omfortable, and I'll be back at five."

Milt did not have to go to a recitation. He marched out with briskness
in his step, and a book under his arm; but when he reached the corner,
the briskness proved to be spurious, and the mathematics book proved to
be William Rose Benet's _Merchants of Cathay_, which Claire had given
him in the Yellowstone, and which he had rescued from the wrecked bug.

He stood staring at it. He opened it with unhappy tenderness. He had
been snatched from the world of beautiful words and serene dignity, of
soaring mountains and companionship with Claire in the radiant morning,
back to the mud and dust of Schoenstrom, from the opera to "city sports"
in a lunch-room! He hated Bill McGolwey and his sneering assumption that
Milt belonged in the filth with him. And he hated himself for not being
enough of a genius to combine Bill McGolwey and Claire Boltwood. But not
once, in his maelstrom of worry on that street corner, did he expect
Claire to like Bill. Through all his youthful agonizing, he had enough
common sense to know that though Claire might conquer a mountain pass,
she could never be equal to the social demands of Schoenstrom and Bill
McGolwey.

He wandered for an hour and came back to find that, in a "dry" city
which he had never seen before, the crafty Bill had obtained a quart of
Bourbon, and was in a state of unsteady beatitude. He wanted, he
announced, to dance.

Milt got him into the community bathtub, and soused him under, but
Bill's wet body was slippery, and Bill's merry soul was all for
frolicsome gamboling, and he slid out of Milt's grasp, he sloshed around
in the tub, he sprinkled Milt's sacred good suit with soapy water, and
escaped, and in the costume of Adam he danced orientally in Milt's room,
till he was seized with sleepiness and cosmic grief, and retired to
Milt's bed in tears and nothing else.

The room dimmed, grew dark. The street lamps outside sent a wan, wavery
gleam into the room. Evening crowds went by, and in a motion-picture
theater a banging piano struck up. Bill breathed in choking snorts. Milt
sat unmoving, feeling very old, very tired, too dumbly unhappy to be
frightened of the dreadful coming hour when Claire and Jeff should hear
of Bill, and discover Milt's real world.

He was not so romantically loyal, not so inhumanly heroic, that it can
truthfully be reported that he never thought of getting rid of Bill. He
did think of it, again and again. But alway