He listened with rapt and equal interest to her words and his, quavering between them, over their glasses. They were indifferent words. It mattered little what they meant. These words, also, were part of the great, rhythmic flow wherein the sun could pour and the winds could play. A bitter lust steeped up through his veins, stiffening his body, tightening the clasp of his fingers about her hand. He leaned over, and she leaned over, and they kissed. He caught no scent of her hair. But the feel of her lips was sharp and clinging. They drew him. They heated the liquor in his veins. They made his veins burst. “Come!” he said, crushing her hands. Her arms were stiff. “Where?” “Home.” She wrenched away her hands. “No,” she said, in a new sharp voice. Quincy stood up, towering over her. “Come, I say. Come, I say,” he cried. “No!” She held her seat. “Why not?” He swayed in his arrested energy. “Sit down, boy.” She seemed frightened. “Sit down. Sit down, first.” He sank stiffly to his seat. She leaned back rigidly in hers. Their eyes met. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.” “Why not--” He put his fist out on the table, as if to crush her reason as she gave it. “Can’t you guess?” she almost pleaded. He waited until her words came, like a bath of melted ice. “There’s something wrong, boy,--with me. I don’t want you to--just because we’ve been good pals,--not _that_!” A man began to sing “America.” Outside, an ambulance crashed past. A dull tussle in the street lay below a screen of piercing voices. A pause. Quincy was sober. He watched her with a tender interest that was almost whimsical. She glittered in anger and defiance, now she had given away her secret. With that act of humiliation, her pride had risen. She was sober also. “Do you think,” she spoke piercingly, leaning back still in her chair, “do you think, if it hadn’t been for somethin’ wrong, I’d ’a’ been out to-night, alone?” He nodded. Over and over again, he nodded. That was his answer to her. His eyes were watching inward a mute, innumerable procession where little huddled things, grey, warped, stunted, slid away. She spoke again. “Tell me, boy. You’re alone, too, ain’t you. _What’s wrong with you?_” The last grey thing slid out. Quincy followed it. In the street was dawn! Dawn with confetti and mud and ice. The street was yellow and hollow and disillusioned. It was a painted harlot after an orgy--a creature of streaked rouge and clotted sweat and bedraggled hair. Quincy left it behind. * * * * * On his desk was the letter of Clarice. Hope. Love. Life. Which was the most unbearable, the most impossible to face--they or their opposite? Which was wrong--they or their denial? Hope, love, life danced and beckoned. Quincy knew he must escape them. Hope, love, life--these were the nadirs of pain, these were the ecstasies to be annihilated. How?