A picturesque character, old
Mynderse, who had lived for forty-five years with his childless wife in
the ancient house on West 10th Street, and for the final fifteen years
had not addressed so much as a word to her. She had died three months
before; and now he had followed, apparently, from what Banneker learned
in an interview with the upset and therefore voluble secretary of the
dead man, because, having no hatred left on which to center his life, he
had nothing else to live for. Banneker wrote the story of that hatred,
rigid, ceremonious, cherished like a rare virtue until it filled two
lives; and he threw about it the atmosphere of the drear and divided old
house. At the end, the sound of the laughter of children at play in the
street.
The article appeared word for word as he had written it. That noon Tommy
Burt, the funny man, drawing down his hundred-plus a week on space, came
over and sat on Banneker's desk, and swung his legs and looked at him
mournfully and said:
"You've broken through your shell at last."
"Did you like it?" asked Banneker.
"Like it! My God, if I could write like that! But what's the use! Never
in the world."
"Oh, that's nonsense," returned Banneker, pleased. "Of course you can.
But what's the rest of your 'if'?"
"I wouldn't be wasting my time here.
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