ly-blue.
Charles-Norton half closed his eyes; his soul began to purr.

Before him a fountain plashed; about the fountain were red blossoms; the
elms rustled gently against the blue sky; through the delicate lace of
their leaves the sun eddied down like a very light pollen; and all this,
through the Pippin's exquisite atmosphere, was enveloped and smoothed and
glazed into a picture--a slightly hazy dream-picture. Charles-Norton
stretched his legs still more; his shoulders rose along the sides of his
head. He was as at the bottom of the sea--a warm and quiet summer sea.
Down through its golden-dusty waters, a streak of sun, polished like a
rapier, diagonaled, striking him on the breast; and to its vivifying burn
he felt within him his heart expand, as though it would bloom, like the
red flowers about the fountain.

Upon the other benches sprawled some of the city's derelicts. The sun was
upon them also; they stirred uneasily to its caress, with sighs and
groans, their warped bodies, petrified with the winter's long cold,
distending slowly in pain. Pale children in their buggies slept with
mouths open, gasping like little fish; some played upon the asphalt.

Charles-Norton, by this time, was apt to be far away; far in another
land. He lay upon his back and watched a hawk on high.

The sparrows usually brought him back. They played about his feet; they
chirped, hopped, and tattled; they peered side-ways at him and gave him
jerky nods of greeting. At times one of them, to a sudden inspiration,
sprang into the air; with a whir he flashed up to the top of a tree. To
the movement, something within Charles-Norton leaped to his throat.

Across the park, gaunt behind the trees, rose the tall steel frame of a
new building; and away up at the top of it (which was higher every day) a
workingman, on a girder, ate his lunch. Charles-Norton liked this man; a
current of comradeship always ran from him to the little figure
silhouetted up against the blue. He should have liked to eat his lunch up
there, side by side with this man, his legs swinging next to his, with
the void beneath. And then, he thought, after lunching, he would like to
stand erect, away up there, at the tip edge of one of the projecting
beams; to stand there a bit, and then spring off; spring off lightly, and
whiz down; down, down, down with outspread arms.

Which was a very foolish thought for a man that worked in a cage to
dream. Very foolish, even if the cage wer