A month had passed since Kenwick became a member of the staff of the "San Francisco Clarion." The work had been going well, and the perpetual small excitement of a newspaper office brought back some of the old thrill that he had known in his college days. But every emotion came in subdued form now. There was a shadow across his sky, a soft pedal applied to every emotion. And until this was lifted he resolved to deny himself a sight of the house on Pine Street.

But during the beginning of his fifth week in the city desire overcame pride and caution, and late one night he walked up the familiar hill and looked into one of the lighted windows. There was no one in the room and the furniture and floors were covered with heavy canvas sheeting spattered with calcimine. An ugly step-ladder stood directly in front of the window, partly obstructing his view. He was about to turn away in bleak despair when the glitter of some small object in a far corner of the room caught his eye. Peering more intently under the half-drawn shade he saw that the gleaming thing was a small tinsel ball suspended from the lowest branch of a tiny Christmas-tree. It was almost New Year's day now, and the little fir with its brave showing of gilt and silver had been relegated to a distant corner to make way for the aggressive progress of the painters. The man at the window, staring in from the darkness at the drooping glory of the little tree, felt for it a sudden sense of kinship. And the Christmas-tree stared back at him with an inarticulate sort of questioning. There was to Kenwick a terrible sort of patience in its attitude. Torn away from its normal environment, transplanted suddenly and without warning into surroundings giddily artificial, and bereft of the roots with which to explore them, the little fir-tree stood there, holding in its out-stretched arms the baubles of an unfamiliar and irrelevant existence. He turned away, maddened by a fury that he did not comprehend. "Anything but that!" he cried savagely. "Anything but the patience of hopelessness!"

His thoughts were in a whirl, and he was unconscious of the fact that he was almost running down the slanting pavement. When he became aware of it he slackened his pace abruptly. He was a fool, he told himself. "Anybody watching me would size me up for an escaped convict—prowling around doorsteps at night; sneaking up to windows, like a professional burglar looking over his territory."

He let himself into his room at the St. Germaine and snapped on the light. The first thing his eyes fell upon in the bare, prim chamber was a letter propped against his mirror. It was a yellow envelope and it bore the dull black insignia of the dead-letter office. There was something ominous-looking about it. There is always something ominous about that pale yellow, unstamped envelope that issues, unheralded and unwanted, from the cemetery of letters. Inside of it was a communication written upon the St. Germaine stationery and addressed in his own handwriting to his brother, Everett Kenwick. It had been opened and sealed again, and across one end something was written. The single word seemed to leap out at Kenwick with the brutal unexpectedness of a bomb. He dropped the envelope as though it had stung him and stood gazing down at it. It stared malignantly back at him, burning a fiery path to his brain. Up and down the room he strode muttering over and over to himself that one horrible word: "Deceased! Deceased!"

The walls of the room seemed to be coming closer and closer. He felt as if he were being smothered. Taking his hat he went out into the hall, and walked down the five flights of stairs rather than encounter the elevator-boy. On the way down he decided to send a telegram of inquiry to the family lawyer in New York. The indelible pencil handed to him by the girl in the little hotel booth seemed to write the message quite of its own accord. And there was a calming sort of comfort in the impersonal manner of the telegraph-operator herself as she counted off mechanically the frantic words of his query.

As he turned away he was conscious of only one impulse; to be with somebody. He must have companionship of some sort, any sort, or he would lose his reason. From the dining-room there drifted out to him the pleasant din of human voices. He made his way inside and followed the head-waiter to his accustomed seat beside one of the mirror walls.

The hotel dining-room was full that evening. There was an Elks' convention in the city and the lobby swarmed with delegates. At his table Kenwick found three other men, and was pathetically grateful for their comradeship. Two of them were from Sacramento. The third introduced himself as Granville Jarvis, late of New Orleans. Kenwick remembered having seen him several times about the hotel. He had that quiet, magnetic sort of personality that never comes quite halfway to meet the casual acquaintance, but that possesses a subtle, indefinable power that lures others across the intervening territory. "I have something for you," Granville Jarvis seemed to say. "I have something that I'll be glad to give you—if you care to come and get it."

The other men talked volubly, including the quartet in their random conversation. Jarvis was an appreciative listener, an unmistakable cosmopolite, whose occasional contributions to the table-talk were keen-edged and subtly humorous. In his speech lingered only a faint trace of the Southern drawl. Of the three men, his was the personality which attracted Kenwick. The two Elks finished their dessert hurriedly and left before the coffee was served. Then Granville Jarvis, glancing at the haggard face of the young man across the table, ventured the first personal remark of the hour. "You've scarcely eaten a thing, and you look all in. I don't want to intrude into your affairs, but is there anything I can do?"

It was that unexpected kindliness that always proves too much for overstrung nerves. "I've just had bad news," Kenwick admitted. "It's rather shaken me up. But you can't do anything, thanks."

"Better take a walk out in the fresh air," Jarvis suggested. "I know how you feel. It's beastly—when a man is all alone."

"I am alone; that's the damnable part of it. And I've got to somehow get through the night."

The other man nodded with silent comprehension. "I'll take a stroll with you if you like, and you don't have to talk."

Kenwick accepted the offer eagerly, and for an hour he and his companion walked almost in silence. Then Kenwick, still haunted by the specter of solitude, invited the New Orleans man up to his room. There stretched out comfortably in two deep chairs, with an ash-tray between them, they discussed politics, books, and New York. "It's my home town," Kenwick explained, "but I'm a Westerner by adoption. They say, 'Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker,' but it hasn't worked that way with me."

Jarvis smiled. "They say that about Emporia, Kansas, too, and about all the other towns ranging in between. It's a world-wide colloquialism. Don't you go back to visit, though?"

"I've been thinking of it," his host replied. And then, despite the fact that his guest was a complete stranger, perhaps because of that fact, he felt an overwhelming desire to tell him of his trouble. For there is a certain security in confiding a sorrow to a casual stranger. Every care-ridden person in the world has felt the impulse, has been impelled to it by the realization that there is safety in remoteness. You will never see the stranger again, or if you do, he will have forgotten you and your trouble. A transitory interest has its advantages. It demands nothing in the way of a sequel. It keeps no watch upon your struggle; it demands no final reckoning. You and your agony are to the chance acquaintance a short-story, not a serial.

Jarvis was leaning back in his deep chair, one leg dangling carelessly over the broad arm. His eye-glasses, rimmed with the thinnest thread of tortoise-shell, gave him a certain intellectuality. Although he was still in the early thirties there were deep lines about his mouth. He had lived, Kenwick decided. And having lived, he must know something about life. Jarvis glanced up suddenly and met his gaze.

"Funny thing, my being here, isn't it?" he said. "Up here in your room, smoking your cigars, sprawling over your furniture as though I'd known you always instead of being the merest chance acquaintance."

Mashing the gray end of his cigar into the ash-tray Kenwick made slow-toned response. "I don't think it's curious. I don't think it's curious at all because as I look back on my life all the vital things in it have had casual beginnings. I have a steadily increasing respect for the small emergencies of life. Whenever I carefully set my stage for some dramatic event it's sure to turn out a thin affair. The best scenes are those which are impromptu and carry their own properties."

"That's flattering to a chance acquaintance, but a hard knock at your friends."

"I'm all for chance acquaintances," Kenwick responded. "Friends have an uncomfortable habit of failing to show up at the moment of crisis. Just when you're terribly in need of them, they fall sick or get absorbed in building a new house, or go to Argentina. And then, before you have time to grow cynical, along comes somebody that you just bow to on the street, and he sees you are in trouble and offers a lift. The people who really owe you something, never pay. They pass the buck to the chance acquaintance, and nine times out of ten he makes good. Makes things more interesting that way. After all, life isn't merely a system of bookkeeping."

Kenwick prided himself upon the fact that he had kept the bitterness out of his voice, but when Jarvis spoke, this illusion was shattered. "Tough luck, Mr. Kenwick. As I said before, I don't want to horn in, but I'd be glad to score another point for the C. A. if it would be of any help to you, and there's nobody else about."

Kenwick put down his cigar. "To tell the truth, there's nobody about at all. It happens that during the past year every friend I had has gone, figuratively speaking, to Argentina. Some of them used to be particularly good at helping me out with my yarns. I'm a fiction-writer, you know, and I'm under contract to finish a mystery-story for one of the magazines. I'm stuck, and it's bothering me a lot. Can't move the thing a peg. I know that the man who talks about his own stories is as much of a pest as the man who tells his dreams but if——"

Jarvis had settled down into his chair with a sigh of luxurious content. "Shoot," he commanded. "It's great stuff being talked to when I'm not expected to make any replies. What's the name of it?"

"It hasn't any name just yet, but I'll let you be godfather at the christening. This is just a scenario of the situation, with all the color and atmosphere left out." He reached over and snapped off the chandelier light, leaving only the soft glow from the little brass lamp upon the table.

"The story," he began when he had resumed his seat, "hinges upon the fortunes of two brothers—or rather the fortunes of one and the misfortunes of the other. The parents die when the elder of the two is thirty and the younger almost nineteen. The older brother has married, and at the death of his mother comes back with his wife, to live at the old home. But the sister-in-law and younger brother are not congenial, and the boy, who has ambitions for a professional training decides to go away from home to a distant university. There is very little opposition to the plan. For the sister-in-law is in favor of it, and the elder brother (who is guardian, of course, and a splendid fellow) consents on the condition that the boy spend his summer vacations at home. He hopes in this way to keep in touch with him and does.

"In the spring of his senior year, America enters the war, and the boy, now a man of twenty-three, enlists and in the autumn gets across. He sees more than six months of action at the front without getting a scratch. But at the end of that time his nerves go to pieces and he is sent first to a convalescent hospital in England and then home. There he finds the old place completely changed under his sister-in-law's rÉgime and he is so obviously unhappy about it that his brother suggests that he accept the invitation of an old family friend and spend the winter with him in his California home. He complies with this plan, the more eagerly because it gives him an excuse to get back to the environment which he has grown to love and the associates that he knew in his college days.

"Without adventure he arrives at the little southern California town, and is met at the depot by his friend's chauffeur. But on the way out to the house they meet with an automobile accident that shakes him up pretty badly and, so far as he can determine from circumstantial evidence, kills the driver. Stranded alone and injured in an unfamiliar village, he applies at the first house he comes to for aid. It chances to be one of those palatial country homes, so plentiful in that region, which seems to have been built for the exclusive use of caretakers. For although it is completely and elegantly furnished and bears every evidence of being tenanted he stays there ill for more than twenty-four hours, absolutely alone except for the presence of a mysterious woman who is apparently locked into one of the bedrooms upstairs, and whom he never sees.

"On the second night he makes a surreptitious escape from this uncanny prison, without ever having encountered its owner, and by a happy stroke of chance, makes his way up the coast to San Francisco. Here he plans to establish himself permanently, look up some of his old associates, and get in touch with life again. But this scheme is thwarted in a most unexpected manner. For on the morning of his arrival something happens that makes chaos of his plans and starts him upon a quest, not into the future, but into the past. In the station depot he stops long enough to purchase a newspaper, and——"

Kenwick paused for an instant and glanced at his auditor.

"Go on," Jarvis commanded with that impatient curtness that is the best assurance of interest.

"He buys a newspaper," the narrator went on. "And from the date on it he learns that instead of having lost connection with the world for two days, he has been out of it for almost a year. There are ten months of his life that he can't account for at all.

"At the library he reads up and discovers that the war is over. From the newspapers and magazines he picks up the thread of world events and orients himself with regard to national and local affairs. But to connect his own past and present proves, as you may suspect, an almost hopeless task. He sends several telegrams to his own home, all of which are ignored. A letter to his brother brings, after long delay, the startling information that he is dead. The message bowls him over completely. And the more the thing preys upon his mind the more certain he is that there has been foul play. He begins to be haunted by the conviction that he is being watched. The only safe course open to him seems to be to lead as normal and inconspicuous an existence as possible until he can hear from the family lawyer."

Kenwick broke off suddenly and reached for the ash-tray. "Well," he said, "what do you think of it?"

Jarvis stirred in his chair. When he spoke he appeared to be returning rather breathlessly from a long distance. "Great stuff," he commented. "It seems to have all the ingredients for a best-seller, except one."

"What's that?"

"Well, I don't pose as a critic of literature. But judging from the novels I've read I should say that the thing it lacks is romance. The poor devil ought to be in love with somebody, or somebody ought to be in love with him."

Kenwick's face stiffened. It was apparent that he had not expected this criticism. And he found himself envying those people who can discuss their love affairs. But not to his best friend could he have mentioned Marcreta Morgan's name. "I told you I was just giving you a scenario of this thing," he reminded his critic. "I'll work up that part of it later. As a matter of fact there is a woman in it. He proposed to her before he went into the service and she rejected him."

"And he didn't look her up afterward?"

"Well, he could hardly do that, not until he had accounted for himself. And especially as she had shown no interest in him whatever while he was away."

"You never can tell about a woman, though. The fact that he had come back a pariah and was in trouble might arouse her love."

"No, not her love; her pity perhaps."

"Well, I won't argue with an author. They are supposed to be authorities on such questions. Go on with the thing. Where had the chap been during those ten months?"

"I haven't the least idea."

Jarvis brought himself upright. "Why, you outrageous devil!" he cried. "Getting me all worked up over a story that you can't see the end of yourself! And how about the family estate? What became of that?"

"I haven't finished plotting the thing yet. That's why I told it to you. If I had solved all its problems it wouldn't have been necessary to inflict it upon you."

His guest rose and stretched himself. "Well, I'm afraid I wasn't much help," he said ruefully. "Fact is, I haven't any creative imagination at all. I'm the kind of reader that writers of detective yarns love. I'll swallow anything that's got a little salt on it, and I never guess right about the ending."

He fumbled in an inside pocket of his coat and drew out a card. "I'd like to have you return this call some time, Mr. Kenwick. I'm not far away from you, just two blocks around the corner in the Hartshire Building. If you care anything for photography, drop around some time and I'll show you some interesting pictures. They are a harmless hobby of mine. I fuss around in a laboratory over there most of the time, and when I'm not there I'm in the dark room."

Kenwick promised to come, and a moment later Granville Jarvis was gone. Bereft of his sympathetic presence the room seemed overpowering in its gaunt emptiness. The last two hours of genial companionship were swept aside as ruthlessly as though they had never been, and Kenwick found himself back again at that ghastly moment when he had torn open the yellow envelope. For he was to learn, in the crucial school of experience, that the sorrow of bereavement is not a permanently engulfing flood, but that it comes in waves, ebbing away under the pressure of objective living only to gather volume for a renewed attack. And in the moment that its victim recovers a staggering strength, it is upon him again, sweeping aside in one crashing moment the pitiful defenses of philosophy and faith which the soul has constructed to save itself from shipwreck.

Until after midnight Kenwick sat at the window waiting for a summons from the telephone. Then he went to bed and fell into a listening sort of sleep. But not during that night nor in the days that followed was there any response to his telegram.