While shaving I had an inspiration that was to have some effect on what happened to me afterward. I decided to let my mustache grow. As it grew strongly in any case, a four days’ absence of the razor had given my upper lip a deep walnut tinge, and, should I leave the club after the week to which I had tacitly pledged myself by coming there at all, I should look different from when I entered. To look different was the first of the obscure and violent longings of which my heart was full. It would be the nearest possible thing to getting away from my old self. Not to be the same man at all as the one who had exchanged those few strange sentences with Regina Barry seemed to be the goal toward which I was willing to struggle at any cost of sacrifice. Having bathed and shaved, I was not an ill-looking fellow till it came to putting on my shirt again. Any man who has worn a shirt for forty-eight hours in a city or on a train knows what a horror it becomes in the exposed spots on the chest and about the wrists. I had had but one shirt for a week and more—and but the one soft collar. You can see already, then, that in spite of some success in smartening up my damp and threadbare suit I left the bath-room looking abject. I was not, however, so abject as Lovey when I found him again in the front sitting-room down-stairs. In the back sitting-room our table companions were all arranged in a row against the wall. In spite of the fact that there were plenty of chairs, they sat huddled together on one bench; and though there was tobacco, as there were books, papers, and magazines, they sought no occupation. When I say that they could have smoked and didn’t, the wrench that had been given to their normal state of mind will be apparent. Close up to one another they pressed, the Scotchman against the piano-mover, and the piano-mover against the wee bye Daisy, like lovebirds on the perch of a cage or newly captured animals too terrified even to snap. Without comment on any one’s part, Lovey roamed the front sitting-room alone. “I say, sonny,” he began, fretfully, as I entered, “this ain’t no place for you and me.” I tried to buck him up. “Oh, well, it’s only for a week. We can stand it for that long. They’re very civil to us.” “But they’re watchin’ of us already like so many cats.” “Oh no, they’re not. They’re only kind.” “I don’t want none o’ that sort of kindness. What do ye think that two-foot-four of a Daisy says to me when ’e offered me the loan of ’is razor? ‘Lovey,’ says ’e, ‘I’m goin’ to ’elp ye to knock off the booze. It’ll be terr’ble hard work for an old man like you.’ ‘To ’ell with you!’ says I. ‘Ye ain’t goin’ to ’elp me to do no such thing, because knock it off is somethink I don’t mean.’ ‘Well, what did you come in ’ere for?’ says ’e. ‘I come in ’ere,’ I says to ’im, ‘because my buddy come in ’ere; and wherever ’e goes I’ll foller ’im.’”