His had been a very ordinary boyhood and young manhood, in no way unusual, almost embarrassingly average; his experience, such as it was, could be duplicated or matched by that of thousands of other American youths. Yet sometimes he looked back on those days of unreality as the richest, the most promising period of his life, because it was a time when to look forward meant possibilities of happiness undreamed of. What did “looking forward” mean now? Except for watching his sons develop—except for a promotion at the university or recognition because of his book, the chief pleasure of which had been in the doing of it, not because of the way it would be received—it meant a checking off or verification (hardly more imaginative or exciting than a business inventory) of all which common sense or experience had long since told him he could expect from life, no more and no less.

The white opaque night enveloped him pleasantly; yet there was a sinister quality about it, as well, which he could not define. He felt, for one thing, that he was fleeing from the concrete to the nebulous and unreal, possibly the dangerous; he felt, too, as if he were stumbling along over quicksands which gave underfoot and threatened to engulf him or pull him down out of sight unless he hurried on. The fog was peopled with curious shapes; his flight was like one of those nightmares, so often the subject of a ribald joke (the baked beans, the bridegroom, the surprise party), in which the protagonist, blindfolded or left in a dark room, is surrounded by friends or acquaintances who look on coldly while he, innocent of their presence, makes a spectacular fool of himself. It was as if, twenty feet away, a line of fateful judges had gathered, to witness his plight yet take no part in it, neither to direct nor to help him. He could almost see these figures looming in the murk nearby, could almost have named them—and he wanted continually to speak out and say (if only to reassure himself): I know you are there; but go away, leave me alone. . . . He ignored them, kept his eyes to the ground which he could not see, pretended he was by himself, and reminded himself over and over that no one knew where he was. . . .