He paused, stricken to silence by that unaccustomed sound. He tried again; a speech that was no speech, a sound more brutal than the jargon of a tongueless maniac smote terror to his heart.

Now madness seized him. The veins swelled upon his forehead, his face grew purple with his rage and bafflement, he beat the table and shouted into their faces, he cursed, snarled, and jeered at them, but nothing but a bestial and incoherent jargon came from him. Then he saw that they were all looking at him with quiet and sorrowful eyes, and their look told him that they knew all, understood all that he had wished to say. And at the same moment it seemed to Jack that he heard that strange whispering echo—that sound filled with acquiescence, with the resigned and final knowledge of men who had known all that any men on earth could know—and which seemed to say, although he could not be certain any words were spoken: “Yes. We know.”

He said no more. His friends were looking at him with their weary and sorrowful eyes in which there was neither any trace of envy or mockery, nor any of youth’s pride or pain or passion. There was only the agreement of an old and final wisdom, an immense and kindly understanding. Without speaking they seemed to say to him: “We know, we understand you, Frederick, because we have all been young and mad and innocent, and full of hope and anguish. We have seen the way the world goes, and we have seen we could not change it, and now we are old and have seen and known as much of it as men can know.”

Now Jack no longer wanted to tell them of his triumphs in the world. He no longer wanted to boast about his wealth, his power, his family, or his high position. Instead, it seemed to him that for the first time in his life, his heart had been cleansed of vanity and pretense. He had for these men a feeling of trust and affection such as he never before had for anyone. And suddenly he wanted to talk to them as he had never talked to anyone, to say and hear the things he had never said and heard.

Like the Mariner who found that he could speak again as soon as he had blessed the living creatures in the sea, so now it seemed to Jack that he could speak and be free again if in penitence and shame he could unpack the sorrowful and secret burden that lay heavy on his heart. He wanted to ask the old men what their own youth had been like and if any of them had known the bitter misery of loneliness and exile in a foreign land. He wanted to tell them the secret dreams and visions of his youth which he had never told to anyone and to hear what dreams and visions they had known. He wanted to tell them of the first years of his life in America, of his little room in a boarding-house, and of the little room he had lived in later in his uncle’s house, and how, forlorn, lonely, poor and wretched as his life had been, he had brought into these little rooms all the proud hope and ecstasy youth can know. He wanted to tell them how he had dreamed of growing rich and famous and of how for years a proud and secret image had sustained his spirit with its prophecy of love and triumph.

That image was this: in an ancient cobbled street like this one and in one of the old and elfin houses in this street a woman lived. The woman had the face and figure of a young woman he had seen in Bonn when he had stopped off there for a visit to a kinsman on his way to America. He had seen the woman seated at a table with two men in an old dark tavern such as this one where the students at the university went for beer. She was a great blonde creature, lavish of limb and full and deep of breast. She looked toward him once and smiled and he had seen that her eyes were grey and clear and fathomless. Jack had never forgotten her and in the dream which was to haunt and sustain his spirit during his first years in America he saw himself as a rich, famous, and distinguished man who had returned to find her. And although he had seen this woman just one time and only for a moment and knew nothing more about her he was certain that he would know where she was when he went to find her. He could see the street, the house, even the room where she would be. The street was like the picture of a destiny, and the old red light of fading day that lay quietly on the gables of the houses, resting there briefly without violence or heat, with a fading and unearthly glow, was like the phantasmal light of time and dreams. And Jack watched with prescient certitude to see himself, as he turned in from a corner to the street and approached the house where she was waiting for him. He heard her singing as she combed her long blonde hair and he knew the song and all the words she sang as well as all the words that she would speak to him.

Her lips were red and full, half-parted, living, warm and fragrant as her breath, her hair was like ripe wheat and spun as fine as smoky silk, her eyes as blue and depthless as unfathomed water, and her voice and the song she sang as rich, as strange and haunting as any songs that sirens sang from fabled rocks. Then she received him into her great embrace, he lay drowned in the torrent of her hair, cradled in the fathomless undulance of her great blonde thighs, borne upon the velvet cushion of her belly, engulfed in the lavish bounty of her breasts, and lost to time, to memory, to any other destiny save dark night and the everlasting love of her great flesh to which, a wisp of man, he surrendered blindly with a passionate and willing annihilation.

This was the dream as it had come to him a thousand times in the first years of poverty and exile to fortify his soul with its triumphant music of love and victory and now he wanted to tell his friends about it and ask them if they too had known such dreams as this in youth. He wanted to tell them how he had gained the power and wealth his heart had visioned and how he had lost the dream and he wanted to ask them if they had also known such loss.