The vision of this was a searing stripe on David’s mind as he lay within the night: was a dark band as he awoke upon the morning. He was naked in bed. His strong arms were thrown up like an infant’s. His open palms pillowed his neck. As he breathed, the muscles in his abdomen rolled gently. He was a powerful boy, with white skin and a wave of golden hair upon his body. He had pulled his bed directly beneath a dormer window. The sun bronzed his head. The clear soft strength of his face came out in this sleepy light. David dozed and prodded his senses into getting up. He was strong and refreshed in the morning. He thought of work as a contest and knew he would win. The Hell of labor was upstairs where the men sweated in open shirts rolling cigars, and he had seen the women fold back their waists till the tawny dust grimed the skin of their breasts. He was in this world’s Purgatory. In the quiet offices beyond, the inner ones bound by invisible threads of gold to the ease of high houses in the winter and the distant smile of the mountains, was Paradise and was the goal. David thought that he had given up the free fields of his home and that now, already he was set on winning them back. This, it seemed to him, was droll. He wondered why he had thrown the fields away, when so evidently the promise of the City was to be able to revisit them. He wondered why _he_ had done so. He thought of Anne, who perhaps was forgetting the scent of the clover. He recalled that if he hurried with his bath, he would have more time at breakfast--more time to be with Anne. His long legs were out of the bed. It was hard to pierce to Anne. Both he and she were embarrassed with their desire to speak freely. They were shy. One morning she said to him: “Mr. David, if you would want to, why don’t you come back and I’ll cook you your dinner.” He thanked her and refused. “You’ve worked enough, I think.” “Oh, I don’t mind.” She had not pressed her offer. He had commanded his pleasure. So it must be her pleasure. She was that sort of woman. “What do you do in the evenings?” he asked her. “Oh, not much. I’m always to bed early. It’s too hot for dancing, ain’t it?” She hurried through her answer. David suddenly knew that when his sickened will and stinging senses came to the house at night, she was there also! While he lay awake in his bed, a wall was between his nakedness and hers. It was both painful and sweet to think of this. The black heat rolled with enforcement through the City. Life was wet fire. A murmur of anguish was the breath of the night. He lay wide-eyed, dreaming. The air was a prison. His senses yearned toward the quiet of death as release from this breath of the world--from these fumes of a dead sun. He was under surprise when it knocked at the door. “Mr. David, I’ve brought you a cool drink. May I come in?” He did not move. He did not reach for his sheet. Anne came through the blackness and gave him a glass. He gulped wet coolth.