Reaching the street, he
hesitated as to the car he should take, whether one up-town to his
club or one across to his apartment, and as he waited he watched the
hurrying crowd with eyes in which were baffled impatience and
perplexity. It was incomprehensible, the shopping craze at this season
of the year. He wished there was no such season. Save for his very
young childhood there were few happy memories connected with it, but
only of late, only during the past few years, had the recurrence
awakened within him a sort of horror, its approach a sense of
loneliness that was demoralizing, and its celebration an emptiness in
life that chilled and depressed beyond all reason. Why was it that as
it drew near a feeling of cowardice so possessed him that he wanted to
go away, go anywhere and hide until it was over, go where he could not
see what it meant to others? It was humanity's home-time, and he had
no home. Why--
"An ass that brays is wiser than the man who asks what can't be
answered," he said, under his breath. "For the love of Heaven, quit
it! Why-ing in a man is as inexcusable as whining in a woman.
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