In the street the dust lay thick and still, and the wilted foliage of the mulberry trees hung motionless from the great arching boughs. Only an aspen at the corner seemed alive and tremulous, while sensitive little shivers ran through the silvery leaves, which looked as if they were cut out of velvet. As Oliver left the house, the town awoke slowly from its lethargy, and the sound of laughter floated to him from the porches behind their screens of honeysuckle or roses. But even this laughter seemed to him to contain the burden of weariness which oppressed and disenchanted his spirit. The pall of melancholy spread from the winding yellow river at the foot of the hill to the procession of cedars which stood pitch-black against the few dim stars on the eastern horizon. "What is the use?" he asked himself suddenly, uttering aloud that grim question which lies always beneath the vivid, richly clustering impressions in the imaginative mind. Of his struggle, his sacrifice--of his art even--what was the use? A bitter despondency--the crushing despondency of youth which age does not feel and has forgotten--weighed upon him like a physical burden. And because he was young and not without a certain pride in the intensity of his suffering, he increased his misery by doggedly refusing to trace it back to its natural origin in an empty stomach. But the laws that govern the variable mind of man are as inscrutable as the secret of light. Turning into a cross street, he came upon the tower of Saint James' Church, and he grew suddenly cheerful. The quickening of his pulses changed the aspect of the town as completely as if an invigorating shower had fallen upon it. The supreme, haunting interest of life revived.