This had not been his first quarrel with Clara, and the frequency of their collisions, always followed by a skirmish of nervous laughter, made him believe that they were both stupidly postponing a sure separation. Clara was, in her entire essence, a deft Puritan industriously beating the back of a frightened Pagan. At certain intervals the Pagan arose and knocked the Puritan unconscious but the latter always gradually revived and resumed its dulcet mastership, and Clara liked or disliked Carl whenever her inner situation shifted in these ways. Carl had grown weary of being alternately punched and caressed by her moods. He had long since realized that his relations with her were merely the playthings of a fluctuating emotional response and that neither he nor she had the slightest respect for each other’s habits and minds, and on this evening, as he walked down the street after leaving her studio he knew that the uncertain pretence of drama had ended. He had slowly discovered that almost all of the people around him, with their different versions of culture and art--those two realities hidden by mincing courtezans of egoism--were distrustful of bluntness and gay impulse in conduct and had made a word known as “unconventional,” in order to defend the ordinary fright that governed their actions. A venerable contradiction among these minor people but one that had held new outlines for him. He had also learned that most of these people were so accustomed to masquerades that they could not believe in the reality of a carelessly naked attitude and usually mistook it for a dazzling and ingenious pose. CHAPTER XI. Filled with these gloomy realities he walked down a roughly bright street where the underworld tiptoed furtively between the ranks of semi-respectable working-people--a street of gaping, sleekly sinister saloons, cabarets, small, thickly tawdry shops, and cheap, coffin-like hotels and apartment houses. The hour was early--nine p.m.--and he walked slowly, engaged in his favorite pastime of watching the shrouded haste of crowds. As he passed a moving-picture theater, dotted with greasy electric lights and plastered with inanely gaudy posters, he felt a light hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw Lucy standing before him. The sight gave him a friendly shock, for on this evening he was tired of clever hypocrisies and longed for anything that would be crude and unassuming. “Lucy, have you fallen down from some sky?” he asked. “No, I just came out of the theater here an’ saw you walkin’ by. Gee, but I’m glad I did! It’s been a year now since we’ve seen each other, hasn’t it? An’ I never, never thought I’d meet you again.” “Well, what has happened to you, Luce?” he asked as they walked down the street together. “I’m married to Fred now. I didn’t see anything else to do after you left, and all of my folks just pushed me into it. ’Nen besides I was tired of workin’ in that darn store. Tired.” “Are you less tired now? Happy?”