At one o’clock he thought of eating, and went to a restaurant in Madison Square.  There he pondered over places which he might look up.  He was tired.  It was blowing up gray again.  Across the way, through Madison Square Park, stood the great hotels, looking down upon a busy scene.  He decided to go over to the lobby of one and sit a while.  It was warm in there and bright.  He had seen no one he knew at the Broadway Central.  In all likelihood he would encounter no one here.  Finding a seat on one of the red plush divans close to the great windows which look out on Broadway’s busy rout, he sat musing.  His state did not seem so bad in here.  Sitting still and looking out, he could take some slight consolation in the few hundred dollars he had in his purse.  He could forget, in a measure, the weariness of the street and his tiresome searches.  Still, it was only escape from a severe to a less severe state.  He was still gloomy and disheartened.  There, minutes seemed to go very slowly.  An hour was a long, long time in passing.  It was filled for him with observations and mental comments concerning the actual guests of the hotel, who passed in and out, and those more prosperous pedestrians whose good fortune showed in their clothes and spirits as they passed along Broadway, outside.  It was nearly the first time since he had arrived in the city that his leisure afforded him ample opportunity to contemplate this spectacle.  Now, being, perforce, idle himself, he wondered at the activity of others.  How gay were the youths he saw, how pretty the women.  Such fine clothes they all wore.  They were so intent upon getting somewhere.  He saw coquettish glances cast by magnificent girls.  Ah, the money it required to train with such—­how well he knew!  How long it had been since he had had the opportunity to do so!

The clock outside registered four.  It was a little early, but he thought he would go back to the flat.

This going back to the flat was coupled with the thought that Carrie would think he was sitting around too much if he came home early.  He hoped he wouldn’t have to, but the day hung heavily on his hands.  Over there he was on his own ground.  He could sit in his rocking-chair and read.  This busy, distracting, suggestive scene was shut out.  He could read his papers.  Accordingly, he went home.  Carrie was reading, quite alone.  It was rather dark in the flat, shut in as it was.

“You’ll hurt your eyes,” he said when he saw her.

After taking off his coat, he felt it incumbent upon him to make some little report of his day.

“I’ve been talking with a wholesale liquor company,” he said.  “I may go on the road.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice!” said Carrie.  “It wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” he answered.

Always from the man at the corner now he bought two papers—­the “Evening World” and “Evening Sun.”  So now he merely picked his papers up, as he came by, without stopping.