This was not his first sortie at ten o’clock. It was a way of release from the torment of his thoughts that he had discovered. That is, if he remembered it in time. Once the misery had him fairly in its grip he was helpless. It was this business of becoming a man. Sometimes he went for a walk early in the morning; but everybody knew about that; he could not hug the secret deliciously to his breast. Anyhow morning walks were for light hearts, he thought, with a gentle swell of self-pity. Night for him! How wistfully he looked back towards the cool zone of childhood. What happened to you was not pleasant. He had noticed a funny thing; if he had said to himself during the day: To-night I will sneak out—there was no virtue in it; he carried his earthiness with him. But if while he was in his bed he yielded suddenly to the impulse; and arose and dressed; a sort of miracle occurred; he forgot himself. It was so to-night. The night took him. He was thrilled by the double line of still houses fronting each other; each house with its windows fixed unswervingly on its adversary across the street; the oblique stoop rails like beards; the cornices like eyebrows. And overhead the stars, deathless flowers in a meadow. Wilfred felt that he belonged. He was as much the street’s as that cat creeping across, its belly hugging the asphalt. Like the cat he was all eyes, ears and nose; the thinking part of him had stopped working. He made a feint at the cat; and chuckled aloud at the creature’s precipitate loss of dignity. Gee! how good it was to be out! Respectable West Eleventh street was already settling down. Most of the outer doors were closed, and many bedroom windows showed rectangles of an agreeable apricot light filtering through the lowered shades. Wilfred had turned East, seeking life. At the corner of Fifth Avenue he was struck by the effect of the new arc lights. Hanging two to a pole, the mellow pinkish globes stretched far into the distance in two gradually converging lines. Like insect lights they climbed the Thirty-Fourth street hill at last and disappeared. Fruit of Night, Wilfred whispered to himself. In Washington Square this mild October night there were still many couples sitting on the benches. The sight of them left Wilfred cold; he merely wondered at their static attitudes; hours, apparently, without moving or speaking. But once as he passed such a couple, a girl whose face was hidden in a man’s neck, laughed softly in her throat, and Wilfred’s breast was acutely disturbed by the sound. It suggested that that private nightmare of his might be a loveliness when shared; that it was the means whereby two human hearts might open to each other. Never for me! he thought with a needle in his heart; and hurried away from the sound.