As he marched on, however, his defiance began to ooze away. He went over every word Ruth or he had said, and when he reached his room he sat deep in an arm-chair, like a hurt animal crouching, his coat still on, his felt hat over his eyes, his tie a trifle disarranged, his legs straight out before him, his hands in his trousers pockets, while he disconsolately contemplated a photograph of Forrest Haviland in full-dress uniform that stood on the low bureau among tangled ties, stray cigarettes, a bronze aviation medal, cuff-buttons, and a haberdasher's round package of new collars. His gaze was steady and gloomy. He was dramatizing himself as hero in a melodrama. He did not know how the play would end. But his dramatization of himself did not indicate that he was not in earnest. Forrest's portrait suggested to him, as it had before, that he had no picture of Ruth, that he wanted one. Next time he saw her he would ask her.... Then he remembered. He took out his new cigar, turned it over and over gloweringly, and chewed it without lighting it, the right corner of his mouth vicious in appearance. But his tone was plaintive as he mourned, "How did it all start, anyway?" He drew off his top-coat and shoes, and put on his shabby though once expensive slippers. Slowly. He lay on his bed. He certainly did not intend to go to sleep--but he awoke at 2 A.M., dressed, the light burning, his windows closed, feeling sweaty and hot and dirty and dry-mouthed--a victim of all the woes since tall Troy burned. He shucked off his clothes as you shuck an ear of corn. When he awoke in the morning he lay as usual, greeting a shining new day, till he realized that it was not a shining day; it was an ominous day; everything was wrong. That something had happened--really had--was a fact that sternly patrolled his room. His chief reaction was not repentance nor dramatic interest, but a vexed longing to unwish the whole affair. "Hang it!" he groaned. Already he was eager to make peace. He sympathized with Ruth. "Poor kid! it was rotten to row with her, her completely all in with the grippe." At three in the afternoon he telephoned to her house. "Miss Ruth," he was informed, "was asleep; she was not very well." Would the maid please ask Miss Ruth to call Mr. Ericson when she woke? Certainly the maid would. But by bedtime Ruth had not telephoned. Self-respect would not let him call again, for days, and Ruth never called him. He went about alternately resentful at her stubbornness and seeing himself as a lout cast out of heaven. Then he saw her at a distance, on the platform of the subway station at Seventy-second Street. She was with Phil Dunleavy. She looked well, she was talking gaily, oblivious of old sorrows, certainly not in need of Carl Ericson.