"You are a fool in this matter," he informed the reflection. "And I
wonder why you are determined to persist in the folly. The man
Chick's tin suit cannot bring as much trouble to him as this garb of
respectability may bring to you. For no man can step up to that poor
Quaker and touch his shoulder and say--"

He broke off. He began to search through his discarded garments and to
stow his few possessions into the pockets of his new attire.

"All folly!" ran his thoughts. "I am consumed with it all of a sudden.
I have ranted to a tramp. Now I rant at myself. I am sloughing the rags
that have protected me. All folly!"

His searching fingers, groping to the deepest corner of a pocket,
found the crumbling fragments of a dried rose. He narrowed his eyes and
surveyed it as it lay in his palm, and then made as if to toss it into
the pool. But he checked the gesture. He set his chin in his hands and
communed aloud with himself after the fashion of those who hold aloof
from mankind:

"Folly, little sister! I may as well be truthful! Two dark eyes which
gave me the first honest, unafraid, and frank gaze I've had from a maid
in two years, two red lips which said 'Please' and 'Thank you'! A flash
of a glance behind her which called me, even if she did not mean it as
a call--and so, on I fare in a lunatic's dream. Own up! I have dreamed
that some day I will see her again. And down in the depths of me stirs
that impulse of the male which makes the peacock spread his feathers
and silly man perk in front of a mirror. Why not give in to the sense
of heredity once in a while even though it means beating up a tramp and