ch interested.

"Yes.... I'm trying to forget----"

"I beg your pardon----"

"It's quite all right. I, myself, mentioned it first; but I can't talk
about it yet. It's too personal----" She turned and looked at the
monstrous city.

After a silence: "It's been a rotten voyage, hasn't it?" he remarked.

"Perfectly rotten. I was so ill I could scarcely keep my place during
life-drill.... I didn't see you there," she added with a faint smile,
"but I'm sure you were aboard, even if you seem to doubt that I was."

And then, perhaps considering that she had been sufficiently amiable
to him, she gave him his conge with a pleasant little nod.

"Could I help you--do anything--" he began. But she thanked him with
friendly finality.

They sauntered in opposite directions; and he did not see her again to
speak to her.

Later, jolting toward home in a taxi, it occurred to him that it might
have been agreeable to see such an attractively informal girl again.
Any man likes informality in women, except among the women of his own
household, where he would promptly brand it as indiscretion.

He thought of her for a while, recollecting details of the episode and
realising that he didn't even know her name. Which piqued him.

"Serves me right," he said aloud with a shrug of finality. "I had more
enterprise once."

Then he looked out into the sunlit streets of Manhattan, all brilliant
with flags and posters and swarming with prosperous looking
people--his own people. But to his war-enlightened and disillusioned
eyes his own people seemed almost like aliens; he vaguely resented
their too evident prosperity, their irresponsible immunity, their
heedless preoccupation with the petty things of life. The acres of
bright flags fluttering above them, the posters that made a gay
back-ground for the scene, the sheltered, undisturbed routine of peace
seemed to annoy him.

An odd irritation invaded him; he had a sudden impulse to stop his
taxi and shout, "Fat-heads! Get into the game! Don't you know the
world's on fire? Don't you know what a hun really is? You'd better
look out and get busy!"

Fifth Avenue irritated him--shops, hotels, clubs, motors, the
well-dressed throngs began to exasperate him.

On a side street he caught a glimpse of his own place of business; and
it almost nauseated him to remember old man Sharrow, and the walls
hung with plans of streets and sewers and surveys and photographs; and
his own yellow oak desk----