People were walking here. Their foot-fall was like a noise heard in a dream and doubted. Their words were like the impact of water falling on stone. Their forms were comets flashing from nowhere into nowhere through a sombre and thick infinitude. They left a wake of drab. They were innumerable. And the sum of all their wakes made almost an atmosphere. This cloyed and choked and somehow had a sneer in it. So Quincy walked fast. And as he did so, the forms blocked in upon the flow of being with less frequence, less consistency. The Park itself had become the undertone. The curving of the paths gave to his motion a tonality. The bushes lay deep in their beds of grass. Above was a lacing of trees, a shameless cover for the naked night. For so the trees seemed to Quincy. The bright sky that shone through and above them was like the hot skin of some empassioned creature--a thing consumed in sex. And the short trees and ruffled bushes that lay before it were like shreds of lace on a vast nudity. They pricked it, they heightened it; even they adorned it. They did not hide it. And somehow, it was suggested to Quincy that they meant to hide it. Quincy’s lips were parted as he walked. And there was moisture on them. Also, there was a veil of dryness on his eyes. And the sky reclined before him like a woman’s breast--like Rhoda’s. Its slope was infinitely slight, delicate yet vast. He recalled the time when he had seen his sister. So he knew! And knowing, so he enjoyed. But in this overwhelming symbol entered more than that experience of sight. This mighty, pulsing sweep of sky gave him a glow, half-memory and half-eternal. For what are instincts but unconscious recollections? So, perhaps, it was natural that of a sudden, his mother came to him, stayed there, pervaded him; and in the spreading grew so vague that his mind caught no glimpse of her. Quincy walked, then, beneath this naked breast with its empurpled shreds of green. And his mind slept--slept perhaps in the same cadence wherein he had slept once, tight in a woman’s arms. And meantime, his feet beat on their way, even as had then his heart. And his lips were moist, taking in life. Quincy was tired, so he sat on a bench. His fingers dug in the damp paint. He brought them before his eyes. They were stained slightly green. This was a jarring note. It disturbed him. It caused a separate vibrating. A tendril of his mind quivered, as if in warning that he was to begin to think. The motion projected by this faint jarring upon himself had to be absorbed. It had to be absorbed either in mind or body. If in the former, he would think; if in the latter, he would walk. He walked.