"Why do you call me old?" he asked curiously.

"I hadn't thought of it before," she admitted; "but, this evening, you
looked so solemn, and there is grey in your hair, that all at once you
seemed like an old gentleman. Now Dan Culser," she hesitated, and then
swept on, "he's what you'd name young." At Daniel Culser's age, he told
himself, he, Jasper Penny, could have walked the other blind; and now
Essie Scofield was calling him old; she had noticed the grey in his
hair. He rose to go, and she came close to him, a clinging, soft thing
of flesh faintly reeking with brandy. "I have a great deal to pay, where
money goes I don't know, even a little would be a help." He left some
gold in her hand, thankful to purchase, at that slight price, a
momentary release.

Outside Cherry Street was blackly cold, a gas lamp at the corner shed a
watery, contracted illumination. He made his way back toward the hotel,
but a sudden reluctance to mount to his lonely chambers possessed him.
Before the glimmering marble façade he took out his watch, a pale gold
efflorescence in the gloom, and rang the hour in minute, clear notes.
The third quarter past ten. He recalled the ball, but then commencing,
at Stephen Jannan's; there it would be indescribably gay, a house
flooded with the music of quadrilles, light, polite-chatter; and he
determined to proceed and have a cigar with Stephen.

He walked briskly up Mulberry Street to Sixth and there turned to the
left. Jasper Penny soon passed the shrouded silence of Independence
Square, with the new Corinthian doorway of the State House showing
vaguely through the irregularly grouped ailanthus trees. Beyond, the
brick wall with its marble coping and high iron fence reached, on the