“It’s because he knows by some childish instinct just where my life-illusion is weakest. It’s because he sees this weak spot, like a raw scratch in the hide of a bear tied to a pole, and it somehow gets on his nerves, so that he wants to poke at it.”

With this hypothesis in his mind he advanced yet another quarter of a mile between the high hedges, where great bunches of old-man’s-beard made large whitish blurs against the darkness. The trunks of the elms looked now, as he passed them by, as if they were composed of a vaporous stuff that was absolutely liquid. But he hated to see this particular effect, because it made him think of his recent attempts to distract Jason from poking at the spot in his life’s conceit where the skin was so tender.