He drank inordinately: gradually a haze enveloped him, separating him from the world, from his companion, a shadowy shape performing strange antics at a distance. Sounds, voices, penetrated to his isolation, rent thinly the veil that held at its center the sharp pain dulled, expanded, into a leaden, sickening ache. He placed the yellow bank note on a silver platter that swayed before him, and in return received a crisp pile, which, with numb fingers, he crowded into a pocket. He would have fallen as he rose from his chair if Tom had not caught him, leading him stumbling but safely to the street. “Don't start an ugly drunk,” Thomas Meredith begged. Without a word, Anthony turned and, with stiff legs, strode into the night. Eliza was dead; he had had something to give her, a surprise, but it was too late. A great piece of good fortune had overtaken him, he wanted to tell Eliza, but... he collided with a pedestrian, and continued at a tangent like a mechanical toy turned from its course. His companion swung him from under the wheels of a truck. “Wait,” he panted, “I'm no Marathon runner, it's hotter'n Egypt.” The perspiration dripped from Anthony's countenance, wet the clenched palms of his hands. He walked on and on, through streets brilliantly lighted and streets dark; streets crowded with men in evening clothes, loafing with cigarettes by illuminated playbills, streets empty, silent save for the echo of his hurried, shambling footsteps. Eliza was lost, out there somewhere in the night; he must find her, bring her back: but he couldn't find her, nor bring her back--she was dead. He stopped to reconsider dully that idea. A row of surprisingly white marble steps, of closed doors, blank windows, confronted him. “This is where I retire,” Thomas Meredith declared. Anthony wondered what the fellow was buzzing about? why should he wait for him, Anthony Ball, at “McCanns”? He considered with a troubled brow a world empty of Eliza; it wasn't possible, no such foolish world could exist for a moment. Who had dared to rob him? In a methodical voice he cursed all the holy, all the august, all the reverent names he could call to mind. Then again he hurried on, leaving standing a ridiculous figure who shouted an incomprehensible sentence.