“Walked past her new home this evening. It is perhaps not so nice as the other place, but eminently respectable. I debated all the way whether I would act unwarrantedly if I wrote her another note in answer to her last. How she would despise me if she knew the unfortunate details of my private life! I bow my head in shame when I think of her and of them.” “Tuesday, May 10. “Mr. Sugenheim said last night Mrs. Benson had refused to accept $2100. She had been wounded too deeply, and disgraced forever in the eyes of the boarders. I was overcome with grief at this news. But she would accept $2400. I at once agreed. I can save nearly two hundred dollars a month out of my salary by living carefully, and I feel more absolved from my turpitude than if I had paid a smaller amount. But it is a base thing to try to feel that I can acquit myself by a money payment. This will be a lesson to me never to trifle with a woman’s feelings again unless I really love her. I think I can say on my honor that I never really loved Mrs. Benson. This makes me feel at once more blameworthy and more relieved than if I had loved her. It is hard to explain just how. “Walked past her new home again this evening. I have chosen another window on the third floor, right-hand corner, as the one that belongs to her. This is foolish, but why should I not do it if it pleases me? I started to write several notes to her this evening, but tore them up. I have no excuse to inflict myself upon her.” The entries of the next few days dealt chiefly with his evening parades and with the struggles of his conscience as to whether he ought to write her again. By pressure of the longing in his soul he became bolder; one evening he even had the courage to go into the front hall of the apartment-house and search out her name in the long row of letter-boxes above the electric-bell buttons. The simple “Wright” printed there held him spellbound for so long that, when he recollected himself, he fled fearfully from the building, and trembled afterward at the thought of the risk he had run. But his timidity did not prevent him from continuing to haunt the vicinity of her home. Such was his absorption in his romance, such interesting business filled his evenings, that he was never lonely, as he had often been even in the company of the other boarders at Mrs. Benson’s. Except for an occasional visit to his brother and sister-in-law in Brooklyn, he had no more human associations, and desired none. The place where he lived was a rooming-house; he took his solitary meals in restaurants, seeking out the cheapest places, so that he might save every possible cent toward discharging the financial burden his engagement and dereliction had put upon him.