He had passed 331 and 341 and 351 and his heart began to beat more rapidly. This was almost as exciting as a Christmas stocking in the Fauntleroy days. His eyes were searching among the numbers; there was a four-story office building (335) and an automobile agency (339) ... and next to that--.... Henry halted, and the laugh dried up in his throat. He had been prepared for anything but the reality. The ark of his fortunes was a shabby little motion-picture theatre.
Gasping, he looked up again at the number, and when he realized that he had made no mistake, his knees turned to gelatine, and he stood staring, fascinated, numbed. His eyes wandered blankly from the crumbling ticket-booth to the unkempt lobby and back to the lurid billing--the current attraction was a seven-reel thriller entitled "What He Least Expected," but Henry missed the parallel. With trembling fingers he produced a cigarette, but in his daze he blew out two matches in succession. He crushed the cigarette in his palm, and moved a few steps towards the lobby. Great Heaven, was it possible that John Starkweather had condemned Henry the fashionable, Henry the clubable, Henry the exclusive to a year of _this_? Was _this_ his punishment for the past? Was _this_ the price of his future? This picayune sordidness, and vulgarity and decay? Evidently, it was so intended, and so ordered.
His power of reason was almost atrophied. He struggled to understand his uncle's purpose; his uncle's logic. To break down his class prejudice, and teach him the dimes in a dollar, and put him on the level of a workingman? All that could have been accomplished by far less drastic methods. It could have been accomplished by a tour of duty with Bob. To be sure, Mr. Starkweather had promised him the meanest job in the directory, but Henry had put it down as a figure of speech. Now, he was faced with the literal interpretation of it, and ahead of him there was a year of trial, and then all or nothing.
He succeeded in lighting a fresh cigarette, but he couldn't taste it. Previously he had paid his forfeits with the best of good-nature, but his previous forfeits hadn't obliged him to declass himself. They hadn't involved his wife. He hadn't married Anna to drag her down to this. It would stand them in a social pillory, targets for those who had either admired them or envied them. It would make them the most conspicuous pair in the whole community: older people would point to them as an illustration of justice visited on blind youth, and would chuckle to observe Henry in the process of receiving his come-uppance: the younger set would quake with merriment and poor jokes and sly allusions to Henry's ancient grandeur. Even Bob Standish would have to hide his amusement; why, Bob himself had made society and success his fetiches. And Anna--Anna who was so ambitious for him--how could _she_ endure the status of a cheap showman's wife?