treacherous rungs, and when the bus jolted to a stop at his own rung he
found something akin to relief as he descended the reckless metal steps
to the sidewalk.

After that, he had but to walk down Fifty-second Street half a block,
pass a stodgy family of brownstone houses--and then in a jiffy he was
under the high ceilings of his great front room. This was entirely
satisfactory. Here, after all, life began. Here he slept, breakfasted,
read, and entertained.

The house itself was of murky material, built in the late nineties; in
response to the steadily growing need of small apartments each floor had
been thoroughly remodelled and rented individually. Of the four
apartments Anthony's, on the second floor, was the most desirable.

The front room had fine high ceilings and three large windows that
loomed down pleasantly upon Fifty-second Street. In its appointments it
escaped by a safe margin being of any particular period; it escaped
stiffness, stuffiness, bareness, and decadence. It smelt neither of
smoke nor of incense--it was tall and faintly blue. There was a deep
lounge of the softest brown leather with somnolence drifting about it
like a haze. There was a high screen of Chinese lacquer chiefly
concerned with geometrical fishermen and huntsmen in black and gold;
this made a corner alcove for a voluminous chair guarded by an
orange-colored standing lamp. Deep in the fireplace a quartered shield
was burned to a murky black.

Passing through the dining-room, which, as Anthony took only breakfast
at home, was merely a magnificent potentiality, and down a comparatively
long hall, one came to the heart and core of the apartment--Anthony's