The muscles of his cheeks moved in hard lumps beneath his fists as if he were champing some resistant substance.

Over his eyes his lids from time to time drooped sleepily.

But all at once he leaped up.
"If I but had something I could take hold of, Pat!" he exclaimed.
"Something I could lay hands on and move, like that bed of rock you uncovered! So I could go ahead! A law is so damned immaterial that one has nothing to work against.

It leaves a man nowhere, helpless.

It lifts him off the ground and holds him kicking futilely in the air.
Just that.