ld soft hat (he
never wore an overcoat) and rushed out.

The Muscovy is a basement restaurant near Washington Square. You get
into it from the street by stumbling down a dark twisting flight of
uneven steps and opening a door under a high stoop. Art dines here and
Anarchism; Ideas sit cheek by jowl with the Senses.

Sue was not late. She sat in the far corner at one of the few small
tables in the crowded room. Two men, a poet and a painter, lounged
against the table and chatted with her languidly. She had brightened a
little for them. There was a touch of color in her cheeks and some life
in her eyes. The Worm noted this fact as he made his way toward her.

The poet and the painter wandered languidly away. The chatter of the
crowded smoky room rose to its diurnal climax; passed it as by twos and
threes the diners drifted out to the street or up-stairs to the dancing
and reading-rooms of the Freewoman's Club; and then rapidly died to
nothing.

Two belated couples strolled in, settled themselves sprawlingly at the
long center table and discussed with the offhand, blandly sophisticated
air that is the Village manner the currently accepted psychology of sex.

The Worm was smoking now--his old brier pipe--and felt a bit more like
his quietly whimsical self. Sue, however, was moody over her coffee.

A pasty-faced, very calm young man, with longish hair, came in and
joined in the discussion at the center table.

Sue followed this person with troubled eyes, “Listen, Henry!” she said
then, “I'm wondering--”

He waited.

“--for the first time in two years--if I belong in Greenwich Village.”

“I've asked myself the same question, Sue.”

This remark perturbed her a little; as if it had not before occurred to
her that other eyes were reading her. Then she rushed on--“Take Waters
Coryell over there”--she indicated the pasty-faced one--“I used to think
he was wonderful. But he's all words, Like the rest of us. He always
carries that calm assumption of being above ordinary human limitations.
He talks comrad