out and left him face to face with the uselessness,
the irrelevance of all the old attitudes of appropriation
and defiance. He seemed to be stumbling about
in his inherited prejudices like a modern man in mediaeval
armour... Moffatt still sat at his desk, unmoved
and apparently uncomprehending. “He doesn’t
even know what I’m feeling,” flashed through
Ralph; and the whole archaic structure of his rites
and sanctions tumbled down about him.
Through the noise of the crash he heard Moffatt’s
voice going on without perceptible change of tone:
“About that other matter now...you can’t
feel any meaner about it than I do, I can tell you
that... but all we’ve got to do is to sit tight...”
Ralph turned from the voice, and found himself outside
on the landing, and then in the street below.
He stood at the corner of Wall Street, looking up
and down its hot summer perspective. He noticed
the swirls of dust in the cracks of the pavement,
the rubbish in the gutters, the ceaseless stream of
perspiring faces that poured by under tilted hats.
He found himself, next, slipping northward between
the glazed walls of the Subway, another languid crowd
in the seats about him and the nasal yelp of the stations
ringing through the car like some repeated ritual
wail. The blindness within him seemed to have
intensified his physical perceptions, his sensitiveness
to the heat, the noise, the smells of the dishevelled
midsummer city; but combined with the acuter perception
of these offenses was a complete indifference to them,
as though he were some vivisected animal deprived
of the power of discrimination.
Now he had turned into Waverly Place, and was walking
westward toward Washington Square. At the corner
he pulled himself up, saying half-aloud: “The
office—I ought to be at the office.”
He drew out his watch and stared at it blankly.
What the devil had he taken it out for? He had
to go through a laborious process of readjustment to
find out what it had to say.... Twelve o’clock....
Should he turn back to the office? It seemed
easier to cross the square, go up the steps of the
old house and slip his key into the door....
The house was empty. His mother, a few days previously,
had departed with Mr. Dagonet for their usual two
months on the Maine coast, where Ralph was to join
them with his boy.... The blinds were all drawn
down, and the freshness and silence of the marble-paved
hall laid soothing hands on him.... He said to
himself: “I’ll jump into a cab presently,
and go and lunch at the club—” He
laid down his hat and stick and climbed the carpetless
stairs to his room. When he entered it he had
the shock of feeling himself in a strange place:
it did not seem like anything he had ever seen before.
Then, one by one, all the old stale usual things in
it confronted him, and he longed with a sick intensity
to be in a place that was really strange.
