"Now we're imprisoned in the present," he said, "and we have to make the
worst of it."

In their despair he had an inspiration, which she declared worthy of him:
it was to take two small flats, of four or five rooms and a bath, and
live in both. They tried this in a great many places, but they never
could get two flats of the kind on the same floor where there was steam
heat and an elevator. At one place they almost did it. They had resigned
themselves to the humility of the neighborhood, to the prevalence of
modistes and livery-stablemen (they seem to consort much in New York), to
the garbage in the gutters and the litter of paper in the streets, to the
faltering slats in the surrounding window-shutters and the crumbled
brownstone steps and sills, when it turned out that one of the apartments
had been taken between two visits they made. Then the only combination
left open to them was of a ground-floor flat to the right and a
third-floor flat to the left.

Still they kept this inspiration in reserve for use at the first
opportunity. In the mean time there were several flats which they thought
they could almost make do: notably one where they could get an extra
servant's room in the basement four flights down, and another where they
could get it in the roof five flights up. At the first the janitor was
respectful and enthusiastic; at the second he had an effect of ironical
pessimism. When they trembled on the verge of taking his apartment, he
pointed out a spot in the kalsomining of the parlor ceiling, and
gratuitously said, Now such a thing as that he should not agree to put in
shape unless they took the apartment for a term of years. The apartment
was unfurnished, and they recurred to the fact that they wanted a
furnished apartment, and made their escape. This saved them in several
other extremities; but short of extremity they could not keep their