`` That was a terrible thing to do '', I said to Oso.

`` But that was war '', I said.

Still, I was disgusted with myself for agreeing with Montero's methods.

In the brief moment I had to talk to them before I took my post on the ring of defenses, I indicated I was sickened by the methods men employed to live and trade on the river.

Next to him was a young boy I was sure had sat near me at one of the trading sessions.

Now under me I could see him for what he really was, a boy dressed up in streaks of paint.

Such was my state of mind that I did not question the possibility of this ; ;

under the circumstances I was only too willing to confess all.

I was nearly thirty at the time.

It was dark and, I sensed, very large ; ;

Sometimes I was aware of people moving about in the darkness.

This impressed me, until I realized how limited was his sphere of influence.

I felt certain he was really a spineless little man.

Once, pressing him, I learned that his job was only part-time, in the afternoons when nothing went on in the hall.

In the mornings, I was informed, fluorescent tubes, similar to the one above the counter, illuminated the entire hall.

I was shown, instead, a batch of white tickets of the sort handed out, he told me, every morning.

Now, here was something of obvious importance to me, yet when I reached for the tickets he snatched them away from my hand.

It was, I felt, possible that they were men who, having received no tickets for that day, had remained in the hall, to sleep perhaps, in the corners farthest removed from the counter with its overhead light.

I felt certain it was self-appointed.

I decided to see no more of the clerk until the processing of my papers was completed.

I was constantly searching for clues around the neighborhood of the hall.

I went to the hall in the afternoons only, on these preliminary matters.

Although it was dark as usual I could see that the hall had only recently contained a great many people.

This desire, I went on, growing voluble as my conviction was aroused, had mounted at such a rate recently that I now found its realization necessary not only to my physical but also to my spiritual wellbeing.

I let up on the accelerator, only to gradually reach again the 60 m.p.h. which would, I hoped, overhaul Herry and the blonde, and as there were cars whose drivers apparently had something more important to catch than had I, Mrs. Major Roebuck settled down to practicing on Corporal Johnson the kittenish wiles she would need when making her duty call on Colonel and Mrs. Somebody in Sante Fe.

The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I thought he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.

Just as I got to my knees, there was again the sound of the fence stretching, and I had time only to start taking my kneeling posture seriously.

Maybe Lou was only unconscious, but right then I thought he must be dead.

But I promised Joyce I would mention her name, if at all, only as a last resort.

I said, `` O.K., so now only Blake knows.

True, she was my Aunt, married to an Uncle related to me only by marriage, but why she had married a man twice her age, and more, perhaps, I did not know or much care.

`` Nope, just you, all the time -- sometimes I think it's the only way I'll ever get a decent partner ''.

`` I only said I was hungry.

His London contract was rescinded, and now, he explains cheerfully, as a bright smile lightens his intense, mobile face, `` I conduct only one hundred and twenty concerts ''!!

`` Now that Bruno Walter is virtually in retirement and my dear friend Dimitri Mitropoulos is no longer with us, I am probably the only one -- with the possible exception of Leonard Bernstein -- who has this special affinity for and champions the works of Bruckner and Mahler ''.

I was chairman, the only not youthful participant.

The latter in turn assured him that `` were I arraigned at the bar, and you my judge, I should expect to stand or fall only by the merits of my cause ''.

Looking back I saw a gray-haired man getting out of his halted car and trying to read our license number.

His heart was pounding like a mighty dynamo and he was trying to think, his mind seeming to scream at him like a hurt or frightened child, `` How will I do it??

The Australian stopped trying to talk a pidgin I could understand, and spoke strange words from deep in his chest.

If I am to speak the whole truth about my knowledge of love, I will have to stop trying to emulate the transcendant nightingale.

I was delighted to make that personal contact in such trying and unusual circumstances.

As the field on which my tent was pitched was a favorite natural playground for the kids of the neighborhood, I had made many friends among them, taking part in their after-school games and trying desperately to translate Grimm's Fairy Tales into an understandable French as we gathered around the fire in front of the tent.

I've had a trying day and I just can't make it out again '', I told them.

Never once during the trying thirties did I come so close to succumbing to the private climate of opinion as to grant Russian communism even that most weasel-worded of encomiums `` an interesting experiment ''.

And to top it all I am often sentimental on purpose, trying to prove to myself that I am not afraid of sentiment.

`` For a time I thought of trying to reach the Free Polish Forces, but one thing led to another.

Eileen got to dancing, just a little tiny dancing step to a hummed tune that you could hardly notice, and trying to pick up strange men, but each time I was ready to say to hell with it and walk out she'd pull herself together and talk so understandingly in that sweet husky voice about the good times and the happiness we'd had together and there I was back on the hook.

I was stumbling in my undershirt trying to find my way around her damn kitchenette when I smelt that sickish sweet hairtonic smell.

Afterwards I learned that Eileen had called Thelma on the telephone and made a big scene about Thelma trying to take her husband away.

I didn't say anything, trying to get my throat clear, but I watched him.

I have never seen Caper off his feet -- he seems to know nothing but ' trot ' and keeps trying a little harder if asked to do so.

Louise climbed onto a stool and clutched the hand with which I was trying to hold the phone, claiming my immediate attention on grounds of extreme emergency.

They were, I felt, people invariably trying to prove not who, but what they were, and trying to determine what, not who, others were.

It was for this reason, and no other that I can see, that in September 1912, Braque took the radical and revolutionary step of pasting actual pieces of imitation-woodgrain wallpaper to a drawing on paper, instead of trying to simulate its texture in paint.