Chapter 36

He stood at the corner of Wall Street, looking up and down its hot
summer perspective. He noticed the swirls of dust in the cracks of the
pavement, the rubbish in the gutters, the ceaseless stream of perspiring
faces that poured by under tilted hats.

He found himself, next, slipping northward between the glazed walls of
the Subway, another languid crowd in the seats about him and the nasal
yelp of the stations ringing through the car like some repeated ritual
wail. The blindness within him seemed to have intensified his physical
perceptions, his sensitiveness to the heat, the noise, the smells of the
dishevelled midsummer city; but combined with the acuter perception of
these offenses was a complete indifference to them, as though he were
some vivisected animal deprived of the power of discrimination.

Now he had turned into Waverly Place, and was walking westward
toward Washington Square. At the corner he pulled himself up, saying
half-aloud: "The office--I ought to be at the office." He drew out his
watch and stared at it blankly. What the devil had he taken it out for?
He had to go through a laborious process of readjustment to find out
what it had to say.... Twelve o'clock.... Should he turn back to the
office? It seemed easier to cross the square, go up the steps of the old
house and slip his key into the door....

The house was empty. His mother, a few days previously, had departed
with Mr. Dagonet for their usual two months on the Maine coast, where
Ralph was to join them with his boy.... The blinds were all drawn down,
and the freshness and silence of the marble-paved hall laid soothing
hands on him.... He said to himself: "I'll jump into a cab presently,
and go and lunch at the club--" He laid down his hat and stick and
climbed the carpetless stairs to his room. When he entered it he had
the shock of feeling himself in a strange place: it did not seem like
anything he had ever seen before. Then, one by one, all the old stale
usual things in it confronted him, and he longed with a sick intensity
to be in a place that was really strange.

"How on earth can I go on living here?" he wondered.

A careless servant had left the outer shutters open, and the sun was
beating on the window-panes. Ralph pushed open the windows, shut the
shutters, and wandered toward his arm-chair. Beads of perspiration stood
on his forehead: the temperature of the room reminded him of the heat
under the ilexes of the Sienese villa where he and Undine had sat
through a long July afternoon. He saw her before him, leaning against
the tree-trunk in her white dress, limpid and inscrutable.... "We were
made one at Opake, Nebraska...." Had she been thinking of it that