Frank, however, soon proved too busy to talk, and Potter was left to his own thoughts. The effect which liquor usually had on him was to produce three distinct stages. It plunged him first into a dreamy and altogether pleasant condition, in which his lot appeared the rosiest in the world, and he radiated good will on all sides. This led to melancholy and a gradual feeling of boredom with everything, aggravated by a tendency to analyze his wrongs and conduct long, unspoken conversations about them with the persons presumed to be responsible for wronging him. Then followed a feverish desire for physical motion, and the making of quick decisions, obeyed on the instant, however ill-advised. The first state of high spirits brought him agreeably to six o’clock when he left Steve Ball’s for fear of encountering early drinkers from the Campus. He was hungry and bolted sandwiches and coffee in a nameless lunch-wagon around the corner. He found himself after that in the “Bucket of Blood.” Night had fallen; the place was unspeakably sordid with its dim lamps and shuffling bums, and his problem once more assumed proportions that harried him. He began to assail Ellen for ever having permitted the intimacy to start. Then he quickly reacted from that attack. A profound, overwhelming wave of self-abasement engulfed him. If there was suffering to be done poor Ellen would endure all of it. She had been his victim and had given him what she had to give, in all things. Had their ages been precisely reversed, he could not have been more responsible. As he ordered another bottle of beer, he became acutely conscious that his money was disappearing. There was no more to be had, certainly for several days. Mails had to take their time, even if there was anything to hope for from them. This sense of impecuniousness made his mind veer to another complicated grievance. In one of the banks at home, held for his use at majority, lay what now seemed an incredible sum of money, from his grandmother’s estate. He had twice entreated his father to allow him to draw modestly on it. His father had not refused in either case, but had probed good-naturedly into his reasons for desiring it. But why, thought the boy, should his father have to know his private business? How could his father understand his peculiar needs? These questions had rankled time and again.