Here they ordered dinner. During their eating the noise of thunder sounded and the splash of the storm drifted in through the dusty basement windows. A thick-wristed, red-fingered waitress slopped back and forth between their table and an odorous kitchen door. Lockwood kept his eyes fastened steadily upon the nervous features of his friend. He thought as the silence increased between them: "This man's got something the matter with him." Gradually an uneasiness came over the novelist, his sensitive nerves responding to the disquiet in the smiling eyes opposite. "You're kind of crazy," he leaned forward and whispered as if confiding an ominous, impersonal secret. "You've got the eyes of a man kind of crazy, Erik." He sat back in his chair, his hands holding the edge of the table, his chin tucked down, as if he were ruminating, narrow-eyed, upon some involved business proposition. "I get you now," he added slowly. "I'll put you in a book--a crazy man who kept fooling himself by imitating sane people." Dorn nodded. "Insanity would be a relief," he answered. "Come on." He stood up quickly and looked down at his friend. "Let's keep going. I've got something in me I want to get rid of." In the doorway the friends halted. The grave, melodious shout of the rain filled the night. The streets had become dark, attenuated pools. The rain falling illuminated the hidden faces of the buildings and silvered the air with whirling lines. As they stood facing the downpour Dorn thought, "Rachel's waiting for me. Why don't I go to her? But I'd only make her sad. Better let it get out of me in the rain." Holding his friend's arm he stood staring at the storm over the city. Through the sparkle and fume of the rain-colored night the lights of café signs burned like golden-lettered banners flung stiffly into the downpour. About the lights floated patches of yellow mist through which the rain swarmed in flurries of gleaming moths. There were lights of doors and windows beneath the burning signs. The remainder of the street was lost in a wilderness of rain that bubbled and raced over the pavements in an endless detonation. He spoke with a sudden softness: "I didn't get your artist, Warren, but you don't get this storm. It's noise and water to you." The novelist answered with a sagacious nod. "There's something alive in a night like this," Dorn went on, "something that isn't a part of life."