"I’ll give you mine," I told him and brought forth my bag from a closet in the hall. Whether Alicia had heard any or all of our words I could not tell. The children were evidently sleeping. I walked on tiptoe. "Where d’you intend to go?" growled Pendleton, without looking at me. "To an hotel," I told him curtly—"any hotel you like." "Go to the Hotel de Gink for all I care," he muttered and went on with his packing. "Do you want to see the children before you go?" I could not forbear asking him that. He paused for a moment and straightened up, breathing heavily. Then he shook his head. "No—I guess not." The tin taxicab was rattling at the door, and Griselda came futilely to announce it. "You’ll hear from me to-morrow morning some time," I whispered to her quickly, as Pendleton, stooping under his bags, lumbered on in front of me. "Look after Alicia—and the others." "Ay," she murmured, "have no fear." There was a train, and in the longest half-hour of any journey we were at the Manhattan Hotel. Adjoining rooms were assigned to us with a bathroom between. There had been a sort of intoxication about the entire business that had carried me on with a blind nameless force as one is carried in a dream. Once I was alone in the four walls of the impersonal chamber, a sudden lassitude fell upon me, followed by an immense wave of dreariness. How somber and sinister was life, full of a drab and hidden tragedy. Trafficking with Pendleton—slaving at Visconti’s—the dreams that had been mine! And this was the life I was living. Suppose in the morning he should refuse? On a sudden my door opened and Pendleton’s hatless head appeared. "Sure you won’t back out in the morning?" And again my nerves snapped back into their steel-like tension. "Not even doomsday morning." "Will you have a drink on it?" "No," I told him, "but there is no reason why you shouldn’t have one." "I think I will," he said, and with a malign gleam of triumph he approached the telephone in my room. "The bar!" he demanded, and when the connection was made he added: "Two rye highs for 436." Then he turned his face toward me and grinned. "Now, Randolph," he began quite amicably, "why keep me here any longer than you can help?" "What d’you mean?" "This: It’s only about half-past ten—quarter to eleven. There is—there must be a train for the West round midnight. Why prolong the sweet agony of parting—why not let me go?" "Now? You must be crazy!" I exploded nervously. "How can I get the money for you? Besides, there’s another thing—I want you to sign something—something a lawyer must draw up—a paper of some sort—so you can’t repeat this business."