But now the habit of his lifetime came to his lips in a kind of despairing prayer, although he didn’t really look upon it as prayer. Just a blind crying out of his soul to the universe that things had gone wrong.

He drew a deep sighing breath of defeat and let his weary muscles relax. He had walked a long way in that suburb he had just left, hunting the man who lived in the third big estate from the station, behind twelve-foot iron grillwork, padded with thick impenetrable forests of rhododendron and hemlock and flowering shrubs. He had toiled up one long leisurely drive after another until he found the right place, only to discover the man for whom he searched was at the country club three miles away. He had walked a hole in the sole of his shoe and acquired a pebble or two inside, and he hadn’t the money now to purchase new shoes. He lifted one foot across his knee and surveyed the limp sole despairingly. He had never had to consider small things like repairs before. Shoes had always been plenty. But there were going to be a lot of things like this presently. The thought startled his tired consciousness with amazing revelation. He had grown up overnight, and to this! It came to him that he was as far from the life that had been his, in name at least, when he had gone down to New York to bid good-bye to Barbara as one could possibly be. He had not yet sensed that there were still depths of life that he had not even imagined.

He drew another deep sighing breath and put the perforated sole quickly down on the floor where he could not see it. He couldn’t think about it anymore. He couldn’t stand another thing till he got rested. He had to get rested before he got home, or his mother would suffer just looking at his face. That was the trouble: Mother sensed everything and suffered so. One couldn’t hide anything from her. Even if outwardly he seemed to have succeeded in camouflaging the state of things, she sensed it. Smiled with him and tried to let him think he had deceived her, yet all the time she was suffering with him just as if she had known exactly how things stood. What was the use? Why try any further? There were only four days, and what more could he do than he had done? “Oh, God!” It was just a weary exclamation, showing his limit of despair. Yet how he hated to give up and let that swine of a lawyer beat him. Let him fix that throttling hold on him for life unless he paid that enormous sum. His indignation rose, but his weariness rose also, and he sank back in the seat with his eyes closed and wished he might go to sleep and forget it all.

In front of him sat two women garbed in afternoon outfits—white gloves, delicate garments, tricky hats that seemed simple yet made their wearers look years younger than their ages. Their voices were low and well modulated; their speech was cultured and refined. They were talking of social affairs. By their conversation, he learned vaguely that they had been to a tea or bridge party or some affair of that sort and were on their way back to their homes in his own part of the city. He paid no more heed to them than if they had been the paneling on the ceiling of the car above him. They were just a part of the place where he was sitting for the time.

Then suddenly with a single sentence their words came alive as astonishingly as if the paneling above him had spoken to him and shown an interest in his problems.

“Oh, and, Mrs. Brent,” said the older woman, the one with white hair, “have you heard what Mr. Stanwood has done for our club? You weren’t out yesterday, were you? But surely someone has told you! It is too wonderful news to keep silent about.”

“Why, no! What’s happened? I haven’t seen a soul for nearly a week till I went out this afternoon, and you were the only one today from our club.”

“Well, I surely am glad to be the first one to tell you,” said the older lady.