Dexter’s dreams about being a successful and prosperous man emerge every autumn and push him to achieve a high place in society. He believes that financial success can be achieved through hard work, and he immerses himself in achieving this goal.
It was a small laundry when he went into it but Dexter made a specialty of learning how the English washed fine woollen golf-stockings without shrinking them, and within a year he was catering to the trade that wore knickerbockers. Men were insisting that their Shetland hose and sweaters go to his laundry just as they had insisted on a caddy who could find golf balls. A little later he was doing their wives' lingerie as well--and running five branches in different parts of the city. Before he was twenty-seven he owned the largest string of laundries in his section of the country. It was then that he sold out and went to New York.
However, the appearance of Judy Jones is the roadblock in his path to realizing his dream. Although Judy Jones treats Dexter as she does other men—carelessly and selfishly—he falls hopelessly in love with her:
His heart turned over like the fly-wheel of the boat, and, for the second time, her casual whim gave a new direction to his life.
While Dexter hopes to win over Judy by establishing himself in high society, she turns him down. Dejected and hurt, he realizes that although he loves her, he can never have her. He gets engaged to another girl, Irene Scheerer, and decides to marry her. Just as he finds himself thinking about a tranquil future with Irene, Dexter’s long-buried feelings of love and anguish are reignited when Judy reappears in his life and pleads with him to marry her instead. Dexter calls off his engagement with Irene only to be turned down by Judy—yet again. When he loses love, he becomes disillusioned with the American dream. By the end of the story, he is detached and unable to feel emotions of anger, pain, or hatred:
"Long ago," he said, "long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more."
