Affairs in the music department were running smoothly. Mr. Brook did not have any serious embarrassments to deal with, such as the harp teacher last year who had finally eloped with a garage meic. There was only this nagging apprehension about Madame Zilensky. He could not make out what was wrong in his relations with her or why his feelings were so mixed. To begin with, she was a great globe-trotter, and her versations were ingruously seasoned with refereo far-fetched places. She would go along for days without opening her mouth, prowling through the corridor with her hands in the pockets of her jacket and her face locked iation. Then suddenly she would buttonhole Mr. Brook and launch out on a long, volatile monologue, her eyes reckless and bright and her voice warm with eagerness. She would talk about anything or nothing at all. Yet, without exception, there was something queer, in a slanted sort of way, about every episode she ever mentioned. If she spoke of taking Sammy to the barbershop, the impression she created was just as fn as if she were telling of an afternoon in Bagdad. Mr. Brook could not make it out.
The truth came to him very suddenly, and the truth made everything perfectly clear, or at least clarified the situation. Mr. Brook had e home early and lighted a fire itle grate in his sitting room. He felt fortable and at peace that evening. He sat before the fire in his stog feet, with a volume of William Blake oable by his side, and he had poured himself a half-glass of apricot brandy. At ten oclock he was drowsing cozily before the fire, his mind full of cloudy phrases of Mahler and floating half-thoughts. Then all at once, out of this delicate stupor, four words came to his mind: "The King of Finland." The words seemed familiar, but for the first moment he could not place them. Then all at once he tracked them down. He had been walking across the campus that afternoon when Madame Zilensky stopped him and began some preposteramarole, to which he had only half listened; he was thinking about the stack of s turned in by his terpoint class. Now the words, the iions of her voice, came ba with insidious exactitude, Madame Zilensky had started off with the following remark: "One day, when I was standing in front of a patisserie, the King of Finland came by in a sled."
Mr. Brook jerked himself up straight in his chair and put down his glass of brandy. The woman athological liar. Almost every word she uttered outside of class was an untruth. If she worked all night, she would go out of her way to tell you she spent the evening at the ema. If she ate lunch at the Old Tavern, she would be sure to mention that she had lunched with her children at home. The woman was simply a pathological liar, and that ated for everything.
Mr. Brook cracked his knuckles and got up from his chair. His first rea was one of exasperation. That day after day Madame Zilensky would have the gall to sit there in his offid deluge him with her eous falsehoods! Mr. Brook was intensely provoked. He walked up and down the room, then he went into his kitette and made himself a sardine sandwich.
An hour later, as he sat before the fire, his irritation had ged to a scholarly and thoughtful wonder. What he must do, he told himself, was tard the whole situation impersonally and look on Madame Zilensky as a doctor looks on a sick patient. Her lies were of the guileless sort. She did not dissimulate with any iion to deceive, and the untruths