it wasn't certain, i supposed, that pickering's private office was in the building i'd seen him come out of earlier. but it seemed likely, and i walked across park row and stood on the corner of park row and beekman street looking up at it. it had no distinction; just a plain, tired-looking, flat-roofed old building with storefronts on the street floor, and above them four identical stories of narrow, closely spaced windows. the storefront windows were dirty, and a lot of them had torn and faded summer awnings folded back against the wall; the bottom halves of some were protected by rusting metal grillwork. in lower manhattan many a drab building just like it has survived into the second half of the twentieth century. it was depressing to look at. in the windows of the new york belting and packing company lay stacks of gray cardboard boxes and piled-up coils of leather belting; next to it was a dingy-looking stationer's: willy wallach. jumbled together in another window stood big glass jugs in protective wooden cases; they were labeled poland water, whatever that was; owen hutchinson, agent, it said on the window. and there was s. gruhn, tailor, and rodriguez pons, cigar dealers, and i don't know what all. under many of the upper-floor windows hung the usual long narrow signs, tilted downward so they could be read from the street. they were of varying lengths; as long, i supposed, as the office space rented by the business firms whose names were painted on them. turf, field and farm, said one under a row of fourth-floor windows; another said the scottish american, and another the retailer. i saw scientific american under a row of third-floor windows, and down at the far end of the same floor hung a sign i glanced at as casually as at the others, and which—i mean this literally—i later saw in nightmares, and still do. the new-york observer, this one said. i walked up a few wooden steps that needed painting, into the recessed entrance, and pushed through a pair of heavy wood-and-glass doors into a vestibule lighted only by the daylight from the street behind me. the building was worn out; inside there was no hiding it, and no one had tried. the wooden floor stretching on into a gloomy interior was worn, the nailheads shiny, and it was filthy: covered with tobacco spit, cigar butts, and permanent ground-in dirt. so was the wooden staircase at my left, the treads so worn they were scooped out at the centers. on the dark-green plaster wall, patched in soiled-white places, was a directory of tenants. the index finger of a large,carefully painted hand—each finger distinct, the sleeve cuff shadowed to seem rounded—pointed ahead into the gloom; behind the cuff was lettered a list of tenants' names and office numbers. an identical hand was painted on the wall of the staircase, pointing up, another longer listing of names behind it. on both lists some of the names had been professionally lettered, but they were faded now, sometimes chipped; these were the older tenants, i imagined. newer names were often crudely lettered, paint dribbles actually running down from the letters of one of them. a good many names were scratched or painted out, others written in above them. some of these were only scribbled; one was simply penciled longhand. and none of them read "jake pickering." a man and then a messenger boy had come in after me and gone up the stairs, and i heard sounds back in the first-floor gloom. now i heard steps coming down the stairs, then a middle-aged or early-elderly white-bearded man appeared, wearing an overcoat and a round cloth cap with earmuff flaps. he glanced at me, and i said, "is there a building superintendent somewhere?" he said, "ha!"—a short bark of disgusted laughter. "a building superintendent! in the potter building! no, sir, there is no one here with either the title or office; there is only a janitor." i asked where to find him, and he said, "a question often asked, but seldom answered with any certainty. he has a den, a lair, under the nassau street entrance, and is sometimes caught there. there's ellen bull"—he pointed ahead into the building, and i saw a vague bulky figure silhouetted down the hallway. "she'll direct you." i thanked him, and he said, "if you find him, which is doubtful, tell him, pray, that dr. prime of the observer reminds him once again that his offices are much too warm for comfort." he smiled pleasantly, gave me a short nod, and pushed through the doors to the street. i walked into the building and found ellen bull, a tall very large negro woman who must have weighed over two hundred pounds; she wore a bandanna tied over her hair and carried an empty pail and a mop. the janitor's cubbyhole, she said, was directly under the nassau street stairs to the basement. i thanked her, and she smiled, her teeth very white in the gloom; she was about forty-five, and as i walked on, it occurred to me that she had probably been a slave. i passed heavy paneled-wood doors, a few of them numbered, most of them not. some were ajar, most were closed. some were labeled with carefully painted names: august w. almquist, patent agent; j.w. denison; w.h. osborn, lawyer. others bore only a square of paper or cardboard, handwritten with a name and tacked to the door panel. in the middle of the building the hall was lighted dimly by gas jets behind globes, the gas turned low; nearer the entrances whatever light there was came from the street. in the nassau street vestibule, under the stairs leading up into the building, a second narrower flight led to the basement, and i walked over and looked down it; it was completely dark. from somewhere overhead i heard the steady rasp of a handsaw and the nerve-jarring squeal, endlessly repeated, of deeply driven nails pried loose. "anyone there?" i called down into the basement. only silence; i'd have been surprised at an answer. i walked halfway down the stairs, but no farther; i wasn't going to blunder around down there in the blackness and break a leg. overhead the squeal of the nails and the sound of the saw continued, and i cupped both hands at my mouth, and called again; more silence. then i yelled "anyone down there?" and got a distant squeak of a replyfrom somewhere below and far back. i walked up to the vestibule again, stood waiting, and presently heard feet shuffling along a floor for a dozen steps before they sounded on the wood of the stairs. i looked down and saw a skinny old man emerging from the basement darkness, his hand on the railing as he slowly climbed up. at first i saw only a bald head, freckled on top; then blue eyes lifted to squint up at me, needing glasses, i supposed; then wide green suspenders curving over the shoulders of a white shirt appeared; and finally the rest of him moved into view out of the darkness, knees slowly lifting as he climbed, pants much too big at the waist, hardly touching the old man, in fact. i gave him dr. prime's message as he climbed the last few stairs up into the light, and he began nodding sadly. "i know. i know. everyone's complaining. it is too warm!" he stepped up into the vestibule, sighing, and nodded toward the plaster wall beside me. "feel!" i put my hand on the wall and nodded; it was pretty warm. "flue goes up through there, and we're burning wood these days." he rolled his eyes up toward the squealing and sawing. "cutting an elevator shaft through, and the owner's burning the old flooring," he said contemptuously. "saving coal. makes a hot fire, and a lot more work for me." i listened, making sympathetic grimaces, then said i was looking for a tenant, jacob pickering. he sighed, and said, "well, mr. pickering, what's your complaint? if it's too hot, i can't—" "no, i'm not pickering; i'm looking for him. which is his office?" but that was too much; he was shaking his head again, turning back toward the basement. "i don't know; how should i know? i know the old tenants; i knew every tenant when the paper was still here! now the paper's gone, building's gone downhill. potter building it is now," he said contemptuously. "all the old tenants are leaving fast as their lease expires. full of fly-by-nights now. they come and they go, some even sublet and don't tell me or mr. potter. i can't keep track of them; have you been upstairs?" i said no, and he shook his head at the impossibility of describing it. "rabbit warren. chopped up into new little offices with matchboard siding; you could spit through the walls! even new hallways up there now, and be still more of them pretty soon, up on the top floors where the paper was. who knows who's up there?" i was stuck for a moment, then i thought of something. "how do they get their mail if you don't know who's where?" he mumbled, his head ducked, starting down the stairs. "oh, i manage; i always manage somehow." "i'm sure you do, but how do you manage?" i had him now; he had to stop and look back and say it. "i keep a book." i'd guessed that. "and where's the book?" "downstairs," he said irritably. '"way back somewhere; i'm not sure where i—"i had my hand in my pocket, "well, i realize it'a lot of trouble." i found a quarter, remembering that it was more than an hour'spayforthis(s) man, and handed it to him. "but i'd be very grateful—" "you're a gentleman, sir; glad to oblige. be back in a minute." it was more than a minute, but he came back upstairs with a pocket notebook, the cardboard cover curling back, the upper corners of the pages splayed out; it had a hole punched through a corner, a piece of dirty white twine tied through it in a loop. he opened it, scanning the pages as he turned them slowly, wetting a thumb each time. i stood looking over his shoulders; at least half the names had been scratched out, other newer ones overwritten. he mumbled all the time: "ought to be torn down, build a new one. elevator ain't finished; been like this for weeks, and won't help anyway. i can't keep track; somebody moves in, it's up to him to tell me his name if he wants his mail." he chuckled; in his old voice it was nearly a cackle. "and he generally does! or if he moves out, and wants his mail sent on. and he generally does! here he is: pickering. third floor, number 27. that's right up above, next to the new shaft; can't miss it. he'll be complaining once the elevator's working, if it ever does; they're noisy devils, you know. i was on one." i climbed upstairs, and on the second floor the door of the office immediately to my right beside the staircase stood open, the steady sound of the sawing and the regular shrieks of pulled nails came from the doorway, and i walked over and stood looking in. two carpenters in white overalls knelt on the floor, their backs to me. one was sawing through the wooden floorboards between the joists, allowing the short sections of sawed-off tongue-and-groove boarding and wider subflooring to drop straight through to the basement—where the old janitor, no doubt, had to gather them up and burn them. the second carpenter was methodically prying loose the short stubs remaining nailed to the joists, using the claws of a hammer, and letting them drop through to the basement too. the two men were gradually working their way backward toward the doorway i stood in. between them and the opposite wall the flooring was gone, the big wooden joists fully exposed. presently they'd be cut off and burned, too, i supposed. on the third floor, the heavy paneled-wood door of the room directly above the carpenters was fastened with a newly installed and very big padlock; painted on the door in red was danger! keep out! shaft-way! the door of the next office was stenciled 27, and was locked: i tried the knob cautiously, after listening at the door crack. there was no one else around. i was standing in a short corridor that branched off the main corridor at a right angle, and now i quickly dropped to one knee to look through the keyhole of room 27. straight ahead across the office i saw a tall dirty window, gray-white with winter daylight; directly under it stood a rolltop desk and a chair. my view to the left was blocked by something standing directly beside the door, so close it was out of focus. to the right i could see one edge of what had apparently been an open doorway connecting this office en suite with the padlocked office beside it. but now the connecting doorway was heavily boarded across, and it occurred to me that the carpenters cutting the elevator shaftway must be working upward so that each floor, as it was cut away, could be dropped through to the basement.

i'd learned all i was going to learn, and probably all i needed to learn, about jake pickering's office. for half a minute or so i stood there in the corridor—till i heard someone's footsteps coming down the stairs. i knew why i hated to turn and walk away; now my mission was completed, and i wished it weren't. i walked back to the main corridor, then turned away from the staircase to walk on through the width of the building, passing the doors of andrew j. todd, lawyer; prof. charles a. seeley, chemist; the american engine company; j.h. hunter, notary. then i came to the the new-york observer offices facing onto park row, and the staircase to the street. walking downstairs i was suddenly aware of how hungry i was. i had lunch at the astor house, across broadway as carmody had said, catercorner from the post office. but i almost turned around and left when i stepped into the lobby. it was packed with men standing in groups and pairs, talking, nearly every one of them wearing his hat, and the marble floor was covered, and i mean covered, with tobacco juice, as i knew they called it. even as i stood in the entrance looking around, four or five seconds at most, a dozen men must have turned, each with a swollen cheek, to spit more or less expertly and more or less carefully at porcelain cuspidors scattered all over the big lobby floor; some didn't even bother looking. trying to think of something else, i walked the length of the lobby past an enormous stick-and-umbrella stand, a railway ticket office, telegraph office, newspaper and cigar stand, and into an enormous, fantastically noisy counter restaurant, with a big oak-framed sign reading no swearing, please. but i had two dozen blue point oysters fresh that morning from new york bay, and they were absolutely great, and i was glad i'd come. i took the el back to gramercy park. i'd noticed the station just east of city hall park, got on there, and it curved north through chatham square, and turned out to be the old third avenue el. i was used to people now; already, in my mind, the other passengers were dressed as they ought to be. but at chatham square a family got on that i couldn't look away from. they must have arrived from ellis island within the hour, and—incredible to a man of the twentieth century—i could tell where they were from by the way they were dressed. the father, who wore a huge drooping mustache, and the ten-year-old son, both wore blue cloth caps with shiny black peaks; short, double-breasted, porcelain-buttoned blue jackets; short scarves tied at the throat; pants that flared far out from the waist and tapered to the ankles; and although the father wore boots, the boy—i was fascinated, and had to force my eyes away—actually wore wooden shoes. the mother was stout, crimson-cheeked, wore two dozen skirts, and exactly the kind of bonnet you can see on the label of a can of old dutch cleanser. on the floor at the father's feet was a carpetbag, and up on the seat beside him a big cloth-wrapped bundle. they looked happy, amiable, peering out the windows and commenting in what must, of course, have been dutch. they were marvelous. they looked like a chocolate ad. and i realized that at this moment—almost the last moments—the world was still a wonderfully variegated place: that soldiers in greece were probably still wearing pointed shoes, long white stockings, and little ballet skirts; turks were in fezzes, their women veiled; plenty of eskimos hadn't yet seen their first white man or caught his diseases; and zulus were still happy cannibals in an unbulldozed, unpaved, unpolluted world.

i knew we must be getting close to my stop, and looked away from the dutch family long enough to glance out over this strange low new york, its church spires the highest things on the island. it was weird to be able to look straight across the city and see the hudson, and astonishing to see how many trees there were. most of the cross streets seemed lined with them, and there were a good many on the avenues. some were fine big ones, taller than the houses around them, and i realized that the greenery of all these trees would give the town a rural look in summer almost like a large village, and i wished i could see it then. we approaching my stop, and for instant, down cross street to the west— seventeenth?e(were) ighteenth?—icaughtaglimpseofa(an) fineandsplendid-(a) looking five-story apartment building with a mansard roof. i was almost certain—it was red brick with brownstone facings— that i recognized it as the stuyvesant. a friend of mine, an artist, who had lived in it till they tore it down, sometime in the fifties, i think, had a watercolor he'd done of it on his livingroom wall. he still missed the place, it was such a magnificent, high-windowed, enormous apartment. it actually had twenty-foot ceilings and four wood-burning fireplaces; new york's first apartment building, he said, known as "stuyvesant's folly" while they were building it because people said no new york gentleman would ever consent to live with a lot of strangers. he liked to talk about it, and i was glad to have had even a glimpse of it. i got off at twenty-third street, walked back to 19 gramercy park, and aunt ada heard the front door open and came in from the kitchen, her hands and forearms white with flour. i asked if julia were home, and she said no, but that she ought to be here any time now, and i thanked her and went on up to my room. it had been some day and i'd walked more than i had in a long time, so i was glad to stretch out on my bed and wait. now and then, outside my window as i lay there, i heard children in the park cry out, their voices high and thin in the cold outdoor air. i heard the already familiar hollow clop of horses' hoofs and the chink of their harness chains. i didn't want to leave this new york; there was so much more to see in this strange yet familiar city. i fell asleep, of course, and awoke at the sounds of julia's return: her voice and her aunt's in the hall. i got up quickly, pulling my watch out. it was just past four thirty, and i put on shoes and coat and trotted down. they were still there in the hall, looking up at me, julia still dressed for the street; she was showing her aunt some things she'd bought. we all went into the parlor, julia untying and pulling off her hat, and i told them the story i'd composed, astonished at how guilty i felt to be looking at these two trusting women and lying. i'd gone to the post office, i said, to cancel the box i'd rented until i got permanent quarters. but i'd found an urgent letter in the box. my brother was sick, and while he'd recover, i added quickly—i didn't want condolences—they needed me meanwhile to help out on my father's farm, so i'd have to leave today; right now in fact. i was suddenly afraid they might ask questions about farming, but of course they didn't. those two nice women were sympathetic, genuinely. and they said they were sorry i was leaving, and it seemed to me that was genuine, too. aunt ada supposed that iwouldn't leave till after dinner, at least, but i said no, i ought to leave right away; it would be a long train trip. she offered to refund part of my week's lodging, which i refused. then julia, suddenly remembering, said, "oh, no! my portrait!" i'd forgotten it completely, and stood looking at her, my mind scrambling for an excuse. then i realized i didn't want one. i wanted to do this portrait very much; it seemed like a particularly good way to say goodbye. so i nodded and said that if she'd sit for it now—i wanted to avoid jake —i'd do it right away, then leave. julia hurried upstairs to get ready—i asked her to keep on the dress she was wearing—and i followed to get my sketchbook from my overcoat pocket. upstairs i packed my carpetbag, stood looking around the room—ridiculously, i knew i'd miss it—then walked out, carpetbag in one hand, sketchbook in the other, and i flipped the cover back to look over the day's sketches. as i turned toward the stairs julia stepped down off the enclosed third-floor staircase, almost bumping into me; her hair was freshly coiled on top of her head now. "oh, may i see!" she said, reaching for my sketchbook. i might have made an excuse, but i was curious and gave her the book. walking slowly down ahead of me, she looked first at my reference sketches of the farming near the dakota; they weren't really sketches yet but more like a set of notes to myself, and she didn't comment on them, but turned the page to my sketch of city hall park and the streets around it. i think i might have guessed the kind of response she made; i knew this was an age of absolute and almost universal faith in progress, and very nearly a love of machinery and its potentials. we were downstairs, and now she stopped in the parlor and said, "what are these, mr. morley?" her fingertip lay on the paper at the cars and trucks i'd sketched onto centre street. "automobiles." she repeated it as though it were two words: "auto mobiles." then she nodded, pleased. "yes: self-propelled. that's an excellent coinage; is it your own?" i said no, that i'd heard it somewhere, and she nodded again and said, "perhaps in jules verne. in any case, i'm quite certain we will have auto mobiles. and a good thing; so much cleaner than horses." she was already turning the page, and now she looked at my rough of trinity and broadway. before she could comment i took it from her, and very rapidly sketched in the enormous buildings that would someday surround the little church. i handed it back to her, and after a moment she nodded. "excellent. wonderfully symbolic. the highest structure on all of manhattan to be eventually surrounded by others far taller: yes. but you're a better artist than architect, mr. morley; to support buildings this tall, the masonry at the base of the walls would need to be half a mile thick!" she smiled, and handed my pad back. "where shall i sit?" i posed her at a window in a three-quarter view, making her let her hair down, and worked with a very sharp hard pencil to force the best delineation i was capable of; no obscuring faultydraftsmanship with a fine thick dash of a line. the hard pencil also allowed the finest shading and cross-hatching i was capable of. it was turning out well. i had the shape of the face, and i had the eyes and eyebrows, the hardest part for me, and i was working quite carefully on the hair: i wanted to really catch the way it was. but i was slow: young felix grier came home, and i dragged out my watch and saw that it was just before five. he stood watching for a few moments, not saying anything. he smiled when i looked up at him, and nodded a quick polite approval, but his eyes were worried, and i knew why. i was worried, too—that jake pickering would come in and raise hell once again, and it was no part of my mission here to make trouble. i stepped up my speed, trying to hang onto my control; i wanted this good. it seemed unlikely that he'd be home from a job at city hall before five thirty or six, and i expected to be finished and gone within minutes now. it was my fault, of course, for not thinking of the obvious: that a man like jake pickering, hating his job and status as a clerk, would walk back to city hall and quit his job after seeing carmody. and now—this time i didn't see him approaching the house—the front door opened, closed, and there he was standing in the hall doorway again. but now he was swaying ever so slightly, and his tie was undone. his overcoat was unbuttoned, his hands shoved into his pants pockets, and his plug hat, far back on his head, had a streak of dried mud at the crown and along one curled rim. he wasn't out of control; he was drunk but knew what he was seeing. julia and i staring at him, his eyes moved from her face to the lines on my pad, back to julia's face, back to the pad. there have been primitive people throughout the world who would not permit a likeness to be made of themselves; they believed it took something of the living person away. and it may be that this man, not realizing or understanding it, had some of that nearly instinctive feeling. because mysketching of julia enraged him as though in his mind my eyes on her face, my moving pencil taking her likeness, were a kind of deep intimacy. as it is in a way. in any case, it was somehow unbearable to him; more than rage, it was emotion past thought: berserk. his eyes lifted from the pad to my face. they were very small now, the whites reddened, and they were absolutely implacable. he lifted his arm to full length, and his lips parted to bare his teeth like an animal as he pointed at me wordlessly; i don't think there were words for the fury he felt. then the arm swung in a short arc to point at julia. his neck looked swollen and his voice was so thick it was hard to understand. he said, "wait. stay here. wait. and i'll show you." then almost nimbly—the swaying vanished—he swung round on his heel and was gone, the front door opening and slamming an instant later. i finished the portrait: why not? after the door slammed i looked at julia, and my mouth opened to say something but all i did was shrug. nothing to say, except well, well, well, or something just as inane, occurred to me. and julia forced a smile and shrugged, too, but her face was white and stayed so. i'm not sure why: fear, anger, shock; i don't know. but she was defiant too, her chin unconsciously lifted through the rest of the sitting, another ten minutes or so. she liked the portrait: i could tell that she really did by the way she looked at it again and again; and some color came back to her face. my drawing was fully detailed, very literal; it could have been a leslie's illustrated newspaper woodcut. but this one was also a good portrait. not only did it look like her; i was a good enough artist to manage that, given the time and incentive, but it also caught something of julia herself, of the kind of person she was, so far as i knew. maybe it did capture something of julia's "soul." anyway, it was good. the others had come into the house; byron doverman just as i was finishing, and then maud torrence, each stopping to admire and praise before going on upstairs. aunt ada came in from the kitchen to call upstairs, saying dinner would be on the table in five minutes. she admired the drawing too, and then insisted, since i was still here, that i stay for dinner. and unless i wanted to look as though i were running from jake, leaving julia to face him alone, i had to stay, and i said i would; the harm, if any, was already done. i was afraid, i realized —i didn't know what the hell this guy might do—but i was curious, too. still admiring her portrait, julia looked up at me and asked me to sign it. i took it, fumbling in my pocket for the pencil, trying to figure out what to say: i couldn't just write my name and nothing more. then i thought, "in for a penny, in for a pound," or whatever the saying is, and i wrote "for julia—affectionately, admiringly," mentally adding, and to hell with you, jake, and signed my name. in the time i'd been here i'd thought almost not at all of rube prien, dr. danziger, oscar rossoff, colonel esterhazy, or even the project itself; they were motionless in my mind, at the small far-off end of the telescope, dwindled and remote. but at dinner they turned real again: what were they going to think of what i'd have to tell them? that i'd disturbed and interfered in events with inexcusable clumsiness? probably; and maybe they'd be right, yet i didn't know how i could have avoided it. the talk at dinner was all of guiteau, with a little weather, and i wasn't interested. for me now, guiteau was once again only a name in an old book; tried, executed, and long forgotten, the world i was preparing myself for hardly even knowing his name anymore. i sat eating mechanically,trying to look as though i were interested, responding when spoken to. but as the project and the people in it returned to life in my mind, i began to recede from this time and place. i was jerked back into it. we were finishing dinner, maud torrence already finished, politely waiting for the others before leaving the table; felix finishing his bread pudding; byron holding a cigar, ready to light it as soon as he stood up; the rest of us drinking coffee. we didn't hear the front door open but we felt the draft, the invisible balloon of cold air touching our ankles. i saw julia, her aunt, and felix across the table suddenly look up into the parlor, and i turned, with byron and maud, to look too. he was standing in the center of the room directly under the multiple flames of the chandelier, staring in at us—confronting us like a bear on his hind legs. still wearing his unbuttoned overcoat, his top hat still far back on his head and shining dully under the overhead light, he stood with his arms dangling straight down, fingers limp, shoulders deeply bowed, head thrust forward. he just stood there, swaying a little again, and we had time to see that he'd been hurt, apparently; that his tie was gone, his shirt collar open and slightly torn, that the first couple of studs below it were gone too, and that across his chest the soiled white of his shirtfront was speckled with blood. we even had time—sitting there motionless, staring across the tabletop or turned in our chairs—to see that the speckles of blood were growing, small spots enlarging, bigger ones expanding, then joining. he was still bleeding—it took a moment or so to understand and formulate the thought—then julia cried, "jake," her voice frightened and concerned, and she stood up so quickly the back of her knees knocked her chair over backward, and i noticed, foolishly, that it made very little sound toppling onto the carpet. she started around the table toward him; now we were all pushing chairs aside, getting to our feet. but jake flung both hands up and out, fingers spread like claws, halting us, freezing us where we stood—julia motionless at a corner of the table, the rest of us half standing or sinking back into our chairs. through a moment or two he looked at us, his teeth bared, yellow and strong-looking. then his hands moved to his chest, each hand gripped an edge of his shirtfront, then pulled the bloody shirt apart, exposing his chest. it was hairy at the sides, black and matted, but more sparsely at the center, the skin there very white and visible under the separate hairs. he wasn't wounded or hurt; not accidentally, that is, and not very much. the blood swelling out of his skin in slow drops that, no longer blotted up by the cloth of his shirt, enlarged now and rolled down out of sight came from dozens and dozens and more dozens of needle pricks. incredibly, his chest was newly tattooed; with five blue-black letters at least two inches high. i wanted to laugh at the absurdity or protest or squeeze my eyes shut and pretend this wasn't happening; i didn't know what i wanted to do or what i felt—but the tattooed letters on his chest spelled julia. he said, "all my life now, i will bear this,'' and he tapped his chest, he said, "nothing can ever remove it. because all of my life you will belong to me, and nothing can ever change that." he looked at us, his eyes moving across all our faces; then he turned, and with absolute dignity walked toward the hall and the stairs to his room, and i didn't want to laugh. it was an absolutely absurd gesture, an almost inconceivable action in the century i was used to. but not here. here and now, there was nothing absurd about it. there couldn't be: this man meant it.

julia was hurrying across the dining room, paler than ever now; then, running a little, she crossed the parlor, and we heard her running steps up the carpeted stairs. i'd left my packed bag in the hallway, my coat and hat hanging on the big mirrored stand there, and i didn't stay; i wasn't needed. i turned to aunt ada, said i had to leave immediately, and she smiled distractedly, shaking my hand across the tabletop, and murmuring good wishes. i said goodbye to the others, who replied with their eyes flicking toward the staircase in the hall. and then i was outside, walking toward twenty-third street. at lexington avenue i took a hansom cab and sat back with my eyes closed. i had no interest at all just now in anything outside. i paid off the cab at fifty-ninth and fifth avenue, where kate and i had come out of central park. and now i walked back into it, and then along the paths, under the occasional lights, heading north and west through the dark unchanging park; and presently, ahead, i saw the gabled bulk of the dakota, its gaslighted windows, and the flickering candle and kerosene lights of the truck farms beside it.