overed couch, General on the floor
beside him, he was trying to sleep. He was strangely tired, and for
a while his only well-defined feeling was one of impatience at having
to go out. Why must people do so many things they don't want to do?
He put out his hand and smoothed softly General's long ears. Why
couldn't a man be let alone and allowed to live the way he preferred?
Why-- "Quit it," he said, half aloud. "What isn't Why in life is
Wherefore, and guessing isn't your job. Go to sleep."

After a while he opened his eyes and looked around the book-lined
walls. When he first began to invest in books he could only buy one
at a time, and now there was no room for more. He wondered if there
was anything he could buy to-day that would give him the thrill his
first books had given. He had almost forgotten what a thrill could
mean. But who cared for books nowadays? The men and women he knew,
with few exceptions, wouldn't give a twist of their necks to see his,
would as soon think of reading them as of talking Dutch at a
dinner-party, and very probably they were right. Knowledge added
little to human happiness. Science and skill could do nothing for
General. Poor General! Again he smoothed the latter's head. For
years he had barked his good-bye in the morning, for years watched
eagerly his coming, paws on the window-sill as dusk grew on, for
years leaped joyously to meet him on his return, but he would do
these things no longer. There was no chance of betterment, and death
would be a mercy--a painless death which could be arranged. But he
had said no, said it angrily when the doctor so suggested, and had
tried a new man, who was deceiving him.

"You are all I have, General"--his hand traveled softly up and down
the length of the dog's back--"and somewhere you must wait for me.
I've got to stay on and play the game, and it's to be played
straight, but when it's called I sha'n't be sorry."

From a box on a table close to him he took a cigar, lighted it, and
watched its spirals of smoke curl upward. Life and the smoke that
vanisheth had much in common. On the whole, he had no grievance
against life. If it was proving a rather wearisome affair it was
doubtless his own fault, and yet this finding of himself alone at
forty was hardly what he had intended. There was something actually
comic about it. That for which he had striven had been secured, but
for what? Success unshared is of all things ironic, and