and he smiled comprehensively at the faces of the young men crowded
around him. "You hadn't ought to," he said, with a touch of his old
impudence, "'cause--I beat the town."




A WALK UP THE AVENUE


He came down the steps slowly, and pulling mechanically at his gloves.

He remembered afterwards that some woman's face had nodded brightly to
him from a passing brougham, and that he had lifted his hat through
force of habit, and without knowing who she was.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps, and stood for a moment
uncertainly, and then turned toward the north, not because he had any
definite goal in his mind, but because the other way led toward his
rooms, and he did not want to go there yet.

He was conscious of a strange feeling of elation, which he attributed
to his being free, and to the fact that he was his own master again in
everything. And with this he confessed to a distinct feeling of
littleness, of having acted meanly or unworthily of himself or of her.

And yet he had behaved well, even quixotically. He had tried to leave
the impression with her that it was her wish, and that she had broken
with him, not he with her.