Shivering, I went on. I did not know where I was bound. The old, savage loneliness—here in the open, where the dampness brought the scent of withered grass and lean, bare trees—was sharper, more embittering than ever.
I went across the street and into the nearest entrance of Central Park. The quietness of everything there frightened me, called up every foolish, childhood fear and superstition. I went through dark lanes that were branched over with creaking branches. I saw the lake, black, cold, with the stippled reflections of shore lights shining up from its edges. I felt the moist, chilly wind that came across the big lawns and struck my face and chest and shoulders. I felt—I could not help but feel that I must go on, go on and on—in search of I know not what.
I came at length to the Fifth Avenue side of the park. The huge white stone and marble houses that flanked the street beyond were half lost in the mist. The automobiles that went up and down the pavements, which were wet and shining like the backs of seals, made no noise—went silently, mystically, sweeping blurred trails of light upon the sidewalks as they passed.
Against that white, low horizon of houses I saw one thing that loomed dark and gropingly conspicuous.
I did not know what it was. Not then. But it held my attention: the darkness, the gray curve of it against the sky. There was something about it that was forbidding, deep, sombre. The lower front of it seemed to be arched and pillared—and under each arch the shadows were impenetrably black.
There were automobiles waiting in front of it, at the sidewalk's edge. A long string of them, too, as if many persons were within upon some mysterious business.
Then, softly, as if from far distant recesses, there came from within the soft, resonant voice of an organ—playing.
Was it a church?
Then I remembered that it was Friday night—and I knew that this was a synagogue—a temple of the Jewish Faith.
At first realization, I moved a little away from it, down the street. A synagogue—and all that it brought to my mind was the memory of my parents. In former years they had been wont to take me with them when they went on Friday nights. And those had been dull, wearisome nights for me—but I had spent them at my parent's side. So that now, in the shadow of God's house, my loneliness for them came back to me in wild deluge, breaking the dam of reserve and doubts and petty limitations.