"At the Victoria."

"All your luggage must be sent to my rooms. I will not hear of your
going elsewhere for lodging while in town. I have a floor, and you
shall share it. It's a bachelor's ranch from basement to garret,
inhabited by artists, journalists, one or two magazine men, a clever
novelist, and three of our New York men. There is no small fry save
myself. We have little banquets every Friday night, and they sometimes
last till Saturday noon. I've taught the Frenchman who represents the
Paris _Temps_ how to play poker, and he threatens to become my
Frankenstein, who will eventually devour me." Hillars laughed, and it
sounded like the laughter of other days. "Jack, I think you will do me
good. Stay with me and keep me away from the bottle if you can. No
man drinks for pure love of liquor. My father never loved it, and God
knows what he was trying to forget. For that's the substance of it
all, to forget. When you start out to the point of forgetfulness, you
must keep it up; regret comes back threefold with soberness. It seems
silly and weak for a man who has been buffeted as I have, who is
supposed to gather wisdom and philosophy as a snowball gathers snow as
it rolls down hill, to try to drown regret and disappointment in
liquor. A man never knows how weak he is till he meets the one woman
and she will have none of him."

And somehow I got closer to Hillars, spiritually. There were two of
us, so it seemed, only I was stronger, or else my passion did not burn
so furiously as his.

The apartments occupied by Dan were all a bachelor could wish for. The
walls were covered with photographs, original drawings, beer steins,