Cornelia felt the trace of his mood on her flesh, found a warm pleasure in talk with this earnest boy whose mind could touch truth without the stiff proddings of the clever. It seemed to Cornelia that David was steadfastly strong like a tree. Tom jumped out of his smoky silence and brewed coffee. They threw cushions on the floor. They laughed a bit at David’s awkwardness at squatting. These shadows in the room were good. Tom came forward now. The ease of his revery and of his listening had distilled some new disquiet. He needed to get at David. He would have said: “How little this boy knows himself! What passion lies behind this dream of friendship! What will the world do when he goes asking impossible treasures?” The thought gave him worry. He would have said: “The City will not make him. Thanks for that. But break him, break him, perhaps.” The fear made him urgent: David must be flexible with his terrible strength. His spoken words were: “I am reminded of a story----” “There was a man.” Tom did not know what he was going to say. His head swam. He was suddenly tired and full of power. He wanted, not sleep, but dream---- “who loved his friend. This man loved his friend and a woman came into his life whom he loved also. He asked for her in marriage, she gave her promise. So he went to his friend and told him. And the friend cried: ‘Do not wed her. Remain with me!’ And the man said: ‘I love this woman but you are my friend. I remain with you.’ He dismissed the woman whom he loved. “Now, thereafter, all was sorrow in the home of the man and his friend. One night as the man slept an angel came to him. The angel said: ‘Thou who art so loyal to thy friend, name a wish and it is granted.’ The man, half-unknown to himself, cried out: ‘Make a miracle! Make one my friend and my lover. Then I may be loyal and yet be happy.’ The angel smiled. ‘So it is already.’ The angel disappeared.” Tom paused. A sudden discomfort came upon his face. He pushed back to his tale as to haven: “...at once the man awoke. He found himself in his bed. He remembered the angel’s visitation. He believed it. He ran to the sleeping chamber of his friend, expecting to behold a miracle. It was his friend, his unchanged friend who slept there. The man cursed and smote his breast. Then a great light came to him. He understood. He returned, both loyal and happy.” David sat there. This Cornelia understood. Tom was on one of his moody jaunts and away. She had sat there watching as a girl on a fence might watch a horseman gallop past in dust and hoof-thud. She recoiled as he swung in too near.