flag of fatigue. You have nailed up a notice to the effect that life is ebbing down in you. You have run away from life. You have played a trick, shabby trick. You have balked at the game. You refuse to play. You have thrown your cards under the table and run away to hide, here amongst your hills.”      

       He tossed his straight hair back from his flashing eyes, and scarcely interrupted to roll a long, brown, Mexican cigarette.     

       “But the gods know. It is an old trick. All the generations of man have tried it... and lost. The gods know how to deal with such as you. To pursue is to possess, and to possess is to be sated. And so you, in your wisdom, have refused any longer to pursue. You have elected surcease. Very well. You will become sated with surcease. You say you have escaped satiety! You have merely bartered it for senility. And senility is another name for satiety. It is satiety's masquerade. Bah!”      

       “But look at me!” I cried.     

       Carquinez was ever a demon for haling ones soul out and making rags and tatters of it.     

       He looked me witheringly up and down.     

       “You see no signs,” I challenged.     

       “Decay is insidious,” he retorted. “You are rotten ripe.”      

       I laughed and forgave him for his very deviltry. But he refused to be forgiven.     

       “Do I not know?” he asked. “The gods always win. I have watched men play for years what seemed a winning game. In the end they lost.”      

       “Don't you ever make mistakes?” I asked.     

       He blew many meditative rings of smoke before replying.     

       “Yes, I was nearly fooled, once. Let me tell you. There was Marvin Fiske. You remember him? And his Dantesque face and poet's soul, singing his chant of the flesh, the very priest of Love? And there was Ethel Baird, whom also you must remember.”      

       “A warm saint,” I said.     

       “That is she! Holy as Love, and sweeter! Just a woman, made for 

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