long
straight hair fell about his eyes and ears like a tangled mane. A thin
straggling beard and moustache, of a brown much lighter than his hair,
covered the lower part of his face. His nose was long and pinched, while
brown and puffed pockets hung beneath his eyes.

He wore a white shirt very crumpled and dirty, a low standing collar and
a black four-in-hand necktie, very greasy. His trousers were striped and
of a slate blue colour--the "blue pants" of the ready-made clothing
stores. Still sitting on the bed, Vandover continued his stupid gaze
about the room.

The room was small, and at some long-forgotten, almost prehistoric
period had been covered with a yellowish paper, stamped with a huge
pattern of flowers that looked like the flora of a carboniferous
strata, a pattern repeated to infinity wherever the eye turned.
Newspapers were pasted upon the ceiling and a great square of very dirty
matting covered the floor. There were a few pieces of furniture, very
old-fashioned, made of pine, with a black walnut veneer, two chairs, a
washstand and the bed. A great pile of old newspapers tied up with bale
rope was kicked into one corner. Two gas brackets without globes
stretched forth their long arms over the empty space where the bureau
should have been. Under the single window was Vandover's trunk, and upon
it his colour box and pots of paint. His hat hung upon a hook screwed to
the door. The hat had once been black, but it had long since turned to a
greenish hue, and sweat stains were showing about the band.

Vandover dressed slowly. He straightened his hair a bit before the cheap
mirror that hung over the washstand, putting on his hat immediately
after to keep it in place. He washed his hands in the dirty water that
had stood in his pasteboard bowl since the previous afternoon, but left
his face as it was. He put on his coat, an old cutaway which had been
his best years ago, but which was now absurdly small for him, the breast
all spotted and streaked with old stains of soup and gravy. Last of all
he drew on his shoes. They were new. Vandover had bought them two days
before for a dollar and ninety cents. They were lined so as to make
socks superfluous.

It had been a bad week with Vandover. The paint-shop had given him no
work to do for ten days, and he had been forced to get along in some way
upon the interest of his bonds--that is to say, upon five dollars and
seventy-five cents a week. Two dollars and seventy-fi