He could hear occasionally Bowman's smooth periods and his wife's eager enjoyment of the discourse. His sense of worldly loneliness deepened; Flavilla seemed far away. All life was inexplicable--yes, and profitless, ending in weariness and death. The hunger for perfection, for God, that had been a constant part of his existence, the longing for peace and security, were almost unbearable. He had had a long struggle; the devil was deeply rooted in him. He could laugh at the broken tyranny of drugs and drink, but the passion for fine steel cutting edges was different, and twisted into every fiber. The rage that even yet threatened to flood him, sweeping away his painfully erected integrity, was different too. These things had made him a murderer. “... not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” He had a sudden muddled vision of another world, a world where sturdy men gave him their hands and in reality fulfilled June Bowman's mocking words. There the houses, the streets of his youth would have been impossible. Ah, he was thinking of another kind of heaven; it was a hop dream. There was a stir below and he heard the clatter of plates. Dinner was in preparation. “Lem!” his wife called. “Mr. Bowman wants you to go to the butcher's.” “Call me June,” he put in; adding: “Sure, Lem; the butcher's; we want a tenderloin, cut thick. You can't get any pep on greens; we ain't cattle.” Doret felt that he would have been infinitely happier with his own thin fare. In a manner he got comfort from a pinch of hunger; somehow the physical deprivation gave him a sense of purification. The other man, purple with the meat and beer, shook out a cigarette from a paper pack. “Always smoke caporal halves,” he proclaimed. The blue vapor from the three burning cigarettes rose and mingled. Bella was quiet, reflective; Bowman sat with half-shut speculative eyes; Lemuel Doret was again lost in visions. “How long are you taking the milk cure?” Bowman asked. Lemuel made no reply, but his wife smiled bitterly. “I had an idea,” the other continued; “but it's a little soon to spring anything. And I don't know but you might prefer it here.” “Try me,” Bella proclaimed; “that's all I want!” Doret still said nothing of his determination to conquer life in Nantbrook. A swift impulse seized him to take June Bowman by the collar and fling him into the street. “Just try me!” Bella repeated. He would be helpless in his, Doret's, hands. It was hard enough to be upright without an insinuating crook in the place. There was a heavy movement of feet in the front of the house, and he went out to meet a customer. Sliding the sensitive razor blade over a young tanned cheek he pondered moodily on the undesirable fact of June Bowman. Returning from this exercise of his trade he saw Bella descending the stair with a plate. “With all your going on over Flavilla,” she told him, “it never came to you that she'd like a piece of steak.”