At this point, Herman Pupick turned on his heel and walked out of the bookstore, leaving his vis-a-vis flat. But when our hero reached his dove cote that evening, he felt strangely disturbed. “Emmaline,” he said to his fellow sufferer, “have you ever had a splinter in your knee?” “Herman! How dare you!” cried Mrs. Pupick, blushing violently. “Do you think that sort of talk is fit for the home?” “No,” said Herman, a wave of shame covering him like a pail of dishwater. An hour later Herman and the dementia praecox case were kneeling beside their sleeping bags requesting God all over again to keep them pure. But Herman couldn’t sleep. Every ten minutes he would wake up and say “Splinters.” Finally our hero, first crossing himself three times, peeled back the bed covers from his sleeping consort. Madam Pupick was partial to the kind of night shirts they bury sailors in who have died at sea. For a moment Herman was almost discouraged. But a strange impulse had mastered him. Gingerly he lifted up the night dress until he had exposed Madam Pupick’s knee. At this point, the kippered herring at his side opened one of its glims and sensing danger, let out a terrible squawk. “Herman! What are you doing,” she shrieked. “I dreamed you had a splinter in your knee,” Herman mumbled with a guilty start, “and I was going to take it out.” Madam Pupick stared at him with watery eyes and yanked the bed covers into their proper position. She was a daughter of Eve, but her father was a mackerel. Thus was the first thread woven in the maelstrom of passion which was to trip our hero and singe his wings. For all that night he tossed on his bed like a Mexican jumping bean. He dreamed he was kneeling before a beautiful window and watching a windmill made of splinters turning around outside and on top of the windmill was a large snake. Then slowly in his dream the windmill and the snake did a fadeout and he found himself looking at Cutie’s knee just as he had seen it in the Methodist Book Store. In the middle of the night Herman woke up with a yell. He had kicked all the covers off and was standing in the middle of the bedroom. As his senses returned our hero felt that something had happened. And he remembered all of a sudden that he had forgotten his hat in the book store. Falling to his knees, Herman put the tips of his fingers together and, his eyes rolling, raised his voice in a grim unfaltering song. “_Onward Christian soldiers, Marching as to War.... With the Cross of Jesus_----” And at just this moment in another part of the great city Cutie with vine leaves in her hair was gathering asphodels in the groves of Kypris while the cuckoo clock on the rubber mantlepiece struck three and the ukeleles danced in the wind. FOURTH MOVEMENT _In which Our Hero Becomes an Open Book_ FOURTH MOVEMENT Herman Pupick wrestled with the Devil for three weeks and lost two straight falls. It was no use. Our hero’s pure mind was a total wreck.