It was not long before he put to himself for the first time a question: What was killing the friendship between Tom and himself? For an uncharted time, he had been in fever, in trance; he had not looked at all. Now, seeing with sudden eyes, he saw their friendship and how it had changed, and how a blight was on it. Always there had been flurries of irritation; swift misgivings; shadows. How much else there had been! Warm communion: the sweet living in Tom’s strength and in the knowledge of his caring: the sheer delight of watching his clear mind cut through the mists of life, like a bird soar and sing over his head. Where now these delights?... It came to David how, for a long time already, they had not been.... Tom came home without taking his dinner. He was not hungry: also he knew that David would be out. He sat motionless in his favorite straight-back chair and took the storm of his senses with heroic grimness. In such an hour, David’s absence moved him obliquely. He was glad of his solitude in their room: fearful of the tread in the hall that must break it. And yet, he was listening, yearning,--suddenly possessed of the sense of something missing, and that thing vital, and that thing David. He caught himself back, in an eternal question: “If he were here, what would you say to each other?” This raging schism there was in all his thoughts: he yearned to hold David, and he yearned to be rid of him. Two monsters, these desires, feeding upon each other, feeding upon him. He helpless against them. If he wounded the one, its hurt was strength to the other. How could he kill the one, without being overwhelmed at once by its opponent? In their balance he was torn away by conflict, yet in their balance he was saved from some black annihilation he could not envisage. How could he lose David altogether? In what realm lived his wish altogether to have him? David came in. Night had crept up sweetly from the street. The City brooded in memory of an August which had come like a woman’s madness. It was still warm. A breeze came dancing through the open window. The room where Tom sat rigid seemed faintly a-swing in a sea: the glow and scent and murmur of the City was a wave, heaving the room. The wind whipped it gently. David came in and saw Tom sitting so strangely stiff; he stopped. Tom, this time, had not budged. He looked at David. He saw his open gentle face and its sweetness, he knew how unbearable it was that he should lose him. “David, won’t you come and sit down?” David came. Crossing the room, he stumbled on the rug. “David ... what is there wrong between us?” His head was turned toward his friend. David looked; there was Tom’s full face pleading toward him. His eyes were bright in the shadow: they glanced with a sharp pain and a great welling wish, like tears. David’s hand instinctively went out: he rested it upon his own knee. “I don’t know, Tom.... I don’t know.” Very faintly he spoke. There was a warm moistness in his mouth.