Then why had he
taken what his wife called "this new step," which he had so long
resisted?
He could only sigh and wonder. "Life works out pretty
peculiarly," he thought; for he couldn't go back now, though the
reason he couldn't was not clearly apparent. He had to go ahead.
CHAPTER XVII
He was out in his taxicab again the next morning, and by noon he
had secured what he wanted.
It was curiously significant that he worked so quickly. All the
years during which his wife had pressed him toward his present
shift he had sworn to himself, as well as to her, that he would
never yield; and yet when he did yield he had no plans to make,
because he found them already prepared and worked out in detail
in his mind; as if he had long contemplated the "step" he
believed himself incapable of taking.
Sometimes he had thought of improving his income by exchanging
his little collection of bonds for a "small rental property," if
he could find "a good buy"; and he had spent many of his spare
hours rambling over the enormously spreading city and its
purlieus, looking for the ideal "buy." It remained unattainable,
so far as he was concerned; but he found other things.
Not twice a crow's mile from his own house there was a dismal and
slummish quarter, a decayed "industrial district" of earlier
days.
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