nothing else to engage his attention. But he was
through, and he had consumed only a few minutes.

His glance wandered to a railroad poster in the dining-room, and this
interested him for an instant. Attractive names caught his eye: Torreon,
Tampico, Vera Cruz, the City, Durango. They were all waiting for him, the
old towns. There was the old work to be done, the old life to resume....
Yes, but there was Sylvia. Sylvia, who had said with the intentness of a
child, "I love you," and again, "I love you." She did not want Runyon. She
wanted him, Harboro. And he wanted her--good God, how he wanted her! Had
he been mad to wander away from her? His problem lay with her, not
elsewhere.

And then he jerked his head in denial of that conclusion. No, he did not
want her. She had laid a path of pitch for his feet, and the things he
might have grasped with his hands, to draw himself out of the path which
befouled his feet--they too were smeared with pitch. She did not love him,
certainly. He clung tenaciously to that one clear point. There lay the
whole situation, perfectly plain. She did not love him. She had betrayed
him, had turned the face of the whole community against him, had permitted
him to affront the gentle people who had unselfishly aided him and given
him their affection.

He wandered about the streets until nearly midnight, and then he engaged a
room in the _Internacional_ and assured himself that it was time to go to
bed. He needed a good rest. To-morrow he would know what to do.

But the sight of the room assigned to him surprised him in some odd
way--as if every article of furniture in it were mocking him. It was not a
room really to be used, he thought. At least, it was not a room for him to
use. He did not belong in that bed; he had a bed of his own, in the house
he had built on the Quemado Road. And then he remembered the time when he
had been able to hang his hat anywhere and consider himself at home, and
how he had always been grateful for a comfortable bed, no matter where.
That was the feeling which he must get back again. He must get used to the
strangeness of things, so that such a room as this would seem his natural
resting-place, and that other house which had been destroyed for him would
seem a place of shame, to be avoided and forgotten.

He slept fitfully. The movements of trains in the night comforted him in a
mournful fashion. They reminded him of that other life, which might be his
again. But e