“Anyway I can’t go any lower,” he would tell himself, “I’m at the bottom!” He recalled stories he had read of beach-combers, all sorts of derelicts drifting through strange countries, and it occurred to him that they were probably people like himself, who had loved fine living, who had been fastidious, who couldn’t adjust themselves to what was poor and ugly. And they were, he reflected, always saved in the end by some woman. Never by a woman in the least like Minnie; always by some splendid, handsome creature. Like Frances. He put that thought away from him, and that image. He was literally driven out of the house. The gas was cut off, the telephone, and at last the water. He groped about in the dark for a day or two, even went to his work unwashed after the taps were empty, but he couldn’t endure thirst. He wanted water to drink, lots of it. He left the house; simply walked out of it and closed the door after him. He went to a cheap lodging house for men in the city, directed his mail forwarded there, and waited on and on. He grew very sullen and angry. He wanted to write to Minnie, to tell her things, to complain: he cursed her infernal secretiveness, and muddle-headedness. Where in God’s name was she and what was she trying to do? At last, after six months, she wrote that she had a good position as housekeeper in Brownsville Landing, but that he’d better write her in care of the post-office at Sanasset, the next village, for she had “thought best” to call herself a widow. He answered sharply that he wished to see her, and she’d have to arrange it. A bitter and resentful letter. She answered with propitiating quickness, and proposed a meeting in the little wood. She brought him a package of sandwiches and some money, kissed him and consoled him and sent him back to New York like a baby pacified with a sugar plum. After that, he came out regularly every Saturday afternoon, and as regularly complained bitterly at the secrecy which appeared to him so unnecessary. But Minnie assured him that it was not, and entreated him to be patient until she had enough money saved to start a new home. He grew more and more ill; at last she advised him to give up his work. “I’ll find you a place to board somewhere near,” she said, “and you can rest for a few weeks.” Under the circumstances, it was extraordinarily difficult to find a place for him where there was no possibility of his hearing of Mr. Petersen and Mr. Petersen’s household. She had to be satisfied with a room in a family of Hungarians who spoke very little English and knew no one outside of their own colony. They lived three miles away, in Sanasset.