Well, my aunt did not approve. I knew she wouldn't, long before I asked her. If I was the least bit undecided before, she gave me clearly to understand that companionship with Jewish boys would not be right for me; that I must avoid this stigma of Judaism as I would avoid a crime. She said it was for my _own_ good--but I cannot believe it very heartily. She was trying at that time to make me join a dancing class of Gentile boys and girls. She told me she thought their company would counteract the effect of having to endure a high school's rabble. There came a night, after a day of niggardly discouragements, when the strange moroseness seemed too heavy to bear. I told my aunt that I did not want any supper--a fact which did not worry her too much, since she was in a hurry to dress and go off to a studio party of some silly sort. And when she was gone and I was alone in the apartment, I could not read or rest or do anything. I tried to study my next day's lessons, but had to give them up. And at last I put on my hat and coat and went down to the street. The air was bracing, but I was not used to the streets at night--and a white, wraith-like fog was beginning to seep up from the pavements and cluster in misty, yellow patches around the lamp-lights. Shivering, I went on. I did not know where I was bound. The old, savage loneliness--here in the open, where the dampness brought the scent of withered grass and lean, bare trees--was sharper, more embittering than ever. I went across the street and into the nearest entrance of Central Park. The quietness of everything there frightened me, called up every foolish, childhood fear and superstition. I went through dark lanes that were branched over with creaking branches. I saw the lake, black, cold, with the stippled reflections of shore lights shining up from its edges. I felt the moist, chilly wind that came across the big lawns and struck my face and chest and shoulders. I felt--I could not help but feel that I must go on, go on and on--in search of I know not what. I came at length to the Fifth Avenue side of the park. The huge white stone and marble houses that flanked the street beyond were half lost in the mist. The automobiles that went up and down the pavements, which were wet and shining like the backs of seals, made no noise--went silently, mystically, sweeping blurred trails of light upon the sidewalks as they passed. Against that white, low horizon of houses I saw one thing that loomed dark and gropingly conspicuous. I did not know what it was. Not then. But it held my attention: the darkness, the gray curve of it against the sky. There was something about it that was forbidding, deep, sombre. The lower front of it seemed to be arched and pillared--and under each arch the shadows were impenetrably black. There were automobiles waiting in front of it, at the sidewalk's edge. A long string of them, too, as if many persons were within upon some mysterious business.