A peculiar species of happiness lurked beneath the weeping. Grief, hating itself, found a revengeful pleasure in attempting to tear and exhaust itself into death. Sometimes the turmoil subsided to a light and sibilant fight for breath. The animal noise departed then and a small soul, much lighter than a phantom sin, plucked unavailingly at the mysterious spear that had suddenly coerced its breast.... The dark words of twilight finally entered the room, making an opera of the marred lyricism that escaped from the hidden face on the bed. Then night pardoned the deficiencies of the room and corrected them with moonlight, creating a tragic and chaste boudoir. Carl Felman felt emptied of all sound, and a mad craving for motion stabbed his limbs. He wanted to rush endlessly into space, barely supported by the breathless consolation of running after something that could never be caught. This would also be of great value to his heart, which was a stiffly smirking acrobat who has broken his legs but still strives to continue the act. He leaped from the bed and seized his cap. His mother, who had been entering his room at intervals and vainly questioning him, stopped him at the outer doorway. “Carl, where are you going?” she cried, in a sharply fearful voice. With a hugely mechanical effort he managed to twist low sounds from his useless lips. “Just--for a--walk--back--soon.” Without heeding her protests and questions, he fled down to the street. Human beings had disappeared, but he could see faces indented on the fronts of houses. One had a look of mangled suffering; another was studiously wicked, like a learned burglar; and a third bore the pathetic leer of a venturesome housemaid. He picked up these details, glanced at them a moment, and then threw them aside as though they were scandals from another planet. He passed into a region of three-story rooming-houses--flat wretches holding an air of patient cowardice. People surreptitiously filtered from the houses and walked down the street with Carl--chorus girls with plump, sneaky faces, underworld hoodlums with an air of wanly etched bravado, ponderously rollicking servant girls, clerks with the faces of genial mice, and meekly dazed old men stumping to their dish-washing jobs. To Carl they were also hurrying after something that had vanished and cajoling their mingled emptiness and pain with swift motion. Now and then he waved an arm to them in greeting, while an unearthly smile dug into his face. His gesture, when observed, was taken for an intended blow and he left attitudes of fear and pugnacity behind him.