The afternoon trailed on. Vance could not write; the poem had vanished like a puff of mist. He sat staring at the paper, and smoking one cigarette after another. Suddenly he remembered that he had promised, that very afternoon, to call on Mrs. Pulsifer and on Tristram Fynes. And here he sat in Mrs. Tracy's dining room, looking out on her frozen garden patch and the cold purple of the hills, and doing nothing and seeing no light ahead. Toward dusk he was seized with the impulse to sprint down to the station, jump into the first train for New York, and pay his two visits. Then he remembered that city people were always full of engagements, and could not be found without an appointment—or might be annoyed if a fellow barged in when he wasn't expected. Besides, he didn't particularly want to see either Fynes or the Pulsifer woman—what he really wanted was to breathe the atmosphere they breathed. But that was another difference that Laura Lou would never understand… .

The next morning was his regular day at the office. But an obscure reluctance kept him from going back to New York. When he got there Eric Rauch would ask him for his next article, of which he hadn't written the first line, the subject of which he hadn't yet chosen. And Tarrant would call him in to his sanctum, and want to know if they couldn't announce the title of his next short story while "Unclaimed" was fresh in people's minds. And he hadn't even settled on a subject for his story either—there were so many to choose from, and none that he felt ready to tackle. Poetry … poetry was what he was full of now… .