bronzed and worn with long marches and jungle fever, and with his hair
prematurely white. He even considered himself, with great self-pity,
returning and finding her married and happy, of course. And he
enjoyed, in anticipation, the secret doubts she would have of her
later choice when she heard on all sides praise of this distinguished
traveller.

And he pictured himself meeting her reproachful glances with fatherly
friendliness, and presenting her husband with tiger-skins, and buying
her children extravagant presents.

This was at Forty-fifth Street.

Yes, that was decidedly the best thing to do. To go away and improve
himself, and study up all those painters and cathedrals with which she
was so hopelessly conversant.

He remembered how out of it she had once made him feel, and how
secretly he had admired her when she had referred to a modern painting
as looking like those in the long gallery of the Louvre. He thought he
knew all about the Louvre, but he would go over again and locate that
long gallery, and become able to talk to her understandingly about it.

And then it came over him like a blast of icy air that he could never
talk over things with her again. He had reached Fifty-fifth Street
now, and the shock brought him to a standstill on the corner, where he
stood gazing blankly before him. He felt rather weak physically, and
decided to go back to his rooms, and then he pictured how cheerless
they would look, and how little of comfort they contained. He had used
them only to dress and sleep in of late, and the distaste with which