blue arm which he after some scrutiny assessed as belonging to a traffic patrolman, that he bethought himself sufficiently to inquire, in a manner a little breathless still, though understood at once by the kindly envoy of order as the natural mood of one inextricably tangled in mind and not yet wholly untangled in body, but still intact when the propulsive energy of the motortruck had been, by a rapid shift of gears and actuating machinery, transformed to a rearward movement, where he might be and how.
"This is Market street," said the officer.
"Market street? Ah, thank you."
Market street! Could it be, indeed? His last conscious impression had been of some shop—a milliner's, perhaps?—on, probably, Walnut street where he had been gazing with mild reproach at the price tickets upon the hats displayed, or, if not displayed, a term implying a rather crude concession to commercialism, at least exhibited, and considering whether or not it would be advisable, on so hot a day or a day that had every promise of becoming hot unless those purple clouds that hung over the ferries should liquidate into something not unlike a thunder shower, to carry with him a small hat as an act of propitiation and reconcilement with Mrs. Thornclrff. So this was Market street. He gazed with friendly interest into the face of the policeman, a gaze in which there was not the slightest sign of any animating rebuke at the interruption in his meditation, a meditation
