“A personal hatred?” echoed Fred.

Storch blew out the light.

“You’re duller than I thought,” he called through the gloom.

Fred turned his face away and tried to sleep.

The next day he decided to crawl out of bed and begin to win back his strength.  He couldn’t lie there forever sharing Storch’s roof and crust.  But the effort left him exhausted and he was soon glad to fling himself back upon the couch.

Each succeeding day he felt a little stronger, until the time came when he was able to drag himself to the open door and sit in the sunshine.  He had never thought much about sunshine in the old days.  A fine day had been something to be remarked, but scarcely hoarded.  With the steam radiator working, it had not mattered so much whether the sun shone or not...  He remembered the first time that a real sense of the sun’s beauty had struck him—­on that morning which now seemed so remote—­when he had risen weakly from his cot at the detention hospital and made ready for exile at Fairview.  Less than a year ago!  How many things had assumed new values since then!  Now, he could exploit every sunbeam to its minutest warmth, he could wring sustenance from a handful of crumbs, he knew what a cup of cold water meant.  He was on speaking terms with hunger, he had been comrade to madness, he had looked upon sudden death, he was an outcast and, in a sense, a criminal.  He felt that he could almost say with Hilmer: 

“I know all the dirty, rotten things of life by direct contact.”

All but murder—­yet it had brushed close to him.  Even now he could evoke the choking rage that had engulfed him on that night of his arrest when his defenseless cheek had reddened to the blow of humiliation.  This had been, however, a flash of passion.  But once, meeting a man who blocked his path in the first upper reaches of the hills, beyond Fairview, he had felt the even more primitive itch of self-preservation urging him to the ultimate crime.  Would he end by going a step farther and planning the destruction of life in cold blood?

It was curious how constant association with a sensational idea dulled the edge of its novelty.  The first time he had heard deliberate and passionless murder all but plotted in Storch’s huddled room he had felt a quick heartbeat of instinctive protest.  Had he been stronger at that moment he would have leaped to his feet in opposition.  But the moment passed and when he heard the subject broached again he listened curiously.  Finally he ceased to feel the slightest tremor of revolt.  Was indifference always the first step toward surrender?