I did not argue. I did not point out to him the false exaggeration of his picture. I did not show him that at my age his work had been to help his father invest his money so that neither of them should ever need to use their minds: that indeed neither of them had ever used their minds, and that the fair consequence had been ... so far beyond the ugliness of their thoughts ... that I was able wholly, passionately, greatly, to give all my mind, all my life to the white flame of intellectual creation. But even this flame needed its nourishment: was it logical to bring this light to being and then let it die? The gross man is nourished with gross food: the indifferent man with any food at all. My high work called for high fuel. Not for a drudge, not for a harried woman, nor a pretty one, nor for promiscuous pleasures. For Mildred! the essential Mildred! Nothing less. And the proof was that ere I had found the perfection of her love, I had not been nourished at all. Rather than blemish the fine growth of my life, I had lived on myself, until I had found my equal.... Of all this, I said naught. I kissed my mother’s accurately rouged cheek: I touched my father’s hand, its soft complacence gave me a savage turn. I went quickly to the door. My mother stopped me. “John, I want you to come back. Are you free Saturday? ... in the afternoon? I’ll stay at home. Nothing has been decided. You must not be hasty. I want to see----” I saw them: so impervious and healthy.--From their stubbornness, my will: from their sheer animal strength, my mental power.... So flashed my thought, but not in irony: a cool constatation. I said: “There is nothing for you to see. It doesn’t matter. And everything has been decided.” ... I was in the street. And I had forgotten my words, impetuous, boastful words that seemed to mean nothing at all. For in my consciousness there was the knowledge that nothing had been decided: that my great need of winning Mildred and of having her right was farther from fulfillment than it had ever been.--Better go back, and not be proud: win your mother, said my reason. I knew I would not go back. _c_ I had left early, too early to rush precipitate to Mildred. There was time to walk to her, and in the blind congestion of my thoughts the need of walking. Spring was a haze within the quiet street. The houses were high gray walls of emptiness. Their windows told of no life. Life was a fertile hush dreaming inchoate like a stirless sea against these rocks of houses. I walked as through some elemental birth, æons anterior to men and cities; through sleepy and vast densities scarce sparked with consciousness. A monster too dull to be savage, too close still to the protoplasmic slime, was this Spring world sprawled upon the stone hills of the city. And as I walked within its palpable mood, my own thoughts clashed like cymbals in a night: their strident clarities were like a wound gashed in its somnolent flesh.