He stood there at the window and shook his head slowly. There was no anger, no resentment. Now it was all sadness, and it was all the more dreary because he knew it was something that couldn’t be repaired. She had let him down and she couldn’t help it and it was just too bad. That was the only way to look at it. Well, anyway, he had tried. No matter what happened from here on in, he’d have that much to remember. He had tried hard. He had meant well. But the sum of it was failure and it was just too bad, it was a damn shame.
From beyond the tenement walls across the alley he heard a ship’s horn sounding on the river. The sound was emphatic against the stillness of late night. It had a sort of beckoning quality, and he began to think in terms of the river, and the ships docked at the piers,
