He went home, and to bed, like one moving in a horrible dream. That
night, and through all the next day, he felt utterly bereft and
wretched: something, say, as though flood and pestilence had swept
through his dear old town and carried off everything and everybody but
himself. He crawled alone in a smashed world. On the second day
following, he found himself able to light a cigarette; and, glancing
about him with faint pluckings of convalescent interest, began to
recognize some landmarks. On the third day, he was frankly wondering
whether a girl with such overstrained, not to say hysterical ideals of
conduct, would, after all, be a very comfortable person to spend one's
life with.
On the evening of this day, about half-past eight o'clock, he emerged
from his mother's house, light overcoat over his arm in deference to his
evening clothes, and started briskly down the street. On the second
block, as luck had it, he overtook Tommy Semple walking the same way.
"Gardiner," said Semple, "when are you going to get over all this uplift
rot and come back to Semple and West?"
The question fell in so marvelously with West's mood of acute discontent
with all that his life had been for the past two years, that it looked
to him strangely like Providence.
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