And all the meanness and shabbiness and effrontery of the monstrous city, all its civic pretence and tarnished ostentation are suddenly revealed when the summer sun blazes over Ascalon. Wherefore the daintier among the Philistines flee—idler, courtier, dangler and squire of dames—not to return until the first snow-flakes fall and the gray veil of November descends once more over the sorry sham of Ascalon.
Out of the inner temple, his ears still ringing with the noise of the drones, Quarren had gone forth. And already, far away in the outer sunshine, he could see real people at work and at play, millions and millions of them—and a real sky overhead edging far horizons.
He began real life once more in a bad way, financially; his money being hopelessly locked up in Tappan-Zee Park, a wooded and worthless tract of unimproved land along the Hudson which Quarren had supposed Lester Caldera was to finance for him.
Recently, however, that suave young man had smilingly denied making any such promise to anybody; which surprised and disconcerted Quarren who had no money with which to build sewers, roads, and electric plants. And he began to realise how carelessly he had drifted into the enterprise—how carelessly he had drifted into everything and past everything for the last five years.
After a hunt for a capitalist among and outside his circle of friends and acquaintances he began to appreciate his own lunacy even more thoroughly.
Then Lester Caldera, good-naturedly, offered to take the property off his hands for less than a third of what he paid Sprowl for it; and as Quarren's adjoining options were rapidly expiring he was forced to accept. Which put the boy almost entirely out of business; so he closed his handsome office downtown and opened another in the front parlour of an old and rather dingy brown-stone house on the east side of Lexington Avenue near Fiftieth Street and hung out his sign once more over the busy streets of Ascalon.
Richard Stanley Quarren
Real Estate
Also he gave up his quarters at the Irish Legation to the unfeigned grief of the diplomats domiciled there, and established himself in the back parlour and extension of the Lexington Avenue house, ready at all moments now for business or for sleep. Neither bothered him excessively.
He wrote no more notes to Strelsa Leeds—that is, he posted no more, however many he may have composed. Rumours from the inner temple concerning her and Langly Sprowl and Sir Charles Mallison drifted out into the real world every day or so. But he never went back to the temple to verify them. That life was ended for him. Sometimes, sitting alone at his desk, he fancied that he could almost hear the far laughter of the temple revels, and the humming of the drones. But the roar of the street-car, rushing, grinding through the steel-ribbed streets of Ascalon always drowned it, and its far seen phantom glitter became a burning reality where the mid-day sun struck the office sign outside his open window.
Fate, the ugly jade, was making faces at him, all kinds of faces. Just now she wore the gaunt mask of poverty, but Quarren continued to ignore her, because to him, there was no real menace in her skinny grin, no real tragedy in what she threatened.