David struggled with what he deemed his impotence. He was not very bright, he feared. Perhaps he failed to feel the stupidity of men because himself was stupid. Tom would not tell him that. A wave of the need of giving welled about him. He was warm and relaxed within this element whose indeterminate grain moved him toward Tom.... He relaxed. The same easeless stir, moving to stiffen him back, poison this sweetness, to make him one again with his threatened solitude. David struggled for the quickening of himself in self-bestowal. Tom sat in darkness, bitter, hard, his will a clenched fist over his body. With a strain so true that the muscles in his neck stood out, he strove to turn away from his loved friend. But his hand went forth: his knotted hand that seemed beaten by the weathers of life went forth as on a journey hazardous even to its wisdom. It tremored close to the hand of David ... the warmth of the young hand made it cold. A sharp shrill voice that sounded a shriek in the darkness. “Let’s have a light,” Tom jumped up. In the yellow of the gas, David sat blinking. Tom was all movement. He flung off his shoes, put on another pair. He changed his necktie. He hung away his house coat. He stood dressed for the street. “I must be off,” he declared. “Which way do you go?” He was decreased to a more comfortable pitch by this let of energy: he came to David; with both hands half-helped him from his seat. They had been long in darkness: in darkness some strange light from each had played upon them. Now at the mundane level of the gas-lamp, they stood and needed to look into each other. Their eyes were venturesome, but their darts of laughter proved them timid. They stirred: their bodies and their minds: swerving away. As if they dangled loose from one another and were close-fastened only by their eyes.... * * * * * David walked yearnful through the City. It seemed sure to him that his heart was empty. He cared for no one. He was a speck caught in a petty whirl that gulfed him quite as whole as if an ocean had risen to immerse him. Happenings of the day and of all other days lay in the back of his head in a shadowed corner where he flung what he was too weary to dispose of: the corner of a curiously cluttered room that had no dear thing in it. So, walking the wild City, it was to David.