Today's Stichomancy for Sophia Loren

The eyes of each were dark and hollow: pale Their visage, and so lean withal, the bones Stood staring thro' the skin. I do not think Thus dry and meagre Erisicthon show'd, When pinc'ed by sharp-set famine to the quick. "Lo!" to myself I mus'd, "the race, who lost Jerusalem, when Mary with dire beak Prey'd on her child." The sockets seem'd as rings, From which the gems were drops. Who reads the name Of man upon his forehead, there the M Had trac'd most plainly. Who would deem, that scent

The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary)

the only perfectly consistent people."

"And sometimes you sound like a Socialist," he pursued, still laughing.

"Never!" I shouted. "Don't class me with those untrained puppies of thought. And you'll generally observe," I added, "that the more nobly a Socialist vaporizes about the rights of humanity, the more wives and children he has abandoned penniless along the trail of his life."

He was livelier than ever at this. "What date have you fixed for the smash-up of our present civilization?"

"Why fix dates? Is it not diversion enough to watch, and step handsomely through one's own part, with always a good sleeve to laugh in?"

Pensiveness returned upon him. "I shall be able to step through my own

for keeping my second self invisible. Nothing better could be contrived under the circumstances. And there we sat; I at my writing desk ready to appear busy with some papers, he behind me out of sight of the door. It would not have been prudent to talk in daytime; and I could not have stood the excitement of that queer sense of whispering to myself. Now and then, glancing over my shoulder, I saw him far back there, sitting rigidly on the low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms folded, his head hanging on his breast--and perfectly still. Anybody would have taken him for me.

I was fascinated by it myself. Every moment I had to glance

The Secret Sharer

to Saint-Nazaire without ever being asked what you had in your arms. Pierre looked for his son, but he could not find him. In the morning, if that monster didn't have the face to come home, saying he had stayed at Batz all night! I should tell you that the mother had not known where to hide her money. Cambremer put his with Monsieur Dupotel at Croisic. Their son's follies had by this time cost them so much that they were half-ruined, and that was hard for folks who once had twelve thousand francs, and who owned their island. No one ever knew what Cambremer paid at Nantes to get his son away from there. Bad luck seemed to follow the family. Troubles fell upon Cambremer's brother, he needed help. Pierre said, to console him, that Jacques and Perotte