"See here—I've got an appointment in town. I guess if I sprint for the elevated I can make it before one o'clock," he announced abruptly; and before she could question or protest he had got into his hat and overcoat, and was hurrying down the lane to the turnpike.

It was weeks since he had been to New York, and then he had stayed only long enough to persuade Dreck and Saltzer to give him a small advance on his royalties. Today, as the huge roar of the streets enveloped him, he felt his heart beating in time with it. He hadn't known how much he had missed the bracing air of the multitude. He avoided the New Hour, but turned in for lunch at the Cocoanut Tree, where it was bewildering and stimulating, after those endless weeks of country solitude and laborious routine, to find the old idlers and workers, the old jokes, the old wrangles, the old welcome again. Eric Rauch met him amicably, and seemed glad to hear that the novel was growing so fast. "Queer, though, if you were to get away the Pulsifer Novel Prize from the boss," he chuckled in Vance's ear. Vance stared, and had to be told, in deepest confidence, that Tarrant was also at work on a novel—his first—and that the few intimates who had seen it predicted that it would pull off the Pulsifer Prize, though perhaps not altogether on its merits.

"Luckily, though," Rauch ended, "it's a First Novel Prize, and that rules you out, because of Instead." He seemed to derive intense amusement from the narrowly averted drama of a conflict between the editor of the New Hour and its most noted contributor.

When Vance left the Cocoanut Tree, rather later than he had meant to, he went to Frenside's lodgings, but found a card with "Away" above the latter's name in the vestibule. Then he recalled the real object of his trip: he must try to get another two or three hundred out of Dreck and Saltzer. His reluctance to ask for a second advance was manifest, and theirs to accord it no less so. The cashier reminded him affably that it wasn't so very long since his last application. That sort of thing was contrary to their rules; but if he'd look in after the first of the year, possibly Mr. Dreck would see what he could do… . Vance turned away, and walking back to Fifth Avenue stood for a while watching the stream of traffic pour by—the turbid flood which had never ceased to press its way through those perpetually congested arteries since he had first stood gazing at it, hungry and light-headed, or the later day when, desperate with anxiety for Laura Lou and the need for money, he had breasted the tide to make his way to Mrs. Pulsifer's and beg for a loan.