membered.

He took out his new cigar, turned it over and over gloweringly, and
chewed it without lighting it, the right corner of his mouth vicious
in appearance. But his tone was plaintive as he mourned, "How did it
all start, anyway?"

He drew off his top-coat and shoes, and put on his shabby though once
expensive slippers. Slowly. He lay on his bed. He certainly did not
intend to go to sleep--but he awoke at 2 A.M., dressed, the light
burning, his windows closed, feeling sweaty and hot and dirty and
dry-mouthed--a victim of all the woes since tall Troy burned. He
shucked off his clothes as you shuck an ear of corn.

When he awoke in the morning he lay as usual, greeting a shining new
day, till he realized that it was not a shining day; it was an ominous
day; everything was wrong. That something had happened--really
had--was a fact that sternly patrolled his room. His chief reaction
was not repentance nor dramatic interest, but a vexed longing to
unwish the whole affair. "Hang it!" he groaned.

Already he was eager to make peace. He sympathized with Ruth. "Poor
kid! it was rotten to row with her, her completely all in with the
grippe."

At three in the afternoon he telephoned to her house. "Miss Ruth," he
was informed, "was asleep; she was not very well."

Would the maid please ask Miss Ruth to call Mr. Ericson when she woke?

Certainly the maid would.

But by bedtime Ruth had not telephoned. Self-respect would not let him
call again, for days, and Ruth never called him.

He went about alternately resentful at her stubbornness and seeing
himself as a lout cast out of heaven. Then he saw her at a distance,
on the platform of the subway station at Seventy-second Street. She
was with Phil Dunleavy. She looked well, she was talking gaily,
oblivious of old sorrows, certainly not in need of Carl Ericson.

That was the end, he knew. He watched them take a train; stood there
alone, due at a meeting of the Aeronautical Society, but suddenly not
wishing to go, not wishing to go anywhere nor do anything, friendless,
bored, driftwood in the city.

So easily had the Hawk swooped down into her life, coming by chance,
but glad to remain. So easily had he been driven away.

* * * * *

For three days he planned in a headachy way to make an end of his job
and join Bagby, Jr., in his hydroaeroplane experiments. He pictured
the crowd that would worship him. He told himself stories unhappy an