... A sad play with laughing music ... little streams of water running up the dark side of a mountain. Impossible ... unreal. Fanny saw the breaking audience. It rose and splintered in the new light house. Men and women suddenly distinct like the jewels in their hair, like the hard smiles, hard lines of face against the new blare of the lighted house. No. The play was real. Laughter went twinkling up the steep of mountains. Laughter flowed up hill. That was the way of laughter.—You men and women falling away downhill, have you never laughed? Upward! upward! Fanny pressed Clara’s arm.
They stood in the night. The breast of Fanny flowed with her hurt and her life: her heart was liquid at last: her hurt and her life, pressed so long against the urge of Clara, melted and flowed. She took the hands of her friend. She pressed them. She knew what was to be....
They walked through the broken throng of men and women parting, waiting: through the bright weave of carriage calls, whispers, farewells: through the new freshet of the City’s stream spreading in blue and green and gold, soon lost. They walked in silence. They were putting off a moment of decision. The Elevated Structure stood like a sentence. Fanny’s arm that had held Clara’s dropped to her side. A train, jingling with lights, drew past....
—It goes and goes, it comes to the window where I work, to the window where I stand this instant at a table. I tear and rip ... I work in the thick shadows of dead life. I look at the train that passes. It is there!
Fanny held out her hand.... A little man, square black beard, small red lips, sharp greedy eyes, stood with his hairy hands upon her shoulders. Mr. Rachmann!—She sought the hand of her friend.
Clara’s lips sharpened.
“Where do you live?” she spoke. “I want to see you soon.”
Fanny shook her head. Mr. Rachmann went. The lips of Clara parted, they were wet.
“I do not understand.”
“Look at me, Clara.”