r this, although it
did endure for some time.

CHAPTER V

For the time being this encounter stirred to an almost unbridled degree
Eugene's interest in women. Most men are secretly proud of their triumph
with woman--their ability to triumph--and any evidence of their ability
to attract, entertain, hold, is one of those things which tends to give
them an air of superiority and self-sufficiency which is sometimes
lacking in those who are not so victorious. This was, in its way, his
first victory of the sort, and it pleased him mightily. He felt much
more sure of himself instead of in any way ashamed. What, he thought,
did the silly boys back in Alexandria know of life compared to this?
Nothing. He was in Chicago now. The world was different. He was finding
himself to be a man, free, individual, of interest to other
personalities. Margaret Duff had told him many pretty things about
himself. She had complimented his looks, his total appearance, his taste
in the selection of particular things. He had felt what it is to own a
woman. He strutted about for a time, the fact that he had been dismissed
rather arbitrarily having little weight with him because he was so very
ready to be dismissed, sudden dissatisfaction with his job now stirred
up in him, for ten dollars a week was no sum wherewith any
self-respecting youth could maintain himself,--particularly with a view
to sustaining any such relationship as that which had just ended. He
felt that he ought to get a better place.

Then one day a woman to whom he was delivering a parcel at her home in
Warren Avenue, stopped him long enough to ask: "What do you drivers get
a week for your work?"

"I get ten dollars," said Eugene. "I think some get more."

"You ought to make a good collector," she went on. She was a large,
homely, incisive, straight-talking woman. "Would you like to change to
that kind of work?"

Eugene was sick of the laundry business. The hours were killing. He had
worked as late as one o'clock Sunday morning.

"I think I would," he exclaimed. "I don't know anything about it, but
this work is no fun."

"My husband is the manager of The People's Furniture Company," she went
on. "He needs a good collector now and then. I think he's going to make
a change very soon. I'll speak to him."

Eugene smiled joyously and thanked her. This was surely a windfall. He
was anxious to know what collectors were paid but he thought it scarcely
tactful to ask.

"I