situations and emotions that would remain exasperatingly vague to the reader had their expression been etiolated by means of platitudinous evasions

As a work of art, it transcends its expiatory aspects

certain mysterious characteristics, the fey grace, the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm that separates the nymphet from such coevals of hers

And every now and then she would volley a burst of Slavic at her stolid lover

there came from the upper landing the contralto voice of Mrs. Haze

Sunday. Heat ripple still with us; a most favonian week.

I composed a madrigal to the soot-black lashes of her pale-gray vacant eyes

a lovely, lonely, supercilious grove (oaks, I thought; American trees at that stage were beyond me)

some special languorous glow which threw garage fellows, hotel pages, vacationists, goons in luxurious cars, maroon morons near blued pools, into fits of concupiscence which might have tickled my pride, had it not incensed my jealousy