He lay still, sleeping at last. The remnant of the great band of
college men went down an adjacent street, raising their cadenced slogan
for the last time. It came through the open window, softened as it were
by the warm air, thick with damp, through which it travelled:
"Rah, rah, rah! Rah, rah, rah!"
Naked, exhausted, Vandover slept profoundly, stretched at full length at
the foot of the bare, white wall of the room beneath two of the little
placards, scrawled with ink, that read, "Stove Here"; "Mona Lisa Here."
Chapter Seventeen
On A certain Saturday morning two years later Vandover awoke in his room
at the Reno House, the room he had now occupied for fifteen months.
One might almost say that he had been expelled from the Lick House. For
a time he had tried to retain his room there with the idea of paying his
bills by the money he should win at gambling. But his bad luck was now
become a settled thing--almost invariably he lost. At last Ellis and the
Dummy had refused to play with him, since he was never able to pay them
when they won.
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