with a flaccid heavy finger; a thin sour woman
telling children playing together "don't, don't, don't," in the whine of
a nasty nurse.

"All for the best, you know--all for the best, we're all of us sure of
that. Love doesn't last--doesn't last--doesn't last--as good fish in
the sea as ever were caught out of it--nobody's heart could break at
twenty-five. You think you're happy and proud--you think you're lovers
and friends--but that doesn't last, doesn't last, doesn't last--none of
it lasts at all."

If he only weren't so _tired_ he could do something. But instead he
feels only as a man feels who has been drinking all day in the instant
before complete intoxication--his body is as distinct from him as if
it were walking behind him with his shadow--all the colors he sees seem
exaggeratedly dull or brilliant, he has little sense of distance, the
next street corner may be a block or a mile away, it is all the same,
his feet will take him there, his feet that keep going mechanically,
one after the other, one after the other, as if they marched to a clock.
There is no feeling in him that stays long enough to be called by any
definite word--there is only a streaming parade of sensations like blind
men running through mist, shapes that come out of fog and sink back to
it, without sight, without number, without name, with only continual
hurry of feet to tell of their presence.

A slinky man comes up at his elbow and starts to talk out of the side of
his mouth.

"Say, mister--"

"Oh, _go_ to hell!" and the man fades away again, without even looking
startled, to mutter "Well, you needn' be so damn peeved about
it--I'll say you needn' be so damn peeved--whatcha think you are,
anyhow--Marathon Mike?" as Oliver's feet take Oliver swiftly away from
him.

Nancy. The first time he ever kissed her when it was question and answer
with neither of them sure. And then getting surer and surer--and then
when they kissed. Never touching Nancy, never. Never seeing her again
never any more. That song the Glee Club used to harmonize over--what was
it?

We won't go there any more,
We won't go there any more
We won't go there any mo-o-ore----

He lifts his eyes for a moment. A large blue policeman is looking at him
fixedly from the other side of the street, his nightstick twirling in a
very prepared sort of way. For an instant Oliver sees himself going over
and asking that policeman for his helmet to play with. That would be the