Turning about from the window he faced his reflection in the mirror,
contemplating dejectedly the wan, pasty face, the eyes with their
crisscross of lines like shreds of dried blood, the stooped and flabby
figure whose very sag was a document in lethargy. He was thirty
three--he looked forty. Well, things would be different.
The door-bell rang abruptly and he started as though he had been dealt a
blow. Recovering himself, he went into the hall and opened the outer
dour. It was Dot.
THE ENCOUNTER
He retreated before her into the living room, comprehending only a word
here and there in the slow flood of sentences that poured from her
steadily, one after the other, in a persistent monotone. She was
decently and shabbily dressed--a somehow pitiable little hat adorned
with pink and blue flowers covered and hid her dark hair. He gathered
from her words that several days before she had seen an item in the
paper concerning the lawsuit, and had obtained his address from the
clerk of the Appellate Division. She had called up the apartment and had
been told that Anthony was out by a woman to whom she had refused to
give her name.
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