David saw how he was in a Jungle. A high and splendid Jungle whose call to the hunt the minds of men had made complex and beautiful, but had by no jot lessened. On the high seas and in far countries they wrangled with fire and steel: in the curbs of the City they wrangled with their bodies: elsewhere they wrangled with sinuous thrusts of their brains, deceit of their mouths. But everywhere they were at a single, sterile Game. David had been willing to accept Tom’s symbol for it all: that black swarm of men, blotching the canyoned street--the brokers at the Curb. He knew it for what it was. Now, David was beginning to see by a new light, to find different colors. Immersed in the struggle himself, he found that it had its appeal like any contest: its occasions for fun and romance, its release of the generous and the brave from the welter of uglier instincts. The strange thing about Tom was that he kept the attitude of the outsider. Perhaps therein lay his strength, the element of caution and command above the Battle. But if David knew from his boyhood what a terrible thing it was to watch two men beat each other in the street, he knew as well what a thrilling thing it was if he were one of the beaters--beyond pain and reason altogether, given up to the ecstasy of _beating_. So now, however arbitrary the rules, wasteful the blows and trivial the ends, there was a pleasure in this clinch of wits, a catching curve to this conflict. The glamor might come, as Tom insisted, from the prodigious expense of will and energy in those who struggled together. But glamor it was.... Was all glory on earth the glory merely of him who could see glory? David moved to his new poise in the world on wings within him like the wings of a seed. He was part of that Spring, he would bud with it: he too sought sustenance for his green shoots, his frail flowers. His affair with Constance shed mellowness like a sun: his relation with Tom inspired at once a taste for mastery and the need of seeking it elsewhere since to Tom he was subject. In the particular detail of finding his life downtown an exciting game, there was his new Chief, the credit man, Mr. Christopher Barlow. A little gray-haired man with blue eyes sparkling: a silent man who seemed unconcerned with giving him the most perfunctory explanations of the work he expected him to do. “How the devil can I give satisfaction if Mr. Barlow declines to show me how?” said David to himself: and looked at Mr. Barlow: and found he was not near so ill-at-ease as the occasion called for. Mr. Barlow did not ignore him. His eyes dwelt on David, reticent, timidly, as if he feared to intrude even with his eyes. But it was no professional attention. The embargo was strict on business. David had his desk. What should he do with it? He pondered--pondered long since there was nothing swift in David at all. He resolved to take matters into his own hands. “I am here,” he decided, “I have to do something here. I’ll look about....”