The perturbation to which this thought gave rise got him out of bed more promptly than would otherwise have been the case. None the less he forgot it entirely in another moment, and had bathed and dressed and was knotting his tie before a mirror when the memory of the girl again flitted darkly athwart the glass of his consciousness.
"Wonder what it was that made me turn myself out of house and home for the sake of that girl, anyway? Something about her...."
But try as he might he could recall no definite details of her personality. She remained a shadow—a hunted, tearful, desperate wraith of girlhood: more than that, nothing.
He wagged his head seriously.
"Something about her!... Must've been good-looking ... or something...."
With which he drifted off into an inconsequent and irrelevant reverie which entertained him exclusively throughout breakfast and his brief homeward walk: in his magnificent, pantoscopic, protean imagination he was busily engaged in writing the first act of a splendid new play—something exquisitely odd, original, witty, and dramatic.
A vague smile touched the corners of his mouth; his eyes were hazily lustrous; his nose was in the air. He had forgotten his guest entirely. He ran up the steps of Number 289, let himself in, trotted down the hall and burst unceremoniously into his room—not in the least disconcerted to find it empty, not, indeed, mindful that it might have been otherwise.
His hat went one way, his handbag into a corner with a resounding bang. He sat himself down at his typewriter, quickly and deftly inserted a sheet of paper into the carriage and ... sat back at leisure, his gaze wandering dreamily out of the long, open windows, into the world of sunshine that shimmered over the back-yards.
A subconscious impulse moved him to stretch forth a long arm and drop his hand on the centre-table; after a few seconds his groping fingers closed round the bowl of an aged and well-beloved pipe.
He filled it, lighted it, smoked serenely.