Blind to the shooting pains in his feet and legs, Peter rushed, stumbling, away. In his profound self-pity, he felt that even Hy had deserted him. He was alone, in a world that had no motive or thought but to do him evil, to pervert his finest motives, to crush him! Somehow he got back to that railroad. An hour and a half he spent painfully sitting in the country station waiting for a train. There was time to think. There was time for nothing but thinking. And Peter, as so often when deeply stirred either by joy or misery, found himself passing into a violent and soul-wrenching reaction. It was misery this time. He was a crawling abject thing. People would laugh. Sue would laugh... But would she! Would she tell? Would Hy and Betty, if they ever did get home, know that she had returned alone? Those deep-green eyes of hers, the strong little chin.... She was Miss Independence herself. Zanin was signing with Silverstone in the morning! Or as soon as the contracts could be drawn. The train came rumbling in. Peter, in, physical and spiritual agony, boarded it. All these painful, exciting experiences of the day were drawing together toward some new unexpected result. He was beaten--yet was he beaten! A news agent walked through the train with a great pile of magazines on his arm. Peter suddenly thought of the moving-picture periodical he had dropped, so long, long ago, in the Tunnel Station. He bought another copy; and again turned the pages. Then he let it fall to his knees and stared out the window with eyes that saw little. Zanin--Silverstone--Sue walking alone over a hill!... Peters little lamp of genius was burning once more. He was thrilled, if frightened, by the ideas that were forming in that curious mind of his. Shortly after seven o'clock of the same evening Jacob Zanin reached his mean little room in Fourth Street, after a stirring twenty-four hours at Silver-stone's house at Long Beach and an ineffectual attempt to find Sue in her rooms. Those rooms were dim and silent. No one answered his ring. No one answered his knock when he finally succeeded in following another tenant of the building into the inner hall. Which explains why he was at his room, alone, at a quarter to eight when Peter Ericson Mann called there. Peter, pale, nerves tense, a feverish glow in his eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses, leaned heavily on a walking stick in the dark hallway, listening to the sound of heavy footsteps coming across the creaking boards on the other side of the door. Then the door opened; and Zanin, coatless, collarless, hair rumpled over his ears on either side of his head, stood there; a hulking figure of a man, full of force, not untouched with inner fire; a little grim; his face, that of a vigorously intellectual Russian peasant, scarred perceptibly by racial and personal hardship. “Oh, hello, Mann!” said he. “Come in.” Then, observing the stick: “What's the matter?” “A little arch trouble. Nothing at all.” And Peter limped in.