ABSTRACT
It is in the old house that he feels the presence of, and indeed seeks out, his alter ego. But in the other, now a construction site, he finds something else, and it is this something else that prompts him to seek the other out. The most clearly defined of the rather nebulous causes that brought him back to New York is the sense of needing to supervise the work: a task that might be expected to be irksome and distasteful, not to say futile. But to his surprise he finds that he is rather good at it, and this is enjoyable:
[I]t had been not the least of his astonishments to find himself able, on the spot, and though without a previous ounce of such experience, to participate with a certain intelligence, almost with a certain authority. He had lived his life with his back so turned to such concerns and his face addressed to those of so different an order that he scarce knew what to make of this lively stir, in a compartment of his mind never yet penetrated, of a capacity for business and a sense of construction. These virtues, so common all around him now, had been dormant in his own organismwhere it might be said of them perhaps that they had slept the sleep of the just.1
