I wanted to suffer, to be hurt
somehow. I thought that was what I should do. I wanted
to suffer, you see, because everyone suffers and does
wrong. I thought of a lot of things to do, but they
wouldn't work. They all hurt someone else."

Tom Foster's voice arose, and for once in his life he
became almost excited. "It was like making love, that's
what I mean," he explained. "Don't you see how it is?
It hurt me to do what I did and made everything
strange. That's why I did it. I'm glad, too. It taught
me something, that's it, that's what I wanted. Don't
you understand? I wanted to learn things, you see.
That's why I did it."

DEATH

The stairway leading up to Doctor Reefy's office, in
the Heffner Block above the Paris Dry Goods store, was
but dimly lighted. At the head of the stairway hung a
lamp with a dirty chimney that was fastened by a
bracket to the wall. The lamp had a tin reflector,
brown with rust and covered with dust. The people who
went up the stairway followed with their feet the feet
of many who had gone before. The soft boards of the
stairs had yielded under the pressure of feet and deep
hollows marked the way.

At the top of the stairway a turn to the right brought
you to the doctor's door. To the left was a dark
hallway filled with rubbish. Old chairs, carpenter's
horses, step ladders and empty boxes lay in the
darkness waiting for shins to be barked. The pile of
rubbish belonged to the Paris Dry Goods Company. When a
counter or a row of shelves in the store became
useless, clerks carried it up the stairway and threw it
on the pile.

Doctor Reefy's office was as large as a barn. A stove
with a round paunch sat in the middle of the room.
Around its base was piled sawdust, held in place by
heavy planks nailed to the floor. By the door stood a
huge table that had once been a part of the furniture
of Herrick's Clothing Store and that had been used for
displaying custom-made clothes. It was covered with
books, bottles, and surgical instruments. Near the edge
of the table lay three or four apples left by John
Spaniard, a tree nurseryman who was Doctor Reefy's
friend, and who had slipped the apples out of his
pocket as he came in at the door.

At middle age Doctor Reefy was tall and awkward. The
grey beard he later wore had not yet appeared, but on
the upper lip grew a brown mustache. He was not a
graceful man, as when he grew older, and was much
occupied with the problem of disposing of h