room every
evening like this!) At least some of the other inhabitants found the
contrast amusing, for sometimes, as he departed stiffly toward the
elevator, leaving her still entreating in the doorway (though with one
eye already on her table, to see that it was not seized) a titter would
follow him which he was no doubt meant to hear. He did not care whether
they laughed or not.

And once, as he passed the one or two young men of the place
entertaining the three or four young women, who were elbowing and
jerking on a settee in the lobby, he heard a voice inquiring quickly, as
he passed:

"What makes people tired?"

"Work?"

"No."

"Well, what's the answer?"

Then, with an intentional outbreak of mirth, the answer was given by two
loudly whispering voices together:

"A stuck-up boarder!"

George didn't care.

On Sunday mornings Fanny went to church and George took long walks. He
explored the new city, and found it hideous, especially in the early
spring, before the leaves of the shade trees were out. Then the town was
fagged with the long winter and blacked with the heavier smoke that had
been held close to the earth by the smoke-fog it bred. Every-thing was
damply streaked with the soot: the walls of the houses, inside and out,
the gray curtains at the windows, the windows themselves, the dirty
cement and unswept asphalt underfoot, the very sky overhead. Throughout
this murky season he continued his explorations, never seeing a face he
knew--for, on Sunday, those whom he remembered, or who might remember
him, were not apt to be found within the limits of the town, but were
congenially occupied with the new outdoor life which had come to be the
mode since his boyhood. He and Fanny were pretty thoroughly buried away
within the bigness of the city.

One of his Sunday walks, that spring, he made into a sour pilgrimage.
It was a misty morning of belated snow slush, and suited him to a
perfection of miserableness, as he stood before the great dripping
department store which now occupied the big plot of ground where once
had stood both the Amberson Hotel and the Amberson Opera House. From
there he drifted to the old "Amberson Block," but this was fallen into a
back-water; business had stagnated here. The old structure had not
been replaced, but a cavernous entryway for trucks had been torn in its
front, and upon the cornice, where the old separate metal letters
had spelt "Amberson Block," there was a long bill