"I'm through," Dorn answered. He arose and took his hat. "I'm leaving for Chicago to-morrow."
He paused, smiling at Lockwood.
"I'm going home."
The novelist nodded sagely and murmured, "Uh-huh. Well, good-night."
Making his way slowly through the night crowds and electrophobia of lower Manhattan, Dorn felt peacefully out of place. His thought had become: "I want to get back to where I was." In the midst of the mechanical carnival of Broadway he caught a memory of himself walking to work with a stream of faces—of a sardonic Erik Dorn to whom the street was a pattern; to whom the mysteries tugging at heels that scratched the pavements were the amusing variants of nothing.
CHAPTER III
"Eddy."
"Yes, dear."
"I have some news for you."