Sam looked at her closely.
"Who are you?" he asked.
She began explaining that she was a clerk in a downtown store and that she
had a lover who drove a laundry wagon.
"I go on these bats to get money to buy good clothes," she said frankly,
"but if Tim saw me here he would kill me."
Putting a bill into her hand Sam went downstairs and getting into a
taxicab drove back to his hotel.
After that night he went frequently on carouses of this kind. He was in a
kind of prolonged stupor of inaction, talked of trips abroad which he did
not take, bought a huge farm in Virginia which he never visited, planned a
return to business which he did not execute, and month after month
continued to waste his days. He would get out of bed at noon and begin
drinking steadily. As the afternoon passed he grew merry and talkative,
calling men by their first names, slapping chance acquaintances on the
back, playing pool or billiards with skilful young men intent upon gain.
In the early summer he got in with a party of young men from New York and
with them spent months in sheer idle waste of time. Together they drove
high-powered automobiles on long trips, drank, quarrelled, and went on
board a yacht to carouse, alone or with women.
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