"CLAY IDOLS" modelled in clay by richard miller photographed by howard warner EIGHTEEN (Continued from page 161 "But, of course," he finished, "there's Aunt Cynth. She insists I spend my summers with mother, and after all, she's responsible for getting me away from this this hole!" I know, thought Elinor, after your father's death your aunt took you away. She glared at him. Why does he ah ways explain all that and how she expects him to do great things and so on, and so on, and so on? But he did go on to tell her, perhaps for the tenth time in a year, of. his boyish resolves to escape from provincialism, to be a Great Literary Man and of the execution of those resolves through his aunt's generosity. His aunt was the only person for whom he had more than a good-natured contempt. Phillip now turned the car off the highway and up a narrow, gravel road. Protruding from the hills into the long valley and cutting this valley off from a stream-cut gorge of the Company's eastern holdings was a long, undulating hog's back, elevated into rocky prominences at either end. Huge cumulus clouds possible only in the arid atmosphere of Nevada floated slowly in the van of hot desert breeze. Soon the valley below assumed what Phillip hoping she wouldn't recognize the figures as cliches termed a "patch-work" or "chessboard" appearance. The car climbed the hog's back to its summit midway between the rocky prominences. A long, sturdy wall crested the formation. At the sight of the Barrier, Phillip felt his equanimity profoundly disturbed. "This is what I wanted to show you," he managed to blurt out. The moment had come! But still he evaded the iminent display of sentimentality. Steadying his shattered nerves by force of will, but still aware of an accelerated heart beat, in order to postpone his avowal of love, he rapidly sketched his theories concerning the rock formation. Elinor surveyed the piled stones uncomprehensively, curious to know the reason for his heavy breathing and muffled tones. It had been erected for defensive purposes by Indians or cavalyrmen during the white settler's encroaching on the valley years before. Its strategic position lay in the fact that it commanded an uninterrupted view of the valley for miles to the north, and let down its southern slope to the gorge and waters, the bubbling gold for which many a campaigner had forfeited his life, Phillip insisted with a flash of characteristic rhetoric. For a moment he forgot his purpose as a flood of memories overcame him. "Over here," he exclaimed gradliquently, "is where I first read Dostoievski!" He stared at her expectantly as if that fact should both amaze and delight her. As a matter of fact, her only thought concerned the rather dubious pronunciation of such a stupid name. Then in a wild release of energy he proceeded to paint an intensely romantic picture of a struggling, noble youth who read Dickens and Stendahl beneath the desert sun, who stopped occasionally to catch a lizzard and dissect him in the name of future science, an indelible part of which he would become. The same noble youth, he observed dramatically, would watch the little train come down the valley at sundown -a slow, crawling worm against the immensity of earth and he would resolve, fingernails piercing palms, that someday he would flee from the narrow valley, and become a great man. Then the poor youth would flee homeward, frightened as the shadows of the speedy desert dusk sprang from every clump of sagebrush, ran out across the valley from every gorge and ravine. It was a magnificent speech filled with bombastic phrases such as "indefatigable phlegmatic" and "insurmountable obstacles." Intoxicated with words he was at last moved to make a declaration of his love. Sentimentality or no sentimentality, he wouldn't postpone it any longer. With a tenseness about his throat and a faint tremulousness in his limbs, he urged himself to utter it. While Phillip had been talking, most of Elinor's curiosity had vanished and was replaced by her old fear and timidity. The lonely barrier, the long valley, the vast stretch of sky all were so alien from the world ot San Francisco, Janice, and the Melodeers. And there was something disquieting in Phillip's behavior. Phillip, always so well-poised, sophisticated, urbane. His effusiveness startled her. Never before had he ranted so, never before had his words seemed so meaningless, never before had he seemed so terribly far from her. She wanted to run away from him and again find the "delicious-ness" which memories of parties and dances summoned. But still he was talking on and on pouring out those meaningless words and temporarily unable to meet her eyes. Phillip paused in frozen stance staring intently and foolishly at a stupid little rock dislodged from the pile now teetering on the edge of a large rock. This sudden extraneous concentration brought about realization to him that he had been shouting in a most ungentle-manly fashion and that Elinor was now staring at him with an expression both puzzled and frightened. Had he then made an ass of himself? Had he been so unbearably mawkish and sentimental after all? The little rock teetering too close to the edge fell down the face of the boulder and started a miniature avalanche Suddenly his arrogance collapsed. He was engulfed by an immense anger and futility. The new fury of love, his hatred of sentimentality, his previous brooding, and above all the ineptness which accompanied his telling a woman th.it he loved her it was too much for him. The instability of h nature so false as his finally tripped him up, and he began to vent his rage on anything and everything that entered his mind. If he had been bombastic before he was vicious now as he attacked everyone from his father to his beloved Aunt Cynthia. In a sudden rage of truth he proclaimed that Elinor was nothing more than a silly sorority girl whose chief concern was to make an impression on her stupid social intimates, and whose only fear was that her own nature, unaffected, would prevail. Finally his tongue played out, his body convulsed with sobs, his mind tormented with the thought that he had heedlessly exposed himself, he brought himself to look at her. Her lips were parted, the eyes were rimmed with moisture, the pupils dilated, and she stared at him with that same childish fear and grief that he had seen so often in his mother. "Elinor, what is it?" he cried, terror clutching at his stomach. "I don't understand you," she wailed, the tears falling. NINETEEN