at a glance that everything was as it should be; there was but
one detail in his mental picture that the place did not realize,
so he rang for the bellboy and sent him down for flowers. He
moved about nervously until the boy returned, putting away his
new linen and fingering it delightedly as he did so. When the
flowers came he put them hastily into water, and then tumbled
into a hot bath. Presently he came out of his white bathroom,
resplendent in his new silk underwear, and playing with the
tassels of his red robe. The snow was whirling so fiercely
outside his windows that he could scarcely see across the street,
but within the air was deliciously soft and fragrant. He put the
violets and jonquils on the taboret beside the couch, and threw
himself down, with a long sigh, covering himself with a Roman
blanket. He was thoroughly tired; he had been in such haste, he
had stood up to such a strain, covered so much ground in the last
twenty-four hours, that he wanted to think how it had all come
about. Lulled by the sound of the wind, the warm air, and the
cool fragrance of the flowers, he sank into deep, drowsy
retrospection.

It had been wonderfully simple; when they had shut him out
of the theater and concert hall, when they had taken away his
bone, the whole thing was virtually determined. The rest was a
mere matter of opportunity. The only thing that at all surprised
him was his own courage-for he realized well enough that he had
always been tormented by fear, a sort of apprehensive dread that,
of late years, as the meshes of the lies he had told closed about
him, had been pulling the muscles of his body tighter and
tighter. Until now he could not remember the time when he had
not been dreading something. Even when he was a little boy it