Another hour was coaxed out of eternity. The sun crept farther into the warm house; out in the street was a growing rush of motorcars and sometimes a clatter of hoofs; the tap in the sink dripped with a cheerful chiming splash on the tumbled china. He whistled and painted. Beginning to feel cramped, he took a short walk around the room, keeping a wary eye on the canvas as if it might take flight with his spasm of energy. It was clear again; he saw just what he wanted and perhaps he could do it. But not just now. “Stale,” he said aloud to his conscience, and his voice sounded choked and rusty in the empty room. He would do something else for awhile. Shave? The idea of putting on water to heat seemed impossible. Wait till later; plenty of water at Bob’s. He leaned to the mirror and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, wondering how he would look with a beard. Bob wouldn’t like it. That reminded him of the shirts and he untied the laundry, sorting it out and hesitating sometimes, sock in hand, between the two piles of segregated underwear, his own and Harvey’s. He always gave himself the benefit of the hesitation. But it meant nothing: Harvey would ravage his store at the first necessity. The work impulse was quite dead. He felt relieved, as though he had flung a small morsel into the maw of his conscience, but otherwise there was no twinge of energy. He tied up Bob’s shirts and put the last unbroken record on the rickety little Victrola, borrowed one evening from Gin and still unreturned. They needed records: the Lennards had good records. Blake kept up pretty well; he probably just walked into a place and bought up everything. Pretty soft for him. Well, one could make out by snuggling up to the big houses, riding in their cars and going to their parties and drinking their liquor. One smothered the occasional fever of hopeless malice. They couldn’t help being lazy and easily pleased and careless. If only they wouldn’t try to be critical about painting. There must be things they couldn’t have; there must be. “When I am rich,” he thought, and then, “but if I never am?” He paused with a clean towel in his hand, and looked around. The room was still the same, small and bare and cluttered and dirty. Outside the window was a blue mountain-peak beyond a broad dwindling stretch of juniper-dotted sand, but around his house there were other little low houses, mud houses sinking in the mud of the road. He turned slowly around, looking hopelessly at the yellow walls and at the tiny fire-place spilling pine ash out on the floor. The picture was shining wetly and tiny knobs of paint on the canvas shed tiny shadows. He frowned at it, stepped suddenly closer and examined it carefully. The letter-box outside clanged in closing, and he heard the postman going away. More bills? Perhaps there would be something else: he decided to see. There was a letter from home, from Minnesota.