At one time he had had an ambition to buy back his furniture from the huge apartment house in which he had formerly lived, and with it to make his cheerless bedroom in the Lick House seem more like a home.  He felt it almost as a dishonour to have strangers using this furniture, sitting in the great leather chair in which the Old Gentleman had died, staring stupidly at his Renaissance portraits and copies of Assyrian bas-reliefs.  Above all, it was torture to think that other hands than his own would tend the famous tiled and flamboyant stove, a stove that had its moods, its caprices, like any living person, a stove that had to be coaxed and humoured, a stove that he alone could understand.  He had told himself that if ever again he should have money enough he would bring back this furniture to him.  At first its absence had been a matter for the keenest regret and grief.  He had been so used to pleasant surroundings that he languished in his new quarters as in a prison.  His indulgent, luxurious character continually hungered after subdued, harmonious colours, pictures, ornaments, and soft rugs.  His imagination was forever covering the white walls with rough stone-blue paper, and placing screens, divans, and window-seats in different parts of the cold bare room.  One morning he had even gone so far as to pin about the walls little placards which he had painted with a twisted roll of the hotel letter-paper dipped into the inkstand.  “Pipe-rack Here.”  “Mona Lisa Here.”  “Stove Here.”  “Window-seat Here.”  He had left them up there ever since, in spite of the chambermaid’s protests and Ellis’ clumsy satire.

Now, however, he had plenty of money.  He would have his furniture back within the week.  He came back from the bank, the money in his pocket, and went up to the room directly, with some vague intention of writing to the proprietors of the apartment house at once.  But as he shut the door behind him, leaning his back against it and looking about, he suddenly realized that his old-time desire was passed; he had become so used to these surroundings that it now no longer made any difference to him whether or not they were cheerless, lamentable, barren.  It was like all his other little ambitions—­he had lost the taste for them, nothing made much difference after all.  His money had come too late.

Why should he spend his five hundred dollars on something that could no longer amuse him?  It would be much wiser to spend it all in having a good time somewhere—­champagne dinners with Flossie, or betting on the races—­he did not know exactly what.  It was true that even these alternatives would not amuse him very much—­he would fall back upon them as things of habit.  For that matter everything was an ennui, and Vandover began to long for some new pleasure, some violent untried excitement.