What was he? What was he doing? A fear in this that was somehow sweet. For it impelled him to a sweet direction. He was nothing: what he did, mattered not at all. What of it? He was going to die some day, and that was sure. He had a haven there: and also he had a haven in the past. Perhaps he should have died when his mother died? How he loved her now! With what new fragrance! Let him fear, and be cold. He had a way in his real life from these. Some day he would die and see his mother. This dwelling back, this yearning forward were one.... She had eyes too knowing ever to need to look. Eyes that felt him. He sat there holding the skein of yarn that her long soft hands unraveled: silently. Her arms moved in rhythm: and her body: and her mouth, that was smiling. He was caught up, they dwelt together in a song whose cadence her busy hands were marking. The yarn that went from his own hands to hers, it bound them: it was not yarn at all: it was red. Sweetly, unendingly the music went that enclosed them. Sweet, unending were the changes of its mood. The cord no longer flowed from him to her. Within it was life running from her heart to her dear hands: and thence to his and to his thirsting heart. His mother fed him, always his mother smiled and he could see the breathing of her breast. She smiled, her breast rose; her breast rose and touched him. The touch was naked: naked mother-flesh to his lips. He was an open mouth, drinking the touch of her breast: drinking his mother. Swinging ... rocking ... swooning ... drinking his mother. Footsteps in the hall. David lurched from his revery. Shreds of it clung to him spinning back to earth: he was still red and moist with it. What did it matter if he was lonely? He would find loves. He was young and strong, his hands were not idle. The city embosomed him. His hands were not idle, seeking. A knock at the door. There was comfort every way. Backward, forward: comfort of rest, comfort of adventure. “Come in,” he said. He was surprised at the laughter in his voice. Tom and Cornelia: a little hushed looking about, taking in his new walls and roof. He was on them, unbridled, pouring. “Big enough to hold my bones as I sleep.... Don’t look so shocked. Are you going to disown me?” His words poured fast. Slowly, behind his words, he seemed to face them.... He was leaving the world of his family, the cloying and sweet drag of it. Here was the coming. These friends: tissues of thought and passion that were not his! What was his measure, what did he look like here? Through the door had come with them the City. Chaos of steel and stone in which swung numberless worlds of flesh, lactaries of blood. Sudden he was in it! He heard its throb in his room, he felt its Hand, weave of a million separate forces, loom on him, fall on him, test him.... His voice in a maze of roars, his eyes in a maze of suns. Transfiguration. Silence out of the roaring worlds. His own voice unafraid. They listened to him.