tuned pianos in a factory. The dead
level of mechanical perfection which they insisted upon was a stupid
affront to his ear. And, of course, the strict regimentation of life at
home, the, once more, dead level of the plateau upon which life was
supposed to be lived, was distasteful to one with a streak of the nomad
and the adventurer in him.

Thanks to his discovery he was able to construct an alternative to a life
like that. A skillful piano tuner could earn what money he needed
anywhere and could earn enough in a diligent week to set him free, his
simple wants provided for, for the rest of the month.

But even a wanderer needs a base, a point of departure for his
wanderings, and his father's house could not be made to serve that
purpose, so Anthony domiciled himself, after a long quest, in the half
story above a little grocery just off North LaSalle Street and not far
from the river.

It happened when Anthony had been living there a year or more that the
grocer, with whom he was on the friendliest of terms, got, temporarily,
into straits at precisely the time that Anthony had three hundred
dollars. He had won a prize of that amount offered by a society for the
encouragement of literature for the minor orchestral instruments, with a
concerto for the French horn. The grocer offered his note for it, but
Anthony thought of something better. He bought his room. It was to be his
to live in, rent free, for as long as time endured.

He took a childlike pleasure in this lair of his. It accumulated his
miscellaneous treasures like a small boy's pocket. He made a mystery of
it. He never gave it as his address. Not even his family knew where it
was, nor, more than vaguely, of its existence. The address he had given
Paula was the one he gave every one else, his father's house out on the
northwest side, just off Fullerton Avenue. This room, in a sense seldom
attained, was his own. When he came back from France, the day Lucile saw
him sitting on the bench in the park, he found it exactly--save for a
heavy coating of dust--as he had left it, in 1917, when he went down to
Camp Grant.

A good philosophy, so John Wollaston with a touch of envy had
admitted--if you can make it work. Where it breaks down with most young
men who set out so valiantly with it, is the point where one sees the
only girl in the world and recognizes the imperious necessity of winning
her, of holding out lures for her, of surrounding her, once won, with the