Page:Spider Boy (1928).pdf/234



The next morning Ambrose awakened, for the first time in California, in an actually beatific mood. Circumstances had considerably altered his point of view. Aspects of the community hitherto distasteful no longer aroused his anxiety. Imperia Starling and Herbert Ringrose apparently were merely episodes in his past. The onerous obligations he had assumed in signing a contract with L.L.B. had been miraculously lifted from his shoulders by the optimistic and beneficent Philip Lawrence. Especially and entirely pleasant had been his re-encounter with Wilhelmina Ford. In a word, he was as contented this morning as he expected to be until he was permitted to return to his secluded apartment and become a forgotten nobody, assuredly his highest ambition.

Outside the sun was bright. From his window he gazed across the green lawn, between the bamboo and the palms. Humming a few bars of an old music hall tune, he lifted the receiver to order his breakfast. A little later he plunged about in his bath like a playful sea-lion. The arrival of the waiters with the warming containers and the table with its white na-