thoughts on study; his mind was forever journeying. What was she doing?
Every minute of the day he was asking that question of himself. It was in
the printed pages of the books he read; it was on the lips of every
lecturer he listened to; it was placarded on every inch of scenery in the
theatre,--always: "Where is she to-night? What is she doing?"

And then, at last, one cold, rainy night in late November he resumed his
stealthy journeys to lower Fifth Avenue atop of the stage, protected by a
thick ulster and hidden as well as he could be in the shelter of a rigidly
grasped umbrella. Alighting in front of the Brevoort, he slunk rather than
sauntered up the Avenue until he came to the cross-town street in which
she lived,--in which he once had lived. It was a fair night for such an
adventure as this. There were but few people abroad. The rain was falling
steadily and there was a gusty wind. He had left his club at ten o'clock,
and all the way down the Avenue he was alone on the upper deck of the
stage. Afterwards he chuckled guiltily to himself as he recalled the odd
stare with which the conductor favoured him when he jestingly inquired if
there was "any room aloft."

Walking down the street toward Sixth Avenue, he peered out from beneath
the umbrella as he passed his grandfather's house across the way. There
were lights downstairs. A solitary taxi-cab stood in front of the house.
He quickened his pace. He did not want to charge himself with spying. A
feeling of shame and mortification came over him as he hurried along; his
face burned. He was not acting like a man, but as a love-sick, jealous
school-boy would have behaved. And yet all the way up Sixth Avenue to
Fifty-ninth Street,--he walked the entire distance,--he wondered why he had
not waited to see who came forth from Anne's house to enter the taxi-cab.

For a week he stubbornly resisted the desire to repeat the trip down-town.
In the meantime, Simmy had developed into a most unsatisfactory informant.
He suddenly revealed an astonishing streak of uncommunicativeness, totally
unnatural in him and tantalising in the extreme. He rarely mentioned
Anne's name and never discussed her movements. Thorpe was obliged to
content himself with an occasional word from Lutie,--who was also painfully
reticent,--and now and then a scrap of news in the society columns of the
newspapers. Once he saw her in the theatre. She was with other people, all
of whom he knew. One of them was P