dollars and fifty cents for his room. The dollar and a half remaining would scarcely pay his car fares!
He did not ring for the elevator. He walked down the four flights of stairs in some sort of confused notion that he could not afford to ride. He faced the street, appalled. It was as busy as Kidder with his mail.
When he remembered Miss Morris, he set out again in frantic haste, almost running, his single glove rolled into a ball in his hand, his hat tilted down over his eyes by the bruise on the back of his head, swallowing dryly. He came, breathless, to the steps of Mrs. Kahrle's boarding-house. The door opened a grudging crack to him. "She ain't here," the woman said, and shut him out.
He found himself, instantaneously, calm. He was like a man in quicksand, who finds that his panic is plunging him deeper, and who stiffens into rigidity, motionless, to wait for the arrival of help. "This is all right," he told himself. "These things happen, of course. We must wait. When I see Kidder again, he'll not be so bad-tempered. It's a matter of waiting a few days. I can write to Miss Morris. I can write to Walter Pittsey and get his advice. I have plenty of time. I don't have to see Margaret for two or three hours yet. I must think of something to tell her."
He was as tired as if he had been running a race; and the worry and excitement had given him a dragging ache in the small of his back. He found himself shaking with cold. He buttoned his light overcoat, sank his hands in his pockets, and went down Broadway huddled in on himself against the wind. He
