Vance received this in silence. What was there to say? Mrs. Tarrant had come to invite them to a party—had delivered her invitation in that room! Did she really think parties were a panacea for such a plight as theirs? Or had she been moved by another impulse which had been checked on her lips by Laura Lou's manifest hostility? The dreary ironic light of failure lay on everything, as it had on that far-off day at Euphoria when Vance, recovering from his fever, had poured out his bitterness in his first tale. Perhaps life would never again be bearable to him except as material for his art. In itself it seemed persistently ugly and uncontrollable, a horror one could neither escape from nor master—as if one should be forever battling in the dark with a grimacing idiot.

"See here—there'll be nothing left to eat if we don't go down," he reminded his wife.

"I don't want anything. I'm not hungry. Besides, it's too late … you're always too late… ."

At that he snatched up his hat and coat in sudden anger. The likeness to Mrs. Tracy was not in his wife's face alone. "Oh, all right. Just as you like. I'm hungry, if you're not. If dinner's over I'll go out and get a bite somewhere."

"You better," she rejoined, in the same lifeless tone; and without looking back at her he flung the door shut and ran downstairs and out of the house.

In the first chophouse that he passed he found a table, ordered sausage and potatoes, with a cup of coffee, and devoured them ravenously. He was still young enough for anger and grief to make him hungry… . There was no one he knew in the place, and after he had satisfied his hunger he pulled out his letters and glanced over them. As he had expected, they were all on literary business. One important publisher, who wanted his next novel, asked him to call and see if, in the course of a talk, they could not devise some plan of adjustment with Dreck and Saltzer. Though Vance had no hope of this he was encouraged by the urgency of the request. How easy it would have been, he thought, to work his way through his two remaining years of bondage if only Laura Lou had not weighed down every endeavour—if only he had been free and alone! But there was no use in going through that weary round again. He had had the chance of freeing himself and had refused it. How could a fellow tell beforehand where each act would lead, and what would be the next to grow out of it? Perhaps they were right, those chaps at Rebecca Stram's, who said it was all a blind labyrinth, a disconnected muddle… .