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As he walked between the incongruities of hard street surfaces and soft noises, everything around him seemed to be vainly trying to conceal a hollow monotone. Middle-aged and old people sat around the doorsteps of the box-like apartment-houses, and the circumscribed and hair’s-breadth shades of intelligence and defeat on their faces were transparent over one color and shape. Each of these people strove to convince himself that his relaxation on this summer evening was a glittering honor conferred by hours of virtuous toil, though at times discontent suddenly raised their voices high in the air. It was as though they lifted musical instruments, gave them one helpless blow, and retired to apathy, scarcely aware of what they had done. Carl looked at them with a weary indifference that almost verged upon hatred, and hurried down the cement walk.

As he neared the apartment-house where his parents lived it suddenly occurred to him that the entrance might be decorated by people who would recognize him and comment upon his appearance and his abrupt return. The thought of their amused and veiled contempt, or their assumption of superior compassion, made him cringe a little and he turned to a side-street that led to an alley which extended behind the block in which his parents lived. He passed through the dismal rear yard of beaten earth and ascended the wooden stairway. A negro janitor, who had been working in this place for several years, gazed at him, at first with suspicion and then with a slowly pitying grin of recognition.