Outside the streetlights sparkled diamond-hard in a clear wind. Nan walked fast, her thoughts desperately tumultuous. The keen October air and the clatter of her heels on the empty pavement of Beacon Street were a relief after the senile stuffiness of her aunt's parlor. And I will be like that, spending my life explaining why I didn't dare live. No! No! Poor Aunt M. had nothing to fall back on. I have my music, my career, my sense of humor; it's not as if I were helpless before things like Fitzie. And she remembered how she'd stood at the piano the other night in that closefitting dress of royal blue satin and felt their eyes on her, and felt light coming into the bleary eyes of old people as she played to them. She had reached Massachusetts Avenue where the pavements were full of people coming out of the moving-picture theatres, standing in knots on the corner waiting for streetcars. For a moment she was caught up, elated, in the stream of windfreshened faces, bodies uncramping deliciously after the stiff seats of theatres. Her eyes ran thrillingly over faces that streamed past her, like her fingers over pianokeys. She walked fast, with exhilaration, until at a corner where she turned up past a drugstore, the curve of a cheek under a boy's mashed-down felt hat, full lips laughing, made her stop still suddenly. Dizzy blackness welled up through her. She stood panting on the corner. Whites of eyes, heads jerked towards her, puzzled looks as people passed. She walked back and forth in front of the drugstore. A hallucination, of course. But could she have seen him? Before she knew it she had called out: "Wenny!" People were looking at her. She walked hurriedly up the dark street, breathless, running away from them. She spun in the grip of a horrible nausea. * * * * "Why, Confucius looks sleeker than ever, Nan," said Fanshaw, and ran the tips of his fingers round the big blue teapot. They sat in the open window looking out at the misty russet trees of the Fenway, with the teatable between them. "He never goes hungry, or rather thirsty." "Imagine this weather for the end of October ... St. Martin's summer." "That's a nice name for it." "Nicer than ours. Indian summer always makes me think of Hiawatha." A sound of pounding and spades cutting gravel came up from the street below. Nan watched the blue backs of three laborers bend and straighten, bend and straighten as they worked in a hole in the street. A man in a black felt hat with a corncob pipe stuck in his beet face stood over them. "Curious for them to be tearing up the street at this time of the year," said Fanshaw, languidly. "Our watermain burst. There wasn't a drop of water in the house this morning." "How awkward."