Angel Island

"Lord, I never noticed before - until I got this chance to get off and

think of it - what a damned bother women are," Honey Smith said one day.

"Of all the sexes that roam the earth, as George Ade says, I like them

least. What a mess they make of your time and your work, always

requiring so much attention, always having to be waited on, always

dropping things, always so much foolish fuss and ceremony, always asking

such footless questions and never hearing you when you answer them.

Never really knowing anything or saying anything. They're a different

kind of critter, that's all there is to it; they're amateurs at life.

They're a failure as a sex and an outworn convention anyway. Myself, I'm

for sending them to the scrap-heap. Votes for men!"

And with this, according to the divagations of their temperaments and

characters, the others strenuously concurred.

Their days, crowded to the brim with work, passed so swiftly that they

scarcely noticed their flight. Their nights, filled with a sleep that

was twin brother to Death, seemed not to exist at all.

Their evenings were lively with the most brilliant kind of man-talk. To

it, Frank Merrill brought his encyclopedic book knowledge, his

insatiable curiosity about life; Ralph Addington all the garnered

richness of his acute observation; Billy Fairfax his acquaintance with

the elect of the society or of the art world, his quiet, deferential

attitude of listener. But the events of these conversational orgies were

Honey Smith's adventures and Pete Murphy's romances. Honey's narrative

was crisp, clear, quick, straight from the shoulder, colloquial, slangy.

He dealt often in the first person and the present tense. He told a

plain tale from its simple beginning to its simple end. But Pete - . His

language had all Honey's simplicity lined terseness and, in addition, he

had the literary touch, both the dramatist's instinct and the

fictionist's insight. His stories always ran up to a psychological

climax; but this was always disguised by the best narratory tricks. He

was one of those men of whom people always say, "if he could only write

as he talks." In point of fact, he wrote much better than he talked -

but he talked better than any one else. The unanalytic never allowed in

him for the spell of the spoken word, nor for the fiery quality of his

spirit.

As time went on, their talks grew more and ore confidential. Women's

faces began to gleam here and there in narrative. They began to indulge

in long discussions of the despised sex; at times they ran into fierce

controversy. Occasionally Honey Smith re-told a story which, from the

introduction of a shadowy girl-figure, became mysteriously more

interesting and compelling. Once or twice they nearly went over the

border-line of legitimate confidence, so intimate had their talk become

- muffled as it was by the velvety, star-sown dark and interrupted only

by the unheeded thunders of the surf. They were always pulling

themselves up to debate openly whether they should go farther, always,

on consideration, turning narrative into a channel much less

confidential and much less, interesting, or as openly plugging straight

ahead, carefully disguising names and places.