Patricia liked Kansas City even less than she had anticipated. She dragged herself through the heat to the office each morning, worried somehow through her work and returned to her room too utterly depressed and weary to seek what enjoyment lay close at hand. A little park was just across the street, but Patricia could not even summon sufficient interest to enter it. Every cloud that rose over the horizon was to her imagination a potential cyclone, which she rather hoped would sweep her away. She thought she would like to be swept into a new world; and if she could leave her memory behind her she thought that life might be almost bearable.
No mail had been forwarded to her from Los Angeles, and the utter silence served to deepen her general pessimism. And then, an hour before closing time
