CHAPTER XI
A NIGHT AT THE MONASTERY
EWING awoke late the next morning, rejoicing that he need not cook his breakfast. After feeding his hill-born hunger with novel and exciting foods he sauntered out to become a wave on the tide that flooded those strange, heart-shaking streets. He mentally blazed his trail as he went. His soul marched to the swift and cheerful stepping of the life about him. He remembered Ben's warnings and wished that expert in urban evil could see how little menacing was this splendid procession. That the Saturday throng of shoppers and pleasure seekers was unaware of the greatness of the moment to him lent a zest of secrecy to his scouting.
Back and forth he wandered on Broadway, the moving crowds, volatile as quicksilver, holding him with a hypnotic power. Often he stopped before some shop, hotel, or theater that he had come to know in print. Not until five o'clock did he find that he was leg weary. Then he took his bearings and, in his own phrase, "made back to camp."
A boy brought him Piersoll's card at six, and Piersoll followed. He came with that alert self-possession which Ewing had come to consider typical of these dwellers in a crowd where each is the inconsiderable part of a great organic body, and must yet preserve his unique oneship.
"Bully old place, this," Piersoll began. "My mother came to balls here thirty years ago. Show me your stuff."
He dropped into one of the armchairs and lighted a cigarette.
Ewing opened a portfolio and placed drawings along the wall. Piersoll slid his chair closer and studied them.
"They're only little things I've seen," murmured Ewing. "I haven't had a chance to see much."
Piersoll blew out smoke and arose to put one of the drawings in a better light. He gazed at this closely, swept his eye again over the others, and exclaimed, "All right! Bully! Good drawing, and the real thing. That's the point—you've drawn only what you've seen. They're not all equally interesting, but they're all true. You'll do."
"I'm glad you like them. I never knew if they were good."