The thing had, of course, come about just at the wrong time.  There never had been a time when Beaton needed money more, when he had spent what he had and what he expected to have so recklessly.  He was in debt to Fulkerson personally and officially for advance payments of salary.  The thought of sending money home made him break into a scoffing laugh, which he turned into a cough in order to deceive the passers.  What sort of face should he go with to Fulkerson and tell him that he renounced his employment on ‘Every Other Week;’ and what should he do when he had renounced it?  Take pupils, perhaps; open a class?  A lurid conception of a class conducted on those principles of shameless flattery at which Mrs. Horn had hinted—­he believed now she had meant to insult him—­presented itself.  Why should not he act upon the suggestion?  He thought with loathing for the whole race of women—­dabblers in art.  How easy the thing would be:  as easy as to turn back now and tell that old fool’s girl that he loved her, and rake in half his millions.  Why should not he do that?  No one else cared for him; and at a year’s end, probably, one woman would be like another as far as the love was concerned, and probably he should not be more tired if the woman were Christine Dryfoos than if she were Margaret Vance.  He kept Alma Leighton out of the question, because at the bottom of his heart he believed that she must be forever unlike every other woman to him.

The tide of his confused and aimless reverie had carried him far down-town, he thought; but when he looked up from it to see where he was he found himself on Sixth Avenue, only a little below Thirty-ninth Street, very hot and blown; that idiotic fur overcoat was stifling.  He could not possibly walk down to Eleventh; he did not want to walk even to the Elevated station at Thirty-fourth; he stopped at the corner to wait for a surface-car, and fell again into his bitter fancies.  After a while he roused himself and looked up the track, but there was no car coming.  He found himself beside a policeman, who was lazily swinging his club by its thong from his wrist.

“When do you suppose a car will be along?” he asked, rather in a general sarcasm of the absence of the cars than in any special belief that the policeman could tell him.

The policeman waited to discharge his tobacco-juice into the gutter.  “In about a week,” he said, nonchalantly.

“What’s the matter?” asked Beaton, wondering what the joke could be.

“Strike,” said the policeman.  His interest in Beaton’s ignorance seemed to overcome his contempt of it.  “Knocked off everywhere this morning except Third Avenue and one or two cross-town lines.”  He spat again and kept his bulk at its incline over the gutter to glance at a group of men on the corner below:  They were neatly dressed, and looked like something better than workingmen, and they had a holiday air of being in their best clothes.