t rugs. His imagination
was forever covering the white walls with rough stone-blue paper, and
placing screens, divans, and window-seats in different parts of the cold
bare room. One morning he had even gone so far as to pin about the walls
little placards which he had painted with a twisted roll of the hotel
letter-paper dipped into the inkstand. "Pipe-rack Here." "Mona Lisa
Here." "Stove Here." "Window-seat Here." He had left them up there ever
since, in spite of the chambermaid's protests and Ellis' clumsy satire.

Now, however, he had plenty of money. He would have his furniture back
within the week. He came back from the bank, the money in his pocket,
and went up to the room directly, with some vague intention of writing
to the proprietors of the apartment house at once. But as he shut the
door behind him, leaning his back against it and looking about, he
suddenly realized that his old-time desire was passed; he had become so
used to these surroundings that it now no longer made any difference to
him whether or not they were cheerless, lamentable, barren. It was like
all his other little ambitions--he had lost the taste for them, nothing
made much difference after all. His money had come too late.

Why should he spend his five hundred dollars on something that could no
longer amuse him? It would be much wiser to spend it all in having a
good time somewhere--champagne dinners with Flossie, or betting on the
races--he did not know exactly what. It was true that even these
alternatives would not amuse him very much--he would fall back upon them
as things of habit. For that matter everything was an _ennui_, and
Vandover began to long for some new pleasure, some violent untried
excitement.

Since the sale of the block in the Mission he had seen but little of
Geary; young Haight had not been his companion since the time when
Turner Ravis had broken with him, but little by little he had begun to
associate with Ellis and his friend the Dummy. Almost every evening the
three were together, sometimes at the theatre, sometimes in the back
rooms of the Imperial, sometimes even in the parlours of certain houses,
amid the murmur of heavy silks and the rustle of stiffly starched
skirts. At times they would be drunk four nights of the week, and on
these occasions it was tacitly understood between Ellis and Vandover
that they should try to get the Dummy so full that he could talk.

However, Ellis' vice was gambling; he and the Dum