Now, it has been said that this state was almost pleasurable. But there was something lacking in it. The lack was profound. It was like a poison that brought fear and anxiety in equal portions with the pleasure. The fact was that Clinton was in a condition similar to that of a man to whom some evil drug has been administered. He experienced a similar, uncanny sense of power; and a similar poison as well: the total lack of any love whatsoever. And in this void was anger, anger so profound he could not even dare admit to himself its presence.

The trip from Toledo to Cleveland takes, under normal conditions, and in a decent car, about two hours and a half. Clinton made repeated efforts to maintain the legal speed limits, but as his mind was absorbed mostly by other matters, the car seemed to charge forward on its own at the rate of some eighty miles an hour. In no time at all, it seemed, Clinton was guiding the car into the driveway at Seminary Street.

There was one light burning behind the upstairs window shade of Ralph’s bedroom, but the rest of the place was dark. It had the look of disaster about it. Clinton felt that any passer-by could take one look at the house and see clearly reflected in it the anguish of the people who lived inside. In his shocked condition, with his new, keener perception of the world, he assigned qualities of sense and spirit to everything he encountered; and the house was sad; contemptuous, too, of all the wickedness that had taken place in its shelter; as he passed under the porch roof, he touched its supporting pillar and found that it had gone cold. He opened the door and went inside.

“Ralph!” he called. “I’m back!” He went up to Ralph’s room. The old man was propped up in bed. There were newspapers on the floor and in his lap, but he did not seem to have been reading them. The crease between his eyebrows was deeper, his nasal folds were wrinkled, the edges of his mouth turned down. Like an unhappy old monkey, dyspeptic, bewildered, he turned his wide-open eyes to Clinton.

“How’d you do? The car handle all right?”

“Yeah, it handled good. You want some food?”

“Naw, I had baloney, beer. —You left her there okay, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Her bein’ there is the right thing.”

“Sure it is.”

The old man looked at the foot of the bed.

“He was here.”

“Berry-berry? He was here?”

“Yeah,” Ralph said. “He left, maybe an hour ago.” The old man studied his wrist, and then he began to rub it with his thumb, trying to form a noodle.

Clinton said, “What’d he have to say?”

“Oh, he—uh—needs some money.”

“I mean, what’d he say about—what happened?”