He saw all this; and for a time he came out of himself, out of his selfishness--out of the constant preoccupation of his interests and his desires--out of the temple of self and the concentration of personal thought.
His thoughts now wandered home.

Standing in the tepid stillness of a starry tropical night he felt the breath of the bitter east wind, he saw the high and narrow fronts of tall houses under the gloom of a clouded sky; and on muddy quays he saw the shabby, high-shouldered figure--the patient, faded face of the weary man earning bread for the children that waited for him in a dingy home.

It was miserable, miserable.

But it would never come back.

What was there in common between those things and Willems the clever, Willems the successful.