has gone for the day. Oh, well, someone will probably come in for
dinner. He hasn't eaten dinner at the club for a long time and there
will be just time for a swim before settling down to a nice piece of
salmon steak.

All the new members seem to be congregated now in the pool and they look
him over as if he were a fresh-air child being given a day's outing. He
becomes self-conscious and slips on the marble floor, falling and
hurting his shin quite badly. Who the hell are these people anyway? And
where is the old bunch? He emerges from the locker room much hotter than
he was before and in addition, boiling with rage.

Dinner is one of the most depressing rituals he has ever gone through
with. Even the waiters seem unfamiliar. Once he even gets up and goes
out to the front of the building to see if he hasn't got into the wrong
club-house by mistake. Pretty soon a terrible person whose name is
either Riegle or Ropple comes and sits down with him, offering as his
share of the conversation the dogmatic announcement that it has been
hotter today than it was yesterday. This is denied with some feeling,
although it is known to be true. Dessert is dispensed with for the sake
of getting away from Riegle or Ropple or whatever his name is.

Then the first gay evening looms up ahead. What to do? There is nothing
to prevent his drawing all the money out of the bank and tearing the
town wide open from the City Hall to the Soldier's Monument. There is
nothing to prevent his formally introducing himself to some nice blonde
and watching her get the meat out of a lobster-claw. There is nothing to
prevent his hiring some bootlegger to anoint him with synthetic gin
until he glows like a fire-fly and imagines that he has just been
elected Mayor on a Free Ice-Cream ticket. Absolutely nothing stands in