Page:Daskam Bacon--Whom the gods destroy.djvu/161

 waiting, waiting in front of the close-shaded windows to see if she had left the house or if she still sat in surprised idleness expecting him. Now he was at Stebbins's house watching Bob as he lay asleep there.

He remembered afterward thinking that the woman must have been a Southerner, for, as she drank, her tongue turned to those softer tones, slurred vowels and quaint idioms.

"It seems like you're having a good time, after all," she said once. He bowed gravely.

By eleven they were well down-town, he was not quite certain where. They stayed but little time in any one place. It seemed as if they had been on this endless journey for years. Now and then he saw a man he knew. In one place he wakened, with a shock of remembrance, to the fact that he had been there before: there, and at the place opposite, too. How little it had hanged! It was before the five years.…

They were at a corner table, he with his back to the room, the woman facing it. On a platform opposite a young fellow sat before a piano,