mattered was that she had been hurt on his
account--was being hurt now on his account--would be hurt, and still and
always on his account, not because he wanted to hurt her but because
it was not within his power, but Life's, to hurt her in that respect or
not.

"Oh, felicitous Nancy!" the pen began to scratch. "Your letter--"

Stupid to be so tired when he was writing to Nancy. Stupid not to find
the right things to say at once when you wanted to say them so much. He
dropped the pen an instant, sat back, and tried to evoke Nancy before
him like a small, clear picture seen in a lens, tried to form with his
will the lifeless air in front of him till it began to take on
some semblance and body of her that would be better than the tired
remembrances of the mind.

Often, and especially when he had thought about her intensely for a
long time, the picture would not come at all or come with tantalizing
incompleteness, apparently because he wanted it to be whole so much--all
he could see would be a wraith of Nancy, wooden as a formal photograph,
with none of her silences or mockeries about her till he felt like a
painter who has somehow let the devil into his paintbox so that each
stroke he makes goes a little fatally out of true from the vision in
his mind till the canvas is only a crazy-quilt of reds and yellows. Now,
perhaps, though, she might come, even though he was tired. He pressed
the back of a hand against his eyes. She was coming to him now. He
remembered one of their walks together--a walk they had taken some eight
months ago, when they had been only three days engaged. Up Fifth Avenue;
Forty-second Street, Forty-third, Forty-fourth, the crosstown glitter
of lights, the reflected glow of Broadway, spraying the sky with dim
gold-dust, begins to die a little behind them. Past pompous expensive
windows full of the things that Oliver and Nancy will buy when Oliver's
novel has gone into its first fifty thousand, content with the mere
touch of each other's hands, they are so sure of each other now. Past
people, dozens of people, getting fewer and fewer as Forty-sixth Street
comes, Forty-seventh, Forty-eighth, always a little arrogantly because
none of the automatic figures they pass have ever eaten friendly bread
together or had fire that can burn over them like clear salt water or
the knowledge that the only thing worth having in life is the hurt
and gladness of that fire. Buses pass like big squares of honeycomb on
wh