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 to go up and alarm clocks off, and somehow ensnare him into the activities of the day.

As he turned up the gas jets in his pompous bedroom the titanic Empire clock was stubbornly maintaining its lie. His own watch had stopped. A towel, the only one, had fallen into the water pitcher. His washing had not been sent to the laundry. Little waves of despair lapped at the edge of his consciousness, and his poor head buzzed.

I and schedules! he thought. I and time! I and an atelier full of snooty painters who know why Cézanne is good! I and thin girls in lampshades! I and life! Dear God.

It took several weeks to draw up a schedule, and when it was drawn up there was no point in putting it into effect before a Monday. As he stepped from the cool entry into the narrow street on the Sunday morning before the first available Monday, Grover was enveloped in billows of heat. It was like stepping into a bowl of warm soup. If this were Aldergrove, he was thinking, it would be Indian summer, with a vengeance. The laundress across the way was sitting in the strip of shade before her establishment mending the socks of her customers. The sun was beginning to encroach upon her knees, and when she bent forward to take the scissors from her basket it shone through her pale hair, giving her an aura that belonged to a