live?  The child had refused to tell him.  With a sudden stop he looked around.  Where was he?  He had walked miles in and out of streets as unknown to him as if part of a city he had never been in, and he had no idea where he was.  A sudden fear gripped him.  Where did Carmencita live?  He had paid no attention to the streets they were on when she took him to the house she called home.  He was full of other thought, but her address, of course, he would get before he left, and he had left without asking.  What a fool he was!  What a stupid fool!  For half a moment he looked uncertainly up and down the street whose name he did not know.  No policeman was in sight; no one was in sight except a woman on the opposite pavement, who was scurrying along with something under her shawl hugged close to her breast, and a young girl who was coming his way.  Turning, he retraced his steps.  He did not know in which direction to go.  He only knew he must keep on.  Perhaps he could find his way back to the place where Carmencita lived.

He did not find it.  Through the night he walked street after street, trying to recall some building he had passed, but he had walked as blind men walk, and nothing had been noticed.  To ask of people what they could not tell was useless.  He did not know the name of the street he wanted to find, and, moreover, a curious shrinking kept him from inquiring.  In the morning he would find it, but he did not want to make demands upon the usual sources for help until he had exhausted all other means of redeeming his folly in not learning Carmencita’s full name and address before he left her.  Was a man’s whole life to be changed, to be made or unmade, by whimsical chance or by stupid blunder?  In the gray dawn of a new day he reached his home and went to bed for a few hours’ sleep.

When, later, he left his house to renew his search for Carmencita the weather had changed.  It had begun to snow, and tiny particles of ice stung his face as he walked, and the people who passed shivered as they hurried by.  On every street that offered chance of being the one he sought he went up and down its length, and not until he felt he was being noticed did he take into partial confidence a good-natured policeman who had nodded to him on his third passing.  The man was kindly, but for hay-stack needles there was no time and he was directed to headquarters.  To find a house, number unknown, on a street, name unknown, of a party, full name again unknown, was too much of a puzzle for busy times like these.  Any other time than Christmas—­He was turned from that an inquiry from a woman with a child in her arms might be answered.

“Any other time than Christmas!”