Banneker might have added that one who had once known cities and the hearts of men from the viewpoint of that modern incarnation of Ulysses, the hobo, contemptuous and predatory, was little likely to be overawed by the most teeming and headlong of human ant-heaps.  Having joined the ant-heap, Banneker was shrewdly concerned with the problem of conforming to the best type of termite discoverable.  The gibes of the doorstep chatterers had not aroused any new ambition; they had merely given point to a purpose deferred because of other and more immediate pressure.  Already he had received from Camilla Van Arsdale a letter rich in suggestion, hint, and subtly indicated advice, with this one passage of frank counsel: 

If I were writing, spinster-aunt-wise, to any one else in your position, I should be tempted to moralize and issue warnings about—­well, about the things of the spirit.  But you are equipped, there.  Like the “Master,” you will “go your own way with inevitable motion.”  With the outer man—­that is different.  You have never given much thought to that phase.  And you have an asset in your personal appearance.  I should not be telling you this if I thought there were danger of your becoming vain.  But I really think it would be a good investment for you to put yourself into the hands of a first-class tailor, and follow his advice, in moderation, of course.  Get the sense of being fittingly turned out by going where there are well-dressed people; to the opera, perhaps, and the theater occasionally, and, when you can afford it, to a good restaurant.  Unless the world has changed, people will look at you. But you must not know it.  Important, this is!...  I could, of course, give you letters of introduction. “Les morts vont vite,” it is true, and I am dead to that world, not wholly without the longings of a would-be revenant; but a ghost may still claim some privileges of memory, and my friends would be hospitable to you.  Only, I strongly suspect that you would not use the letters if I gave them.  You prefer to make your own start; isn’t it so?  Well; I have written to a few.  Sooner or later you will meet with them.  Those things always happen even in New York....  Be sure to write me all about the job when you get it—­

Prudence dictated that he should be earning something before he invested in expensive apparel, be it never so desirable and important.  However, he would outfit himself just as soon as a regular earning capacity justified his going into his carefully husbanded but dwindling savings.  He pictured himself clad as a lily of the field, unconscious of perfection as Herbert Cressey himself, in the public haunts of fashion and ease; through which vision there rose the searing prospect of thus encountering Io Welland.  What was her married name?  He had not even asked when the news was broken to him; had not wanted to ask; was done with all that for all time.

He was still pathetically young and inexperienced.  And he had been badly hurt.