He had intended to take one of his friends home with him, had thought it would be too dismal alone there in the bare place that last night. But now he did not want anyone with him, did not want to have to talk. Though when he let himself in the front door he wished he was not alone. It was pretty dismal to be coming into the abandoned house. He had a flashing sense of how absolutely empty the place was--empty of the people who had lived there, empty even of those people's things. There was no one to call out to him. His step made a loud noise on the bare stairs. He went back down stairs for a drink of water; he walked through the living-room, the dining-room, the kitchen. There used to be people there--things doing. Not any more. A bare house now--so empty that it was _queer_. He hurried back upstairs. At the head of the stairs he stood still and listened to the stillness from the bedrooms. Then he shook himself angrily, stamped on to his own room, loudly banged the door behind him and whistled as he hurriedly got ready for bed. He tried to go right to sleep, but could not get sleepy. He was thinking of the house--of things that had gone on there. He thought of Ruth and Stuart--of the difference they had made in that house. And he kept thinking of Mrs. Williams, thinking in this new way of the difference it must have meant to her, must have made in _her_ house. He wondered about the house she had just gone home to, wondered if she got lonely, wondered about the feeling there might be beneath that manner of not seeming to mind. He wondered just what it was made her keep from getting a divorce. And suddenly the strangest thought shot into his mind--Had anyone ever _asked_ her to get a divorce! Then he laughed; he had to make himself laugh at the preposterousness of his idea. The laugh made such a strange sound in the bare room that he lay there very still for a moment. Then loudly he cleared his throat, as if to show that he was not afraid of making another noise. But the house was so strangely still, empty in such a queer way; it was too strange to let him go to sleep, and he lay there thinking of things in a queer way. That preposterous idea kept coming back. Maybe nobody ever _had_ asked her to get the divorce; maybe it had just been taken for granted that she would be hard, would make it as hard as she could. He tried to keep away from that thought, something made him want to keep away from it, but he could not banish that notion that there were people who would be as decent as it was assumed they would be. He had noticed that with the fellows. Finally he got a little sleepy and he had a childish wish that he were not alone, that it could all be again as it had been long ago when they were all there together--before Ruth went away.