Hartley could not leave his humble East Side room without a pang or two of regret. One can never turn over such a page in life, he knew, without a touch of sorrow for the chapter that is closed. He felt that he was losing the companionship of those whom a common poverty had drawn closely about him. He felt, too, that it was the death of the democrat in him. He had grown to take an unworded pride in classing himself as one of the People. There could be no more of the "glad confident morning again." And if, at times, he had rebelled against the squalor and discomfort of that older life, yet now, when the hour for stepping out of and above it had arrived, he hesitated still again before taking the upper path into that new and untried world. The heat and dust and clangor of the busy streets, the cries and odors where men and women hived closely together, the wailing of young and neglected children, the sense of feverish movement and stir, the hum of the ceaseless machines--all these in the old days had entered into his life and had brought with them a riddle which he had not quite read, a lesson which he had not quite learned. And life there, too, had known its shreds and patches of color. With all its poverty there was a Southern air of gaiety and lightness about this New World East Side. It had none of the dismal and monotonous hideousness and the hopelessness of a Bethnal Green and a Whitechapel. He felt that he was stepping out to light and to liberty, yet taking with him a heavy heart--a heart that had almost grown to love its very cell. And after all, was it liberty? The softer side of life had not been unknown to him, and had not brought him happiness in the old days. A touch of the flagellant in him still turned his eyes toward the more buffeting existence, while at the same time the artist, the apostle for form, cried out in him for its leisured contemplation. Yet better to be the crystal and be broken, he felt, than the tile upon the housetop. And John Hartley was not altogether and unrestrictedly happy during that first hour in his new apartment. While these thoughts were running tumultuously through his mind Mrs. Spaulding, the embodiment, he felt, of the spirit of his newer existence, looked wonderingly out over her pearl-gray boa at him and waited for him to speak. He had taken it all very quietly. She did not know whether to be pleased or annoyed; Cordelia had accustomed her to gratitude in its more demonstrative form. She had expected, perhaps, a little more effusion on the part of her new _protégé_. He, on his part, did not see that more remained to be said. Mrs. Spaulding continued to look at him with musing eyes. He had always seemed to her to have the manners of another century. There were times when his stiffness irritated her. "Are all Englishmen alike?" she asked. "Why?" "Because sometimes I feel that I'd like to give you a good shaking, just to joggle you out of your shell for a few minutes."