Let me know how you have sped at Santa Clara, will you?
Good-by." The staircase and passage seemed to have grown shabbier and meaner as Paul, slowly and hesitatingly, descended to the street.

At the foot of the stairs he paused irresolutely, and loitered with a vague idea of turning back on some pretense, only that he might relieve himself of the sense of desertion.

He had already determined upon making that inquiry into the colonel's personal and pecuniary affairs which he had not dared to offer personally, and had a half-formed plan of testing his own power and popularity in a certain line of relief that at once satisfied his sympathies and ambitions.

Nevertheless, after reaching the street, he lingered a moment, when an odd idea of temporizing with his inclinations struck him.

At the farther end of the hotel--one of the parasites living on its decayed fortunes--was a small barber's shop.