sed, already miraculously protected by oilskin capes.

The rain gave Amory a feeling of detachment, and the numerous unpleasant
aspects of city life without money occurred to him in threatening
procession. There was the ghastly, stinking crush of the subway--the car
cards thrusting themselves at one, leering out like dull bores who grab
your arm with another story; the querulous worry as to whether some one
isn't leaning on you; a man deciding not to give his seat to a woman,
hating her for it; the woman hating him for not doing it; at worst a
squalid phantasmagoria of breath, and old cloth on human bodies and the
smells of the food men ate--at best just people--too hot or too cold,
tired, worried.

He pictured the rooms where these people lived--where the patterns of
the blistered wall-papers were heavy reiterated sunflowers on green and
yellow backgrounds, where there were tin bathtubs and gloomy hallways
and verdureless, unnamable spaces in back of the buildings; where even
love dressed as seduction--a sordid murder around the corner, illicit
motherhood in the flat above. And always there was the economical
stuffiness of indoor winter, and the long summers, nightmares of
perspiration between sticky enveloping walls... dirty restaurants where
careless, tired people helped themselves to sugar with their own used
coffee-spoons, leaving hard brown deposits in the bowl.

It was not so bad where there were only men or else only women; it was
when they were vilely herded that it all seemed so rotten. It was some
shame that women gave off at having men see them tired and poor--it
was some disgust that men had for women who were tired and poor. It was
dirtier than any battle-field he had seen, harder to contemplate than
any actual hardship moulded of mire and sweat and danger, it was an
atmosphere wherein birth and marriage and death were loathsome, secret
things.

He remembered one day in the subway when a delivery boy had brought in a
great funeral wreath of fresh flowers, how the smell of it had suddenly
cleared the air and given every one in the car a momentary glow.

"I detest poor people," thought Amory suddenly. "I hate them for being
poor. Poverty may have been beautiful once, but it's rotten now. It's
the ugliest thing in the world. It's essentially cleaner to be corrupt
and rich than it is to be innocent and poor." He seemed to see again a
figure whose significance had once impressed him--a well-dressed young
m