The passion for form, that strange intuitive power that many men have
felt and none but the masters of human life have understood, had begun
to awaken in him. Already he had begun to sense out the fact that for
him law was but an incident in some vast design and he was altogether
untouched by the desire for getting on in the world, by the greedy
little snatching at trifles that was the whole purpose of the lives of
so many of the people about him. When somewhere in the park a band
began to play he nodded his head up and down and ran his hand
nervously up and down the legs of his trousers. Into his mind came the
desire to boast to the barber, telling of the things he meant to do in
the world, but he put the desire away. Instead he sat silently
blinking his eyes and wondering at the persistent air of
ineffectiveness in the people who passed. When a band went by playing
march music and followed by some fifty men wearing white plumes in
their hats and walking with self-conscious awkwardness, he was
startled. Among the people he thought there was a change. Something
like a running shadow passed over them. The babbling of voices ceased
and like himself the people began to nod their heads. A thought,
gigantic in its simplicity, began to come into his mind but was wiped
out immediately by his impatience with the marchers.
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