In a moment of time it was all taken from him, all the lovely bric-a-brac, all the heavy pieces, all the little articles of vertu which he had bought with such intense delight and amongst which he had lived with such happiness, such contentment, such never-failing pleasure.  Everything went—­the Renaissance portraits, the pipe-rack, the chair in which the Old Gentleman had died, the Assyrian bas-reliefs and, worst of all, the stove, the famous tiled stove, the delightful cheery iron stove with the beautified flamboyant ornaments.  For the first few months after the seizure Vandover was furious with rage and disappointment, persuaded that he could never live anywhere but in just such a room; it was as if he had been uprooted and cast away upon some barren, uncongenial soil.  His new room in the hotel filled him with horror, and for a long time he used it only as a place where he could sleep and wash.  For a long time even his pliable character refused to fit itself to such surroundings, refused to be content between four enormous white walls, a stuccoed ceiling, and a dark red carpet.  He passed most of his time elsewhere, reading the papers at the Mechanics Library in the morning, and in the afternoon sitting about the hotel office and parlours until it was time to take his usual little four o’clock stroll on Kearney and Market streets.  He had long since become a familiar figure on this promenade.  Even the women and girls of Flossie’s type had ceased to be interested in this tall, thin young man with the tired, heavy eyes and blue-white face.  One day, however, a curious incident did for a moment invest Vandover with a sudden dramatic interest.  It was just after he had moved down to the Lick House, about a month after he had sold the block in the Mission.  Vandover was standing at Lotta’s fountain at the corner of Kearney and Market streets, interested in watching a policeman and two boys reharnessing a horse after its tumble.  All at once he fell over flat into the street, jostling one of the flower venders and nearly upsetting him.  He struck the ground with a sodden shock, his arms doubled under him, his hat rolling away into the mud.  Bewildered, he picked himself up; very few had seen him fall, but a little crowd gathered for all that.  One asked if the man was drunk, and Vandover, terrified lest the policeman should call the patrol wagon, hurried off to a basement barber shop near by, where he brushed his clothes, still bewildered, confused, wondering how it had happened.

The fearful nervous crisis which Vandover had undergone had passed off slowly.  Little by little, bit by bit, he had got himself in hand again.  However, the queer numbness in his head remained, and as soon as he concentrated his attention on any certain line of thought, as soon as he had read for any length of time, especially if late at night, the numbness increased.  Somewhere back of his eyes a strange blurring mist would seem to rise; he would find it