pectator. There was
no intimacy for him, no real contact. He was glad to remember the bed
that awaited him and confessed this to Chalmers.

"Bed!" echoed Chalmers in righteous amazement. "What's the use of going
to bed? You only fall asleep!"

"He's right, old man," put in Baldwin warningly. "I've tried it."

Dallas turned a reproachful gaze on Ewing. "God has given you a
beautiful life and you sleep it away! Come, come, man!"

"We'll have a bite to eat, anyway," broke in Griggs. "Come on, here's
Clayton's."

They were presently about a table far back in a restaurant where
lingered many sitters-up of nights. They ordered Welsh rabbits and ale.
Ewing refused the ale and drank water.

Dallas put on an air of wishing to defend this choice of beverage. "Of
course, it's the stuff that made Noah famous," he submitted.

"Yes--and it made all that trouble at Johnstown, too," broke in Chalmers
with deep hostility in his look at Ewing's glass. "I can't forget that.
Water has never been the same to me since."

They fell to the food when it came. They smoked, they drank more ale,
they sang in tones enough subdued to avert public disfavor, and they
flung jests about to spice the endless gossip of their craft.

Ewing listened, yet with eager eyes for the people at other tables
about them. These men and women captivated him by their suggestions
of mystery--characters in the play he was forever beholding--
curious-looking men whose faces suggested lives of dramatic tension;
beautiful women, splendidly arrayed, with much of mystery and something
of daring in their animation. He scanned them all furtively as the talk
at his own table flowed on.

It was chiefly of their work that they talked. Chalmers related matters
exposing the inefficiency of an art editor to whose mercies fate now and
then betrayed him. Chalmers bitterly thought that this person should be
driving an ice wagon or helping about in a shipyard, or something of the
sort--not telling artists how to draw their pictures.

Baldwin sympathized. He had his own art editor. It came out that no man
present had ever even heard of a competent art editor. It stood to
reason that there could be none. A man of capacity to be an art editor
would have too much self-respect. He would starve in the gutter first.
But it took time and talk and replenished mugs to reduce this truth to
its beautiful, naked simplicity, and Ewing at last saw that day had
come. The lights inside were