روز چهارم

EVELYN DISCOVERED

Failure was imminent, and Robert was bereft of hope.

It was now Friday. Despite his abstemious and parsimonious way of living, his money had been reduced to a mere pittance.

A perverse impulse brought him to the section where young people in strange clothing and with uncouth manners made him recoil in unmitigated disgust.

He had never been au courant with the “hippies” and “punks.”

He was always fastidious about proper dress and behavior.

A moment later he saw her!

Evelyn! She was sitting at a table in a coffee shop, surrounded by a coterie of the most noisome individuals he had ever seen. Evelyn was not incongruous, for she herself was unkempt.

So this was her new habitat! At that instant Robert knew as an incontrovertible fact that he had lost her.

With a grimace, he turned and walked, a doleful and melancholy figure, toward the bus depot and home.

s.