"Have I been rude? Have----" "Yes. Very." He could endure no more. "Good night!" he growled, and was gone. He was frightened to find himself out of the house; the door closed between them; no going back without ringing the bell. He couldn't go back. He walked a block, slow, incredulous. He stood hesitant before the nearest corner drug-store, shivering in the March wind, wondering if he dared go into the store and telephone her. He was willing to concede anything. He planned apt phrases to use. Surely everything would be made right if he could only speak to her. He pictured himself crossing the drug-store floor, entering the telephone-booth, putting five cents in the slot. He stared at the red-and-green globes in the druggist's window; inspected a display of soaps, and recollected the fact that for a week now he had failed to take home any shaving-soap and had had to use ordinary hand-soap. "Golly! I must go in and get a shaving-stick. No, darn it! I haven't got enough money with me. I _must_ try to remember to get some to-morrow." He rebuked himself for thinking of soap when love lay dying. "But I must remember to get that soap, just the same!" So grotesque is man, the slave and angel, for while he was sick with the desire to go back to the one comrade, he sharply wondered if he was not merely acting all this agony. He went into the store. But he did not telephone to Ruth. There was no sufficiently convincing reason for calling her up. He bought a silly ice-cream soda, and talked to the man behind the counter as he drank it. All the while a tragic Ruth stood before him, blaming him for he knew not what. He reluctantly went on, regretting every step that took him from her. But as he reached the next corner his shoulders snapped back into defiant straightness, he thrust his hands into the side pockets of his top-coat, and strode away, feeling that he had shaken off a burden of "niceness." He had, willy-nilly, recovered his freedom. He could go anywhere, now; mingle with any sort of people; be common and comfortable. He didn't have to take dancing lessons or fear the results of losing his job, or of being robbed of his interests in the Touricar. He glanced interestedly at a pretty girl; recklessly went into a cigar-store and bought a fifteen-cent cigar. He was free again.