Blackguard by Maxwell Bodenheim — Read

Carl returned to the minor, suavely gesturing groups of hypocrites in the city in which he lived, and in going back to this "art and literary world" he had the feeling of one who had deserted a strong valley of desire to enter a stilted room filled with imitation orchids, valiantly empty words, and malice dressed in clumsy, velvet costumes. This reaction was still dominating him as he sat, one afternoon, in the office of a magazine called "Art and Life," perched upon a window-sill and looking down at the black and dwarfed confusion of a street.

This office was a gathering place for several young writers, each of whom fondled his pet rebellion against conservative standards, and they clustered around the anxiously seraphic face of Martha Apperson, the young editor, and seriously fought for the treason of her smiles. She was a tall, sturdily slender woman with a blithely symmetrical swerve to her body, and the natural pinkness of her face parted into the curves of a lightly distressed and virginal doll. Her blue-gray eyes were looking at life with a startled incredulity -- the gaze of one who has been tempted to regard a sometimes merry, but more often vaguely sorrowful picture-puzzle. Life to her was a rapidly taunting mixture of glints, hints, undertones, surface blooms, fleeting tints, portentous shadows with little shape to them, broken images, and misty heights, and she was forever trying to lure them all into a cohesive whole by striding from one philosophy and creed to another, adding another stride every three or four months. At such times she would appear at her office and enthusiastically assure her audience that she had finally accomplished the almost obscene miracle of penetrating the depths of human existence.