One minute after reading the letter, in his room, Carl was standing on the chaste black-and-white tiles of the highly respectable white-arched hall down-stairs asking Information for the telephone number of ---- West 157th Street, while his landlord, a dry-bearded goat of a physician who had failed in the practise of medicine and was now failing in the practise of rooming-houses, listened from the front of the hall. Glad to escape from the funereally genteel house, Carl hastily changed his collar and tie and, like the little boy Carl whom Gertie had known, dog-trotted to the subway, which was going to take him Home. CHAPTER XXV Before the twelve-story Bendingo Apartments, Carl scanned the rows of windows which pierced the wall like bank-swallows' nests in a bold cliff.... One group of those windows was home--Joralemon and memories, Gertie's faith and understanding.... It was she who had always understood him.... In anticipation he loitered through the big, marble-and-stucco, rug and rubber-tree, negro hallboy and Jew tenant hallway.... What would the Cowleses be like, now? Gertie met him in the coat-smelling private hall of the Cowles apartment, greeted him with both hands clasping his, and her voice catching in, "Oh, _Carl_, it's so good to see you!" Behind Gertie was a swishing, stiff-backed Mrs. Cowles, piping in a high, worn voice: "Mr. Ericson! A friend from home! And such a famous friend!" Gertie drew him into the living-room. He looked at her. He found, not a girl, but a woman of thirty, plump, solid, with the tiniest wrinkles of past unhappiness or ennui at the corners of her mouth; but her eyes radiant with sweetness, and her hair appealingly soft and brown above her wide, calm forehead. She was gowned in lavender crêpe de Chine, with panniers of satin elaborately sprinkled with little bunches of futurist flowers; long jet earrings; a low-cut neck that hinted of a comfortable bosom. Eyes shining, hands firm on his arm, voice ringing, she was unaffectedly glad to see him--her childhood playmate, whom she had not beheld for seven years. Mrs. Cowles was waiting for them to finish their greetings. Carl was startled to find Mrs. Cowles smaller than he had remembered, her hair nearly white and not perfectly matched, her face crisscrossed with wrinkles deeper than her age justified. But her old disapproval of Carl, son of a carpenter and cousin of a "hired girl," was gone. She even laughed mildly, like a kitten sneezing. And from a room somewhere beyond Ray shouted: "Be right there in a second, old man. Crazy to have a look at you."