he couldn't read; his
friends bored him; life was as flat as beer dregs.

His attic studio was lighted by a dormer window at a height convenient
to receive his elbows on the sill. He came to a pause in that position
morosely staring out on Washington Square basking in the summer morning
sunshine. In some occult way the gilding on the green leaves stabbed
at his breast and accused him of futility.

"What the deuce am I doing up here in this dusty garret painting bad
pictures while the whole world is alive!" he thought.

He picked up his hat and went slowly down the three flights to the
street. At the corner of the square he turned down Macdougall street
into the Italian quarter.

This intimate thoroughfare was as crowded as a bee-hive. Happy, dirty,
big-eyed children played in the gutters while their obese mothers
squatted untidily on the stoops. No lack of the zest of life here. It
shamed the pedestrian without cheering him.

"They haven't much to live for," he thought, "and they're not
complaining. Why can't I take things as they come, as they do, without
searching my soul?"

It was a point of pride with Evan not to look like a denizen of
Washington Square. So his hair was cut, and his clothes like anybody's
else. He even went so far as to keep his hat brushed, his trousers
creased and his shoes polished. For the rest he was a vigorous,
deep-chested youth of middle height with rugged features and glowing
dark eyes. He had a self-contained, even a dogged look. Like all men
susceptible of deep feeling, he did not choose to wear his heart upon
his sleeve.

Half an hour later found him in that quaint corner of the island
bounded by Liberty street, Greenwich street and the river. It is
generally called the Syrian quarter, though shared by the Syrians with
immigrants of all nations, whose boarding-houses abound there,
convenient to the landing station. A feature of the neighbourhood is
the cheap clothing stores where the immigrants buy their first United
States suits. These suits hang swinging from the awnings like wasted
gallows birds. A hawk-eyed salesman lurks beneath; in other words the
"puller-in."

As Evan approached such a place in darkest Greenwich street a customer
issued forth of aspect so comical and strange that Evan was drawn out
of himself to regard him. It was a tall, lean old man who moved with a
factitious sprightliness. He was clearly no immigrant but a native of
these United S