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she had no doubt that Communists were dreadful people, still, if that was what Jesse Blackless

believed, he had to say it. Threats to the social order had never been real to Irma—at least not

up to the time of the panic. During that convulsion she had heard many strange ideas discussed,

and had begun to wonder about them. Now she said: "If you and your mother see him, I

ought to see him too."

"Don't let him corrupt you," replied the husband, grinning again. He got fun out of arguing

with his Red uncle, and used him for teasing other people.

Lanny went over to the villa and came back with a tall, odd-looking man, having an almost

entirely bald head fairly baked by the sun—for he went about most of the time without a hat.

He was dressed carelessly, as became a painter, with sandals, white duck trousers, and a shirt

open at the throat. His face had many wrinkles, which he increased when he smiled in his

peculiar twisted way; he was given to that kind of humor which consists in saying something

different from what you mean, and which assumes understanding on the part of other people

which they do not always possess. Jesse Blackless was satisfied with the world in which he

lived, and found his pleasure in reducing it to absurdity.

"Well, so this is Irma!" he said, looking down at her. She had covered up her bosom with the

orange-colored peignoir of Chinese silk which she was wearing. Her vivid brunette color, which

had come back quickly, should have pleased a painter; but Uncle Jesse painted only street urchins

and poor beggar folk and workingmen with signs of hard toil on them.

"And this is the baby!" he said, peering into the well-shaded bassinet. He didn't offer any

forbidden intimacies, but instead remarked: "Watch out for her—she'd be worth a lot to

kidnapers." A sufficiently horrid idea.

The visitor seated himself in a canvas chair and stretched his long legs. His glance

wandered from the young wife to the young husband and back again, and he said: "You made a

lucky choice, Irma. A lot of people have tried to ruin him, but they haven't succeeded." It was

the first time Lanny had ever known his Red uncle to pay anybody a compliment, and he

valued it accordingly. Irma thanked the speaker, adding that she was sure his judgment was

good.

"I know," declared the painter, "because I tried to ruin him myself."

"Have you given up hope?"

"There'd be no use in trying now, since he's married to you. I am a believer in economic

determinism."

Lanny explained: "Uncle Jesse thinks he believes that everybody's behavior is conditioned by

the state of his pocketbook. But he's a living refutation of his own theory. If he followed his

pocket-book, he'd be painting portraits of the idle rich here on this coast, whereas he's

probably been meeting with a group of revolutionary conspirators somewhere in the slums of

Cannes."

"I'm a freak," said Uncle Jesse. "Nature produces only a few of these, and any statement of

social causes has to be based upon the behavior of the mass."

So this pair took to arguing. Irma listened, but most of her thoughts were occupied with the

personality of the man. What was he really like? Was he as bitter and harsh as he sounded,

or was this only a mask with which he covered his feelings? What was it that had hurt him

and made him so out of humor with his own kind of people?

III

The discussion lasted quite a while. They both seemed to enjoy it, even though they said

sarcastic things, each about the other. The French word for abuse is "injures," which also means

injuries, but no hard saying appeared to injure either of these men. Apparently they had heard

it all before. Lanny's favorite remark was that his uncle was a phonograph; he put on a record

and it ground out the old dependable tune. There was one called "dialectical materialism" and

another called "proletarian dictatorship"—long words which meant nothing to Irma. "He wants

to take my money and divide it up among the poor," she thought. "How far would it go, and

how long would it take them to get rid of it?" She had heard her father say this, and it

sounded convincing.

They talked a great deal about what was happening in Russia. Irma had been a child of nine

at the time of the revolution, but she had heard about it since, and here on the Riviera she had

met Russians who had escaped from the dreadful Bolsheviks, sometimes with nothing but what

they had on. You would be told that the handsome and distinguished-looking head waiter in a cafe

was a former Russian baron; that a night-club dancer was the daughter of a one-time

landowner. Did Uncle Jesse want things like that to happen in France and the United States?

Irma tried to tell herself that he didn't really mean it; but no, he was a determined man, and

there often came a grim look on his face; you could imagine him willing to shoot people who

stood in his way. Irma knew that the Paris police had "detained" him a couple of times, and that

he had defied them. Apparently he was ready to pay whatever price his revolution cost.