He left Petersen at the next street-corner and boarded a crowded street-car, reflecting on his engagement to meet the “quiet an’ thin Lucy” as he stood wearily clinging to the leather strap. Petersen’s attitude toward women was a familiar joke. Dressed in its little array of fixed and confident variations it had pursued Carl in the past without repulsing or flattering him. To him it was an elaborately pitiful delusion of dominance made by hosts of men, who felt the craving to inject a dramatic variety and assurance into the frightened monotones of their lives. In an aching effort to dignify their barren days these men adopted the roles of hunters and masters among women. They entered, with infinite coarseness and precision, a glamorous realm of lies, jealousies, cruelties, and haloes, and in this wildly fantastic land they managed to forget the flatly submissive attitudes of another world. Carl was telling himself that he had been waiting for a woman who could bring him something more than the crudely veiled undulation of flesh but he fashioned the starving little romance with great deliberateness. “Women have excited my flesh and it has often yielded to them, but that is simply a necessary triviality,” he said to himself. “I, too, must seek to evade the monotonies and restrictions of my life, lest I become mad, but at least I am quite conscious of the joke. The cheap little drug-store does not witness any hoodwinked swaggers on my part! So on to quiet Lucy, with her stiff stupidities and elastic curves.” Once more he had to pass the garrulous sentries at the gate--the neighbors around the doorstep. They eyed the dirt upon his clothes and face with an amazed contempt--Carrie Felman’s son a common laborer!--and lost in their scrutiny they gave him monosyllabic greetings. “Well, judging from the dirt all over you you’ve found a job,” said his mother in tones of blunt resignation. “Yes, I’m working as a lineman’s helper for the telephone company,” he answered in an expressionless voice. After he had washed his parents pelted him with amiable questions--the details of his work, wages, and companions--a dash of solicitude swinging with their desire to entertain the dull aftermath of a hot summer day. He answered their questions patiently and they were glad that their son seemed ready to plunge his “wildness” into the soothing currents of an average life. Their affection for him was only able to dominate their hearts when he failed to challenge the peaceful assumptions and bargains of their lives, for otherwise it verged into hatred because it was confronted by a stabbing mystery which it could not understand.