ther word, without a backward
look, he turned and walked away.

"Walter!" she called after him, and again, "Walter! Don't go!"

But he was running top speed down the footpath.

When he stopped, from growing weariness of soul as much as from
physical exhaustion, he was on a cross street leading into Sixth
Avenue. The tinsel front of a saloon rose before him. He tore through
the swinging doors, ordered a drink of whiskey and then another. It
might have been so much water, for all it either fed or quenched the
fire within him. With some instinct to go back to his own private hole
of misery, he took a street car. But he found it impossible to sit
still. He got down after three blocks, found another saloon, took
another drink. This, too, evaporated in the feverish heat engendered by
his sleepless night. But it did afford an idea, a plan. He would get
drunk--for the first time in his life, get blind, staggering drunk.
When he recovered from that, time would have dimmed the misery a
little; he would be able to endure. Just now, he must get drunk or die.

Alone and in broad daylight, he tried it. From, the corner saloons of
the Upper West Side to the dives of the Bowery, he poured in whiskey
and yet more whiskey. Nothing happened; positively nothing. The fire
within burned as fiercely as ever, the misery beat as keenly against
his temples. He tried his voice; he was speaking clearly. Once he ran
down the open asphalt of a water-front street; all his muscular control
remained. The most that liquor did was to spread a slight fog over his
senses, so that he seemed to be seeing through a veil, hearing through
a partition.

On the approach of night, the effect struck him all at once. It came in
a wave of drowsiness, a delicious sense that his trouble, still there,
weighed lightly upon him--did not matter. He was sitting in Madison
Square when he realized this effect. He could sleep now. Thank God for
that! He turned toward the club, walking on the rosy airs of reaction.

As he approached the club door, he was aware that a woman had
disengaged herself from the crowd across the street, was hurrying
toward him. At that moment, a hall-boy dived from the entrance, and
grabbed his arm urgently but respectfully.

"That woman's been asking for you since four--when we chased her away
she laid for you--if you want to get inside--"

"Young man," said the voice of Rosalie Le Grange across his shoulder,
"young man, Dr. Blake wants to se