course, he would get before he left, and he had left without asking.
What a fool he was! What a stupid fool! For half a moment he looked
uncertainly up and down the street whose name he did not know. No
policeman was in sight; no one was in sight except a woman on the
opposite pavement, who was scurrying along with something under her
shawl hugged close to her breast, and a young girl who was coming his
way. Turning, he retraced his steps. He did not know in which
direction to go. He only knew he must keep on. Perhaps he could find
his way back to the place where Carmencita lived.

He did not find it. Through the night he walked street after street,
trying to recall some building he had passed, but he had walked as
blind men walk, and nothing had been noticed. To ask of people what
they could not tell was useless. He did not know the name of the
street he wanted to find, and, moreover, a curious shrinking kept him
from inquiring. In the morning he would find it, but he did not want
to make demands upon the usual sources for help until he had exhausted
all other means of redeeming his folly in not learning Carmencita's
full name and address before he left her. Was a man's whole life to be
changed, to be made or unmade, by whimsical chance or by stupid
blunder? In the gray dawn of a new day he reached his home and went to
bed for a few hours' sleep.

When, later, he left his house to renew his search for Carmencita the
weather had changed. It had begun to snow, and tiny particles of ice
stung his face as he walked, and the people who passed shivered as
they hurried by. On every street that offered chance of being the one
he sought he went up and down its length, and not until he felt he was
being noticed did he take into partial confidence a good-natured
policeman who had nodded to him on his third passing. The man was