Wall Street, then turned
up William Street, thinking of his luck. Cosmopolitan Traction had
certainly looked like higher prices. Indeed, it seemed to him that he
could almost hear the stock shouting, articulately: "_I'm going up, right
away, right away!_" If somebody would buy a thousand shares and agree to
give him the profits on a hundred, on ten, on one!

But he had not even his carfare. Then he remembered that he had not
eaten since breakfast. It did him no good to remember it now. He would
have to get his dinner from Griggs in Brooklyn.

"Why," Gilmartin told himself with a burst of curious self-contempt, "I
can't even buy a cup of coffee!"

He raised his head and looked about him to find how insignificant a
restaurant it was in which he could not buy even a cup of coffee. He
had reached Maiden Lane. As his glance ran up and down the north side of
that street, it was arrested by the sign:

MAXWELL & KIP

At first he felt but vaguely what it meant. It had grown unfamiliar
with absence. The clerks were coming out. Jameson, looking crustier than
ever, as though he were forever thinking how much better than Jenkins he
could run the business; Danny, some inches taller, no longer an office
boy, but spick and span in a blue serge suit and a necktie of the latest
style, exhaling health and correctness; Williamson, grown very gray and
showing on his face thirty years of routine; Baldwin, happy as of
yore at the ending of the day's work, and smiling at the words of
Jenkins--Gilmartin's successor, who wore an air of authority, of the
habit of command which he had not known in the old days.

Of a sudden Gilmartin was in the midst of his old life. He saw all that
he had been, all that he might still be. And he was overwhelmed. He
longed to rush to his old associates, to speak to them, to shake hands
with them, to be the old Gilmartin. He was about to step toward Jenkins,
but stopped abruptly. His clothes were shabby, and he felt ashamed. But,
he apologized to himself, he could tell them how he had made a hundred
thousand and had lost it. And he even might borrow a few dollars from
Jenkins.

Gilmartin turned on his heel with a sudden impulse and walked away from
Maiden Lane quickly. All that he thought now was that he would not
have them see him in his plight. He felt the shabbiness of his clothes
without looking at them. As he walked, a great sense of loneliness came
over him.

He was back in Wall Street. At the