gallery.

Over the varnished oak floor of this roomy apartment a middle-aged man who
wore a green shade above his eyes was propelling himself in a wheeled
chair. Thus did Joseph Foster cover the space where the younger and more
fortunate sometimes danced, and thus did he move among works of art which,
even on the brightest days, he could barely see.

He knew the step. "Brought anything?" he asked.

He depended on Randolph for the latest brief doings in current fiction; and
usually in the background--and often long in abeyance--was something in the
way of memoirs or biography, many-volumed, which could fill the empty hours
either through retrospect or anticipation.

"Only myself," replied the other, stepping in. Foster dextrously manoeuvred
his chair toward the entrance and reached out his hand.

"Well, yourself is enough. It's good to have a man about the place once in
a while. Once in a while, I said. It gets tiresome, hearing all those girls
slithering and chattering through the halls." He put his bony hands back on
the rims of his wheels. "Where have you been all this time?"

"Oh, you know I come when I can." Randolph ran his eye over the walls of
the big empty room. The pictures were all in place--landscapes, figure-
pieces, what not; everything as familiar as the form of words he had just
employed to meet an oft repeated query implying indifference and neglect.

"How is it outside? I haven't been down on the street for a month."