Sidney, left alone, stood in the little parlor beside
the roses. She touched them tenderly, absently.
Life, which the day before had called her with the
beckoning finger of dreams, now reached out grim insistent
hands. Life—in the raw.
K. Le Moyne had wakened early that first morning in
his new quarters. When he sat up and yawned,
it was to see his worn cravat disappearing with vigorous
tugs under the bureau. He rescued it, gently
but firmly.
“You and I, Reginald,” he apostrophized
the bureau, “will have to come to an understanding.
What I leave on the floor you may have, but what blows
down is not to be touched.”
Because he was young and very strong, he wakened to
a certain lightness of spirit. The morning sun
had always called him to a new day, and the sun was
shining. But he grew depressed as he prepared
for the office. He told himself savagely, as
he put on his shabby clothing, that, having sought
for peace and now found it, he was an ass for resenting
it. The trouble was, of course, that he came
of fighting stock: soldiers and explorers, even
a gentleman adventurer or two, had been his forefather.
He loathed peace with a deadly loathing.
Having given up everything else, K. Le Moyne had also
given up the love of woman. That, of course,
is figurative. He had been too busy for women;
and now he was too idle. A small part of his
brain added figures in the office of a gas company
daily, for the sum of two dollars and fifty cents
per eight-hour working day. But the real K. Le
Moyne that had dreamed dreams, had nothing to do with
the figures, but sat somewhere in his head and mocked
him as he worked at his task.
“Time’s going by, and here you are!”
mocked the real person—who was, of course,
not K. Le Moyne at all. “You’re the
hell of a lot of use, aren’t you? Two
and two are four and three are seven—take
off the discount. That’s right. It’s
a man’s work, isn’t it?”
“Somebody’s got to do this sort of thing,”
protested the small part of his brain that earned
the two-fifty per working day. “And it’s
a great anaesthetic. He can’t think when
he’s doing it. There’s something
practical about figures, and—rational.”
He dressed quickly, ascertaining that he had enough
money to buy a five-dollar ticket at Mrs. McKee’s;
and, having given up the love of woman with other
things, he was careful not to look about for Sidney
on his way.
He breakfasted at Mrs. McKee’s, and was initiated
into the mystery of the ticket punch. The food
was rather good, certainly plentiful; and even his
squeamish morning appetite could find no fault with
the self-respecting tidiness of the place. Tillie
proved to be neat and austere. He fancied it
would not be pleasant to be very late for one’s
meals—in fact, Sidney had hinted as much.
Some of the “mealers”—the Street’s
