He saw, across the street, a creamery, and, at a bare table, consumed a quart of milk and a plate of sugared rusk. Then, on a chair in the line before the garage, he sat half intent upon the conversation about him, half considering the swift changes that had overtaken him in the past, few days. His fingers closed upon Eliza's letter in his pocket, and he gazed at the callous and ribald faces at his side, he heard the truculent laughter, with wonderment that they existed in the same world with her delicate beauty. She smiled at him, out of his memory, over a mass of white bloom, and the present seemed like an ugly dream from which he must awake in her presence. Or was the other a dream, a vision of immaterial delight spread before his wondering mind, and this harsh mirth, these mocking faces, Hartmann's smooth lies, the hateful reality? The night deepened, one by one the chairs before the garage were deserted, the sharp pounding of a hammer on metal sounded from within, the disjointed measures of a sentimental song. A sudden weariness swept over Anthony, a distaste for the task of seeking a room through the strange streets; and, arranging the cushions in Hartmann's car, he slept there until morning. He awoke to the flooding of the concrete floor with a sheet of water flashing in the crisp sunlight. It was eight o'clock, and he made a hurried toilet at a convenient spigot, breakfasting at the creamery. Hartmann appeared shortly after nine: his countenance glowed from a scented massage, his yellow boots shone with restrained splendor, and a sprig of geranium was drawn through an ironed buttonhole. He nodded briefly to Anthony, and narrowly watched the latter manouvre the Berliet from its place in the row onto the street. They sped smoothly across town to what, evidently, was the principal shopping thoroughfare; and, before a glittering plateglass window that bore the chaste design, “Hartmann & Company” drew up, and Hartmann prepared to descend. “I think I'll go on West,” Anthony informed him; “this afternoon.”