emptiest form of human entertainment. They’re dull; they’re expensive; they keep you from doing intelligent things, like studying; they keep you from doing simple, healthy things, like sleeping and exercising; they make you artificial; they make you civil to people you despise—they make women, at least, for we must have partners—” 

 “But why do you go, then?” 

 She was silent, and they looked straight and long at each other. Then she said, gravely: 

 “The answer’s very humiliating. I go because I haven’t anything else to do.” 

 He did not reassure her. “Yes, that’s bad,” he said, after a second. “But of course you could not expect to have anything else to do when all your time is taken up like that. ‘When the half gods go,’ you know, ‘the gods arrive.’” 

 The quotation was not new to Crystal; in fact, she had quoted it to Eddie not very long before, apropos of another girl to whom he had shown a mild attention, but it seemed to her as if she took in for the first time its real meaning. Whether it was the dawn, exhaustion, a stimulating personality, love, or mere accident, the words now came to her with all the beauty and truth of a religious conviction. They seemed to shake her and make her over. She felt as if she could never be sufficiently grateful to the person who had thus made all life fresh and new to her. 

 “Ah,” she said, very gently, “that’s it. I see. You won’t believe me, but I assure you from now on I mean to be entirely different.” 

 “Please, not too different.” 

 “Oh yes, yes, as different as possible. I’ve been so unhappy, and unhappy about nothing definite—that’s the worst kind, only that I have not liked the life I was leading.” 

 She glanced at him appealingly. She had tried to tell this simple story to so many people, for she had many friends, and yet no one had ever really understood. Some had told her she was spoiled, more, that there was no use in trying to change her life because she would soon marry; most of them had advised her to marry and find out what real trouble was. Now, as she spoke she saw that this strange young man from the sea not only understood her discontent, but thought it natural, almost commonplace. 

 She poured it all out. “Only the worst thing,” she ended, “is that I’m not really any good. There isn’t anything else that I know how to do.” 

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