end of the road? Whither was he tending?
Mr. Boner's shoes? His desk was the step next below the little
private office. He laughed shortly to himself as he opened a bureau
drawer and selected a clean white shirt. The touch of the clean linen
encouraged him a little. He began to whistle. He had a "date on" with
Mary Louise. He had asked her to go to the vaudeville. Two or three
hours of pleasant forgetfulness, anyway. Mary Louise--the thought of
her brought a vague feeling of unrest. For over two weeks he had tried
to get her over the 'phone. She had either been out when he had called
or had pleaded some other engagement. Finally he had got the
engagement for to-night three days ahead. And she had as good as
promised to see him right off, immediately after that week-end in
Bloomfield. Stranger! Stranger in the city! That did not sound very
much as if she were a stranger. He wondered what she could have been
doing. She had met a good many people while she was doing Red Cross,
probably, people in the army--men--officers, now in civilian life. Why
not? And yet he had felt the least bit irritated and a little bit
lonely. For _his_ friends had scattered, it seemed. And then they had
not mattered much. And he had rather looked forward to the coming
summer with Mary Louise in town. Now he didn't so much. It was
foolish, too. There wasn't any reason for it. A man shouldn't pin his
resources down to one spot.

He washed, dressed, and then went to dinner at a dairy lunch around
the corner. The boarding place furnished breakfasts only. Then there
was an hour and a half to kill before he could go for her. She had a
room in a down-town apartment, not over three blocks away, and that
would take but a very short time. He wandered over to the public
square. Some old men were sitting on a row of iron benches lining the
sidewalk, facing the street. They surveyed him critically as he passed
by. He walked up and idly inspected the kiosk where the weather-bureau
reports were posted. He noticed it predicted continued fair. Then he
turned and walked in the street for about a block, gazing in shop
windows. There was nothing in any of them that he particularly wanted.
He stopped at a street corner and looked up and down both streets. A
few desultory pedestrians went walking hither and yon, leisurely, with
no apparent purpose. It was the lull of supper hour and there was an
orange glow that penetrated even down to the streets which were mere
ca