As his vision readjusted itself and he found that he was in a narrow iron bedstead, instead of a wide one of black walnut, with a portrait of Mr. Cran facing him, he began to wonder how he had got from the one couch to the other, and how much time had elapsed in the transit… . But the effort of wondering was too much for him; his aching head dropped back… .

The recollection of Upton shot through him rebukingly; but he said to himself that Upton hadn't needed any advice, and would probably have rejected it if offered. "He ran the show—it was all fixed up beforehand between him and the Hayes fellow… . I wonder if his mother knows?" The thought of Mrs. Tracy was less easy to appease. He remembered her warning against Hayes, her adjuration that they should avoid bad company and come home before night; and he would have given the world to be in his own bed at Euphoria, with no difficulties to deal with but such as could be settled between himself and his family. "If I only knew the day of the week it is!" he thought, feeling more and more ashamed of the part he had played, and more and more scared of its probable consequences. "She'll cry—and I shall hate that," he reflected squeamishly.

At last he tumbled out of bed, soused his head in cold water, got into his clothes, and shuffled downstairs. The house was quiet, the hour evidently going toward sunset. In the back porch Mrs. Tracy sat shelling peas. There was no sign of emotion on her face, which was sallow and stony. She simply remarked, without meeting his eyes: "You'll find some fried liver left out on the table," and bent again to her task.

"Oh, I don't want anything—I'm not hungry," he stammered, longing to question her, to find out from her all that remained obscure in his own history, to apologize and to explain—if any explanation should occur to him! But she would not look up, and he found it impossible to pour out his excuses to her bent head, with the tired-looking hair drawn thinly over the skin, like the last strands of cotton round one of his mother's spools. "Funny women should get to look like that," he thought with a shiver of repulsion. To cut the situation short, he wandered into the dining room, looked at the fried liver and sodden potatoes, tried in vain to guess of what meal they were the survival, and turned away with the same sense of disgust with which the top of Mrs. Tracy's head had inspired him.