“Big enough to hold my bones as I sleep.... Don’t look so shocked. Are you going to disown me?”
His words poured fast. Slowly, behind his words, he seemed to face them.... He was leaving the world of his family, the cloying and sweet drag of it. Here was the coming. These friends: tissues of thought and passion that were not his! What was his measure, what did he look like here? Through the door had come with them the City. Chaos of steel and stone in which swung numberless worlds of flesh, lactaries of blood. Sudden he was in it! He heard its throb in his room, he felt its Hand, weave of a million separate forces, loom on him, fall on him, test him.... His voice in a maze of roars, his eyes in a maze of suns. Transfiguration. Silence out of the roaring worlds. His own voice unafraid.
They listened to him.
“Let’s enjoy ourselves to-night. Let’s eat on Broadway and go to a theater. My treat.... I insist! Look, I’m rich!” He took a silver dollar, he tossed it through the window. “I’m ready. Come.”
He was throbbing. He took Cornelia, and swung her waist and kissed her.
“Dear sweet Cornelia,” he laughed. “I swear I’ve not been drinking a drop.... It’s you!... It’s you made me drunk. Don’t you believe it? I swear it.”
She was glowing with pleasure. After all, David seemed part her boy. Let him carry on. And he, pacing about the room.
“I swear it. I swear it is Cornelia.... By my——” He stopped. He was sober.
David was sober. Looking with a new-discovered tenderness at Cornelia.
“Excuse me,” he blushed: he sank into a chair. Cornelia’s cool hand was on his brow.