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RADIOACTIVITY IN THE ENVIRONMENT
A companion series to the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity

Series Editor
M.S. Baxter
Ampfield House
Clachan Seil
Argyll, Scotland, UK

Volume 1: Plutonium in the Environment

(A. Kudo, Editor)
Volume 2: Interactions of Microorganism with Radionuclides
(F.R. Livens and M. Keith-Roach, Editors)
Volume 3: Radioactive Fallout after Nuclear Explosions and Accidents
(Yu.A. Izrael, Author)
Volume 4: Modelling Radioactivity in the Environment
(E.M. Scott, Editor)
Volume 5: Sedimentary Processes: Quantification Using Radionuclides
(J. Carroll and I. Lerche, Authors)
Volume 6: Marine Radioactivity
(H.D. Livingston, Editor)
Volume 7: The Natural Radiation Environment VII
(J.P. Mclaughlin, S.E. Simopoulos and F. Steinhäusler, Editors)
Volume 8: Radionuclides in the Environment
(P.P. Povinec and J.A. Sanchez-Cabeza, Editors)
Volume 9: Deep Geological Disposal of Radioactive Waste
(W.R. Alexander and L.E. Mckinley, Editors)
Volume 10: Radioactivity in the Terrestrial Environment
(G. Shaw, Editor)
Volume 11: Analysis of Environment Radionuclides
(P.P. Povinec, Editor)
Volume 12: Radioactive Aerosols
(C. Papastefanou, Author)
Volume 13: U-Th Series Nuclides in Aquatic Systems
(S. Krishnaswami and J. Kirk Cochran, Editors)
Volume 14: Remediation of Contaminated Environments
(G. Voigt and S. Fesenko, Editors)
Volume 15: Airborne Radioactive Contamination in Inhabited Areas
(K.G. Andersson, Editor)
Volume 16: Environmental Radionuclides: Tracers and Timers of Terrestrial Processes
(K. Froehlich, Editor)
Volume 17: Technologically Enhanced Natural Radiation
(A.S. Paschoa and F. Steinhäusler, Authors)
VOLUME SEVENTEEN

RADIOACTIVITY IN THE ENVIRONMENT

TECHNOLOGICALLY
ENHANCED NATURAL
RADIATION

Authors
A.S. Paschoa
Private Consultant, Rua Belisario Tavora 47, Rio de Janeiro,
RJ 22245-070, Brazil

F. Steinhäusler
University of Salzburg, Division of Physics and Biophysics,
Salzburg, Austria

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Elsevier
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First edition 2010

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10 11 12 13 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Table of Contents

Preface vii
1 Introduction 1
1.1. Is TENR a Universal Issue? 1
1.2. TENR – A Global Issue 4
1.3. Overview 9
2 Depleted Uranium (DU) as TENR 19
2.1. A Brief History of DU 19
2.2. DU Inventories 22
2.3. DU as TENR and its Impacts 26
3 Terrestrial, Atmospheric, and Aquatic Natural
Radioactivity 29
3.1. Terrestrial and Atmospheric
Natural Radioactivity 29
3.2. TENR Industries 46
4 Cosmic Radiation, Including its Effects on
Airline Crew, Frequent Flyers, and Space Travel 87
4.1. The Issue 87
4.2. Source Term: Cosmic Radiation 87
4.3. Doses Due to Cosmic Radiation 102
4.4. Effects of Cosmic Radiation on
Avionics 119
5 Metrology and Modeling 123
5.1. Metrology 123
5.2. Modeling 136
6 Legal Aspects of Natural Radiation 141
6.1. Protection against TENORM
Exposures 141
6.2. Heterogeneous International
Approach 142
6.3. Regulatory Framework for NORM
Industries 143
7 Terrorism and Natural Radiation 153
7.1. Natural Radionuclides as a
Terrorist Weapon 153
7.2. Suitable Natural Radionuclides 154
7.3. Illegal Acquisition of Natural
Radioactive Material 156
7.4. Motivation for a Terrorist Attack
with Natural Radionuclides 157
7.5. Modes of Attack with Natural

v
vi

Radionuclides 158
7.6. Risk Assessment 165
7.7. Societal Response 167
Overview 171
References 175
Author Index 209
Subject Index 219
PREFACE

When we decided back in January 2008 to jointly write a book on

Technologically Enhanced Natural Radiation (TENR) we had no clear
picture of the effort that would be involved in the project. Less than one
month later, Murdoch Baxter, editor of the Elsevier's Radioactivity in the
Environment Series sent Anselmo a stimulating message that convinced us
of the importance of writing such a book. At that time, Anselmo was
actively editing the Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on the
Natural Radiation Environment (NRE-VIII), which had been held in
Búzios, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 7212, 2007, as a consequence
there were superimposed time intervals in which he was finishing a project
and starting a new one. The initial plan for the book was modified while
writing it to avoid duplication with other books, which addressed the wide
field of natural radiation. The book starts with a quasi-philosophical
question whether TENR is a Universal issue, or not. The answer to this
question is an unequivocal yes. TENR as a global issue is presented as a
statement rather than a question. The evolution of global exposure rates
estimates since 1959 is presented to show that such estimates have grown by
a factor of two. The book explores current issues like depleted uranium
(DU). The World Health Organization (WHO) views on the DU problem
is presented, and the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine (IOM)
of the National Academies (of the United States) on this subject are
summarized. The longest chapter of the book deals with the intricacies of
terrestrial, atmospheric, and aquatic natural radioactivity. Selected industries
and their relationship to naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM),
technologically enhanced NORM (TENORM), and TENR raw material
product, by-product, or residues are examined with regard to their
potential to enhance radiation exposure to workers, consumers, and
members of the general public. The issue of cosmic radiation, including its
effects on airline crews, frequent flyer passengers, astronauts, and aircraft,
satellites, and spacecraft equipment, is addressed in more than 30 pages,
including a large number of tables and illustrative figures. The prehistory,
history, and current aspects of metrology are presented in connection with
their relation to NORM/TENORM/TENR. Environmental modeling
regarding NORM/TENORM is briefly discussed, focusing on its
objectives. We emphasize the need for sensitivity analysis of mathematical
environmental models. Legal aspects of the natural radiation are presented
and discussed, including the current rather heterogeneous international
approach. The need for harmonizing national and international regulatory

vii
viii Preface

frameworks to NORM/TENORM industries is pointed out, including

guidance and practical implementation of existing concepts and principles.
The potential of using natural radionuclides for making and using terrorist
weapons is not ignored. Although for reasons of security, technical details
are mostly absent, a discussion of this important current issue is presented,
encompassing analytical aspects of suitability of natural radionuclides already
used for terror or homicide attempts. Illegal acquisition of natural
radioactive materials, motivation, as well as modes that can be adopted
for a terrorist attack with natural radionuclides, are discussed, as well as
descriptions of what is usually called indistinctly dirty bombs. A risk
assessment of radiological terrorism using natural radionuclides is presented
as to guide those involved directly or indirectly in impeding such terror
attempts and attacks. A long list of references supports the statements, data,
and overall information that appear in this book on TENR.
A book after being finished becomes a museum piece. However, people
like Merril Eisenbud (191521997) and Konrad Bates Krauskopf
(191022003) taught us that a book, like a museum, may be visited by
those interested in learning from the past; teaching and making research in
the present; and developing new ideas, concepts, and research for the
future. Thus, we feel a sense of achievement for making a little contribution
to the vast book-museum that grows throughout the world every day.
We wish that this book will be helpful to students, scientists, and
researchers in general, decision-making authorities at government and
nongovernmental organizations dealing with the NORM/TENORM/
TENR issues. We hope also that officials in nuclear-, industrial-,
aeronautical-, and space-agencies will find this book useful to make the
critical assessment of the radiological impact of natural radiation vis-á-vis
the radiological impact from man-made sources used in nuclear technology
and nuclear medicine.
We owe gratitude to many colleagues in several countries who let us use
their data, tables, and figures in this book. They are too many to be
mentioned in this preface, but at least some of them are cited in the text.
The TENR book could not be written without their help.
In addition to the immense help of Murdoch Baxter, other members of
the Elsevier staff helped us in different phases of the book project. We
would like to mention at least those with whom we exchanged messages.
They are the following: Linda Versteeg, Anita Koch, and Nicola Poser.
More recently Mageswaran Babusivakumar made valuable suggestions and
corrections to improve the quality of this book. All of the above-
mentioned Elsevier staff members have helped at one time or another to
overcome difficulties that looked at first glance unsurmountable. Our
thanks are extensive to those Elsevier member staff who helped us
incognito to put together this book.
Preface ix

Anselmo’s wife, Alba, and his son, Claudio, provided permanent and
necessary support to keep writing even when there were too many other
commitments to attend. We do have to confess that writing this book ends
up being an enjoyable task.
Anselmo S. Paschoa
Saquarema, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Friedrich Steinhäusler
St. Gilgen, Salzburg, Austria
26 December 2009
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1. Is TENR a Universal Issue?

Natural radiation (NR) is a phenomenon that pervades the whole known
Universe. The term radiation is usually applied only to electromagnetic
radiation which includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared rays (thermal
radiation), visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays – covering 19
orders of magnitude in terms of wavelength or frequency. The spectrum of
electromagnetic radiation, also known as the Maxwell spectrum, is
schematically illustrated in Figure 1.1.
The expression technologically enhanced natural radiation (TENR)
encompasses all kinds of NRs which are – or were at any time in the
past – enhanced by technological activities. Thus, one can ask the
following germane question – Is TENR a Universal issue?
The concept of Universe as mentioned here extends from a radius of 5.5
light hours (or less) for the solar system to about 15 billion light years for the
observable Universe. The existence of the cosmic microwave background
radiation (CMBR) was predicted some 60 years ago by George Gamow
(Gamow, 1948a; Gamow, 1948b). Gamow suggested that the Universe was a
sphere of radius R made of matter and radiation, with R expanding propor­
tionally with time t. At about the same time, Ralph Alpher and Robert
Herman estimated the temperature of the CMBR to be between 5 and 28 K
(Alpher and Herman, 1948). Not until 1965 was the CMBR detected
experimentally as electromagnetic radiation (Penzias and Wilson, 1965). The
current estimate of the CMBR temperature is about 2.725 K (http://www.
eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2008/pr-13-08.html – accessed on July
23, 2008).
The three governing laws of radiation in the Universe are usually
summarized today as the following:
1. Planck’s law (black body) – which relates the radiant energy emitted by a
given celestial body (object) to the inverse of the fifth power of the
wavelength of the radiation and the temperature of the radiant object;
2. Stefan–Boltzmann law – which relates the total energy emitted by an
object to the fourth power of temperature; and
3. Wien’s law – which establishes that the peak radiance decreases linearly
as the temperature increases.
Radioactivity in the Environment, Volume 17 r 2010 Elsevier Ltd.
ISSN 1569-4860, DOI 10.1016/S1569-4860(09)01701-X All rights reserved.

1
2 Technologically Enhanced Natural Radiation

10–14 10–12 10–10 10–8 10–6 10–4 10–2 100 102 104 wavelength (meters)

ultraviolet microwaves
infrared

108 106 104 102 100 10–2 10–4 10–6 10–8 10–10 energy (eV)

- rays radio waves

x-rays visible
ionizing radiation light

1022 1020 1018 1016 1014 1012 1010 108 106 104 frequency (cycle/s)

Figure 1.1 Electromagnetic spectrum or Maxwell spectrum.

When astrophysics was still considered a new scientific discipline, back

in 1965, William A. Fowler was invited to give the fifth series of the Jayne
Lectures at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia (Fowler,
1967). In his lectures, Fowler discussed the theoretical differences between
the neutrinos and antineutrinos which appear in weak beta decay processes:
for neutrinos, positron radioactivity, electron capture by positrons, and
neutrino capture by neutrons; and for antineutrinos, electron radioactivity
in the neutron decay process, positron capture by neutrons, and
antineutrino capture by positrons.
The neutrino (and the antineutrino) had been postulated more than 30
years before Fowler’s lecture in a letter written by Wolfgang Pauli to Lisa
Meitner and Hans Geiger who were attending a meeting in Tübingen in
December 1930 (Pauli, 1930). Pauli’s letter preceded the discovery of the
neutron by Chadwick by 2 years (Chadwick, 1932a, 1932b). The neutrino
was finally detected by Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan in 1956
(Reines and Cowan, 1956; Cowan et al., 1956).
The neutrino is a weak interacting particle with near-zero mass which
travels with almost light speed. The very existence of the neutrino makes
radiation a Universal issue.
Neutrinos are also produced on Earth either by natural radioactivity or
in accelerators and nuclear reactors by the decays of natural radionuclides
from the uranium isotope series (235U and 238U) and from the thorium
(232Th) series plus those from artificial radionuclides like plutonium and
other transuranium isotopes. Neutrinos are also produced in the Sun and
throughout the Universe in a myriad of nuclear reactions, including fusion.
There are three types of neutrinos ordered by increasing order of rest
mass: electron-neutrino, muon-neutrino, and tau-neutrino. Some neu­
trinos detected on Earth are messengers from stars, including our Sun.
Neutrinos (i.e., geo-neutrinos) resulting from the decay chains of the
238
U, 235U, and 232Th plus the beta decay of 40K are extant in the Earth’s
Introduction 3

environment. The production of geo-neutrinos can be summarized by the

series of simplified nuclear reactions as represented below:
238
U ! 206 Pb þ 84 He þ 6e þ 6�ne
235
U ! 207 Pb þ 64 He þ 5e þ 5�ne
232
Th ! 208 Pb þ 64 He þ 4e þ 4�ne
40
K ! 40 Ca þ e þ n� e

Several ongoing and future experiments are aimed at detecting

geo-neutrinos (Bohem et al., 2001; SNO Collaboration, 2004; Fiorentini et
al., 2005; de Meijer et al., 2006; Enamoto, 2006; Giammarchi, and Miramonti,
2006; Rubia, 2006; The Borexino Collaboration, 2006; Domogatsky et al.,
2006; Learned, 2007; Raghavan, 2007; Neutrino Geoscience, 2008).
Neutrinos can also be used, however, in nuclear safeguards activities as a
nonintrusive tool to check a reactor’s activities (see, e.g., Bohem et al.,
2001; Anjos et al., 2006; Bowden, 2008).
Figure 1.2 is an idealized graph of the rate of antineutrinos detected in
(or thermal power of) a nuclear reactor as a function of time. The expected
number of detected antineutrinos is of the order of a few hundred per day,
depending on a number of parameters, which can be translated into the
thermal power of the nuclear reactor.
Although one cannot say that humans can enhance the NR extant
throughout the Universe to any significant degree, the Palo Verde, Double
Chooz, and Angra dos Reis neutrino oscillations experiments show that
nuclear reactors contribute a detectable number of electron–antineutrinos
per fission of 235U, 238U, 239Pu, and 241Pu.
rate of detected antineutrinos

Thermal power %

cycle n outage cycle n+1

date

Figure 1.2 Idealized graph of the rate of antineutrinos detected in (or thermal
power of) a nuclear reactor as a function of time.
4 Technologically Enhanced Natural Radiation

Neutrinos are also produced artificially in nuclear detonations and

particle accelerators (Zuber, 2004). Those neutrinos, like all other neutrino
types mentioned above, are spread out all over but cannot be distinguished
from those of natural origin.
Thus, one can say confidently that TENR is a Universal issue but,
because the neutrinos interact very little with matter, the radiation doses
from neutrinos do not need to be considered as far as radiation protection
issues are concerned.

1.2. TENR – A Global Issue

The acronym TENR stands for technologically enhanced natural
radiation, though the most commonly found definition in Internet dictionaries
is “technologically enhanced natural radioactivity.” The latter is a more
restrictive definition derived from the wide use of the acronyms NORM
(naturally occurring radioactive materials) and TENORM (technologically
enhanced NORM).
As is well known, radioactive emissions encompass only the lower end
of the Maxwell electromagnetic spectrum of radiation – as wavelength
1015Wl(m)W107 or as frequency 104on (Hz)o1022 – while radiation
per se includes the whole Maxwell spectrum represented schematically in
Figure 1.1. As one can see in Figure 1.1, the spectrum of visible light
encompasses just a small portion of the Maxwell spectrum, corresponding
to a narrow window from 400 to 700 nm in the middle of the wavelength
spectrum, while gamma rays, for example, have wavelengths of 1010 m.
The Maxwell spectrum ranges from less than 1015 m to more than 104 m.
This book will address TENR as technologically enhanced natural
radiation in a broader sense, but without emphasizing ultraviolet, visible,
infrared, microwaves, and radio waves. In other words, this book will deal
essentially with natural ionizing radiation as far as it is enhanced
technologically.
One can confidently state that there are only two types of NR: cosmic
radiation and terrestrial radiation. Some authors, however, do prefer to add
internal sources of NR in the human body as a third type of radiation.
Here, it is worth mentioning that cosmic radiation (or cosmic rays) is
defined in a pedestrian way as high-energy particles of extraterrestrial origin.
A more classical definition states that cosmic rays are nuclei (or ionized atoms)
which can be from a single proton up to an iron nucleus and beyond. Protons
constitute 90% and alpha particles 9% of all cosmic rays, consequently all other
components are less than 1%. All other means stable and quasi-stable particles
like neutrons, antiprotons (and maybe anti-nuclei), hard gamma rays (i.e.,
lo1014 m), electrons, positrons, neutrinos, antineutrinos, esoteric particles
like weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) – which are hypothetical
Introduction 5

particles assumed to be a possible solution for the dark matter problem

(see, e.g., Feng and Kumar, 2008) – magnetic monopoles, mini black holes,
etc. These are the primary cosmic rays (PCRs) and are produced in stellar
flares (like solar flares), supernovae events, and in other extraterrestrial galactic
and extragalactic energetic sources.
The primary cosmic ray spectra at 10.6 GeV per nucleon used in
calculations are composed of protons in the hydrogen flux (the unbound or
free protons) plus 11 groups of primary nuclei, as shown in Table 1.1.
The interactions between the PCRs and the atmospheric and terrestrial
nuclei produce secondary cosmic rays (SCRs). The SCRs are essentially all
elementary particles and stable and unstable nuclei from which the most
important are the following: nucleons, nuclei and nuclides, hard gamma
rays, mesons (p7, p0, K7, y, D7, y), charged leptons (e7, m7, t7), and
neutrinos and antineutrinos (ne, nm, nt).
Concerns for the potential radiation doses to crew and passengers of high-
altitude supersonic commercial air transport due to cosmic rays from galactic
and solar events started in the early 1960s (Foelsche, 1961; Foelsche and
Graul, 1962). However, the interest in the radiation doses due to cosmic rays
had begun in the 1950s (UNSCEAR, 1956 and 1958, WHO, 1959). There
are not so many differences between the cosmic ray doses received by high-
altitude populations and those received by crew and passengers of
commercial airplanes flying at altitudes varying from 3 to 12 km. The latter
data are now available through a large number of publications.
One of the first important actions of UNSCEAR was to carry out
investigations on the biological effects of ionizing radiation (UNSCEAR,
1956, 1958). It was then accepted that the probability of mutation per locus

Table 1.1 Components of the primary cosmic ray spectrum at 10.6 GeV per nucleon
(O’Brien, 2005).

Z Element Relative abundance %

1 H 750 95.233
2 He 34 4.317
3–5 Li–Be 0.4 0.051
6–8 C–O 2.20 0.279
9–10 F–Ne 0.3 0.038
11–12 Na–Mg 0.22 0.028
13–14 Al–Si 0.19 0.024
15–16 P–S 0.03 0.004
17–18 Cl–Ar 0.01 0.001
19–20 K–Ca 0.02 0.003
21–25 Sc–Mn 0.05 0.006
26–28 Fe–Ni 0.12 0.015
6 Technologically Enhanced Natural Radiation

per unit dose was of the order of 1  107. As a consequence, it was also
known that a rather large number of observations needed to be made to
resolve the “signal to noise ratio” to obtain statistically significant results
concerning the dose response relationship. Not long after the 1958
UNSCEAR report was published, a World Health Organization (WHO)
Expert Committee also produced a report which expressed concern about
the genetic effects which might be produced in humans due to the
increasing use of ionizing radiation in medicine, science, and industry
(WHO, 1959). It was then expected that the study of human populations
exposed to relatively large amounts of background radiation (i.e., of the
order of 1 rem y1  or 10 mSv y1 in today’s units) would bring untapped
information on radiation-induced mutations and their fate.
As mentioned by Paschoa (2000a, 2000b), some of the obvious
populations to be studied, in accordance with the WHO (1959)
committee recommendations, were those living in high-altitude areas;
for example, Cerro de Pasco, Peru, 4.3  103 m, latitude 101S; the
Himalayan area (Lhasa), 3.7  103 m, latitude 301N; La Paz, Bolivia,
3.6  103 m, latitude 161S; Quito, Ecuador, 2.9  103 m, latitude 01;
Bogota, Colombia, 2.6  103 m, latitude 41N. However, areas with high
natural radioactive background were also, in some cases, worth
investigating. Among those, a WHO Committee mentioned the
following (WHO, 1959): part of the Kerala State, in India, and adjoining
area in Madras State; the monazite areas in the Brazilian States of Espírito
Santo and Rio de Janeiro; the mineralized volcanic intrusives in the
Brazilian States of Minas Gerais and Goiaz; the primitive granitic,
schistous, and sandstone areas of France with slight elevation of NR; and
some uninhabited areas of the Belgian Congo.
At that time, the doses from external and internal irradiation from
natural sources under the usual conditions at sea level were believed to be
as shown in Table 1.2 (WHO, 1959). The temporal evolution of concepts
and the improvements of knowledge and measurement techniques resulted
in new information on the doses from external and internal irradiation.
The 1959 dose estimates did not have data on the inhalation exposure of
either radon or thoron, though it had estimates for 14C, because of the
importance which was then given to the introduction of this radionuclide
into the biosphere due to the nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere
(Suess, 1953; Revelle and Suess, 1957; Arnold and Anderson, 1957; Young
et al., 1965). Ten years before the WHO Expert Committee met, 14C had
started being used as a reliable dating tool based on the ratio
14
C/12CE1.3  1012 found both in living organisms and in the
atmosphere (Arnold and Libby, 1949; Libby, 1955). However, there was
the suspicion after the atmospheric nuclear weapon tests that the carbon
isotopic ratio would change to an extent that would affect the reliability of
the method (see, e.g., Krane, 1987).
Introduction 7

Table 1.2 Exposure rates from external and internal irradiation to gonads and
other soft tissues, as known in 1959.

Exposure rates

mrem y1 mSv y1

External irradiation
Cosmic rays 28 280
Gamma rays (outdoors) 47 470
Internal irradiation
40
K 19 190
14
C 1.6 16
226
Ra ? ?
Total (from all sources) 95 950
Source: Adapted from WHO (1959) – see also Paschoa (2000a, 2000b).

Table 1.3 compares as much as possible the dose estimates made by

WHO (1959) with those made by UNSCEAR (2000). It is interesting to
note, by observing the last column of Table 1.3, that though the dose
estimates for cosmic radiation increased and ingestion exposure due to
terrestrial radionuclides increased by only about 30% each, and the dose
estimates from terrestrial external irradiation did not change significantly,
the total dose estimates increased by about 150%. Radon (222Rn) inhalation
which was not accounted for in the WHO estimates in 1959 became by far
the most important individual component of the dose estimates made by
UNSCEAR in 2000.
The areas with high levels of natural radioactivity and/or high radon or
thoron concentrations are likely to become TENR areas because of mineral
exploitation and later industrial processing of NORM material, as has been
pointed out in the Brazilian case (Paschoa, 2002). The WHO Committee
(WHO, 1959) had suggested that populations exposed to annual doses of
about 10 mSv (i.e., E4 times higher than the average dose to the world
population), as per the UNSCEAR (2000) estimate, would bring untapped
information on radiation-induced mutations and their effects. Much has
been achieved as far as the dose assessment of elevated NR areas is
concerned (see, e.g., Eisenbud, 1982; Sohabi and Esmaili, 2002).
Occupational annual dose equivalents might have reached levels as high
as 55 mSv from thoron inhalation prior to the improvement of industrial
hygiene in a Brazilian monazite industry (Paschoa and Pohl-Rülling, 2005).
Such high annual doses are more than 500 times the current estimate for
the world average annual thoron inhalation dose, or approximately 20
times the world average dose from all sources.
8 Technologically Enhanced Natural Radiation

Table 1.3 Exposure rates from external and internal irradiation as estimated by
UNSCEAR (2000) plus the ratio WHO (1959)/UNSCEAR (2000) of those estimates.

Exposure rates

WHO UNSCEAR WHO (1959),

(1959) (2000) mSv y1a UNSCEAR (2000)
mSv y1

External irradiation
Cosmic radiation 280
Directly ionizing plus photon 280
component
Neutron component 100
Cosmogenic radionuclides 10
Subtotal (cosmic plus 280 390 0.72
cosmogenic radionuclides)
External terrestrial irradiation
Gamma rays (outdoors) 470 70
Gamma rays (indoors) 410
Subtotal (external terrestrial 470 480 0.98
irradiation)
Internal irradiation
Inhalation exposure
Uranium and thorium 6
series
Radon (222Rn) 1.15  103
Thoron (220Rn) 100
Subtotal (inhalation ? 1.26  103 ?
exposure)
Ingestion exposure
40
K 190 170
Uranium and thorium 120
series
14
C 16
226
Ra ?
Subtotal (ingestion 206 290 0.71
exposure)
Total (from all sources) 950 2.42  103 0.39
a
Average.

The importance of evaluating occupational and public doses from

TENR areas becomes clear. This fact has been stressed recently in the
NORM V Symposium (Wymer, 2008).
Introduction 9

1.3. Overview
Human activities can modify NORM into TENORM, resulting in
enhanced concentration of NORM in a product, by-product, or residual
material. Thereby individuals can receive increased radiation exposure due
to TENR either as workers or consumers. Such elevated radiation exposure
can also result from extreme environmental exposure situations outside of
direct control, such as high-altitude flights and activities in space due to
cosmic radiation. The following section provides an overview of these main
topic areas, describing schematically the individual production steps, end
products, and associated emissions and wastes (TENR compartments
marked in grey) (IAEA, 2003a, 2003b).

1.3.1. From NORM to TENORM due to human activities

Environmental conditions can change as a result of several industrial
processes, resulting in an increase in the concentrations of natural
radionuclides in the material produced as the end product or waste
material; examples of such industrial processes are shown schematically in
Figure 1.3.
Each of these processes which appear in the top layer boxes of Figure
1.3 can result in an increased exposure to TENORM, for example:

(a) the extraction of water from subsurface aquifers can result in the
precipitation of scales, containing elevated levels of radium (226Ra);

Figure 1.3 Industrial activities leading to increased concentrations of natural radio-

nuclides. TENR compartments marked in grey.
10 Technologically Enhanced Natural Radiation

(b) processes burning fossil fuel and hydrocarbons can lead to atmospheric
emission of volatilized lead and polonium and increased concentration
of radium in ash;
(c) NORM undergoing physical disaggregation may undergo enhanced
dispersion of natural radionuclides in the environment;
(d) NORM subjected to sedimentation may further increase its concentra­
tion of natural radionuclides; and
(e) several fractionation processes can enhance NORM levels further in the
end product, such as in slimes or fines.

1.3.2. Hydrocarbons
Hydrocarbons are usually extracted from reservoirs located in sediments.
The use of formation water, a mixture of oil–gas–water in contact with the
reservoir exploited, can lead to an increased dissolution of radium (226Ra) in
comparison to uranium (238U) and thorium (232Th). These radionuclides,
together with their decay products (222Rn, 220Rn, and their decay
products), will contaminate the surfaces of equipment, pipes and tanks, and
potentially the environment (Figure 1.4).
Several subsequent stages in the production of different fuels (LNG, ethane,
propane, etc.) will also be accompanied by the emission of NORM into the
environment. Workers in charge of maintenance can receive occupational
radiation doses from a wide variety of exposure scenarios, ranging from the
cleaning of tanks to handling pipes and valves coated with NORM.

Figure 1.4 NORM in the oil and gas industries.

Introduction 11

Figure 1.5 illustrates that a particular issue to be addressed can be the

exposure to radon and its decay products and emission during oil and gas
extraction and front-end reduction process.

1.3.3. Coal
Coal will be in increasing demand in the next decades at least – besides oil
and gas – as one of the main sources of primary energy worldwide. Fossil
fuel represents NORM (mainly radium and its decay products) so that
increasing extraction of this fossil fuel from underground mines and surface
mines will result in TENORM issues. These issues cover a wide range,
from occupational radiation exposure of miners, radioecological challenges
due to atmospheric emissions of radium and its decay products from coal-
fired power plants, to managing the large amounts of waste (waste rock,
waste water, ash, and slag) due to mining and combustion processes. Figure
1.6 shows schematically the different stages of the coal fuel cycle, from
mining to combustion as fuel in a coal-fired power plant.
TENORM arises as an elevated radon and decay product concentration
due to mining, to radium-containing liquid effluents, as well as in sludge,
sediments, tailings, waste rock, and gypsum. In view of the large amounts of
residues, complex waste management schemes are required for an
environmentally sound and cost-effective disposal.

1.3.4. Geothermal energy

High temperature fluids, heated in geothermal reservoirs below the Earth’s
surface, are increasingly utilized for energy production in geothermal power
plants, for geothermal heat pumps or used in direct heat applications. In

Figure 1.5 Radon, thoron (222Rn, 220Rn), and decay products and emissions during
oil and gas extraction and front-end reduction process.
12 Technologically Enhanced Natural Radiation
Coal fuel cycle.
Figure 1.6
Introduction 13

either case, boreholes drilled into the underground reservoir are used to
utilize the heated fluid above ground in heat exchangers and steam turbines,
as indicated in Figure 1.7.

1.3.5. Water treatment

Most water supplies used for drinking water or industrial process water
require treatment in order to remove impurities, such as chemicals and
metals, in some cases also NORM (e.g., 226Ra). Also discharges by various
industries necessitate treatment of the wastewater (e.g., mining industry).
This treatment is carried out in waterworks, as illustrated in Figure 1.8.
The NORM in such water reflects the local geology, typically
containing uranium (238U, 234U), radium (226Ra, 228Ra), and radon

Figure 1.7 Geothermal power usage.

Figure 1.8 Water treatment process.

14 Technologically Enhanced Natural Radiation

(222Rn). Water treatment can result in a significant amount of TENORM

due to the large volume of water treated and the increased concentration of
natural radionuclides in filtration equipment, such as spent ion exchange
resins, spent granular activated carbon, sand filter elements, together with
contaminated back flush water, filter sludge, and lime sludge.

1.3.6. Metal mining

Metals are mined through underground mines, open pit mines, and solution
mining. Each of these techniques generates large amounts of solid and liquid
wastes. Every stage of the industrial process involves NORM, from the
extraction of the ore, to its physical or chemical processing, and finally the
smelting of the ore in order to extract and purify the metal. Since the process
feed ore contains NORM, the residues, tailings, and slag from each stage can
contain elevated levels of natural radionuclides, as illustrated in Figure 1.9.

1.3.6.1. Aluminum production

The main source for aluminum is bauxite ore, which contains
approximately 50% Al2O32H2O. Bauxite ore contains radionuclides from
the uranium and/or thorium series. The production process is associated
with large amounts of residues, posing economic and ecological
difficulties (typically between 1.1 and 6.2 ton red mud per ton alumina
produced). Figure 1.10 provides an overview of the main sources leading
to TENR.
The major such waste component is red mud, an alkaline slurry, which is
deposited in heaps or depressions. Radon and thoron emanation, as well as
airborne dust, are potential sources of NORM exposure (USGS, 2008).

Figure 1.9 Metal mining and processing.

Introduction 15

Figure 1.10 Aluminum production.

1.3.6.2. Iron production

Iron ores, especially in a state of enhanced weathering, scavenge natural
radionuclides. In addition, major components used for iron and steel
making also contain uranium. This can lead to TENORM in off-gas
cleaning dust. Also, slag and off-gas cleaning sludge are likely to contain
uranium decay products at increased levels. Figure 1.11 provides an
overview of the different compartments contributing to TENR.

1.3.6.3. Gold production

Worldwide gold is used as jewelry, support for currencies, in electronic
appliances and optical instruments (e.g., lasers), and in the construction and
space industries (e.g., shielding from solar radiation). Global gold production
is about 2,500 ton y1 (USGS, 2008). In view of the fact that ore mined for
gold contains only about 5 g ton1, global mine tailings amount to
approximately 109 ton annually. In Figure 1.12, mining and subsequent
metal production are shown schematically. The main components of the
gold-production-related TENR are seepage and surface runoff in the tailings
area, radon exhalation from tailings, waste rock crushed and used as
construction material, as well as contaminated materials (e.g., wood from
underground mining, bulk wastes) and scales formed during operations.

1.3.7. Industrial processes

Raw materials used in a variety of industrial processes containing NORM
can result in TENR. These processes range from the mining and use of
different mineral sands and phosphates, to the production of bricks from
16 Technologically Enhanced Natural Radiation

Figure 1.11 Iron and steel production.

Figure 1.12 Gold production.

certain raw or recycled materials, to recycling of NORM-containing wastes

resulting from decommissioned dwellings.

1.3.7.1. Mineral sands

About 5.5 million ton (Mt) of heavy minerals (density W2.8 g cm3), such
as monazite, ilmenite, rutile, zircon, yttrium, casserite, bastnasite, and
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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calm and exalted. Her blood ran light. Having destroyed her world,
her disbelief somehow survived as if on an eminence.
However, her emotions rejected their own finality. She felt that she
had to go on somewhere outside herself.

May waited in vain for Paul to come back. She convinced herself that
she was not good. When she believed in her own humility she was
not afraid to admit that she wanted to see him. She was unhappy
now with her own body. As soon as she saw her little breasts
uncovered she felt frightened and ashamed and wanted to hide
herself. When she was alone in her room she cried miserably, but as
soon as her tears ceased to flow she lay on her bed in an empty
waiting happiness, thinking of Paul. She recalled all that related to
him since she had first known him. It gave her a beautiful happy
sense of want to remember him so distinctly. However, when her
thoughts arrived at the memory of the last thing that had occurred
between them she imagined that she wished him to kill her so that
she need no longer be ashamed.
I want to be dead! I want to be dead! She said this over and over
into her pillow. Her beautiful pale braid of hair was in disorder. Her
thin legs protruded from her wrinkled skirts. She lifted her small
tear-smudged face with her eyes tight shut.
May wanted to tell Aunt Julia, but dared not. She knew Aunt Julia
was sad, though she did not know why. Aunt Julia, however, resisted
confidences. When she came in from work and found May waiting
for her in the hall or on the stairs Aunt Julia made herself look tired
and kind. "Well, May, dear, how are you? You seem to be a very
bored young lady these days. Your father is thinking of sending you
away to school when Bobby goes. How would you like that?" And
she smiled in a perfunctory far-away fashion.
May saw that Aunt Julia was in another world and did not want her.
"I don't care. Whatever you and Papa decide. I'm an awful ninny and
should be terribly homesick."
"That would be good for you. You must learn to be self-reliant."
Without glancing behind her, Aunt Julia passed quickly up the stairs
and disappeared into her room. The door shut.
To May it was as if Aunt Julia knew everything already and put her
aside because of what she had done. She was dead and corroded
with shame. Lonely, she wandered out into the back yard. The sky,
in the late sunshine, was covered with a pale haze like faint blue
dust. A shining wind blew May's hair about her face and swirled the
long stems of uncut grass. The seeded tops were like brown-violet
feathers. Beyond the roofs and fences the horizon towered, vast and
cold looking.
May wanted it to be night so that she could hide herself. She knew
Nellie was in the kitchen doorway watching her. She wanted to avoid
the eyes of the old woman. Paul could not love her while she was
despised.
White clothes on a line were stretched between the windows of the
apartment houses that overhung the alley. The bleached garments,
soaked with blue shadow, made a thick flapping sound as the wind
jerked them about. When the sun sank the grass was an ache of
green in the empty twilight. May thought it was like a painful dream
coming out of the earth. She was afraid of the fixity of the white sky
that stared at her like a madness. She knew herself small and ugly
when she wanted to feel beautiful. If she were only like Aunt Julia
she would not be ashamed.
It grew dark. She loved the dark. There was a black glow through
the branches of the elm tree against the fence. The large stars,
unfolding like flowers, were warm and strange. In the enormous
evening only a little shiver of self-awareness was left to her. She
tried to imagine that, because she was ugly and impure, Paul had
already killed her. The strangeness and exaltation she felt came to
her because she was dead. She loved him for destroying her.

Dudley gave up the attempt to take Laurence into his life. Dudley
had insisted on seeing the Farleys several times, but the result of
these meetings was always disappointing. What he considered their
small hard pride erected about them a wall of impenetrable reserves.
He pitied them in their conventionality. They regard me, he thought,
as a wrecker of homes, and the fact that I have been Julia's lover
prevents them from recognizing me in any other guise.
He felt that he was learning a lesson. He must avoid destructive
intimacies. If he gave, even to small souls, he had to give
everything. In order to save himself for his art he must learn to
refuse. He was in terror of love, in terror of his own necessities, and
afraid of meeting acquaintances who, with the brutality of casual
minds, could shake his confidence in himself by uncomprehending
statements regarding his work.
He grew morbid, shut himself up in his studio, and refused to admit
any validity in the art of painters of his own generation. He
persuaded himself that he was the successor of El Greco and that
since El Greco no painter had done anything which could be
considered of significance to the human race. He would not even
admit that Cézanne (whom he had formerly admired) was a man of
the first order. He was a painter, to be sure, but Dudley could ally
himself only with those whose gifts were prophetic.
His imaginings about himself assumed such grandiose proportions
that he scarcely dared to believe in them. To avoid any responsibility
for his conception of himself he was persuaded that there was a
taint of madness in him. Rather than awaken from a dream and find
everything a delusion, he would take his own life. He lay all day in
his room and kept the blinds drawn, and was tortured with
pessimistic thoughts, until, by the very blankness of his misery, he
was able to overcome the critical conclusions of his intelligence. He
did not eat enough and his health began to suffer. His absorption in
death drew him to concrete visions of what would follow his suicide.
He was unable to close his eyes without confronting the vision of his
own putrid disintegrating flesh. In his body he found infinite pathos.
As much as he wanted to escape his physical self, it was sickening to
think of leaving it to the indignities of burial at the hands of its
enemies.
The idea of suicide, haunting him persistently, aroused a resistant
spirit in him. He exaggerated the envies of his contemporaries. He
fancied that they feared him far more than they actually did and
were longing for his annihilation. He decided that something occult
which originated outside him was impelling him toward self-
destruction. In refusing to kill himself he was combating evil
suggestions rather than succumbing to his own repugnance to
suffering and ugliness.
While he was in this frame of mind some one sent him a German
paper that was the organ of an obscure artistic group. In this
journal, insignificantly printed, was a flattering reference to Dudley.
He was called one of the leaders of a new movement in America. He
read the article twice and was ashamed of the elation it afforded
him. He could not admit his deep satisfaction in such a remote
triumph. With a sense of release, he indulged to the full the
vindictiveness of his emotions toward his own countrymen—those
who were fond of dismissing him as merely one of the younger
painters of misguided promise.
However, the praise from men as unrecognized as himself
encouraged his defiance to such a point that he resumed work on a
canvas which he had thrown aside. His own efforts intoxicated him.
He refused to doubt himself. Life once more had the inevitability of
sleep. He knew that he was living in a dream and only asked that he
should not be disturbed.
He needed to run away from the suggestion of familiar things. He
decided to go abroad again and wrote to borrow money of his father.
Dudley made up his mind to avoid Paris where, as he expressed it,
the professional artist was rampant. He wanted to visit the birthplace
of a Huguenot ancestor who had suffered martyrdom for his religion.
It stimulated him to think of himself as the last of a line whose
representatives had, from time to time, been crucified for their
beliefs.

Two endless streams of people moved, particolored, in opposite

directions along the narrow street. The high stone buildings were
tinged with the red of the low sunshine. Hundreds of windows, far
up, catching the glare, twinkled with the harsh fixity of gorgon's
eyes. Beyond everything floated the pale brilliant September sky
overcast by the broad rays which stretched upward from the invisible
sun.
Julia, returning from the laboratory, hesitated at a crowded corner
and found Dudley beside her.
"This is pleasant, Julia. I've been wanting to see you and Laurence
Farley. I'm sailing for Europe next week, and I should have been
very much disappointed if I had been obliged to go off without
meeting you again." He tried to speak easily while he looked at her
with an expression of reproach. Julia smiled and held out her hand.
There was a defensive light in her eyes which he interpreted as a
symptom of dislike. He wanted to convince himself that every one,
even she, was completely alienated from him. All that fed his pain
strengthened his vacillating egotism.
Julia noted the familiar details of his appearance: his short arms in
the sleeves of a perfectly fitting coat; the plump hairy white hand
which reached to hers a trifle unsteadily; his short well-made little
body that he held absurdly erect; the wide felt hat that he tried to
wear carelessly, which, in consequence, was slightly to one side on
the back of his head and showed his dark curls; the childishly fresh
color which glowed through the beard in his carefully shaven cheeks;
his small full mouth that sulked in repose but when he smiled
displayed exaggeratedly all of his little even teeth; his prettily
modeled, womanish nose; the silky reddish mustache on his short
lip; and his soft, ingratiating, long-lashed eyes. Everything in his
appearance disarmed her resentment of him. Yet she knew that if
she expressed anything of her state of mind he would take
advantage of her vulnerability. She was prepared to see his gaze
harden toward her and his demeanor, puerile now, become ruthless
and commanding. She could not analyze the thing in herself that
made her so helpless before him. She was able, she thought, to
observe him coldly. She withdrew her hand from his and said, "So
you are going away again? I am glad for your sake. I know how
America must irk you. Even from my viewpoint I can see that it is
the last country for an artist." At the same moment her heart
contracted and she told herself that there was something false and
monstrous in Dudley which suppressed her natural impulse to be
frank in stating what she felt for him.
Dudley walked beside her. She wants me to go away! He insisted on
believing this. To know that she continued to suffer, however,
comforted him as much now as it had in the past. He sensed that
she had, in some remote way, remained subject to him. Because of
this she was dear. When he remembered that, but for this accidental
meeting, he would not have communicated his departure to her he
was momentarily panic-stricken. He no longer wished to detach
himself from her.
"Tell me about your work. What are you doing now?"
He took her arm. "I can't talk about my work, Julia. Something goes
out of me that ought to go into the work when I talk about it too
much. That's my struggle—my fight. It's terrifying at times. I know
all the hounds are baying at my heels. When I go abroad this time I
am going to avoid Paris. I know dozens of cities. Paris is the only
one which is a work of art. That's why I am going to keep away. I
am through with the finality of that kind of art. I am going abroad to
feel how much of an American I am. That's why I hate it so. It's in
me—a part of me. I can't escape it. I must express it. That is my
salvation—in belonging to America." It was almost irresistible to tell
her some of the conclusions he had arrived at to comfort himself,
but he knew that Julia never approached a subject from a cosmic
angle. She made him feel small and unhappy and full of a
homesickness for understanding. In her very crudity she was the life
he had to face. "I want to talk to you about yourself, Julia. There are
clouds of misunderstanding between us. We mustn't leave things like
this." He pressed her arm against his side.
She was ashamed before a stout woman who was passing who
showed, by the expression of dull attention in her eyes, that she had
overheard his remark. In this atmosphere of public intimacy Julia felt
grotesque. "I can't talk about myself, Dudley. Don't ask me. You've
put me out of your life. Why should you be interested?"
He was conscious of the stiffening of her body as she walked beside
him and observed the forced immobility of her face. Emerging from
the self-loathing which was an undercurrent to his vanity, he was
grateful to her for allowing him to hurt her. He began to wonder if he
were not, at this instant, realizing for the first time the significance
of his relationship to her—not its significance in her life, but its
significance in his own. He admitted to himself the cruelty of his
feeling for her. He wanted to torture her, to annihilate her even. It
pleased him to discover in himself enormous capacities for all things
that, to the timid-minded, constitute sin. He must embrace life
without moral limitations. "Julia, my dear—you must not
misunderstand my feeling for you. I want you—want you even
physically—as much as I ever did." His voice shook a little. "It is only
because I understand now that I must refuse myself much. I have
found just this last month a marvelous spiritual rest which makes
living deeply more acceptable."
Julia had never felt more contemptuous of him. "What I have to say
would only convince you of my limitations."
"Don't be childish, Julia. You don't want to understand me. We can't
talk in the street. Come to my studio for half an hour." He could not
let her go away from him yet.
Julia's pride would not allow her to object.
On the way they passed an acquaintance of Dudley's. Dudley could
not explain to himself why he was ashamed of being seen with Julia.
He wanted to hurry her through the street.
In the oncoming twilight the brilliant shop fronts were vague with
glitter and color. Above the glowering tower of an office building a
blanched star twinkled among faded clouds. When they reached
Dudley's doorstep Julia began to feel morally ill and to wonder why
she had come. As Dudley watched her mount the long green-
carpeted stairs before him he was suddenly afraid of her.
They entered the studio. It was almost dark in the big room. The
canvas that Dudley was working on stood out conspicuously in the
translucent gloom that filtered through the skylight. He crossed the
floor and furtively threw an old dressing gown over the painting.
Julia found herself unable to speak. When she discerned the lounge
she sat down weakly upon it.
Dudley stumbled over the furniture. He wanted to evade the
moment when he must find the lamp. "Take off your wrap, Julia. I
can't find matches. I seem to have mislaid everything. I am a
graceless host." His own voice sounded strange to him.
When at last he struck a match, Julia said, "Don't!" and put her
hands to her eyes. The flame, which, for an instant, had blindly
illumined his face, went out. Dudley could not bring himself to move.
The evening sky, dim with color, was visible through the windows
behind him, and above the sombre roof of the factory that rose from
the courtyard his figure was thrown into relief. Objects over which
there seemed to brood a peculiar stillness loomed about the room.
The tension was intolerable to them both. They were experiencing
the same nausea and disgust of their emotions—emotions which
seemed inevitable for such a moment and so meaningless. Dudley
said, "Where are you? I'm afraid of stumbling over you."
Julia, a hysterical note in her voice, answered, "Here I am, Dudley."
She knew that he was coming toward her. She wanted to die to
escape the thing in herself which would yield to him. But at this
instant the light flashed on and everything that she was feeling
appeared to her as unjustifiable and ridiculous.
To Dudley, Julia's body represented all the darkness of self-distrust
and the coldness of his own worldly mind. He wished that her
personality were more bizarre so that he might regard his past acts
as mad rather than commonplace. He did not know why he had
brought her to the studio and was ashamed to look at her. There
was nothing for it but to admit the duality of his nature, and that
half of it was weak. He longed to hasten the time of sailing when he
would begin completely his life alone in which nothing but the artist
in him would be permitted to survive. He said, "Is it too late for me
to make you some tea? Let me take your wrap." When he
approached her he averted his gaze.
"I can't stay long, Dudley. It is better that I shouldn't." She wanted
to force on him an admission of her defeat. If she could only
reproach him by showing him the destruction of her self-respect! Her
eyes were purposely open to him. He would not see her. She
resented his obliviousness. "You seem to me a master of evasion."
When he sat down near her, he said, "Let it suffice, Julia, that I take
the hard things you want to say to me as coming from a human
being whom I respect and care for enormously—and I still think
everything fine possible between us provided you accept in me what
I have never doubted in you—my absolute good faith, and my
absolute desire, to the best of my powers, to be honest and sincere
in every moment of our relationship, past and present."
Julia gave him a long look which he obliged himself to meet. Then
she got up. "I can't stay, Dudley. You won't understand." She turned
her head aside. Her voice trembled. "It's painful to me."
He rose also, helplessly. He wanted to wring a last response from
her. It was impossible. Everything seemed dark. He would not
forgive her for going away.
Julia took up her wrap from a chair and went out hastily without
looking back.
Dudley felt a swift pang of despair. Not because she was gone, but
because her going left him again with the problem of reviving the
hallucinations of greatness. It was not easy for him to deceive
himself. He could do so only in the throes of emotions which
exhausted him. In moments of unusual detachment he perceived the
faults in himself as apart from the real elements of genius that
existed in his work. But he was not strong enough to continue his
efforts for the sake of an imperfect loveliness. Only in spiritual
drunkenness could he conquer his susceptibility to the nihilistic
suggestions of complacent and unimaginative beings.

PART III
Julia and Laurence were to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Hurst. Of late
Laurence had shown an unusual measure of social punctiliousness.
Julia realized that his new determination to see and be with people
was a part of his resistance to suffering. She thought bitterly that his
regard for the opinions of others was greater than his regard for her.
Julia put on a thin summer gown, very simply made, a light green
sash, and a large black hat. Her misery had pride in itself, but when
she looked in the glass she was pleased, and it was difficult to
preserve the purity of her unhappiness. As she descended the stairs
at Laurence's side she felt guiltily the trivial effect of her becoming
dress. She wanted him to notice her. "I'm afraid we are late."
His fine eyes, with their sharp far-away expression, rested on her
without seeming to take cognizance of her. "I hope not. Mrs. Hurst is
a hostess who demands punctuality." He spoke to her as to a child.
There was something cruel in his kindness. For fear of exposing
himself he refused her equality.
If he would only love her—that is to say, desire her—Julia knew that
she would be willing to make herself even more abject than she had
been, and that it would hurt her less than his considerate
obliviousness. Laurence had ordered a taxi-cab. The driver waited at
the curbstone in the twilight. He turned to open the door for the two
as they came out. Julia was avidly, yet resentfully, aware of his
surreptitious admiration. She told herself that her sex was so
beggared that she accepted without pride its recognition by a
strange menial.
It was a beautiful cool evening. The glass in the taxi-cab was down.
The cold stale smell of the city, blowing in their faces, was mingled
with the perfume of the fading flowers in the park through which
they passed. The trees rose strangely from the long dim drives. Here
and there lights, surrounded by trembling auras, burst from the
foliage. Far off were tall illuminated buildings, and, about them, in
the deep sky, the reflection was like a glowing silence. The wall of
buildings had the appearance of retreating continually while the cab
approached, as if the huge blank bulks of hotels and apartment
houses, withdrawing, held an escaping mystery.
Laurence scarcely spoke. Julia's sick nerves responded, with a
feeling of expectation, to the vagueness of her surroundings. Her
heart, beating terrifically in her breast, seemed to exist apart from
her, unaffected by her depression and fatigue. It was too alive. She
cried inwardly for mercy from it.
Mrs. Hurst's home was a narrow, semi-detached house with a
brown-stone front and a bow window. From the upper floor it had a
view of the park. When Julia and Laurence arrived, a limousine and
Mr. Hurst's racer were already drawn up before the place. There
were lights in one of the rooms at the right, and, between the heavy
hangings that shrouded its windows, one had glimpses of figures.
Laurence said sneeringly, "Hurst has arrived, hasn't he! Affluent
simplicity in a brown-stone front. You are honored that Mrs. Hurst is
carrying you to glory with her."
Julia said, "But they really are quite helpless with their money,
Laurence. Mrs. Hurst has a genuine instinct for something better."
"How ceremonious is this occasion anyway? I don't know whether I
am equal to the frame of mind that should accompany evening
dress."
"There will only be one or two people. Mrs. Hurst knows how we
dislike formal parties."
Mr. Hurst, waving the servant back, opened the front door himself.
He was a tall, narrow-shouldered man with a thin florid face. His
pale humorous blue eyes had a furtive expression of defense. His
mouth was thin and weak. His manner suggested a mixture of
braggadocio and self-distrust. He dressed very expensively and
correctly, but there was that in his air which somehow deprecated
the success of his appearance. His sandy hair, growing thin on top,
was brushed carefully away from his high hollow temples. The hand
he held out, with its carefully manicured nails, was stubby-fingered
and shapeless. "Well, well, Farley! How goes it? I've been trying to
get hold of you. Want to go for a little fishing trip?" He was confused
because he had not spoken to Julia first. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Farley?
Think you could spare him for a few days?" Mr. Hurst's greeting of
Laurence was a combination of bluff familiarity and resentful respect.
When he looked at Julia his eyes held hers in bullying admiration.
Julia had never been able to say just where his elusive intimacy
verged on presumption. Feeling irritated and helpless and sweetly
sorry for herself, she lowered her lids.
"My—dear!" Mrs. Hurst kissed Julia. "How sweet you look! How do
you do, Mr. Farley? It was nice of you to let Julia persuade you to
come to us. We really feel you are showing your confidence in us.
Julia, dear girl, tells me you have as much of an aversion to parties
as Charles and I have. This will be a homely evening. Mr. and Mrs.
Wilson are here, and there is a young Hindoo who has been giving
some charming talks at the Settlement House. He speaks very poor
English but he's so interested in America. He's only become
acquainted with a few American women. I want him to meet Julia. I
think he'll amuse her too." Mrs. Hurst's short little person was
draped in a black lace robe embroidered with jet. She squinted when
she smiled. Minute creases appeared about her bright eyes. Her
expression was gentle and deceitful. Her arms, protruding from her
sleeve draperies, were thin, and their movements weak. Her
wedding ring and one large diamond-encircled turquoise hung
loosely on the third finger of her left hand. Her hands were meager
and showed that her bones were very small and delicate. About her
hollow throat she wore a black velvet band, and her cheeks, no
longer firm, were, nevertheless, childishly full above it. Though she
said nothing that justified it, one felt in her a sort of affectionate
malice toward those with whom she spoke. In her flattering
acknowledgment of Julia's appearance there was something
insidiously contemptuous. "Come away with me, child, and we'll
dispose of that hat. Williams!" She turned to the Negro servant
whom Mr. Hurst had intercepted at the door. She nodded toward Mr.
Farley. The Negro went forward obsequiously.
"Yes, Williams, take Mr. Farley's hat," Mr. Hurst said. Then, in
humorous confidence, sotto voce, "How about a drink, Farley? My
wife has that young Hindoo here. This is likely to be a dry
intellectual evening. That may suit you, but I have to resort to first
aid. Want to talk to you about that fishing trip. Come on to my den
with me."
Shortly after this, Julia, descending the stairs with her hostess,
found Laurence and Mr. Hurst in the hall again. Laurence, his lips
twisted disagreeably, was listening with polite but irritating
quiescence to Mr. Hurst's incessant high-pitched talk. Mr. Hurst, who
had been surreptitiously glancing toward the shadowy staircase that
hung above his guest's head, was quick to observe the approach of
the women. He had always found fault with what he considered to
be Julia's coldness, but he admired her tall figure and her fine
shoulders. "Hello, hello! Here they are!"
"Charles!" Mrs. Hurst was whimsically disapproving. "Why haven't
you taken Mr. Farley in to meet our guests? You are an erratic host."
Mr. Hurst moved forward. "That's all right! That's all right! Farley and
I had some strategic confidences. You take him off and show him
your Hindoo. I want Mrs. Farley to come out and see my rose
garden, out in the court. I'm going to have a few minutes alone with
her before you conduct her to the higher spheres and leave me
struggling in my natural earthly environment. I won't be robbed of a
little tête-à-tête with a pretty woman, just because there's an
Oriental gentleman in the house who can tell her all about her astral
body. Did you ever see your astral body, Mrs. Farley?"
"Boo!" Mrs. Hurst waved him off and pushed Julia toward him. "Go
on, if she has patience with you. But mind you only keep her there a
moment. I've told Mr. Vakanda she was coming and I'm sure he's
already uneasy. Rose garden, indeed! It's quite dark, Charles! Come,
Mr. Farley. Put this scarf about you, dear." She took a scarf up and
threw it around Julia's shoulders.
"Ta-ta!" Mr. Hurst came confidently to Julia, and they walked out
together across a glass-enclosed veranda that was brilliantly lit.
Descending a few steps they were among the roses. "Autumn
roses," said Mr. Hurst. The bushes drooped in vague masses about
them. Here and there a blossom made a pale spot among the
obscure leaves. Where the glow from the veranda stretched along
the paths, the grass showed like a blue mist over the earth, and
clusters of foliage had a carven look. The dark wall of the next
house, in which the lighted windows were like wounds, towered
above them. Over it hung the black sky covered with an infinite
flashing dust of stars. Julia's face was in shadow, but her hair
glistened on the white nape of her neck where the black lace scarf
had fallen away.
Mr. Hurst had made a large sum of money from small beginnings. He
would have enjoyed in peace the sense of power it gave him, and
the indulgence in fine wines and foods and expensive surroundings
for which he lived, but his wife prevented it. He had married her
when they were both young and impecunious. She had been a
school teacher in a mid-western city. She had managed to convince
him that in marrying him she conferred an honor upon him, and she
succeeded now in making him feel out of place and absurd in the
environment which his efforts had created, which she, however,
turned to her own use. Instead of flaunting his success in boastful
generosity, according to his inclination, he found himself compelled
to deprecate it. He had a secret conviction that he was a man to be
reckoned with, but openly, and especially before his wife's friends,
he ridiculed himself, perpetrating laborious and repetitious jokes at
his own expense, just as she ridiculed him when they were alone.
Mrs. Hurst was chiefly interested in what she considered culture, and
in welfare work, and among her acquaintances referred to her
husband affectionately as if he were a child. She had no connection
which would give her the entrée to socially exclusive circles, and she
was wise enough not to attempt pretenses which it would have been
impossible for her to sustain. Her husband's friends were mostly
selfmade and newly rich. She was affable to them but maintained
toward them a mild but superior reserve. She expressed tolerantly
her contempt of social ostentation and suggested that among Mr.
Hurst's play-fellows she was condescending from her more vital and
intellectual pursuits. Men who drank and played golf or poker
between the hours of business considered her "brainy," but "a
damned nice woman". She was generous to impecunious celebrities
of whom she had been told to expect success. On one occasion
when she and Mr. Hurst were sailing for England she was
photographed on shipboard in the company of a popular novelist.
The picture of the novelist, showing Mrs. Hurst beside him in
expensive furs, appeared in a woman's magazine. She had never
seen the man since, but she always referred to him as "a charming
person". She was frequently called upon to conduct "drives" for
charity funds. At masquerade balls organized for similar purposes
her name appeared with others better known and she could honestly
claim acquaintance with women whose frivolous occupations she
professed to despise. She was an assiduous attendant at concerts
and the public lectures which were given from time to time by men
of letters or exponents of the arts. References to sex annoyed her.
The vagueness of her aspirations sometimes led her into fits of
depression and discouragement, but she had a small crabbed pride
that prevented her from allowing any one—least of all, perhaps, her
husband—to see what she felt. She was conscientiously attentive to
children, but actually bored by them. She seldom thought of her own
childhood, and she sentimentalized her past only when she reflected
on her early girlhood and the instinctive longing for withheld
refinements which had led her away from a sordid uncultured home
into the profession of a teacher. Often her husband irritated her
almost uncontrollably, but she never admitted that the moods he
aroused in her had any significance. She was ashamed of him and
called the feeling by other names.
Mr. Hurst's frustrated vanity consoled itself somewhat when he was
alone before his mirror, for even his wife admitted that he was
distinguished looking. He consumed bottle after bottle of a
prescription which, so a specialist assured him, would make his hair
come back. Always gay and affectionate and generally liked, he had
a secret sensitiveness that he himself was but half aware of, and
which no one who knew him suspected. He had never abandoned
the romantic hope that some day he would meet a woman who
would understand him. It was his unacknowledged desire to have his
wife's opinion of him repudiated that made him perpetually
unfaithful to her. Years ago he had been astonished to discover that
even the women whom his wife introduced him to, who looked down
on his absence of culture, and whose intellectual earnestness really
seemed to him grotesque, were quite willing to take him seriously
when he made love to them. He was bewildered but elated in
perceiving the vulnerability of those he was invited to revere. Once
he learned this it awakened something subtle and feminine in his
nature and tempted him to unpremeditated cruelties. Though his sex
entanglements were, as a rule, gross and banal enough, and quickly
succeeded one another, he treasured at intervals a plaintive
conviction that some day he would meet the woman who had, as he
expressed it, "the guts to love him". Musing on this, he found in it
the excuse for all the unpleasing episodes in which he took part.
Outwardly cynical, he was sentimental to the point of bathos. He
had one fear that obsessed him, the fear of growing old, so that the
woman, when she met him, might not be able to recognize him.
He had always been a little afraid of Julia and had a secret desire, on
the rare occasions when they met, to hurt her in some way that
might force her to concede their equality. He called himself a mixture
of pig and child and when he met any of his wife's "high-brow"
friends he envied them and wanted to trick them into exhibiting
something of the pig also. Julia was young and pretty. He sighed and
wished her more "human". He had never found her so charming as
she seemed to-night. Under the accustomed stimulus of alcohol he
relaxed most easily into a mood of affectionate self-pity. Without
being drunk in any perceptible way, he loved himself and he loved
every one, and his conviction of human pathos was strong. Julia's
tense yet curiously subdued manner showed him that she was no
longer oblivious to him. He fancied that there was already between
them that sudden rapport which came between him and women who
were sexually sensible of his personality. "You aren't angry with me
for taking you away like this?"
Julia said, "How could I be? I wish all social gatherings were in the
open. It seems terrible to shut one's self indoors on these beautiful
nights."
Charles Hurst was impelled to talk about himself. He did not know
how to begin, and coughed embarrassedly. He imagined that Julia
was ready to hear, and already he was grateful for the regard he
anticipated. "Don't mind if I light a cigar?"
"I should like it."
"Don't smoke cigarettes, do you? Some of the ladies who come here
shedding sweetness and light are hard smokers."
Julia shook her head negatively. "I don't. But you surely can't object,
as a principle, to women smoking?"
"No. I think my objections are chiefly—chiefly what my wife—what
Catherine would call esthetic. I'm not strong on principles of any
sort. Don't take myself seriously enough."
Julia could make out his nonchalant angular pose as he stood
looking down at her. As he held a match to his cigar the glow on his
face showed his narrow regular features, his humorously ridiculing
mouth, and his pale eyes caught in an unconscious expression of
fright.
Julia said, "I'm afraid you take yourself very seriously indeed, or you
wouldn't be so perpetually on the defensive." Poor Mr. Hurst! This
evening she could not bear to be isolated by conventional reserves,
even with him. It flattered her unhappiness to feel that he was a
child. And this evening it seemed to her desperately necessary that
she touch something living which would respond involuntarily to the
contact.
Mr. Hurst was disconcerted. He took the cigar out of his mouth and
examined the glowing tip which dilated in the dark as he stared at it.
Tears had all at once come to his eyes. He wondered if he were
drunker than he had imagined. The moment he suspected any one
of a serious interest in him it robbed him of his aplomb. "Don't read
me too well, Mrs. Farley. You know I'm not really much of a person.
Coarse-fibered American type. No interests beyond business and all
that. Good poker player. Hell of a good friend—when you let him.
But commonplace. Damn commonplace. Nothing worth while at all
from your point of view."
They strolled along the path further into the shadows. Julia was
astonished by the ill-concealed emotion in Mr. Hurst's humorous
voice. His transparency momentarily assuaged the tortures of her
self-distrust. "How can you say that? My human predilections are not
narrowed down to any particular type, I hope."
"Oh, well, I know—you and Catherine—miles over my head, all of it.
Lectures on the Fourth Dimension. Some girl with adenoids here the
other night been studying 'Einstein'. Damned if it had done her any
good. Yes, what that gal needed was somebody to hug her." Julia
was conscious that he was turning toward her. "Crass outlook, eh?"
He laughed apologetically.
"She probably did," Julia said. They laughed together.
Mr. Hurst felt all at once unreasoningly depressed. He wanted to
touch her as a child wants to touch the person who pleases it. But
the sophisticated element in his nature intervened. He despised his
own simplicity. "Do you find yourself getting anywhere in the pursuit
of the good, the true, and the beautiful? Honestly now, Mrs. Farley.
I've had the whole program shoved at me—not that Catherine isn't
the best of women, bless her little soul. You know the life we tired
business men lead pretty much resembles that of the good old
steady pack horse that does the work. We dream about green
pastures and all that, but never get much closer to it. And when you
get to the end of things you begin to wonder if your plodding did
anybody any good—if anything ever did anybody any good. I've got
no use for cynicism—consider it damn cheap. Wish some time I was
a little bit more of a cynic. But I'm lost. Hopelessly lost. I take a
highball every now and then because my—I think my mind hurts."
He halted suddenly and they were looking into each other's vague
faces. "This talk getting too damn serious, eh? Something about you
to-night that invites a fellow to make a fool of himself."
"I hope not," Julia said. "I like you for talking frankly."
"Oh, I'm not too damn frank. We can't afford it in this world of hard
knocks. Now to you, now, I'm not saying all that I'd like to, by a
jugful."
"Then you don't make as much of a distinction between me and the
crowd as I hoped."
Charles had let his cigar go out. He kept turning it over and over in
his stiff fingers that she could not see. He felt that only when he
held a woman in his arms and she was robbed of her conventional
defenses could he speak openly to her. With other attractive women
he had come quickly to a point like this where he wanted to talk of
his inner life. He imagined it would give him relief if he could touch
Julia's dress and put his head in her lap. The terrible fear of
revealing himself before his wife and her friends had stimulated his
imagination toward abandon. When he was a child his mother had
not loved him. She was a defiant person. She was ashamed of him
because he allowed himself to be victimized by all the things against
which she had futilely rebelled. He had felt himself despised though
he had never understood the reason. His mother found continual
fault with him and never petted him. One day a girl cousin much
older than he had discovered him in a corner crying and had
comforted him, and had allowed him to put his head in her lap. As
he had never gotten over considering himself from a child's
standpoint, his adult visions always culminated in a similar moment
of release. Whenever he became sentimental about a woman he
imagined that he would some day put his head in her lap. He had
been, in his own mind, so thoroughly convicted of weakness that the
development of strength no longer appealed to him as a means of
self-fulfilment. He abandoned himself to an incurable dependence for
which he had not as yet found a permanent object. It eased him
when he could evoke the maternal in a mistress. "Aren't we all—
somewhat on the defensive toward each other?" he said after a
minute.
Julia was reminded again of what she thought to be her own
tragedy. She felt reckless and wanted some one into whom to pour
herself. She imagined herself lost in the dark garden, crushed
between the walls and bright windows of the houses. In some
indefinable way she identified herself with the million stars, flashing
and remote in the black distance of the sky that showed narrowly
above the roofs. "Yes," she said. "And so uselessly. People are so
pathetic in their determination not to recognize what they are. If we
ever had the courage to stop defending ourselves for a moment—
But none of us have, I'm afraid." She carried the pity which she had
for herself over to him. She had noticed how thin his face was, that
the bold gaze with which he looked at her was only an expression of
concealment, and that there were strained lines at the corners of his
good-tempered mouth. Yes, in the depths of his pale eyes with their
conscious glint of humor there was undoubtedly something eager
and almost blankly disconcerted.
Charles could not answer her at once. He threw his cigar aside. His
hand trembled a little. I wonder how drunk I am, he said to himself.
He decided that he was helpless in the clutch of his own impulses.
He thought, A damn fool now as always. Have I got this woman
sized up wrong? She's a dear. Here goes. Poor little thing! Gosh, I
know she can't be happy with that self-engrossed ass she's married
to! In his more secret nature he was proud of his own temerity.
"Damn it all, Mrs. Farley—Julia—" He hesitated. "I've queered myself
right off by calling you Julia, haven't I?" His laugh was forced and
unhappy. He glanced over his shoulder toward the house.
Julia was alarmed by the unexpected immanence of something she
was trying to ignore. She kept repeating to herself, He's a child! Her
thoughts grew more disconnected each instant. She wanted to go
away, yet she half knew that she was demanding of Charles the very
thing that terrified her. "Of course not. Mrs. Hurst calls me Julia, why
shouldn't you?" Her tone was intended to lift their talk to a plane of
unsexed naturalness.
"Yes, by George, why shouldn't I! She calls you that a good deal as if
she were your mother." He paused. "Did you know I'd reached the
ripe old age of forty-one?" (He was really forty-two.)
"It doesn't shock me."
"Well, I wish it did. I don't like to be taken so damn much for
granted." (He wanted to tell her that Catherine was three years older
than he, but his sense of fair play withheld him.) "An old man of my
age has no right to go around looking for some one to understand
him, has he?"
"Why not? I'm afraid we do that to the end of time, Mr. Hurst."
"Say, now, honestly, Mrs. Farley—Julia—I can't lay myself wide open
to anybody who insists on calling me Mr. Hurst. I feel as if I were a
hundred and seven." He tried to ingratiate himself with his
boyishness.
"I haven't any objection to calling you Charles." (Julia thought
uncomfortably of Mrs. Hurst and, remembering her, was
embarrassed.) "Don't feel hurt if I'm not able to do it at once.
Certain habits of thought are very hard to get rid of."
"And I suppose you've been in the habit of considering me in the
sexless antediluvian class!"
"You've forgotten that Laurence—that my husband is as old as you
are."
When Julia mentioned her husband, Charles's impetuosity was
dampened. It upset him and made him unhappy. However, he was
determined to sustain his impulses. "Yes, I had."
Silence.
Charles wanted to cry. "You know I appreciate it awfully that you are
willing to enter into the holy state of friendship with an obvious
creature like myself. Catherine says you're a wonderful woman, and
she's a damned good judge—of her own kind, that is."
"I'm afraid she's flattered me. I wish you weren't so humble about
our friendship. I am as grateful as you are for anything genuine."
"Yes, I'm too confounded humble. I know I am. Always was. You
know I'm not really lacking in self-respect, Miss Julia."
"Of course you aren't. You seem to me one of the most self-
respecting people I know."
Charles was silent a long time. He knew that he was being carried
away on a familiar current. By God, she means it! he said to himself.
He would refuse to regard anything but the present moment. "How
does it happen you and I never came together like this before? I'd
got into the habit of thinking you were one of these icy Dianas that
had an almighty contempt for any one as well rooted in Mother
Earth as I am."
Julia laughed uncomfortably. "That's a mixed metaphor." Then she
said seriously, "I want to understand things—not to try to escape. It
seems to me we must all go back to Mother Earth if we try to do
that." She added, "I'm afraid we are making ourselves delinquent.
We mustn't abandon Mrs. Hurst and her guests altogether."
They turned toward the veranda. They were walking side by side
and inadvertently Charles's hand brushed Julia's. He caught her
fingers. She made a slight gesture of repulsion which he scarcely
observed. Then her hand was relinquished to him. "Confound these
social amenities! I thought you were going to be my mother-
confessor, Miss Julia." Until he touched her hand he had been
conscious of their human separateness and his sensuous impulses
had been in abeyance. With the feel of her flesh, she became simply
the woman he wanted to kiss, the possessor of a beautiful throat,
and of mysterious breasts that compelled him familiarly through the
dim folds of her white dress. His acquisitive emotion was savage and
childlike. Here was a strange thing which menaced and invited him.
He wanted to know it, to tear it apart so that he need no longer be
afraid of it. Already he annihilated it and loved it for being subject to
him. He leaned toward her and when she lifted her face to him he
kissed her. He felt the shudder of surprise that passed over her.
"Julia—don't hate me. Child, I'm going to fall in love with you! I
know it!" His voice was smothered in her hair. He kissed her eyes
and her mouth again. Trembling, Julia was silent. He wondered
recklessly if she despised him, but while he wondered he could not
leave her. He felt embittered toward her because she awakened his
dormant sensuality and he supposed that women like her were
superior to the necessities that left him helpless.
"Please!" Julia said. When his mouth was pressed against hers she
was suffocated by the same thrill of astonishment and despair which
she had experienced when she first allowed Dudley Allen to take her.
When she was able to speak she said, "Oh, we are so pathetic and
absurd—both of us! It's so hopelessly meaningless."
He was excited and elated. In a broken voice, he said, "So you think
I am pathetic and absurd? I am, child. I don't care! I don't care!" He
thought that she was referring to the general opinion of him. He
hardened toward her, while, at the same moment, a wave of
physical tenderness enveloped him. Stealthily, he exulted in the
capacity he possessed for sexual ruthlessness. He knew she could
not suspect it. He would be honest with her only when it became
impossible for her to evade him.
They heard footsteps and turned from each other with a common
instinct of defense. Mrs. Hurst was descending the steps from the
lighted porch. "I have a bone to pick with that spouse of mine," she
called pleasantly when she could see them. Charles had taken out a
fresh cigar and was lighting a match.
"Hello, hello! Am I in trouble again?" Charles fumbled for Julia's
hand, and gave it a squeeze, but dropped it as his wife drew near.
Mrs. Hurst's figure was in silhouette before them. "You'll spoil my
dinner party, Charles! Julia, child, I'm afraid you need reprimanding
too. You have to be stern with Charles." Her tone was truly vexed,
but so frankly so that it was evident she suspected nothing amiss.
"I'm sorry if I am in disfavor." Julia's voice was cold. In her nihilistic
frame of mind she wished that her hostess had discovered the
compromising situation.
Julia's reply was irritating and Mrs. Hurst's displeasure inwardly
deepened. She felt stirring in her a chronic distrust and animosity
toward other women, but would give no credence to her own
emotion. "Come, child, don't be ridiculous! I suppose I can't blame
Charles for trying to steal you from me. I'm sure he wanted to talk
to you about himself. It's the one thing he cannot resist." She
laughed, a forced pleasant little laugh, and caught Julia's arm in a
determined caressing pressure. "Come. We're all going to be good.
Mr. Vakanda is waiting to take you in to dinner." Julia followed her
toward the house. "Come, Charles!" Mrs. Hurst commanded him
abruptly over her shoulder. The manner in which she spoke to him
suggested strained tolerance.
Charles's immediate relief at not having been seen was succeeded
by complacency. To deceive his wife was for him to experience a
naïve sense of triumph. Poor little Kate! He could even be sorry for
her.
Julia more than ever wanted to feel that Laurence's refusal of her
was forcing upon her a promiscuous and degrading attitude toward
sex. She said, "I'm sure the fault is mine. I couldn't resist the night
and the roses."
"Now don't try to defend him. The roses were his excuse, not
yours." Mrs. Hurst wondered how they had been able to see
anything of the roses in such a light. She wished to forget about it.
"Mollie Wilson has been telling us how difficult the role of a mother
is these days. She says she envies you May with her amenability.
Lucy has some of the most startlingly advanced conceptions of what
her mother should let her do."
Charles, walking almost on their heels, interrupted them. "It would
be an insult to Ju—to Mrs. Farley if I needed an excuse for carrying
her off for a minute." He cleared his throat. "Say, Kate, damn it all,
will you and she be upset if I call her Julia? I like her as well as you
do."
Again Mrs. Hurst was irritated and inexplicably disturbed. It was
Charles—not Julia—of course. Any woman. He's always like that!
"Then I shall expect to begin calling Mr. Farley Laurence," she said
acidly. She spoke confidentially to Julia. "He can't resist them, dear—
any of them. Pretty women. You'll have to put up with his
admiration. All my nicest friends do."
"The dickens they do!" Charles grumbled jocosely. His wife's tone
made him nervous. He was suspicious of her.
When they came up on the lighted veranda a maid passed them, a
neat good-looking young woman in black with inquisitive eyes. Julia
caught on the servant's face what seemed an expression of inquiry
and amusement. Charles, who had often tried to flirt with the girl,
glanced at her shamefacedly and immediately lowered his gaze.
Damn these women! Julia, feeling guilty and antagonistic, observed
Mrs. Hurst, but found that she appeared as usual, sweet and
negatively self-contained, yet suggesting faintly a hidden malice.
They walked through a long over-furnished hall and entered the
drawing room. The men rose: the Hindoo, good-looking but with a
softness that would inevitably repel the Anglo-Saxon; Mr. Wilson,
stout and jovial, his small eyes twinkling between creases of flesh,
the bosom of his shirt bulging over his low-cut vest; Laurence,
clumsy in gesture, kind, but almost insulting in his composure.
During the evening Julia could not bring herself to meet Laurence's
regard, nor did she again look directly at Mr. Hurst. Charles, after
some initial moments of readjustment when he found it difficult to
join in the general talk, recovered himself with peculiar ease. Indeed
his later manner showed such pronounced elation that Julia
wondered if it were not eliciting some unspoken comment. When he
turned toward her she was aware of the furtive daring of his
expression, though she refused to make any acknowledgment of it.
He laughed a great deal, made boisterous jokes uttered in the
falsetto voice he affected when he was inclined to comicality, and,
when his jests were turned upon himself, chuckled immoderately in
appreciation of his own discomfiture. The Hindoo, whose bearing
displayed extraordinary breeding, had opaque eyes full of distrust.
His good nature under Charles's jibes was assumed with obvious
effort and did not conceal his polite contempt. During dinner and
afterward Charles plied every one, and particularly the men, with
drink. Mrs. Hurst had always been divided between the attractions of
the elegance which demanded a fine taste in wines and liqueurs,
and her moral aversion to alcohol. She never served wines when she
and Charles were alone, and to-night she was provoked by his ill-
bred insistence that the glasses of her guests be refilled.
When the meal was over and the men had returned to the drawing
room, Charles seemed to be in a state of fidgets. His face and even
his helpless-looking hands were flushed. He walked about
continually, and was perpetually smoothing his carefully combed hair
over the baldish spot on the top of his head. Mrs. Wilson, who was
florid and coarsely good-looking, with her iron-gray hair, admired his
distinguished figure in its well-cut clothes. His flattering manner
when he talked to her made her feel self-satisfied. Julia, though she
had honestly protested to Charles that she did not smoke, indulged
in a cigarette. Mrs. Wilson also lit one and expelled the smoke from
her pursed mouth in jerky unaccustomed puffs. Mrs. Hurst's dislike
of tobacco was equal to her repugnance to alcohol. She refused to
smoke but was careful to show that her distaste for cigarettes was a
personal idiosyncrasy. She made little amused grimaces at the
smokers and treated them as if they were irresponsible children.
Mrs. Wilson, in talking to Mr. Vakanda, contrived many casual and
contemptuous references to her recent experiences in Europe. She
was divided between her genuine boredom with European culture
and her pride in her acquaintance with it.
Charles, observing Julia in this group, appreciated the distinction of
her simpler, more aristocratic manner; and the clarity and frankness
of her statements seemed to him to place her as a being from
another world. Damn me, she's a thoroughbred! Makes me ashamed
of myself, bless her soul! His emotions were too much for him. He
went into his "den," which was across the hall, and poured himself a
drink. Fragments of the evening's conversation buzzed in his head.
Julia and Mr. Wilson had disagreed as to the validity of certain
phases of the newer movements in art. Mr. Wilson scoffed blatantly
at all of them. Mr. Vakanda was more reserved, but one suspected
that he looked upon Westerners as adolescent and treated their art
accordingly. Charles, without knowing what he was talking about,
had come jestingly to Julia's rescue. When he remembered how
often he had joined Mr. Wilson in ribald comment on subjects which
she treated as serious, he felt he had been a traitor to her. Damn my
soul, I'm hard hit! I never half appreciated that girl until to-night!
Don't know what the hell's been the matter with me! Overcome by
his reflections, he walked to a window and stared out into the quiet
dimly lit street. His suddenly aroused sensual longing for Julia
returned and made him embarrassed and unhappy. He set his glass
down on the window ledge and passed a hand across each eye as if
he were wiping something away. Damn it all, I'm in love with her all
right.

When the time for the Farleys' departure arrived Charles was
talkative and uneasy. He clapped his hand on Laurence's shoulder.
"You're one of the few men who's fit to fish with, Farley. Most of 'em
are too damned loud for the fish. We'll fix that little trip up yet. I
suspect you of being the philosopher of this bunch anyway."
"I can furnish the requisite of silence, but I'm afraid it requires some
peculiar psychic influence to attract fish. I haven't got it."
Charles's manner was self-conscious to a degree. He spoke rapidly
and unnecessarily lifted his voice. His wife watched him with a cold
kind little smile of disgust. She wanted to create the impression that
she understood him, but her resentment of him rose chiefly from the
fact that he was incomprehensible to her. "That's all right. I'll catch
the fish. I'll catch the fish. Damned if I haven't enjoyed the evening.
Say, Farley, Kate and I are coming over some evening and I'm going
to talk to your wife. I believe she's just plain folks even if she can
chant Schopenhauer and the rest of those cranks. You know I
admire your brains, Miss Julia. By Jove, I do. You can give me some
of the line of patter I've missed. Kate, now—Kate's got it all at her
finger tips, but she's given me up long ago. Have a drink before you
go, Farley? No! You know I'm a great admirer of Omar Khayyám's,
Miss Julia. The rest of you high-brows seem to have put the kibosh
on the old boy. He's the fellow that had some bowels of compassion
in him. Knew what it was like to want a drink and be dry." Charles
smoothed back his hair. His hand was trembling slightly. He looked
at Julia now and then but allowed no one else to catch his eyes.
Laurence, holding his silk hat stiffly in his fingers, moved
determinedly toward the front door. His smile was enigmatic but his
desire for escape was evident.
Julia said, "I'll talk to you about Schopenhauer, Mr. Hurst, and
convince you that he was very far from a crank." She smiled.
"Yep? Well, guess I'm jealous of him. I'm willing to be taught. This
business grind I'm in is converting me into pretty poor company. Not
much use for a meditative mind in the stock market. Eh, Farley? The
women have got it all over us when it comes to refining life."
Laurence said, "I imagine I know as little of the stock market as my
wife, Hurst."
"And you must remember I'm a business woman, too."
"So you are. Working in that confounded laboratory. Well, I've got no
excuse then."
"Know thyself, Charles!" Mrs. Hurst shook her finger playfully.
"Yep. Constitutional aversion to knowing myself—knowing anything
else. Looks to me as if you had picked a lemon, Kate."
"We must really go." Julia held out her hand.
Mrs. Hurst shook hands with Julia. "So delightful to have had you.
I'm glad you impressed Mr. Vakanda with the significance of America
in the world of art, dear." Mrs. Hurst, at that instant, disliked her
guest intensely, but she preserved her smile and her delicate tactful
air. Laurence shook hands with her also. His reserve appealed to her.
She could be more frankly gracious with him.
Charles pressed Julia's fingers lingeringly, in spite of her efforts to
withdraw them. He was suddenly depressed and gazed at her with
an open almost despairingly interrogative expression. "Yep, damn
me, Kate's right. You put the Far East in its place, Miss Julia. Did me
good to see it." He giggled nervously, but his face immediately grew
serious. Seeing her go away into her own strange world depleted the
confidence he experienced while with her. He was oppressed by the
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