The truth was, indeed, that Tom could be insincere: deeply so, never. His insincerity was superficial. It could come into play the world over: it went like a mist before the sun of their friendship. David must learn a difficult thing: to believe his friend when he spoke truth, to be unshaken when he scattered counterfeits. Was not the reason plain enough? Tom was sensitive beyond measure. As no one else he felt the scorn of life, the scorn of human imperfection. Among the false works of man he had to move about, to hunt and earn his living. Tom’s passionate disgust for the Law! How his too fine sensibilities were agonized by the Law’s lying ugliness: so that his native pleasure in its practice went and he had no eyes for the Law’s better side. Or, if he did have pleasure in the game--and he must while he played it--how quick it died away before the soreness of his nerves! Tom could not admit of the need of life’s imperfections: not face the imperfections in himself. Yes: that was it. When these imperfections called for their hour of air, they simply cast the real Tom out where he would not interfere. That was why the love of power and applause, when it did come to Tom, came like intoxication, overwhelmed him so that David looked in vain for his scornful and uncompromising friend. Now David would look in vain no longer. In the very perfection of Tom’s worldliness, he saw the measure of his contempt. As if Tom said: Here, my fools, you want me to dazzle you and play you? You shall have your fill. You have no interest in my real thoughts, my real self? You shall have no peep at them. The more, now, Tow hid himself, the more David found him. All this David discovered for himself. All this, in many conversations, hinted or thrust sharply in, Tom had been preparing him to think. Tom--and an April sun upon the seed of himself.... David glowed.... What marvel what difference there could be in the same things! His cable-car flung grating shrieking on the corner: an adventurous jest which once was an ugly jolt against the tempo of his way. The City!--the miraculous City! No trees, no fresh sod greening: an ailanthus bursting here and there through cracks--gray cold--in the pavements. But men and women in the streets! Now he saw what teeming creatures these were, the streets and their women. Streets and women big with laughter and children. Teeming streets, teeming women. It was hard to recall how dead he had been that winter. It was hard to recall the streets. Gray mournful fissures they were, cracks by the cold upon the flint of a barren star: ruts in the crust of a dead world. Upon them the chill refuse of chaos was cast down. Soiled snow, soiled creatures. They crawled from their crannies and over-ran them. They bore in their eyes the Sign of exile in chaos. Now different streets--budding teeming streets: different himself, glowing through packed streets.