Warrener, in the office, had drifted into the position of confidential clerk, very much used when wanted, and shifted off into a little, stuffy room, where he had a desk and typewriter, when his services were not in active demand. Here he copied, filed and noted; added, opened and docketed mail; and read the financial news in every available sheet in the city. To his own thinking, he was an authority on stocks and bonds. He heard innumerable tips thrown out; saw them acted upon, and prove either valuable or worthless; followed the rise and fall of fortunes near and far; assisted at failures and successes; and during the hours of his routine in the office had the sensation of being himself a millionaire! But when he left the ferry, the bondholders and "big men" hurried to their more important trains and more important stations, and Warrener hustled himself, with his evening papers, into the short train of the Slocum local, he then distinctly felt the difference between his bank balance and his chief's! He lived in the atmosphere of money, but he had never been ambitious. Of average intelligence, common school education, steady-going and trustworthy, he had no intentions further than to pay his bills, earn his salary and keep at the business.
Were he asked what part of his life he recalled with most pleasure he would have unhesitatingly answered: "Getting engaged and going on our honeymoon." The sentimental period--which had come into his unimaginative life with the imperiousness of that passion which at least once during a man's life changes his existence for a time, short or long--had for Warrener left behind it a memory which the cares of the world, the moth and rust of vulgar routine, trains and ferries, quick lunches and elevators, common surroundings and abasing ideals, overlaid but never destroyed.
Eight years before he had asked the prettiest girl he knew to marry him, and she had said yes. His vacation falling at this time, they had spent two weeks in August at Far Rockaway, and from there went directly into the rented house on Grand Street, and the newly married man began his bi-daily pilgrimages on the train.
He would have been ashamed to have anyone, above all his wife, know that as he crossed the ferry, one of a thick-packed crowd on the front part of the boat, standing there close to the running waters, near the bow, he often gave himself a mental holiday; then the image of Gertrude in a pinkish dress and picture hat came to his mind as he had seen her on the boardwalk at Rockaway eight years ago. It was a species of revel for him to recall those days. He was not unhappy or even discontented; he was too commonplace to be capable of either sensation. He was numbed, pinched hard by life.