The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-06-22
CHAPTER xxx

Campanionship .comradeshipl A stark thought came to Joe Murray. It came inevitably. It came often, clearer and clearer. It came and abided with him, unbid- den. It had been with him long time, he suddenly saw, unrecog- nized.
 These stings, these ranking stabs they were alivel They were not, they never could be, happiness and peace - because they were alive! The other, the happiness and peace, the visions: they were passionless and dead and unattainable. They were a drug and delusion for a starving man, who was sick for the days of his strength and his plenty.
 It was not Helen he yearned for any more. It was the past. Helen was dead, gone into limitless time; his love for her had not died, but was part of him; he would always love her and remember her in beauty, through all the years. Helen was not of the earth, she was beyond all passion; she was not real, she was vision.
 It was a vision he dreamed with but it was Terry he lived with daily!
 Realization rushed upon him, cataclysmic. It was Terry he wanted and hungered for. Terry --pestering, worrying, begging and beguiling. Terry, with her dainty fine web spinning always about him. Terry, who would conceiv- ably ride in box car with him blandly and gaily, and walk on the highways and sleep in the fields of a nation, did he ask her. So long as they travelled together. It was the starker a thought for the clarity of it's conclusion, which went back to the very beginning It was Terry he wanted, yes, but it was Terry he had lost. It was Terry he had failed, and Terry who had been torn from his hands. He had not failed himself; he had not been able to keep her, losing her to forces far beyond his hum ble command. But to realize that he had possessed this and lost it . and that 1t was this and noth- ing else in the world that he wanted it was stark, stark and man must face it forever! 1 He went little berserk. He had a remnant of money, a few meager dollars from the tiny fund sent him by the Murrays. He put the money ! in an envelope and mailed it back ! to them, saying he was gone again, not to worry, he'd keep going and come out right side up-he had to keep going, and he could not come home.
 He felt this interval of lingering dependence to be shame on him, a recollection that must me wiped out. He had his manhood. He knew the ways of the road. He could make his way, wanting nothing from any man. He'd come right side up There would be work. There would be need of rore automobile bodies sometime somewhere; there would be work and forgetfulness. Work and for getfulneSs.
 Not peace! He rebeled at peace sllattering the seductive visions There was no peace-not in life Life goes on, fight and a strug- gle always, and the greatest tor ment, the greatest loss, is to be out of the struggle, out of the stream of it.
 Neither life nor love have peace in them, though they both have surpassing beauty: the beauty of change, the beauty of growth, the beauty of continuity, inscrutable and intending.
 And this was Joe's gropine avowl. He who had been out ot the stream of it, out of the run ming he was plunging back This man, Joe Murray.
 Joe Murray went foraging. Wher he found what he wanted, he brought it home to the hotel witf him: a piece of cast-off leather light and fairly pliable. It wa treasure trove He borrowed z pocket knife from the hotelman al the desk and went to work in hi room.
 He took off his shoes; they wert in no state for the road, with hole large as quarters in the soles. H. cut a piece of paper to a patterr and trimmed it till it slid inside one of the shoes easily and neatly Then he laid the pattern on th' strip of leather and hacked out most practical inner sole.
 He was at work on the other sho when there came knock on tn door. He had occasional visits iron room neighbors; he called an invi tation to come right in. The doc opened, and he glanced up.
 Slowly, numbly, he dropped tn shoe, the leather, the knife.
 '"Terry!"
 She came into the room, closin the door behind her. She was look ing at him with the big brow eyes looking at him. She wa thin; there were big circles unde the eyes; her shoulders droope' beneath the cheap red coat.
 "Joe," she said, and stopped.
 He looked scared, looked like man who does not know what t do. She did it for him. She walked to him and sat down on his lar sliding her arms around his necl and laying her head on hi shoulder.
 Terry" he said. God Terry!' His voice would not func ton. He did not know what wa happening to him, what was rack ing him.
 She knew. She said, Joe once, and suddenly began to cry weakly, surrendering wholly. Ant