Being without grace or hope, he had long ago disappeared in
the mire. Now dragnets were out for him; he was to be rehabilitated
and restored. And so Vallance fell grandly as Lucifer to the lowest
pit, joining the tattered ghosts in the little park.
Sitting there, he leaned far back on the hard bench and laughed a
jet of cigarette smoke up to the lowest tree branches. The sudden
severing of all his life's ties had brought him a free, thrilling,
almost joyous elation. He felt precisely the sensation of the
aeronaut when he cuts loose his parachute and lets his balloon drift
away.
The hour was nearly ten. Not many loungers were on the benches. The
park-dweller, though a stubborn fighter against autumnal coolness, is
slow to attack the advance line of spring's chilly cohorts.
Then arose one from a seat near the leaping fountain, and came and
sat himself at Vallance's side. He was either young or old; cheap
lodging-houses had flavoured him mustily; razors and combs had passed
him by; in him drink had been bottled and sealed in the devil's bond.
He begged a match, which is the form of introduction among park
benchers, and then he began to talk.
"You're not one of the regulars," he said to Vallance. "I know
tailored clothes when I see 'em. You just stopped for a moment on
your way through the park. Don't mind my talking to you for a while?
I've got to be with somebody. I'm afraid--I'm afraid. I've told
two or three of those bummers over about it.
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