There are, in the lives of almost every man and woman, certain brief episodes that, enduring for a long or a short time, leave in the memory a sense of completeness. To those moments humanity returns for refuge, for courage, and for solace. It was of such material that Hugo’s next two months were composed. The items of it were nearly all sensuous: the sound of the sea when he sat in the sand late at night with Charlotte; the whoop and bellow of the merry-go-round that spun and glittered across the street from his tent; the inarticulate breathing and the white-knuckled clenchings of the crowd as it lifted its face to his efforts, for each of which he assumed a slow, painful motion that exaggerated its difficulty; the smell of the sea, intermingled with a thousand man-made odors; the faint, pervasive scent of Charlotte that clung to him, his clothes, his house; the pageant of the people, always in a huge parade, going nowhere, celebrating nothing but the functions of living, loud, garish, cheap, splendid; breakfasts at his table with his woman’s voluptuousness abated in the bright sunlight to little more than a reminiscence and a promise; the taste of beer and pop-corn and frankfurters and lobster and steak; the affable, talkative company of Valentine Mitchel.

Only once that he could recall afterwards did he allow his intellect to act in any critical direction, and that was in a conversation with the young artist. They were sitting together in the sand, and Charlotte, browned by weeks of bathing, lay near by. “Here I am,” Mitchel said with an unusual thoughtfulness, “with a talent that should be recognized, wanting to be an illustrator, able to be one, and yet forced to dawdle with this horrible business to make my living.”

Hugo nodded. “You’ll come through—some winter—and you won’t ever return to Coney Island.”

“I know it. Unless I do it for sentimental reasons some day—in a limousine.”

“It’s myself,” Hugo said then, “and not you who is doomed to—well, to this sort of thing. You have a talent that is at least understandable and—” he was going to say mediocre. He checked himself—“applicable in the world of human affairs. My talent—if it is a talent—has no place, no application, no audience.”

Mitchel stared at Hugo, wondering first what that talent might be and then recognizing that Hugo meant his strength. “Nonsense. Any male in his right senses would give all his wits to be as strong as you are.”