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 She looked back, as she closed the door, and smiled soberly at him. For the moment, he wondered about her; then, left alone, he dropped upon his chair. No; he would never return to Mount Auburn Street; Ben would go back to the rooms, after Christmas vacation, and pack up his things and send them to him. Where? Where would he be having his room with Lida? How would he pay for it?

Not with Lida's money; so much was certain. But what would Lida do with her money? She had a great deal, which she surely would spend. How could he stop her? He had not reckoned with the difficulty of Lida with a lot of money; he with nothing and less than nothing—debts.

He went out and, upon Michigan avenue in the blowing snow, he wandered as far as the University Club. There he turned in upon Christmas meetings of college groups, undergrads and grads, sons and fathers, Harvard, Yale and Princeton people and boys whom he had known in prep school. They called to him noisily and claimed him.

Late in the afternoon, he took a taxi home. It was a gay, cheery house, in its exterior aspect—his home. It was of tan brick, with its wooden trim painted a light blue which, with the help of little heaps of snow on the sills, held the last brightness of the failing day. The windows were wide and here and there they flickered with firelight. Beedy had built for him, Jay realized, a wood fire on the big hearth in the hall.

The gayness and color represented, to Jay, his mother, for she had "built" the house here on Astor Street amid the duller dwellings of wives of men who were presidents of banks, of railroads, of companies manufacturing things.