Here and there, before and behind him, were the faces; voices
called, smiles invited, hands beckoned. Up and down the street went men
looking at the sidewalk, their coats turned up about their necks, their
hats pulled down over their eyes. They looked at the faces of the women
pressed against the little squares of glass and then, turning, suddenly,
sprang in at the doors of the houses as if pursued. Among the walkers on
the sidewalk were old men, men in shabby coats whose feet scuffled as they
hurried along, and young boys with the pink of virtue in their cheeks. In
the air was lust, heavy and hideous. It got into Sam's brain and he stood
hesitating and uncertain, startled, nerveless, afraid. He remembered a
story he had once heard from John Telfer, a story of the disease and death
that lurks in the little side streets of cities, and ran into Van Buren
Street and from that into lighted State. He climbed up the stairway of the
elevated railroad and jumping on the first train went away south to walk
for hours on a gravel roadway at the edge of the lake in Jackson Park. The
wind from the lake and the laughter and talk of people passing under the
lights cooled the fever in him, as once it had been cooled by the
eloquence of John Telfer, walking on the road near Caxton, and with his
voice marshalling the armies of the standing corn.
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