The city flashed before her in all the sparkle of October, the air tingled, and in the early morning light the houses, the street, looked as bright and fresh as young school-children washed, combed, bright-eyed, new with sleep, and up from roofs went magic veilings of flimsy smoke.  Down the avenues clanged cars black with mechanics, clerks, and shop-girls on the way to work; people streamed hurrying to their day’s toil.  The city was awake, shaking in every part of her with glad breakfast and the rush to activity.  What colossal forces swinging in, swinging out of the metropolis in long pulsations of freight and ship and electricity!  Wall Street would roar, the skyscrapers swarm, the schools drone and murmur and sing, the mills grind and rattle, and the six continents and the seven seas would pulse their blood into the city and be flushed by her radiating tides.  Into this hidden activity Myra stepped, deaf and blind to all but the clamor of her heart and a single man walking like a black pawn aureoled in the low early sunlight.

She came down slowly, as he came up.  She glanced at his face.  She was shocked by its suffering, its gray age.  He looked quite shabby in his long frayed coat, his unpolished shoes, his gray slouch hat—­shabby and homely, and ill-proportioned, stooping a little, his rough shock of hair framing the furrowed face and sunken melancholy eyes.  And it was for this man that she had been breaking her heart!  Yet, at the moment there swept over her an awful surge of passion, so strong that she could have seized him in her arms and died in his embrace.

He, in turn, saw how white and set her face was, how condemnatory.  He had come to her almost ready to throw his plans overboard and cleave to her—­for a day and a night that side of his nature had dominated, expunging all else, driving him to her, demanding that he grasp her magic presence, her womanly splendor.  This alone was real, and all the rest fantastic.  And he had walked up and down the street with all the October morning singing in his blood; the world was glorious again and he was young; he would take her, he would forget all else, and they would go off somewhere in the wilderness and really live.  He had never lived yet.  He thirsted for life, he thirsted for all this woman could give him.  And now the condemnation in her face choked him off, made her a stranger, separated them, made it hard to speak to her.

He cried in a low voice: 

“Myra!”

The word was charged with genuine passion, and she became more pale, and stood unable to find her tongue, her lips quivering painfully.

Then suddenly there was a nervous overflow.

“You wanted to walk in the Park,” she blurted in a cold, uneven voice.  “We’d better be going then.  I won’t have much time.  I’ve got to be at school early.”

She started off, and he strode beside her.  They walked in a strange slow silence, each charged with inexpressible, conflicting emotions, and each waiting for the other.  This strain was impossible, and finally Joe began speaking in low tones.