The sun went out of sight. The wind lifted the pine boughs and they moved as if in terror against the torn clouds. The sound that went through them died away in peace, in the happiness of being lost. May felt as if something of her had gone forever into the wide still sky and the dead shadowless park. She wanted to feel, not to think. When she thought, she was caught in her body as in a net. The separate parts of her were like pains where she thought Aunt Julia would loathe her. * * * * * When Laurence was apart from Julia and remembered her look of humility that asked for something she dared not state, he experienced an almost sickening pity for her. There was something in her suffering which he identified with his own. Yet he did not feel nearer to her in attributing their unhappiness in common to the futile and inevitable circumstances of human life. The pain of each of them, he told himself, was in realizing the isolation in which every human ultimately finds himself when he recognizes that his inner life cannot be shared. Laurence somehow exulted in seeing Julia forced to accept a condition of existence which had been plain to him for a long time. His despair was so complete that he imagined himself ready to abandon his defenses before her. But when he was actually in her presence she was only the thing that hurt him, and he was against her in spite of himself. Then her cruelty seemed monstrous, because she appeared to understand so little of what she had done. He knew that he bewildered her by showing no resentment toward Dudley Allen. Laurence despised her when she could not see the working of his pride that forced him to be superior to her lover's influence. Often he said to himself, I'll go away. I can't bear it! But, while he believed in nothing outside himself, what was there to seek? He visited his parents more frequently. To be with them was a fulfilment of his humiliation. He would end where he was born, as every one else did. Though he was certain that everything which developed through initiative was foredoomed to failure, his pride in Bobby increased. He wanted to keep his pessimism from contaminating his son. Bobby knew his power. When he encountered his father coming in from the laboratory alone it was a time to make a demand. "Hello, Dad! Say, Dad, _am_ I too much of a kid to run a motor cycle? Jack Wilson says I can't run his motor cycle because I'm too much of a kid! Say, Dad, I've got some money saved up. Can't I buy me a motor cycle? I can run it. Honest, I can!" He had been playing in the street, his face dirty and smeared with sweat, his shirt torn in front, and his collar askew. His look was rapt and self-intent. He had the air of pushing his father aside to reach some hidden determination.