erset Club for breakfast. Even
the fashionable quarters had the air of untidy domesticity to which no
excess of heat ever degrades the European cities. Care-takers in
calico lounged on the door-steps of the wealthy, and the Common looked
like a pleasure-ground on the morrow of a Masonic picnic. If Archer
had tried to imagine Ellen Olenska in improbable scenes he could not
have called up any into which it was more difficult to fit her than
this heat-prostrated and deserted Boston.

He breakfasted with appetite and method, beginning with a slice of
melon, and studying a morning paper while he waited for his toast and
scrambled eggs. A new sense of energy and activity had possessed him
ever since he had announced to May the night before that he had
business in Boston, and should take the Fall River boat that night and
go on to New York the following evening. It had always been understood
that he would return to town early in the week, and when he got back
from his expedition to Portsmouth a letter from the office, which fate
had conspicuously placed on a corner of the hall table, sufficed to
justify his sudden change of plan. He was even ashamed of the ease
with which the whole thing had been done: it reminded him, for an
uncomfortable moment, of Lawrence Lefferts's masterly contrivances for
securing his freedom. But this did not long trouble him, for he was
not in an analytic mood.

After breakfast he smoked a cigarette and glanced over the Commercial
Advertiser. While he was thus engaged two or three men he knew came
in, and the usual greetings were exchanged: it was the same world after
all, though he had such a queer sense of having slipped through the
meshes of time and space.

He looked at his watch, and finding that it was half-past nine got up
and went into the writing-room. There he wrote a few lines, and
ordered a messenger to take a cab to the Parker House and wait for the
answer. He then sat down behind another newspaper and tried to
calculate how long it would take a cab to get to the Parker House.

"The lady was out, sir," he suddenly heard a waiter's voice at his
elbow; and he stammered: "Out?--" as if it were a word in a strange
language.

He got up and went into the hall. It must be a mistake: she could not
be out at that hour. He flushed with anger at his own stupidity: why
had he not sent the note as soon as he arrived?

He found his hat and stick and went forth into the street. The