“Look here; can I see somebody in authority or not?”

The porter was privately esteemed a wit at his motherin-law’s.  Waddling away, he answered, “Or not.”

Mr. Wrenn drooped out of the corridor.  He had planned to see the Tate Gallery, but now he hadn’t the courage to face the difficulties of enjoying pictures.  He zig-zagged home, mourning:  “What’s the use.  And I’ll be hung if I’ll try any other offices, either.  The icy mitt, that’s what they hand you here.  Some day I’ll go down to the docks and try to ship there.  Prob’ly.  Gee!  I feel rotten!”

Out of all this fog of unfriendliness appeared the waitress at the St. Brasten Cocoa House; first, as a human being to whom he could talk, second, as a woman.  She was ignorant and vulgar; she misused English cruelly; she wore greasy cotton garments, planted her large feet on the floor with firm clumsiness, and always laughed at the wrong cue in his diffident jests.  But she did laugh; she did listen while he stammered his ideas of meat-pies and St. Paul’s and aeroplanes and Shelley and fog and tan shoes.  In fact, she supposed him to be a gentleman and scholar, not an American.

He went to the cocoa-house daily.

She let him know that he was a man and she a woman, young and kindly, clear-skinned and joyous-eyed.  She touched him with warm elbow and plump hip, leaning against his chair as he gave his order.  To that he looked forward from meal to meal, though he never ceased harrowing over what he considered a shameful intrigue.

That opinion of his actions did not keep him from tingling one lunch-time when he suddenly understood that she was expecting to be tempted.  He tempted her without the slightest delay, muttering, “Let’s take a walk this evening?”

She accepted.  He was shivery and short of breath while he was trying to smile at her during the rest of the meal, and so he remained all afternoon at the Tower of London, though he very well knew that all this history—­“kings and gwillotines and stuff”—­demanded real Wrenn thrills.

They were to meet on a street-corner at eight.  At seven-thirty he was waiting for her.  At eight-thirty he indignantly walked away, but he hastily returned, and stood there another half-hour.  She did not come.

When he finally fled home he was glad to have escaped the great mystery of life, then distressingly angry at the waitress, and desolate in the desert stillness of his room.

He sat in his cold hygienic uncomfortable room on Tavistock Place trying to keep his attention on the “tick, tick, tick, tick” of his two-dollar watch, but really cowering before the vast shadowy presences that slunk in from the hostile city.

He didn’t in the least know what he was afraid of.  The actual Englishman whom he passed on the streets did not seem to threaten his life, yet his friendly watch and familiar suit-case seemed the only things he could trust in all the menacing world as he sat there, so vividly conscious of his fear and loneliness that he dared not move his cramped legs.