I am in New York at the Hotel, you see. In a week, I must join Lawrence in Maine. But I got weary of the little house and closed it behind me. I don’t know what I hoped to find in the burning city. But will you ride one hour to spend another hour with me? JULIA DEERING. He went. The city burned indeed. But as he traversed it--slowly to preserve his neatness--he knew that he was proof against such fire. As he approached the hotel, his thoughts veered altogether backward. His thoughts were a feeble countercurrent to the great part of him that propelled so swiftly forward as to encumber his feet and place a straining awkwardness upon his effort to go slowly. Thought of what lay before him was altogether wanting. He was thinking of what he had said to his mother. He had lied to her. All of his life he could recall no lie to teach him how to utter this one. Yet he had lied glibly--and with success. He was almost proud of this--that little part of him which could pay heed, at such a moment, to any past. He had spoken of a college friend in town for a few days--one his mother knew nothing of. “You will be back to-night?” she had said. And then, strangely, so callous did this one falsehood seem to have made him, that he had answered: “I can’t be sure. Better not expect me.” Why this gratuitous blow to his mother’s faith? He knew he would be back. What could keep him in New York? Surely, not a summer “show”? Only his desire to fend off his mother, a perverse consequence of lying to her, could explain his answer. Well: that was settled. A falsehood did not wait long ere it sowed its poison seed. But now, he found his heart beating hard and painfully against his throat. It knew, before his eyes, that the hotel was there! A dark, cool lobby, after the street’s glare--a monster with many eyes, that he must pass. It was filled with moving, mumbling creatures--each one an eye. And an eye upon a pivot that touched him and soiled him and then brushed on. It seemed to stir nervously at his intrusion, to demand his secret as indemnity for its disturbance. It was cynical and real. It must be warded off without a contact. For a contact would leave him spotted. An elevator hurled him up, from its vaporous presence. The hall, also, lived. The soft carpet held back his feet perversely. The dark doors set in the bright grey walls marked a mocking rhythm to his interminable progress. Each turn in the passage was a mute thrust against his carefully reckoned gait. The silence of two chambermaids who had been chatting was a badge on him, and the thud of his feet also was a comment. Then, the door opened before he had to knock. She did not smile--any more than had the vision. Such visions are serious. So was she, now, in reality. Her hand meant nothing. She took this hat. And her voice caressed him with all the firmness and mastery of her hand, that last evening of the kiss.