"For my part New York's home to me. I feel sick, somehow, when I'm away from it."
The man swung about and glanced nervously at the changing landscape, and then suddenly turned back again and exhibited a pocket volume with flexible covers.
"Dante's Inferno," he declared, pointing to the book. "Ever delve into it? I've just recently been through a little inferno of my own," he went on. "I brought this with me, because I've got to keep before my mind the fact that some people have gone through more than I have. At least, so it seems to me. At the same time, I don't know that I'm ready to change places with any of the chaps in here." He tapped the book. "Neat little volume," he commented, rattling on nervously and without apparently keeping much track of what he was saying. "See the frontispiece," he said, leaning over towards Beekman. "It's Dante himself. I wonder why he always wears that headgear? Never see him without it! Always reminds me of a little verse on how to tell the names of busts."
"'I recognise Dante because he's tab-eared.' Tab-eared, you know," he went on, "is his peculiar sort of headgear. All sculptors give it to him." He resumed in sing-song fashion:
"'I recognise Dante, because he's tab-eared,
And Virgil I know by his wreath,
Old Homer I tell by his rough, shaggy beard,
And the rest — by the names underneath.'"
Beekman laughed aloud.
"Good! Mighty good!" he cried. "Especially 'and the rest by the names underneath.' A flash of genius that."
The man turned over several pages in his book and began to read steadily, rumpling his hair, from time to time, as he did so. Once he looked up, only to find Beekman staring hard at the top of his head.
"Looking at my Heidelberg scar?" he asked hastily, pulling a lock of hair over it. "It was an ugly one, I can tell you, and almost did for me, too. Sometimes, you know I've thought it dented me a little in the skull." He pushed back the hair, again exhibiting the long, deep cut. "It throbs there once in a while—it's throbbing now."