Lines 385-386:  Jane Dean, Pete Dean

The transparent pseudonyms of two innocent people.  I visited Jane Provost when passing through Chicago in August.  I found her still unmarried.  She showed me some amusing photos of her cousin Peter and his friends.  She told me—and I have no reason to disbelieve her words—that Peter Provost (who I desired very much to meet, but he was, alas, selling automobiles in Detroit) might have exaggerated a wee bit, but certainly did not fib, when explaining that he had to keep a promise made to one of his dearest fraternity friends, a glorious young athlete whose “garland” will not, one hopes, be “briefer than a girl’s.”  Such obligations are not to be treated lightly or disdainfully.  Jane said she had tried to talk to the Shade’s after the tragedy, and later had written Sybil a ling letter that was never acknowledged.  I said, displaying a bit of the slang I had recently started to master:  “You are telling me!”