everywhere--ask them if it is horrible."

This made me melancholy, and somehow set me thinking of the friends
immeasurably distant I had left but yesterday.

What were they doing? Did they miss me? I was to have called for my
pay this afternoon, and tomorrow was to have run down South to see that
freckled lady of mine. What would she think of my absence? What would
she think if she knew where I was? Gods, it was too mad, too absurd!
I thrust my hands into my pockets in fierce desperation, and there
they clutched an old dance programme and an out-of-date check for a New
York ferry-boat. I scowled about on that sunny, helpless people, and
laying my hand bitterly upon my heart felt in the breast-pocket beneath
a packet of unpaid Boston tailors' bills and a note from my landlady
asking if I would let her aunt do my washing while I was on shore.
Oh! what would they all think of me? Would they brand me as a deserter,
a poltroon, and a thief, letting my name presently sink down in shame
and mystery in the shadowy realm of the forgotten? Dreadful thoughts!
I would think no more.

Maybe An had marked my melancholy, for presently she led me to a stall
where in fantastic vases wines of sorts I have described before were put
out for all who came to try them. There was medicine here for every kind
of dulness--not the gross cure which earthly wine effects, but so nicely
proportioned to each specific need that one could regulate one's debauch
to a hairbreadth, rising through all the gamut of satisfaction, from the
staid contentment coming of that flask there to the wild extravagances of
the furthermost vase. So my stripling told me, running her finger down
the line of beakers carved with strange figures and cased in silver,
each in its cluster of little attendant drinking-cups, like-coloured,