Into the street his smile and her words went with him ... shredding his speed, eating into the mood of his release, until his smile went and he stood stock still. The sun splintered into the block, from the east, through mouldy cornices of houses. Men and women moved separate upon stone, moved from sun to shadow, brokenly. The day was yet too young to have welded them into the substance of the block. Each was a particle thrown out from a separate home. Karl stood, looked down through the scatter of men and women, the scatter of shade and sun. Athwart shoulders and skirts and hats that bobbed like dark flotsam in a golden sluggish stream, he saw a man move up. A weight rose from his bowels, clutched at his throat. The man he had seen once, with the woman he had seen often!--Her husband.... A sense of omen cloaked his head and made him dizzy. He felt only his body free, his head was cloaked. The street was suddenly a force, physical and relentless, fixing him there within the channel of this man. He could no longer fight for the fading word in him: Folly! The man was almost abreast of him standing to face him. There, in himself he heard, sharp like a fusillade, the words that were his own. “_I’m stopping you! Because your wife’s in danger! Look at her! Who put the iron bar across her breast?_” A young man leisurely moved up. A smile in his ruddy face, his red lips mumbling as if he discoursed amiably to himself. His eyes wandered amenably. He saw Karl. Something furrowed his brow into a question. Karl swerved aside. They passed each other.... And now the word that had been fading ... “folly” ... shrieked. It besieged him and shrieked. It was very brave. “Fool! Fool!”--what did the words mean? Why am I in the street? Why did her husband cross me in the street? His mind reached for the surety of his mantel and of its row of sober books. These casual things could be explained. He was lonely. Perhaps he was a bit ... unreally, of course, since what did he know of her?... in love. Nonsense. He jerked his cap over his eyes.... _Look at her! Take away the bar! Place your arms there!_... he returned to the house he lived in. The area-gate was open, so he went in by it. His mind, he was very sure, was master now. It was a hard fight of course. He had had so little training! For so very long, he had weltered in emotion. At home, the emotion of rage and of salvation against the brutal gluttony of his father: the emotion of faith against the crass certainty of his world that his mother was bad. And in America, above all, the emotion of hunger. With one way only to destroy it ... his easiest gift ... the emotion of music with which he earned his bread. --But it shall not master! His mind pictured the book on psychology upon his mantel. I’ll learn about that. And then some day I’ll dash the old ’cello ... no, absurd!... I’ll sell it. His feet led him into Clara’s kitchen.