He knew he would have to. There was little use in being clever at the Law save one could sell one’s cleverness. There was little use in treasuring even in some mute corner of his soul the dream that ability, unorganized, was profitable. It could only spoil his humor: perhaps his chances. Some day, Lomney might find him lunching alone and think it queer. This above all must be avoided. Lomney had his Class’s phobia for queerness. He would not have trusted Solomon in an outlandish cut of vest. Coming this late afternoon to see his friend, Tom found the check on his tangents of mood abominably hard. He must take Lomney to his bosom and cherish him: as a man should another who was to multiply his power.... Waiting made them pensive, forgetful. The doors of the vestibule sucked suddenly in. Cornelia and Tom gathered themselves with an alacrity determined by their recovery from its opposite. A woman was there. Her bare arms were folded: a gray apron spread across her body like a sooty mist over a fertile field. As they stepped in they left the day. They entered another time. In the transition they were quick to both. It was September and hot. Beyond the bricks and the pavements, Indian Summer made the world glad. Trees waved in their new bright colors like flowers sprung up over night: earth was a-dance with insects, was leaping drunk from sharp liquors: air trilled with seeds for the next Spring. In New York heat was empty. Tom and Cornelia thought this. David also. He sat upstairs in his room, looking over the Square. Tom and Cornelia were out of the day and into the hall. About them the odor of endless passions, innumerable steps: the acerb sad odor of the lodging house. More lasting and more real it was than the lives of the creatures who came and who went. Here in this breath of the dark halls, their one permanence. David had but recently moved in. The room was still somewhat strange to him: it was hard to rest in it, to rest asleep in it. Being with it stirred his nerves. The need of repose sent him to sitting in the Park. Also, he was still weary in the change from his vacation spent in the mountains with the Deanes. The first days of return had been dense ringing blows on the slumber of his nerves that were once more glad--glad as never before--in the free welcome of the woods. This was gone--gone echoing as David refitted to the City. He was pensive, waiting for his friends to see his new room and take him to dinner. He sat with his elbows on the base of the open window and was glad when the breeze touched his face. Also he was a little irritated when it fingered upward and threw his hair in his eyes. He had to move his hand to move his hair. Unwelcome. His mood was the immobile one in which the Past alone may move. The wind was the stir of the outer world, the world in which was his future and from whose moving he was momently apart.