By the time the sublime spring days came, Fairfax discovered that he needed consolation. He must have been a very stubborn, dull animal, he decided, to have so successfully stuffed down and crushed out Antony Fairfax. Antony Fairfax could not have been much of a man at any time to have gone down so uncomplainingly in the fight.

"A chap who is uniquely an artist and poet," he wrote to his mother, "is not a real man, I reckon."

But he had not described to her what kind of a fellow stood in his stead. Instead of going to church on Sundays he exercised in the free gymnasium, joined a base-ball team—the firemen against the engineers—and read and studied more than he should have done whenever he could keep his eyes open. Then spring came, and he could not deny another moment, another day or another night, that he needed consolation.

The wives and daughters of the railroad hands and officials—those he saw in Nut Street—were not likely to charm his eyes. Fairfax waited for Easter—waited with a strange young crying voice in his heart, a threatening softness around his heart of steel.

He went on rapidly with his new studies; his mind grasped readily whatever he attacked, and his teacher, less worldly than the choir-master at St. Angel's, wondered at his quickness, and looked at his disfigured hands. Joe Mead knew Tony's plans and his ambitions; by June they would give Fairfax an engine and Mead would look out for another fireman to feed "the Girl." The bulky, panting, puffing, sliding thing, feminine as the machine seemed, could no longer charm Fairfax nor occupy all his thoughts.

He had been sincere when he told Sanders that he would look out for Molly Shannon. The pinnacle this decision lifted him to, whether felt to be the truth or purely a sentimental advance, nevertheless gave him a view which seemed to do him good. The night after Sanders' visit, Fairfax slept in peace, and the next day he went over to Sanders' mother and asked to see Molly Shannon. She had left Nut Street, had run away without leaving any address. Fairfax did not push his chivalry to try to find her. He slept better than ever that night, and when during the month Sanders himself went to take a job further up in the State and the entire Sanders family moved to Buffalo, Fairfax's slumbers grew sounder still. At length his own restless spirit broke his repose.

April burst over the country in a mad display of blossoms, which Fairfax, through the cab of his engine, saw lying like snow across the hills. He passed through blossoming orchards, and above the smell of oil and grease came the ineffable sweetness of spring, the perfume of the earth and the trees. Just a year ago he had gone with Bella and Gardiner to Central Park, and he remembered Gardiner's little arm outstretched for the prize ring he could never secure, and Bella's sparkling success. The children had been in spring attire; now Fairfax could buy himself a new overcoat and did so, a grey one, well-made and well-fitting, a straw hat with a crimson band, and a stick to carry on his Sunday jauntings—but he walked alone.

He flung his books in the bottom drawer of his bureau, locked it and pitched the key out of the window. He would not let them tempt him, for he had weakly bought certain volumes that he had always wanted to read, and Nut Street did not understand them.

"It's the books," he decided; "I can't be an engineer if I go on, nor will I be able to bear my lonely state."

Verse and lovely prose did not help him; their rhythm and swell drew away the curtains from the window of his heart, and the golden light of spring dazzled the young man's eyes. He eagerly observed the womenkind he passed, and Easter week, with its solemn festival, ran in hymn and prayer toward Easter Day. New frocks, new jackets, new hats were bright in the street. On Easter Sunday Fairfax sat in his old place by the choir and sang. The passion and tenderness brooding in him made his voice rich and the choir-master heard him above the congregation. From the lighted altar and the lilies, from the sunlight streaming through the stained windows, inspiration came to him, and as Fairfax sat and listened to the service he saw in imagination a great fountain to the left of the altar, a fountain of his building that should stand there, a marble fountain held by young angels with folded wings, and he would model, as Della Robbia modelled, angels in their primitive beauty, their bright infancy. The young man's head sank forward, he breathed a deep sigh. He owed every penny that he had laid by to Mrs. Kenny, to the tailor and the doctor, and in another month he would be engineer on probation. His inspiration left him at the church door. He walked restlessly up to the station and with a crowd of excursionists took his train to West Albany. Luncheon baskets, crying babies, oranges, peanuts, and the rest of the excursion paraphernalia filled the car. Fairfax looked over the crowd, and down by the farther door caught sight of a familiar face and figure.

It was Molly Shannon coming back to Nut Street for Easter. For several months the girl had been working in the Troy collar factory, and drawn by the most powerful of magnets was reluctantly returning to Nut Street on her holiday. Molly had no new dress for Easter. She hadn't even a new hat. Her long hours in the factory and her state of unhappy, unrequited love, had worn away the crude brilliance of her form. She was pale, thinner, and in her cheap dress, her old hat with its faded ribbon, with her hands clasped over a little imitation leather handbag, she sat utterly alone, as youth and beauty should never be.

Fairfax limped down the car and took his place by her side.