but the actual separation between them might,
possibly, have taken place long before that.

Alan resolved to hold these questions in abeyance; he would not accept
or grant the stigma which his relationship to Corvet seemed to attach
to himself until it had been proved to him. He had come to Chicago
expecting, not to find that there had never been anything wrong, but to
find that the wrong had been righted in some way at last. But what was
most plain of all to him, from what Sherrill had told him, was that the
wrong--whatever it might be--had not been righted; it existed still.

The afternoon had changed swiftly into night; dusk had been gathering
during his last talk with Sherrill, so that he hardly had been able to
see Sherrill's face, and just after Sherrill had left him, full dark
had come. Alan did not know how long he had been sitting in the
darkness thinking out these things; but now a little clock which had
been ticking steadily in the blackness tinkled six. Alan heard a knock
at his door, and when it was repeated, he called, "Come in."

The light which came in from the hall, as the door was opened, showed a
man servant. The man, after a respectful inquiry, switched on the
light. He crossed into the adjoining room--a bedroom; the room where
Alan was, he thought, must be a dressing room, and there was a bath
between. Presently the man reappeared, and moved softly about the
room, unpacking Alan's suitcase. He hung Alan's other suit in the
closet on hangers; he put the linen, except for one shirt, in the
dresser drawers, and he put Alan's few toilet things with the
ivory-backed brushes and comb and other articles on the dressing stand.

Alan watched him queerly; no one except himself ever had unpacked
Alan's suitcase before; the first time he had gone away to college--it
was a brand new suitcase then--"mother" had packed it; after that first
time, Alan had packed and unpacked it. It gave him an odd feeling now
to see some one else unpacking his things. The man, having finished
and taken everything out, continued to look in the suitcase for
something else.

"I beg pardon, sir," he said finally, "but I cannot find your buttons."

"I've got them on," Alan said. He took them out and gave them to the
valet with a smile; it was good to have something to smile at, if it
was only the realization that he never had thought before of any one's
having more than one set of buttons for ordinary shirts. Alan
wond