But five minutes would be a generous allowance for the duration of this foot-loose elation.  As he leaves the station he suddenly becomes aware of the fact that no one else has heard about his being fancy-free.  Everyone seems to be going somewhere in a very important manner.  A great many people, oddly enough seem to be going home.  Ordinarily he would be going home, too.  But there would not be much sense in going home now, without—.  But come, come, this is no way to feel!  Buck up, man!  How about a wild oat or two?

Around at the club the doorman says that Mr. McNartly hasn’t been in all afternoon and that Mr. Freem was in at about four-thirty but went out again with a bag.  There is no one in the lounge whom he ever saw before.  A lot of new members must have been taken in at the last meeting.  The club is running down fast.  He calls up Eddie Mastayer’s office but he has gone for the day.  Oh, well, someone will probably come in for dinner.  He hasn’t eaten dinner at the club for a long time and there will be just time for a swim before settling down to a nice piece of salmon steak.

All the new members seem to be congregated now in the pool and they look him over as if he were a fresh-air child being given a day’s outing.  He becomes self-conscious and slips on the marble floor, falling and hurting his shin quite badly.  Who the hell are these people anyway?  And where is the old bunch?  He emerges from the locker room much hotter than he was before and in addition, boiling with rage.

Dinner is one of the most depressing rituals he has ever gone through with.  Even the waiters seem unfamiliar.  Once he even gets up and goes out to the front of the building to see if he hasn’t got into the wrong club-house by mistake.  Pretty soon a terrible person whose name is either Riegle or Ropple comes and sits down with him, offering as his share of the conversation the dogmatic announcement that it has been hotter today than it was yesterday.  This is denied with some feeling, although it is known to be true.  Dessert is dispensed with for the sake of getting away from Riegle or Ropple or whatever his name is.

Then the first gay evening looms up ahead.  What to do?  There is nothing to prevent his drawing all the money out of the bank and tearing the town wide open from the City Hall to the Soldier’s Monument.  There is nothing to prevent his formally introducing himself to some nice blonde and watching her get the meat out of a lobster-claw.  There is nothing to prevent his hiring some bootlegger to anoint him with synthetic gin until he glows like a fire-fly and imagines that he has just been elected Mayor on a Free Ice-Cream ticket.  Absolutely nothing stands in his way, except a dispairing vision of crepe letters before his eyes reading:”—­And For What?”

He ends up by going to the movies where he falls asleep.  Rather than go home to the empty house he stays at the club.  In the morning he is at the office at a quarter to seven.