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Jay set out to establish his first connection with a payroll, encouraged by a wife eloquent with hopes contrary to those usually entertained upon such an occasion. Lida hoped his father wouldn't employ him and that Jay, after having offered to go to work and having been refused, would feel satisfied with the gesture.

Lida had awakened, after he had dressed, and beckoned him to her bed where she had extended her white arms to him.

"Try to be through with him in time to catch the Century, Jay," she urged. "I'll have us packed."

Her temporary enthusiasm for Chicago, surprised in her by the revelation of the lake and the floe agleam under the moon, was quickly worn. The lake, under daylight, did not develop any diversions; it was scenery in winter.

The city was not impressive to a New Yorker. It was flat and smoky; the people talked just like their streets, Lida observed, with flat, noisy, uninteresting voices; and they kept themselves simply spattered with business.

"You never see a gentleman, born here," she told her husband coolly. "Every man who isn't working apologizes for it or looks like he expected to be arrested, no matter how much he has. It's the slave psychology. It simply screams out loud hou'recently you've all been scraping. You can't get away from it in Chicago, so you love it and praise it—like your rotten weather."