wash of Broadway which flowed up to the door of the warm-hearted physician. To borrow meant to lose caste, to become dependent, to become the object of derision or—worse—of pity.
And how would he live without human contact, without companionship, friendly counsel, the sympathy he craved, the applause that was tonic to him? In the first shocking knowledge of his downfall, Ken had been driven deep into the secret chambers of his own mind. The festering wound was his own, to nurse, to temper with soothing oils, to bind and to cure. He would, he believed, hide. Day would find him secure behind his bolted door. At night, late at night, he would walk through deserted streets or into the park, where only the homeless hid the shame of their poverty.
Of course, there was always the Other World. Vague world now, unreal, peopled by fantasies. The key to that world he had mislaid down there in Texas, where spacious prairies were too wide to conceal its monstrous figures. To meet his own kind was impossible now. To meet them and not to notice their frailties was impossible—unless he drank. And, for the present, he would not drink.
And yet, as time passed heavily, as the loathesome appearance of the disease became noticeable, as he avoided even the casual glance of the hall boy, the newsman, the soda jerker at the corner drug store, as his face, pale in the half light of his apartment, was encrusted with a hard powdery film, he felt the insistent desire rise. Life was empty as an old egg shell and as brittle. Time, jerkily moving forward, sleepless nights, sober days succeeding one another in the dragging pace of a funeral procession, was
