Mr Newman’s thoughts became lost. For he knew that whatever the proof, Mr Stevens still would not hire him, nor would he like him any better than he did now. It was dreamlike and fugitive and yet he knew it was so. For he knew that in the old days in the glass cubicle no proof, no documents, no words could have changed the shape of a face he himself suspected.

A face … The monstrous mockery of the thing started tears to his eyes. He got up and started walking again as though to find ahead of him in the dark the clue to this confusion. Was it possible, he wondered, that Mr Stevens looked at me and thought me untrustworthy, or grasping, or loud because of my face? It could not be possible, he thought. It simply could not be. Because I am not untrustworthy and I am a quiet person. And yet it would be absolutely impossible to convince the man.

Alarm began digging like a point into his flesh and he walked faster. There must be something he could do that would hence-forth indicate to an employer that he was what he was, a man of great fidelity and good manners. What could he do, what new manner was there that he could adopt? Had he changed his old manner? God almighty, had something about his way of walking or talking changed these past days? He carefully reviewed himself and decided that he was the same outwardly as he had always been. Then what in the world could he do to show these people that he was still Lawrence Newman?

His face. Beside a lamppost on a corner he came to a halt. He was not this face. Nobody had a right to dismiss him like that because of his face. Nobody! He was him, a human being with a certain definite history and he was not this face which looked like it had grown out of another alien and dirty history. They were trying to make two people out of him! They were looking at him as though he were guilty of something, as though he would hurt them! They could not do that! They dare not do that to him because he was no one else but Lawrence Newman …!

The sound of his own voice shattered his vision and the empty public street appeared around him and he stood stiff.

Trembling, he looked ahead and saw the lights of a subway entrance and hurried toward it. It was two blocks away, long blocks. He passed the churchyard, and the tombstones now swept him with their cold meaning; the dark itself seemed to have cavernous form, and he strode toward the entrance lights and when he got there he was almost running.

When he got home he went directly to Fred, whom he found in the chicken-wired backyard kennel. When he opened the gate the two red setters paced toward him sniffing wildly and stood there delicately lifting their paws and looking up at him. With Fred he talked quietly of the weather and the moon which hung low behind their heads, throwing their shadows long across the dirt kennel floor.