turned on in his bedroom; partly because of his old timidity, and
partly so that, if he should wake in the night, there would be no
wretched moment of doubt, no horrible suspicion of yellow
wallpaper, or of Washington and Calvin above his bed.

Sunday morning the city was practically snowbound. Paul
breakfasted late, and in the afternoon he fell in with a wild San
Francisco boy, a freshman at Yale, who said he had run down for a
"little flyer" over Sunday. The young man offered to show Paul
the night side of the town, and the two boys went out together
after dinner, not returning to the hotel until seven o'clock the
next morning. They had started out in the confiding warmth of a
champagne friendship, but their parting in the elevator was
singularly cool. The freshman pulled himself together to make
his train, and Paul went to bed. He awoke at two o'clock in the
afternoon, very thirsty and dizzy, and rang for icewater, coffee,
and the Pittsburgh papers.

On the part of the hotel management, Paul excited no suspicion.
There was this to be said for him, that he wore his spoils with
dignity and in no way made himself conspicuous. Even under the
glow of his wine he was never boisterous, though he found the stuff
like a magician's wand for wonder-building. His chief greediness
lay in his ears and eyes, and his excesses were not offensive ones.
His dearest pleasures were the gray winter twilights in his sitting
room; his quiet enjoyment of his flowers, his clothes, his wide
divan, his cigarette, and his sense of power. He could not
remember a time when he had felt so at peace with himself. The
mere release from the necessity of petty lying, lying every day and
every day, restored his self-respect. He had never lied for