sk, and was
far, very far, from happy. He leaned back--the chair worked beautifully
upon its well-oiled springs--and wondered. He shut his eyes, and tried
to place himself in his position of a month before, and failed. Why had
there been no callers? His own branch of business was in a laggard way,
but of that he made no account. He thought of Oonalaska, and decided
that there were worse places in the world than on that shore, even with
the drawback of the howlings. He seemed to be in space.

To sum up all in an explanatory way, George Henry, having largely lost
his grip upon the world, had voluntarily, being too sensitive, severed
all connections save those he had to maintain with that portion of the
community interested in the paying of his bills. Now, since he had met
all material obligations, he thought the world would come to him again
unsought. It did not come.

Every one seemed to have gone away with the wolf. George Henry began
trying to determine what it was that was wrong. The letter-carrier, a
fine fellow, who had called upon him daily in the past, now never
crossed his threshold. Even book agents and peddlers avoided the place,
from long experience of rebuff. The bill-collectors came no more, of
course; and as George Henry looked back over the past months of
humiliation and agony he suddenly realized that to these same collectors
he had been solely indebted toward the last of his time of trial for
what human companionship had come to him. His friends, how easily they
had given him up! He thought of poor old Rip Van Winkle's plaint, "How
soon we are forgotten when we are gone!" and sarcastically amended it to
"How soon we are forgotten when we are here!" A few invitations
declined, the ordinary social calls left for some other time, and he was
apparently forgotten. He could not much blame himself that he had
voluntarily severed the ties. A man cannot dine in comfort with
comfortable friends when his heart is sore over his general
inconsequence in the real world. Play is not play when zest is not given
to it by work and duties. Even his social evenings with old and true
friends he had given up early in the struggle. He could not overcome the
bitterness of his lot sufficiently to sit easily among those he most
cared for. It is not difficult sometimes to drop out of life while yet
alive. Yet George Henry realized that possibly he had been an extended
error--had been too sensitive. He thought of his neglect of fr