It was a day of clouds low-scudding over the City.
The City crouched hostile and sharp, as if it felt the universe its foe. The City of men. With its roofs like an upstanding fur, it lay there, a cattish monster. The wind boomed afar, plunged near, whistled and shook the windows and was off screaming with fright at its courage. The City was tense and cold under its houses. A lighter shadow cut down from the retreated pall of the skies. The sun was up there somewhere. The shadow mushroomed forth, losing its lightness, swelling with relief into the wider darkness: disappeared. The City breathed again. Another shaft of light, of greater vibrance, lanced it, made it quiver, faded once more. These alternations were a rhythm, like breath, on the City. And in the room, where Tom stood looking out and David slumbered, these rhythms were compressed and sharpened. The swathes of lighter shadows—strugglings of the sun—brought unrest. The City was easier in the greater gloom. Was the sun what it feared? The gloom was a cloak, hiding the foe. When it parted a sword flashed. When it parted, the City trembled.
Tom felt the acerb coldness of this maze of stone and brick. A testaceous monster crouched beside the hidden Hudson. It lost its unity: it broke into parts. The City became a swim of brittle points, a sea and a foam of iron. Tom wondered how the soft breasts of the dwellers had conceived their City that was more hard and hostile than the whipped heavens. He saw them under the mountains of their handicraft like shell-less creatures huddled in a mountain of waves.
He was back from this fury to his chair. There slept his friend. He was aware of David gently asleep and of the surge of the City and of the skies a humor of hostile motion. He was aware of all this suddenly at once. The contrast was like swift heat on the smooth surface of his consciousness. It cracked. In the fissures light to see by....
The deposits of his last summer. He had gone away, for his two weeks, alone. This was his custom, and the one who might have led him to disregard it was unwilling. David had earned the respect of Mr. Deane by declining to take a vacation. He might have gone, as the year before, to spend it in the mountains with his uncle’s family. He had no stomach to. He was very far from Lois. He believed she was engaged, though he had purposely avoided the confidence she almost forced him to ask.
“You don’t seem to want to know anything about me, David.”
“There might be many things. Why don’t you ask? Then you may find out.”
“What could there happen to you?”
“Oh, indeed, sir! So nothing could happen to me to interest you!”