The landing in New York and the separation which followed were not entirely merry. Every discomfort was forgotten and the travelers only knew that the most wonderful cruise since that of the ark had come to an end. There was not one who would not have been glad to begin it again the next day. Immediately after the landing Brewster and Gardner were busy with the details of settlement. After clearing up all of the obligations arising from the cruise, they felt the appropriateness of a season of reflection. It was a difficult moment--a moment when undelivered reproofs were in the air. But Gardner seemed much the more melancholy of the two. Piles of newspapers lay scattered about the floor of the room in which they sat. Every one of them contained sensational stories of the prodigal's trip, with pictures, incidents and predictions. Monty was pained, humiliated and resentful, but he was honest enough to admit the justification of much that was said of him. He read bits of it here and there and then threw the papers aside hopelessly. In a few weeks they would tell another story, and quite as emphatically. "The worst of it, Monty, is that you are the next thing to being a poor man," groaned Gardner. "I've done my best to economize for you here at home, as you'll see by these figures, but nothing could possibly balance the extravagances of this voyage. They are simply appalling." With the condemnation of his friends ringing in his troubled brain, with the sneers of acquaintances to distress his pride, with the jibes of the comic papers to torture him remorselessly, Brewster was fast becoming the most miserable man in New York. Friends of former days gave him the cut direct, clubmen ignored him or scorned him openly, women chilled him with the iciness of unspoken reproof, and all the world was hung with shadows. The doggedness of despair kept him up, but the strain that pulled down on him was so relentless that the struggle was losing its equality. He had not expected such a home-coming. Compared with his former self, Monty was now almost a physical wreck, haggard, thin and defiant, a shadow of the once debonair young New Yorker, an object of pity and scorn. Ashamed and despairing, he had almost lacked the courage to face Mrs. Gray. The consolation he once gained through her he now denied himself and his suffering, peculiar as it was, was very real. In absolute recklessness he gave dinner after dinner, party after party, all on a most lavish scale, many of his guests laughing at him openly while they enjoyed his hospitality. The real friends remonstrated, pleaded, did everything within their power to check his awful rush to poverty, but without success; he was not to be stopped.