and take the girl home. Then he smiled satirically at himself. Her lot
condemned her to be out in all weathers. It would not be a kindness but
an exhibition of smug vanity to shelter her this one night; also, there
was the question of her reputation--and the possibility of turning her
head, perhaps just enough to cause her ruin. He sprang across the
wind-swept, rain-swept sidewalk and into the limousine whose door was
being held open by an obsequious attendant. "Home," he said, and the
door slammed.

Usually these journeys between office and home or club in the evening
gave Norman a chance for ten or fifteen minutes of sleep. He had
discovered that this brief dropping of the thread of consciousness gave
him a wonderful fresh grip upon the day, enabled him to work or play
until late into the night without fatigue. But that evening his mind was
wide awake. Nor could he fix it upon business. It would interest itself
only in the hurrying throngs of foot passengers and the ideas they
suggested: Here am I--so ran his thoughts--here am I, tucked away
comfortably while all those poor creatures have to plod along in the
storm. I could afford to be sick. They can't. And what have I done to
deserve this good fortune? Nothing. Worse than nothing. If I had made my
career along the lines of what is honest and right and beneficial to my
fellow men, I'd probably be plugging home under an umbrella--and to a
pretty poor excuse for a home. But I was too wise to do that. I've spent
this day, as I spend all my days, in helping the powerful rich to add to
their wealth and power, to add to the burdens those poor devils out
there in the rain must bear. And I'm rewarded with a limousine, and all
the rest of it.

These thoughts neither came from nor produced a mood of penitence, or of
regret even. Norman was simply indulging in his favorite