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AVID gave up the rooms, where he had lived with Fidelia, and he moved from the hotel the next day. He had come to feel freer and more reasonable as a result of his talk with Alice and he appreciated the folly of the mixture of sentiment and stubbornness which had made him determine to maintain his home as it had been.

Of course he had realized that sometime he would give up the rooms but he had been waiting to hear, definitely, that Fidelia had rejoined Bolton. He had not heard this; he had not heard anything at all from her.

He moved about four miles south and nearer the center of the city, taking a room in a so-called bachelors' building near Lincoln Park. Except for the janitor's wife and the maids of the staff who swept and dusted, there was not a woman living in the building.

These quarters were considerably cheaper than the hotel suite and also they involved him in much less indirect expenditure. The move took him from the well-meant attentions of the Vredicks and his hotel friends and cast him more upon himself. He went home for Christmas and stayed there five days and he formed the habit of running down to Itanaca on the late train every Saturday afternoon and returning late Sunday night.