“Eris.”
In a postscript she gave her address in Los Angeles.
Much flattered and genuinely touched, he wrote her immediately.
The glamour lasted for the next few weeks. Complacency is a great stimulation to memory. A bland satisfaction in the ardent mental attitude of Eris toward himself incited him to real effort in his letters. He became expansive—a trifle sentimental when he thought of the girl’s beauty—but only airily so—and he rather settled down to a Chesterfieldian attitude toward his unusual and odd little protégée.
Wisdom in wads he administered with a surprising solemnity foreign to his accustomed attitude toward himself.
However, his flippancy was an attitude as far as it concerned his belief in himself. Because this young man really took himself very devoutly.
He prescribed a course of reading for Eris. He formulated rules of conduct, exposed pitfalls, impressed maxims in epigrams, discoursed on creative and interpretive art. It was perversely clever. He used some of the material in his novel.
This was all very well. The girl’s letters were charming and touching; the correspondence was excellent practice for him, and part of it could be salvaged for practical ends.
But there were in use at that time, among the semi-educated, two cant-words which the public, now, was working to rags;—psychology and complex.