And in the end we compromised. That is, I told her I had one more possibility. If that failed, I would let her know. This she informed me I could do by telephone, as Boyd’s name was in the book. If it didn’t fail ... But as to that she forgot to exact a promise, just as she forgot to tell me her new address. Like most shy people who dash out of their shyness for some adventure too bold for the audacious, she retreated as suddenly. Springing into her motor as soon as we had arrived at a temporary decision, she drove away, leaving me still at a loss as to whether or not I was Malvolio. Dumfounded and distressed by this unexpected meeting, and the still more unexpected offer made in it, my thoughts began to run wild. It was in my power to live, to eat, to pay my way for a little longer. Of the money at her disposal I need accept no more than a few hundred dollars, a trifle to her, but to me everything in the world. Even if it did me no more than a passing good, it would do me that. If I had in the end to "get out," as I phrased it, I would rather get out in a month’s time than do it that very day. In the mean while there might be—the miracle. It was the mad prospect of all this that sent me out of Fifth Avenue to crawl along the side of Creed & Creed’s establishment, which flanked the cross-street, without noticing the way I took. For the minute I had forgotten the errand that brought me to this particular spot in New York. It had been crowded out of my memory by the fact that, after all, it might not matter whether I found work or not. I could live, anyhow. All I had to do was to take a telephone list, call up Boyd Averill’s number, say that I had changed my mind.... It was a temptation. For you to understand how fierce a temptation it was you would have to remember that for a month I had been insufficiently fed, and that for a week I had not really been fed at all. Moreover, I could see before me no hope of being fed in the immediate future. I was asking myself whether it would be common sense on the part of a drowning man to refuse a rope because a woman in whom there might be a whole confusion of complex motives had thrown it, when I suddenly found my passage along the pavement blocked.