Curly withdrew into himself in the curious, baffling way he had; the way that made him mysterious and somewhat superior, and, at times, brought on him the distrust of his companions, always morbidly suspicious at their best. Archie disliked to step out of Gibbs’s place into the street; it seemed like an exposure. He glanced out. The summer twilight had deepened into darkness. The street was deserted and bare, though the cobblestones somehow exuded the heat and turmoil of the day that had just passed from them. Archie thought for an instant of what Curly had said about his mother; he could see her as she would be sitting in the kitchen, with the lamp on the table; Gusta would be bustling about getting the supper, the children moving after her, clutching at her skirts, retarding her, getting in her way, seeming to endanger their own lives by scalding and burning and falling and other domestic accidents, which, though always impending, never befell. The kitchen would be full of the pleasant odor of frying potatoes, and the coffee, bubbling over now and then and sizzling on the hot stove--Archie had a sense of all these things, and his heart yearned and softened. And then suddenly he thought of his father, and he knew that the conception of the home he had just had was the way it used to be before his father lost his leg and all the ills following that accident had come upon the family; the house was no longer cheerful; the smell of boiling coffee was not in it as often as it used to be; his mother was depressed and his father quarrelsome, even Gusta had changed; he would be sure to encounter that lover of hers, that plumber whom he hated. He squeezed the roll of bills in his pocket; suddenly, too, he remembered his new revolver and pressed it against his thigh, and he had pleasure in that. He went out into the street. After all, the darkness was kind; there were glaring and flashing electric lights along the street, of course; the cheap restaurant across the way was blazing, people were drifting in and out, but they were not exactly the same kind of people in appearance that had thronged the streets by day. There was a new atmosphere--a more congenial atmosphere, for night had come, and had brought a change and a new race of people to the earth--a race that lived and worked by night, with whom Archie felt a kinship. He did not hate them as he was unconsciously growing to hate the people of the daylight. He saw a lame hot-tamale man in white, hobbling up the street, painfully carrying his steaming can; he saw cabmen on their cabs down toward Cherokee Street; he saw two girls, vague, indistinct, suggestive, flitting hurriedly by in the shadows; the electric lights were blazing with a hard fierce glare, but there were shadows, deep and black and soft. He started toward Cherokee Street; he squeezed the money in his pocket; he was somehow elated with the independence it gave him.