y and Market streets. He had long since become a
familiar figure on this promenade. Even the women and girls of Flossie's
type had ceased to be interested in this tall, thin young man with the
tired, heavy eyes and blue-white face. One day, however, a curious
incident did for a moment invest Vandover with a sudden dramatic
interest. It was just after he had moved down to the Lick House, about a
month after he had sold the block in the Mission. Vandover was standing
at Lotta's fountain at the corner of Kearney and Market streets,
interested in watching a policeman and two boys reharnessing a horse
after its tumble. All at once he fell over flat into the street,
jostling one of the flower venders and nearly upsetting him. He struck
the ground with a sodden shock, his arms doubled under him, his hat
rolling away into the mud. Bewildered, he picked himself up; very few
had seen him fall, but a little crowd gathered for all that. One asked
if the man was drunk, and Vandover, terrified lest the policeman should
call the patrol wagon, hurried off to a basement barber shop near by,
where he brushed his clothes, still bewildered, confused, wondering how
it had happened.

The fearful nervous crisis which Vandover had undergone had passed off
slowly. Little by little, bit by bit, he had got himself in hand again.
However, the queer numbness in his head remained, and as soon as he
concentrated his attention on any certain line of thought, as soon as he
had read for any length of time, especially if late at night, the
numbness increased. Somewhere back of his eyes a strange blurring mist
would seem to rise; he would find it impossible to keep his mind fixed
upon any subject; the words of a printed page would little by little
lose their meaning. At first this had been a source of infinite terror
to him. He fancied it to be the symptoms of some approaching mental
collapse, but, as the weeks went by and nothing unusual occurred, he
became used to it, and refused to let it worry him. If it made his head
feel queer to read, the remedy was easy enough--he simply would not
read; and though he had been a great reader, and at one time had been
used to spend many delightful afternoons lost in the pages of a novel,
he now gave it all up with an easy indifference.

But, besides all this, the attack had left him with nerves all unstrung;
even his little afternoon walk on Kearney and Market streets exhausted
him; any trifling and sudden noise, t