Martha Caldwell walked by with the two Smith girls. He thought she saw him. If so, she carefully avoided a direct glance. They still weren't speaking. At least, Martha wasn't. And to think that during three long years, except for another episode now and than, she had been his girl! Heigh-ho! No more girls! He was through! The Ames's carriage rolled fly. Mary Ames was in it. And--apparently, unmistakably--the new girl. The girl of the Sunbury House veranda. She was chatting brightly. She _was_ pretty. He turned mournfully away. She was not for him. Once it might have been possible--back in his gay big days. But not now. Not now. He approached the window for the sixth time. For the sixth time, Miss Hemple shook her head. He wandered out to the door. His chance had passed. If the old man should, at this moment, and alone, come walking out, he would say meekly, 'Good-afternoon, Mr Boice,' and hurry away. He would even try to look busy and earnest. There was shame in the thought. His mouth was drooping at the corners. All of him--body, mind, spirit--was sagging now. He moved, slowly down toward the tracks, entered the little lunch-counter place there and ate a thick piece of lemon-meringue pie. Which was further weakness. He knew it. It completed his depression. He felt that he must think. He ordered another piece of pie. He wished he hadn't said so much to Humphrey. Would he ever learn to control the spoken word? Probably not. He sighed. And ate. He couldn't very well go back to the office. Not like this--in defeat. All that work, too I Life, work, friendship, all the realities seemed to be slipping from his grasp. His thoughts were drifting off into a haze. It was an old familiar mood. It had come often during his teens. Not so much lately; but he was as helpless before it as he had been at eighteen, when he finally drifted aimlessly out of his class at the high school. In those days, it had been his habit to wander along the beach, sit on a breakwater, let life and love and duty drift by beyond his reach. Thither he headed now by a back street. Too many people he knew along Simpson Street. Besides, he might be thrown face to face with the old man. At the corner of Filbert Avenue he met the editor and proprietor of the _Gleaner_. He inclined his head with unconscious severity and would have passed on. But Robert A. McGibbon came to a halt, smiled in a thin strained fashion, and glanced curiously from Henry's face to the tightly rolled manuscript in his hand and back to the face. 'Well,' he remarked, 'how's things?' Henry wanted to be let alone. But he had never deliberately snubbed anybody in his life. He couldn't. So he, too, came to a stop. 'Oh, pretty good,' he replied. 4