Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/217

 or possibly it was merely on the outside of his own mind.

"God! What a mess I've made of things, haven't I now? Haven't I?" So the president of Judson-Morris accused himself bitterly.

But he had made other messes elsewhere. In the same minutes when he had been shutting down the shop he had been also flashing out messages to every concern that was manufacturing parts for his old model Nemos, ordering instant cessation and canceling his buying orders with the present deliveries. These telegrams would mean within a day or two at most other lines of men like this marching out of other factories, and George had that picture before his mind also as, an hour or so later, he passed disconsolately out of the factory door.

As he turned his car toward the Indian Village, sickening sensations of awful failure bore down within him, and that yearning to indulge himself for once in delicious depression of spirit before the woman he loved came upon him as it had a few nights before. He took a melancholy pleasure in the planning of an evening in which, he fondly dreamed, a sympathetic and beautiful woman would rise to heights of consolation that should make his hurts seem priceless treasures.