made his acquaintance most informally one night in the summer,
had responded at sight to the unconscious claim of weakness; he had come
to feel a strong bond, conceived splendid reformatory plans. The boy's
fall and disgrace, coming like a crash from the blue, had been a severe
shock to him, which would last. His self-exile, while probably advisable
for a time at least, had been a prospect full of sadness. If poor
Dalhousie had, woven into him, a vitiating twist for self-dramatization,
if he said, "My God, why can't I die?" less with the terrible dignity of
ruin than like a lad portraying his idea of ruin on the stage, his
native missing of the utter ring of truth never occurred to Vivian. To
him this boy, broken for cowardice and cast off by his father and
friends, was as tragic a figure as Oedipus.

And what made the farewell so peculiarly sad was that Dal, out of his
painful bewilderment, was evidently still clinging to some sort of hope.
He himself had said, and said again, that there was no hope for such as
he. He admitted with bitterness his insane passion that sunny afternoon;
remembered and acknowledged a wild impulse to overturn the boat, and let
come what might. He paced the floor and cried out that nothing that they
said of him could be too bad. And yet he hoped. He had come to the
Dabney House with hope. He had given his Texas address with a falter
of hope.

But of course there was no hope. Drink, the great fowler, had bagged
one more....

Without, there rose a lonesome booming, far and ghostly in the stillness
of the great empty hotel. It was the Garlands' crazy clock, memento of
Mister in his prodigal bridal days. Harried forever by some obscure
intestinal disorder, the mad timepiece stayed voiceless for days
together, and then, without warning, embarked upon an orgy of profligate
strikings. Now it struck fourteen, and fell abruptly silent.

Vivian stirred, and remembered the reception. His uncle, who derided and
castigated his Dabney House career, had said emphatically that he would
consider it most disrespectful if his solitary nephew absented himself
from the annual greeting of friends. The nephew, since his home-coming,
had grown very fond of the old gentleman. Yet he knew quite well that he
wasn't giving up this evening solely to please his uncle.

He rose, relit his pipe, and walked about. Though useful bones were
missing from his left foot, he liked to walk: was rather an accomplished
pedestria