be reached out to-touched with hands, his hands-the man went over him intently, the young, seeking face and eyes, the soft wonder-tender-the intensity of him, the body he had yet to see unclothed, the boyishness of himthe heartbreaking boyishness of him!

Young enough to be my son! Oh! How I wish it might be! You! My son! My own son! A son of my own! To love! As I damn well please!

Shocked him. If he had spoken aloud, the sound of his voice could not have been clearer, rang more real in his ears, than it did now in his mind. This facet of thinking always shocked, surprised, amazed him . . . and left him wondering that others surely must have heard, overheard, a breach of his mental privacy.

My God! What am I thinking of? Goddamn a world that only confuses the mind and never lets us know what our decisions are really of, or about!

Let me go! the young man was crying inside, let me breathe! "For God's sake! Stop the car!" he wanted to shout, "Let me out!" but he did not.

The voice of the man cut in, sharp, clean, the silence-ended it, "If you're coming home with me, we've got to take the next turn off. If not . . . So, what's it to be?"

A young man took himself into his own two hands and stated, "Please take me home."

"Home it is," said the man.

"I mean my home . . . I really can't stay with you tonight . . . I'm sorry." "I understood the first time." The voice of the man flattened whatever there was, might have been. A hammer pounding nails. So definite, finality, authority, leaving no room, saving, "Goodbye." "Take the kid home," he told the driver.

It was over. However cold it might be, the cold air of reality, the young man gulped it somewhat, and for the moment, gratefully. How long could he hold it? The tension breaking inside him, he collapsed against the back seat of the car now. For whatever harm he had done, he was truly sorry. He had not intended it. He had not wanted to hurt . . . anybody . . . remarkably calm now, philosophic, detached . . . now.

Another time. . . another time . . . echoed his mind, faintly, pleaded not yet . another time . . . another time.

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The rest of it clicked off swiftly. For the man, bitter defeat that, somehow, he had failed himself, and the boy-of a man who cannot retreat . . . and cannot give up... his own youth...

Ending whatever had been-at the curb, he got out with the young man. They stood an instant, facing each other. The man gave the young man no time to say, "Thank you," or to extend his hand. As cold as a nonpersonal slap, the man said, "So long. See you around sometime." Turned, and as swiftly, got back into the car, and it was gone.

The young man stood in the late, late hour, alone on the street. Suddenly hot sexual desire out of cold, weak, shaken, suddenly very, very angry, frus-

tration.

Instantly, desire to cry out to the vanishing automobile, to call it back to him. But he didn't. He couldn't. It was gone. It had disappeared.

In his mind, yelling, "You son of a bitch! You stupid son of a bitch! Couldn't you understand anything?"

And the tears began spilling.

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