Quincy went north on South Street, past the swinging doors of saloons and shops where marling-spikes and flag-trucks made display. Under the Bridge itself he went--looming above him like a curse; and into the rookeries of Cherry Hill. Quincy had had enough. He was frightened, horrified. He pushed up Water Street and westward, eager above all to escape the omnipresent Bridge. He passed through fetid piles of tenement, pouring their produce into the street. Crowds jostled him; cars clashed; machines went braying, shuttling. The taste of New York was bitter on his lips. Through its sheer bulk, it threatened to submerge him. He wished to run, in order to be rid of it. But he held himself back. He must be calm, courageous. All of this delirium, this lurid show of filth and vice and an inexplicable beauty--was it not life? Would he avoid life, would he be rid of it? Was he not of it? was he not also life? And so, aching in his soul, for his experience, yet aware deeply that he had somehow been visiting himself, Quincy reached the station and journeyed back to college. The depth of the impression of this trip on Quincy was such that he did not begin really to know it until somewhat later. Great shocks often compound a spiritual bath which takes a long time to soak upon the nerves. Quincy’s experience, as he looked back on it, was in the nature of a shock--a physical one. It grew blurred, dimensionless within his mind. And in proportion, grew the mental reflex. It seemed now, to Quincy, that the vagueness of what he had encountered was his own subjective vagueness; as if indeed he had pried into the arcana of existence. Of course, such a venture into truth could not have the petty clarity of fact. He learned that a glance within himself gave just such dim results. Yet here, dimness did not detract from poignancy. And so, with New York. There was a firm analogy between these delvings; and between their consequences, at first elusive, physical, and finally outspreading into an aura of deep importance. He spoke freely of all this to Garsted. “Why,” asked Garsted, “do you fail to divorce the sense of beauty from even the vilest thing you saw?” “That I can’t understand,” said Quincy. “You don’t seem to know what the sense of beauty means.” “Let me see if I can figure it out.” Quincy knit his brow, and his blue eyes softened. It was as if he had spiritually relaxed, instinctively aware that in this way one can receive. “Perhaps,” he groped on, “perhaps, when I feel beauty, I am really feeling a sense of welcome. A welcome of the spirit.” “Good!” cried Garsted. “And when do we welcome? Now, look out for your answer! No sentimentalism. Hypothetically, we welcome when we are charitable, altruistic, Christian. But actually--” “When we want, I guess.”