ddleville. Something held him.

The warmth of bright hotel lobbies and theatres and restaurants uptown
was no longer available for Lane. His money had dwindled beyond the
possibility of luxury, and besides he shrank now from meeting any one
who knew him. His life was empty, dreary and comfortless.

One wintry afternoon Lane did not wander round as long as usual, for
the reason that his endurance was lessening. He returned early to his
new quarters, and in the dim hallway he passed a slight pale girl who
looked at him. She seemed familiar, but Lane could not place her.
Evidently she had a room in the building. Lane hated the big barn-like
house, and especially the bare cold room where he had to seek rest. Of
late he had not eaten any dinner. He usually remained in bed as long
as he could, and made a midday meal answer all requirements. Appetite,
like many other things, was failing him. This day he sat upon his bed,
in the abstraction of the lonely and unhappy, until the cold forced
him to get under the covers.

His weary eyelids had just closed when he was awakened. The confused
sense of being torn from slumber gave way to a perception of a voice
in the room next to his. It was a man's voice, rough with the
huskiness Lane recognized as peculiar to drunkards. And the reply to
it seemed to be a low-toned appeal from a woman.

"Playin' off sick, eh? You don't want to work. But you'll get me some
money, girl, d'ye hear?"

A door slammed, rattling the thin partition between the two rooms, and
heavy footsteps dragged in the hall and on the stairway.

Sleep refused to come back to Lane. As he lay there he was surprised
at the many sounds he heard. The ramshackle old structure, which he
had supposed almost vacant, was busy with life. Stealthy footfalls in
the hallways passed and repassed; a piano drummed somewhere; a man's
loud voice rang out, and a woman's laugh faint, hollow and far away,
like the ghost of laughter, returned in echo. The musical clinking of
glasses, the ring of a cash register, the rattling click of pool
balls, came up from below.

Presently Lane remembered the nature of the place. It was a house of
night. In daylight it was silent; its inmates were asleep. But as the
darkness unfolded a cloak over it, all the hidden springs of its
obscure humanity began to flow. Lying there with the woman's appeal
haunting him and all those sounds in his ears he thought of their
meaning. The drunkard with his lust for