In my room I sat again on the edge of the bed and I had again bolted the door. The notion of using Nora to plant and sow fields for me while I rode about on a magnificent black stallion was now quite gone and I had to construct another and at once. That I realized. I had to construct a new dramatization of myself and leave Nora out of it. I was not ready for the Noras. Perhaps I would never be ready for them. Few American men I have ever known have ever shown any signs of being ready for the Noras of the world or of being able really to understand or face them. My mind turned again to the field of business and affairs. I had already known a good many men and, while such fellows as the baseball player at the warehouse had the better of me because I had been fool enough to let the struggle between us get on a physical plane, I had not met many men who had caused me to tremble because of any special spiritual or intellectual strength in themselves. To be sure the world of affairs was one of which I knew nothing and yet I thought I might tackle it. “It cannot be worse than the world of labor,” I thought as I sat in the darkness, trying not to think of Nora--thoughts of whom I was convinced might weaken the resolution I had taken and might even cause me to begin blubbering again--and keeping my mind fixed on the laborers I had known, even as the laborers who lived in the house with me tramped heavily, one by one, up the stairs and went off to their rooms and to sleep. “I will become a man of action, in the mood of the American of my day. I will build railroads, conquer empires, become rich and powerful. Why should I not do something of the sort as well as all the other men who have done it so brilliantly? America is the land of opportunity. I must keep that thought ever in my mind,” I told myself as I tiptoed out of the house at two o’clock in the morning, having left a note of good-by to Nora and the amount of my room rent in an envelope on my bed. I was being very careful not to make any noise as I went along the hallway and past Nora’s door. “I had better not wake up the woman,” I was wise enough to say to myself as I went away, hugging my new impulse in life. NOTE VIII