conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'The Tunnel of Love'
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Tunnel of Love
  The chiaroscuro broke up, with some of the Nereids and old youths charging in for a last dip. The water was so shallow here and the beach sloped so gradually you had to run a quarter of a mile to get your feet covered let alone attain a depth sufficient to fling yourself into with any éclat, so that these dramatic dashes petered out into bathos. A man had tried to commit suicide here once—a local artist who'd had a painting rejected by the Avalon Hardware Company, which hung canvases as a way of displaying wares in its picture-frame section—and had gotten so tired and discouraged walking out in search of deep enough water that he'd turned around and gone back. Gotten a little self-conscious too, as there'd been parties on the beach watching. A few hundred more feet and he'd have been under Long Island jurisdiction.
  She went to the McBains' station wagon where she also changed back into her street clothes. Carrying a last beer apiece, we went for a walk down the beach.
  Strolling along, I recalled my last summer holiday from domestic life, two years before; how I'd begun it in a ferment vaguely related to the hearsay about the "trouble" husbands "got into" when their wives were away. My debaucheries had ultimately consisted of an hour spent in the shooting galleries along Sixth Avenue with a friend named Al Standard; the consumption at Lindy's of great bleeding wedges of strawberry cheese pie and a party at the home of a neighbor, to celebrate his revision of a hymnal for a denomination whose name escapes me. The interlude of lotus eating had been interspersed with plays and movies frenetically gobbled in the drive to "get as much in" as I could, and had ended, one final evening, in the company of an air pilot acquaintance, who confessed a secret desire to write obscenities on the sky.
  It was my memory of the general tepidity of that fortnight (and of the sheepish kind of shame that constituted its aftermath) that added, I suppose, a slight undercurrent of resolve to my mood of tingling expectation as we scuffed along through the sand. We fetched up near a breakwater a half mile from where we'd started. We sat down on the sand, turning our faces to the water and hearing nearby the tidal river pouring itself forever into the gluttonous sea; the same sea that wallowed softly or flung its pitiless spume against the rocks at Moot Point.
  She pushed back the lock of hair the better to scrutinize me worriedly. I dropped my arm down over my eyes, gorging myself on her concern.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Tunnel of Love
  The chiaroscuro broke up, with some of the Nereids and old youths charging in for a last dip. The water was so shallow here and the beach sloped so gradually you had to run a quarter of a mile to get your feet covered let alone attain a depth sufficient to fling yourself into with any éclat, so that these dramatic dashes petered out into bathos. A man had tried to commit suicide here once—a local artist who'd had a painting rejected by the Avalon Hardware Company, which hung canvases as a way of displaying wares in its picture-frame section—and had gotten so tired and discouraged walking out in search of deep enough water that he'd turned around and gone back. Gotten a little self-conscious too, as there'd been parties on the beach watching. A few hundred more feet and he'd have been under Long Island jurisdiction.
  She went to the McBains' station wagon where she also changed back into her street clothes. Carrying a last beer apiece, we went for a walk down the beach.
  Strolling along, I recalled my last summer holiday from domestic life, two years before; how I'd begun it in a ferment vaguely related to the hearsay about the "trouble" husbands "got into" when their wives were away. My debaucheries had ultimately consisted of an hour spent in the shooting galleries along Sixth Avenue with a friend named Al Standard; the consumption at Lindy's of great bleeding wedges of strawberry cheese pie and a party at the home of a neighbor, to celebrate his revision of a hymnal for a denomination whose name escapes me. The interlude of lotus eating had been interspersed with plays and movies frenetically gobbled in the drive to "get as much in" as I could, and had ended, one final evening, in the company of an air pilot acquaintance, who confessed a secret desire to write obscenities on the sky.
  It was my memory of the general tepidity of that fortnight (and of the sheepish kind of shame that constituted its aftermath) that added, I suppose, a slight undercurrent of resolve to my mood of tingling expectation as we scuffed along through the sand. We fetched up near a breakwater a half mile from where we'd started. We sat down on the sand, turning our faces to the water and hearing nearby the tidal river pouring itself forever into the gluttonous sea; the same sea that wallowed softly or flung its pitiless spume against the rocks at Moot Point.
  She pushed back the lock of hair the better to scrutinize me worriedly.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: three more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was of course no use resisting; her curiosity would never let me rest. I twisted the cigar out morosely in an ashtray; then suddenly buried my face in my hands and said, "Oh, my God." I peered at her through a latticework of fingers, and saw that she was knitting steadily, her face overcomposed; a little pale.
  I rose and, flapping my hands at my sides, said: "I suppose it's no use trying to hide anything. The woman is with child. That was it."
  Standing at the window made no sense: the drapes were drawn. But I couldn't bring myself to turn around. My shoulders may have hunched a little as I steeled myself. I heard the click of the needles stop, and a rustle as she put her knitting in a basket on the floor beside her chair. Then I turned around.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The phone rang. Audrey bolted out of bed and got it on the third ring—par for that distance. It was Isolde. They talked for half an hour or more, and when Audrey returned she said: "They want to celebrate. All of us together."
  Celebrate we did. We made a night of it in New York. Our old foursome. Happy once again, with a difference perhaps—but happy. The Pooles carted Augie, Junior over to our place in a carrying basket and Mrs. Goodbread sat with all the children there. We dressed. The girls were visions in new frocks; the men, in tuxedos now slightly tight for them, looked like exploded baked potatoes. We had dinner and then went to a night club. We drank champagne. We raised our glasses.
  That was only a few years ago and yet the children seem to be already growing up—the Pooles' and, certainly, ours. Mrs. Goodbread sits regularly with the Pooles' two, but our Maude is now old enough to leave with the rest. Old enough also, though, to be going out on her own now and then. Mr. Good-bread still mows lawns for several of us and detains us widely as a raconteur. Dr. Vancouver has left general medicine and settled in pediatrics; there is still a lack of baby doctors in growing Avalon and he has made a good thing of it. Isolde takes her kids to him and reports he is O.K., but still a good deal of a hypochondriac—though less apprehensive about catching things from babies than he'd been from adults. Terry I never saw again. The McBains moved West, and they and she have dropped from sight. Now and then I pick up a copy of The Reader's Digest and look for the article about her mother, but I never see it.
  So Augie was gathered into the orbit that claims us all at last. So the damnation is that there is no damnation; the peal of doom is a penny whistle, the Good Humor bell calling the children at evening. So the years glide along. I never go to Moot Point any more. There is nothing doing there. A new six-lane highway goes by the door, and Moot Point is a silent ruin. It would have been much better had the state survey hit it directly—then it would have been condemned by eminent domain and torn down, with reasonable remuneration at market value. But the government does not recognize near misses or what they call consequential damage to property deflated by scenic blights. So my old haunt stands, throttled by the encroaching forests, choked with bushes filled with guzzling bees or tufts of winter snow. Cars and fume-dispensing trailers bowl past the front all day; the Maine waters murmur everlastingly behind. I hardly think about it any more—I can't stand to. But sometimes I'm reminded of it, and then my heart breaks. As a valley dweller drinks from streams which bear rumors of the cold purity of mountaintops, so I can in chance moments of daily life catch echoes and glimpses, intimations of that ideal typified by Moot Point at its best. A woman's wit and animal ease, splinters of hotel gaiety, these quicken memories of that lost Babylonian grace, that quicksilver common to all those who were seen there in the old days.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A woman's wit and animal ease, splinters of hotel gaiety, these quicken memories of that lost Babylonian grace, that quicksilver common to all those who were seen there in the old days. Audrey bolted out of bed and got it on the third ring—par for that distance. It was Isolde. They talked for half an hour or more, and when Audrey returned she said: "They want to celebrate. All of us together."
  Celebrate we did. We made a night of it in New York. Our old foursome. Happy once again, with a difference perhaps—but happy. The Pooles carted Augie, Junior over to our place in a carrying basket and Mrs. Goodbread sat with all the children there. We dressed. The girls were visions in new frocks; the men, in tuxedos now slightly tight for them, looked like exploded baked potatoes. We had dinner and then went to a night club. We drank champagne. We raised our glasses.
  That was only a few years ago and yet the children seem to be already growing up—the Pooles' and, certainly, ours. Mrs. Goodbread sits regularly with the Pooles' two, but our Maude is now old enough to leave with the rest. Old enough also, though, to be going out on her own now and then. Mr. Good-bread still mows lawns for several of us and detains us widely as a raconteur. Dr. Vancouver has left general medicine and settled in pediatrics; there is still a lack of baby doctors in growing Avalon and he has made a good thing of it. Isolde takes her kids to him and reports he is O.K., but still a good deal of a hypochondriac—though less apprehensive about catching things from babies than he'd been from adults. Terry I never saw again. The McBains moved West, and they and she have dropped from sight. Now and then I pick up a copy of The Reader's Digest and look for the article about her mother, but I never see it.
  So Augie was gathered into the orbit that claims us all at last. So the damnation is that there is no damnation; the peal of doom is a penny whistle, the Good Humor bell calling the children at evening. So the years glide along. I never go to Moot Point any more. There is nothing doing there. A new six-lane highway goes by the door, and Moot Point is a silent ruin. It would have been much better had the state survey hit it directly—then it would have been condemned by eminent domain and torn down, with reasonable remuneration at market value. But the government does not recognize near misses or what they call consequential damage to property deflated by scenic blights. So my old haunt stands, throttled by the encroaching forests, choked with bushes filled with guzzling bees or tufts of winter snow. Cars and fume-dispensing trailers bowl past the front all day; the Maine waters murmur everlastingly behind. I hardly think about it any more—I can't stand to. But sometimes I'm reminded of it, and then my heart breaks. As a valley dweller drinks from streams which bear rumors of the cold purity of mountaintops, so I can in chance moments of daily life catch echoes and glimpses, intimations of that ideal typified by Moot Point at its best.The phone rang.