He began to wonder why he hadn’t stayed in the city and spent his forty-six cents for something to eat. It would have bought a great many crackers, say, or even bananas. He passed the bakery, and a whiff of fresh-baked bread greeted his nostrils. He cast a wistful eye at the window. Of course he might go in and ask for a job in payment for his supper. There were his soldier’s clothes. But no. That was equivalent to begging. He could not quite do that. Here in town they would have all the help they wanted. Perhaps, farther out in the country--perhaps--he didn’t know what; only he couldn’t bring himself to ask for food, even with the offer to work. He didn’t care enough for that. What was hunger, anyway? A thing to be satisfied and come again. What would happen if he didn’t satisfy it? Die, of course, but what did it matter? What was there to live for, anyway?
He passed a house all windows, where children were gathered about a piano with one clumsily playing an accompaniment. There was an open fire, and the long windows came down to the piazza floor. They were singing at the top of their lungs, the old, time-worn song made familiar to them by community sing-songs, still good to them because they all knew it so well,
“There’s a long, long trail a-winding Until my dreams all come true;”
and it gripped his heart like a knife. He had sung that song with _her_ when it was new and tender, just before he sailed away; and the trail had seemed so long! And now he had reached the end of it, and she had not been there to meet him! It was incredible! She so fair! And false! After all those months of waiting! That was the hardest part of it, that she could have done it, and then explained so lightly that he had been away so long she was sure he would understand, and they both must have got over their childish attachment; and so on, through the long, nauseating sentences of her repeal. He shuddered as he said them over to his tired heart, and then shuddered again with the keen air; for his uniform was thin, and he had no overcoat.
What was that she had said about the money? He needn’t worry about it. A sort of bone to toss to the lone dog after he was kicked out. Ah, well! It was paid. He was glad of that. He was even grimly glad for his own destitution. It gave a kind of sense of satisfaction to have gone hungry and homeless to pay it all in one grand lump, and to have paid it at once, and through his lawyer, without any word to her or her father either. They should not be even distant witnesses of his humiliation. He would never cross their path again if he had his way. They should be as completely wiped out of his existence and he out of theirs as if the same universe did not hold them.
