This was different.
He was profoundly depressed. He wandered out of the crowd and,
after colliding with a man from the caterer's in a dark rear hall,
found his way up the servant's staircase to the small back room
where he kept the lares and penates of his quiet life, his pipe, his
fishing rods, a shabby old smoking coat, and back files of magazines
which he intended some day to read, when he got round to it.
The little room was jammed with old furniture, stripped from the
lower floor to make room for the crowd. He had to get down on his
knees and crawl under a table to reach his pipe. But he achieved
it finally, still with an air of abstraction, and lighted it. Then,
as there was no place to sit down, he stood in the center of the
little room and thought.
He did not go down again. He heard the noise of the arriving and
departing motors subside, its replacement by the sound of clattering
china, being washed below in the pantry. He went down finally, to
be served with a meal largely supplemented by the left-overs of the
afternoon refreshments, ornate salads, fancy ices, and an
overwhelming table decoration that shut him off from his wife and
Delight, and left him in magnificent solitude behind a pyramid of
flowers.
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