Serapion

It began because, meeting Nils Berquist in town one August
morning, he dragged me off for luncheon at a little restaurant on a
side street where he swore I would meet some of the rising geniuses of
the century.

What we did meet was the commencement for me of such an
extraordinary experience as befalls few men. At the time, however, the
whole affair seemed incidental, with a spice of grotesque but harmless
absurdity. Jimmy Moore and his Alicia! How could anyone, meeting them
as I did, have believed a grimness behind their amusing eccentricity?

I was just turned twenty-four that August day. A boy's guileless
enthusiasm for the untried was still strong in me, coupled with a
tendency to make friends in all quarters, desirable or otherwise.
Almost anyone who liked me, I liked. My college years, very recently
ended, had seen me sworn comrade to a reckless and on-his-way-to-be-
notorious son of plutocracy, while I was also well received in the
room which Nils Berquist sharing with two other embryo socialists of
fanatic dye. A certain ingenuous likableness must have been mine even
then, I think, to have gained me not only toleration, but real
friendship in both camps.

Berquist was older than I by several years. He had earned his
college days before enjoying them and, college ended, he dropped back
into the struggle for existence and out of my sight--till I ran across
him in town that August day.

To play host even at a very moderate luncheon must have been an
extravagance for Nils, though I didn't think of that. He was a man
with whom one somehow never associated the idea of need. Tall, lean,
with a dark, long face, high cheekbones and deep eyes set well apart,
he dressed badly and walked the world in a careless air of ownership
that mere clothes could not in the least affect.

His intimates knew him capable of vast, sudden enthusiasms, and
equally vast depressions of the spirit. But up or down, he was Nils
Berquist, sufficient unto himself, asking no favors, and always with
an indefinable air of being well able to grant them.

I admired and liked him, was very glad to see him again, and
cheerfully let him steer me around two corners and in the door of his
bragged-of trysting place.

On first entering, my friend cast an eye about the aggregation of
more or less shabby individuals present and muttered: "Not a soul
here!" in a disappointed tone. Then, glimpsing a couple seated at a
corner table laid for four, he brightened a trifle and led me over to
them.

Nil's idea of formal presentation was always more brief than
elaborate. After addressing the fair-haired, light-eyelashed, Palm-
Beach-suited person on one side of the table as "Jimmy" and his vis-a-
vis, a darkly mysterious lady in a purple veil, as "Alicia," he
referred to me casually as "Clay," and considered the introduction
complete.