought...." But above all he was tiresome.

He was tiresome when he dropped the book bit and the reading kick and went back to the subject of Josie. What a loss she had been for him! I couldn't let that pass; I had to lecture him on his sentimental attachments, on his habit of always living in the past. I suggested whiskey as a more forthright remedy, and I expected him to tell me to go to hell. He did, but in his own way.

"... That Josie is plump, and, if I may put it this way, 'revolutionized,' is a post facto irrelevancy. That we would have lived a fuller, happier life than we now experience is a conviction I believe, perhaps immodestly, is futilely held mutually."

I found myself asking with feelings of superiority what a "post facto irrelevancy" was? And what was it to be "futilely held mutually?" And what, in any case, was "a fuller, happier life?" And though I asked the questions to

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