At moments on this particular afternoon, when he touched bottom, he threw back his head and swept the sky with a look that resembled a shaken fist, or a dog’s bared teeth. Put into words it would have run: Oh, You up there! . . . You, Who have granted us artists but a single faculty — that of aping You, of playing the Creator-and Who then freakishly and thievishly rob us of the power to do it . . . .
At one such moment his sullen eyes, in falling, met those of a girl who had paused on the kerb to decipher a scrap of writing. She had glanced up unthinkingly as he drew near; but she did not look away again — he saw to that! It pleased him suddenly to fix her eyes with his, to pin them fast, paying out his own evil mood in the look, till his victim reddened and made off. And he did not so mu
