This is perhaps the most bleak of O. Henry's best-known stories.

Although the
basic ironic plot can be summed up in one sentence: a young man commits suicide
in the same room where a young woman he has searched in vain committed
suicide, it is the atmosphere of the room and the suggestion that each place bears
the traces of the lives that have inhabited it that make the story so compelling.

It is a story of fleetingness, of lives that move through a desolate and indifferent

world, leaving only fragments of themselves, which the young man discovers as he
searches the drawers and rummages in every nook and cranny of the room in
search of something that remains. of the woman you are looking for.

However, all that remains is an illusory familiar sweet smell, which

melodramatically turns into the sweet smell of gas that ignites in despair. like it did
just a week before. Although the fact that the young man ends up in the same
room in which his lost beloved took her own life is one of the most extreme
coincidences in all of O. Henry's fiction.

An ordinary young man moves through the sprawling West Side boarding houses,
searching for an empty room. Over and over again, he tries each of the houses
grouped on the street. On her twelfth attempt, a Mrs. Purdy, an unhealthy-looking
housekeeper, responds.

She invites this prospective tenant to her home to inspect a recently vacated room.
Happy after so many disappointments, the young man follows the woman to an
environment of stale and polluted air, a house that reinforces the gloom that hangs
over the streets. Mrs. Purdy talks constantly praising the furnished room she's
about to see, shrewdly emphasizing its positive attributes: a chest of drawers,
chairs and tables, plenty of closet space, and a convenient gas connection. He
also emphasizes the class of his operation by telling the young man about the
elegant tenants who had recently occupied this room. A husband and wife
vaudeville team, Sprowls and Mooney, recently stayed there, and a framed
marriage certificate on the dresser attests to the house's respectability.

This is important, as Purdy's house is located next to the theater district and most
unreliable and unpredictable theater people come and go, even the seemingly
stable ones. Therefore, a vacant furnished room is available right now in this
eminently respectable pension. Left by the persuasive introduction of the landlady,
but without showing great joy, the young man takes the room and carefully counts
the money of his payment. Unreliable and unpredictable, they come and go, even
the seemingly stable ones. Therefore, a vacant furnished room is available right
now in this eminently respectable pension. Left by the persuasive introduction of
the landlady, but without showing great joy, the young man takes the room and
carefully counts the money of his payment. Unreliable and unpredictable, they
come and go, even the seemingly stable ones. Therefore, a vacant furnished room
is available right now in this eminently respectable pension. Left by the landlady's
persuasive introduction, but without showing great joy, the young man takes the
room and carefully counts the money for his payment

The room is furnished with worn furniture and signs from previous tenants. As he
sits, the man immerses himself in the sensory smells of the room. Smell a familiar
scent that belongs to the woman you are looking for. Then he investigates every
corner of the room for anything related to it.

Finding nothing, he goes to the housekeeper and asks for details about the
previous tenants. He describes everyone from the previous year, but no more,
since he cannot remember the others so clearly. Their love is not described, so he
returns to the room that now smells of mold and decay as before he smelled her.

Lying on the old mattress, he falls asleep. Later, the housekeeper talks to a friend
of hers about the man. She also reveals that a woman who matched her
description recently committed suicide in her bedroom bed, but she didn't want to
tell him so as not to scare him.