I knew we must be getting close to my stop, and looked away from the Dutch family long enough to glance out over this strange low New York, its church spires the highest things on the island. It was weird to be able to look straight across the city and see the Hudson, and astonishing to see how many trees there were. Most of the cross streets seemed lined with them, and there were a good many on the avenues. Some were fine big ones, taller than the houses around them, and I realized that the greenery of all these trees would give the town a rural look in summer almost like a large village, and I wished I could see it then.

We were approaching my stop, and for an instant, down a cross street to the west — Seventeenth? Eighteenth? — I caught a glimpse of a fine and splendid-looking five-story apartment building with a mansard roof. I was almost certain — it was red brick with brownstone facings — that I recognized it as the Stuyvesant. A friend of mine, an artist, who had lived in it till they tore it down, sometime in the fifties, I think, had a watercolor he'd done of it on his livingroom wall. He still missed the place, it was such a magnificent, high-windowed, enormous apartment. It actually had twenty-foot ceilings and four wood-burning fireplaces; New York's first apartment building, he said, known as "Stuyvesant's Folly" while they were building it because people said no New York gentleman would ever consent to live with a lot of strangers. He liked to talk about it, and I was glad to have had even a glimpse of it.

I got off at Twenty-third Street, walked back to 19 Gramercy Park, and Aunt Ada heard the front door open and came in from the kitchen, her hands and forearms white with flour. I asked if Julia were home, and she said no, but that she ought to be here any time now, and I thanked her and went on up to my room.

It had been some day and I'd walked more than I had in a long time, so I was glad to stretch out on my bed and wait. Now and then, outside my window as I lay there, I heard children in the park cry out, their voices high and thin in the cold outdoor air. I heard the already familiar hollow clop of horses' hoofs and the chink of their harness chains. I didn't want to leave this New York; there was so much more to see in this strange yet familiar city.

I fell asleep, of course, and awoke at the sounds of Julia's return: her voice and her aunt's in the hall. I got up quickly, pulling my watch out. It was just past four thirty, and I put on shoes and coat and trotted down. They were still there in the hall, looking up at me, Julia still dressed for the street; she was showing her aunt some things she'd bought.

We all went into the parlor, Julia untying and pulling off her hat, and I told them the story I'd composed, astonished at how guilty I felt to be looking at these two trusting women and lying. I'd gone to the post office, I said, to cancel the box I'd rented until I got permanent quarters. But I'd found an urgent letter in the box. My brother was sick, and while he'd recover, I added quickly — I didn't want condolences — they needed me meanwhile to help out on my father's farm, so I'd have to leave today; right now in fact. I was suddenly afraid they might ask questions about farming, but of course they didn't. Those two nice women were sympathetic, genuinely. And they said they were sorry I was leaving, and it seemed to me that was genuine, too. Aunt Ada supposed that I wouldn't leave till after dinner, at least, but I said no, I ought to leave right away; it would be a long train trip. She offered to refund part of my week's lodging, which I refused.

Then Julia, suddenly remembering, said, "Oh, no! My portrait!"

I'd forgotten it completely, and stood looking at her, my mind scrambling for an excuse. Then I realized I didn't want one. I wanted to do this portrait very much; it seemed like a particularly good way to say goodbye. So I nodded and said that if she'd sit for it now — I wanted to avoid Jake — I'd do it right away, then leave. Julia hurried upstairs to get ready — I asked her to keep on the dress she was wearing — and I followed to get my sketchbook from my overcoat pocket.

Upstairs I packed my carpetbag, stood looking around the room — ridiculously, I knew I'd miss it — then walked out, carpetbag in one hand, sketchbook in the other, and I flipped the cover back to look over the day's sketches.

As I turned toward the stairs Julia stepped down off the enclosed third-floor staircase, almost bumping into me; her hair was freshly coiled on top of her head now. "Oh, may I see!" she said, reaching for my sketchbook. I might have made an excuse, but I was curious and gave her the book. Walking slowly down ahead of me, she looked first at my reference sketches of the farming near the Dakota; they weren't really sketches yet but more like a set of notes to myself, and she didn't comment on them, but turned the page to my sketch of City Hall Park and the streets around it.

I think I might have guessed the kind of response she made; I knew this was an age of absolute and almost universal faith in progress, and very nearly a love of machinery and its potentials. We were downstairs, and now she stopped in the parlor and said, "What are these, Mr. Morley?" Her fingertip lay on the paper at the cars and trucks I'd sketched onto Centre Street.

"Automobiles."

She repeated it as though it were two words: "Auto mobiles." Then she nodded, pleased. "Yes: self-propelled. That's an excellent coinage; is it your own?" I said no, that I'd heard it somewhere, and she nodded again and said, "Perhaps in Jules Verne. In any case, I'm quite certain we will have auto mobiles. And a good thing; so much cleaner than horses." She was already turning the page, and now she looked at my rough of Trinity and Broadway. Before she could comment I took it from her, and very rapidly sketched in the enormous buildings that would someday surround the little church. I handed it back to her, and after a moment she nodded. "Excellent. Wonderfully symbolic. The highest structure on all of Manhattan to be eventually surrounded by others far taller: yes. But you're a better artist than architect, Mr. Morley; to support buildings this tall, the masonry at the base of the walls would need to be half a mile thick!" She smiled, and handed my pad back. "Where shall I sit?"

I posed her at a window in a three-quarter view, making her let her hair down, and worked with a very sharp hard pencil to force the best delineation I was capable of; no obscuring faulty draftsmanship with a fine thick dash of a line. The hard pencil also allowed the finest shading and cross-hatching I was capable of.

It was turning out well. I had the shape of the face, and I had the eyes and eyebrows, the hardest part for me, and I was working quite carefully on the hair: I wanted to really catch the way it was. But I was slow: Young Felix Grier came home, and I dragged out my watch and saw that it was just before five. He stood watching for a few moments, not saying anything. He smiled when I looked up at him, and nodded a quick polite approval, but his eyes were worried, and I knew why. I was worried, too — that Jake Pickering would come in and raise hell once again, and it was no part of my mission here to make trouble. I stepped up my speed, trying to hang onto my control; I wanted this good. It seemed unlikely that he'd be home from a job at City Hall before five thirty or six, and I expected to be finished and gone within minutes now.

It was my fault, of course, for not thinking of the obvious: that a man like Jake Pickering, hating his job and status as a clerk, would walk back to City Hall and quit his job after seeing Carmody. And now — this time I didn't see him approaching the house — the front door opened, closed, and there he was standing in the hall doorway again. But now he was swaying ever so slightly, and his tie was undone. His overcoat was unbuttoned, his hands shoved into his pants pockets, and his plug hat, far back on his head, had a streak of dried mud at the crown and along one curled rim.