Broodingly Lane plodded down the street.  He had feared that sooner or later he would be forced to leave home, and he had shrunk from the ordeal.  But now, that it was over, he felt a kind of relief, and told himself that it was of no consequence what happened to him.  All that mattered was for him to achieve the few tasks he had set himself.

Then he thought of Mel Iden.  She had been driven from home and would know what it meant to him.  The longing to see her increased.  Every disappointment left him more in need of sympathy.  And now, it seemed, he would be ashamed to go to Mel Iden or Blair Maynard.  Such news could not long be kept from them.  Middleville was a beehive of gossips.  Lane had a moment of blank despair, a feeling of utter, sick, dazed wonder at life and human nature.  Then he lifted his head and went on.

Lane’s first impulse was to ask Colonel Pepper if he could share his lodgings, but upon reflection he decided otherwise.  He engaged a small room in a boarding house; his meals, which did not seem of much importance, he could get anywhere.

This change of residence brought Lane downtown, and naturally increased his activities.  He did not husband his strength as before, nor have the leisure for bad spells.  Home had been a place of rest.  He could not rest in a drab little bare room he now occupied.

He became a watcher, except during the stolen hours with Bessy Bell.  Then he tried to be a teacher.  But he learned more than he thought.  He no longer concentrated his vigilance on his sister.  Having failed to force that issue, he bided his time, sensing with melancholy portent the certainty that he would soon be confronted with the stark and hateful actuality.  Thus he wore somewhat away from his grim resolve to kill Swann.  That adventure on the country road, when he had discovered Swann with Helen instead of Lorna, had somehow been a boon.  Nevertheless he spied upon Lorna in the summer evenings when it was possible to follow her, and he dogged Swann’s winding and devious path as far as possible.  Apparently Swann had checked his irregularities as far as Lorna was concerned.  Still Lane trusted nothing.  He became an almost impassive destiny with the iron consequences in his hands.

Days passed.  Every other afternoon and night he spent hours with Bessy Bell, and found a mounting happiness in the change in her, a deep and ever deeper insight into the causes that had developed her.  The balance of his waking hours, which were many, he passed on the streets, in the ice cream parlors and confectionery dens, at the motion-picture theatres.  He went many and odd times to Colonel Pepper’s apartment, and took a peep into the club-rooms.  Some of these visits were fruitful, but he did not see whom he expected to see there.  At night he haunted the parks, watching and listening.  Often he hired a cheap car and drove it down the river highway, where he would note the cars he passed or met.