It was now night. The snow had subsided. Most of it had melted as it fell. An odor of moist discomfort came from the streets with Sarah--the odor of the city shopping for Christmas gifts. It was warm and cozy in Adelaide’s room. But as Quincy stood against the window and looked out, this petty ease lay in the back of his brain like a sucking plaster. The street was grey and brown. The lamp-light stumbled through the mists and vapors. A motor car went swaying, snorting; its reeking tires seemed to cut swaths in the thick gutter, like hot irons. His mother was reciting her adventures in half-a-dozen stores. Also, she was repeating for Rhoda a series of petty household troubles which already he and Adelaide had heard four times. But Adelaide never seemed to grow impatient. And the majestic Rhoda was at attention. Quincy found in this no virtue. Little huddled figures were sprayed through the street. They moved slowly, but laboriously. They were wet and irritated by the weather. Soon they would enter homes, like his, and recite to those they found there, eager to listen, the same round of petty trouble and smug adventure and fallacious sentiment. Would they find one among their various audiences who, like himself, objected? like himself was there through a grim jest of Nature? like himself, longed to be elsewhere? And if so, why could not he, Quincy, discover him? Why could not they be given one to another? A delivery wagon came splashing to their house and stopped. The horse shook his drenched hide. A boy leaped out, laden with packages. He saw the quick crunch of his feet, the stamp of the horse’s hoofs. And then, the bell rang loud and long. Everything outside, this sound reminded him, was muffled. It and he were inexorably separate. Yet, the house and the interminably repeated talk in the back of his brain--was it a solace for this isolation? The wagon churned its way from sight. Vaguely, he heard the rattle of the wheels. After it was gone, an elevated train mounted uptown with a slow rhythm. A car’s clear clang came to him, draped in fog. Two men trudged on the farther sidewalk. One of them laughed and slapped his comrade’s shoulder. The other pulled his hat low and turned up the collar of his coat. They disappeared--for ever. The lamps glared in the darkness that kept away from them. And his mother’s voice crushed on the melody of all these vagrant notes, bathed in the minor harmony of the night. “Quincy--father’s just come. Suppose you go down and greet him and tell him we’re all up here.” * * * * * Then, there was the day--a Sunday--when his mother was ill and Quincy stayed with her, in her bedroom. Adelaide had gone on an excursion. Jonas and Marsden never bothered. In the afternoon, for a while, his father came as if to perform a duty. On the mandate of his mother that he needed air, Quincy strolled out alone. This too, fell into the Pattern, as he traced back for it.