From that night on his life fell into a regular stride--days of wrenching labor and nights of rebellious weariness, broken by intervals in which he crept, like a swindled, dirty child, to the arms of Lucy, washed into a dreamless rest by the simple flow of her desire for him and her sightless worship. To her he was an enigmatic, statuesque prince delighting her with queer words which she could finger as though they were new toys and bringing her an eager compression of grief and joy which she had never known before. She realized, dimly, that he was fundamentally alien to her, and she often said to herself: “Some day he’ll meet a child who c’n understand all of his funny words and then he’ll forget about me,” but this fear only increased the stubbornness of her grasp. And so his life wavered between toil, and sensual peace, and little mildly stunted poems until one morning in late autumn when, at the main office of the telephone company, he was discharged with the information that his job had been merely a temporary one. “Thanks, old boy,” he said loudly in the face of the astonished cashier. “If you knew what a relief this is to me you’d take a drink with me to celebrate the occasion.” “Now what in the devil’s the matter with you?”--the man voiced his peevish perplexity as he fished for Carl’s pay envelope. “I was getting accustomed to the chains, but now that you’ve benignly removed them I’ll make another effort to escape,” he answered, in the grip of a gay and aimless relief.