He proceeded homeward. As he climbed the boarding-house stairs to his room he felt listless. For four weeks he had climbed those listless stairs. There had been one brief respite--the two days of Bloomfield with its easy relaxation. What lay at the end of the road? Whither was he tending? Mr. Boner's shoes? His desk was the step next below the little private office. He laughed shortly to himself as he opened a bureau drawer and selected a clean white shirt. The touch of the clean linen encouraged him a little. He began to whistle. He had a "date on" with Mary Louise. He had asked her to go to the vaudeville. Two or three hours of pleasant forgetfulness, anyway. Mary Louise--the thought of her brought a vague feeling of unrest. For over two weeks he had tried to get her over the 'phone. She had either been out when he had called or had pleaded some other engagement. Finally he had got the engagement for to-night three days ahead. And she had as good as promised to see him right off, immediately after that week-end in Bloomfield. Stranger! Stranger in the city! That did not sound very much as if she were a stranger. He wondered what she could have been doing. She had met a good many people while she was doing Red Cross, probably, people in the army--men--officers, now in civilian life. Why not? And yet he had felt the least bit irritated and a little bit lonely. For _his_ friends had scattered, it seemed. And then they had not mattered much. And he had rather looked forward to the coming summer with Mary Louise in town. Now he didn't so much. It was foolish, too. There wasn't any reason for it. A man shouldn't pin his resources down to one spot.