can't sit up," said Lois.

"Why not? It's luxury to stay awake in a comfortable chair with a lot of
books around. I'll be back in a couple of hours without fail."

A couple of hours! If he had said a couple of years, the words could
have brought, it seemed, no deeper sense of desolation. Hardly had he
gone, however, when the door-bell rang, and word was brought to Lois,
who with Dosia had gone up-stairs, that it was Mr. Harker from the
typometer office. The visitor, a tall, colorless, darkly sack-coated
man, with a jaded necktie, had entered the little drawing-room with a
decorously self-effacing step, and sat now on the edge of his chair, his
body bent forward and his hat still held in one hand, with an effect of
being entirely isolated from social relations and existing here solely
at the behest of business. He rose as Lois came into the room, and
handed her a small packet, in response to her greeting, before reseating
himself.

"Thank you very much," said Lois. "This is the money, I suppose. I'm
sorry you went to the trouble of bringing it out yourself. I thought you
might send me out a check."

Mr. Harker shook his head with a grim semblance of a smile. "That's the
trouble, Mrs. Alexander. We can't send any checks. Mr. Alexander is the
one who does that. Everything is in Mr. Alexander's name. I went to Mr.
Leverich to-day to see how we were going to straighten out things; but
he doesn't seem inclined to take hold at all, though he could help us
out easily enough if he wanted to. I--there's no use keeping it back,
Mrs. Alexander. This is a pretty bad time for Mr. Alexander to stay
away. He ought to be home."

"Why, yes," said Lois.

"Exactly. His absence places us all in a very strange, very unpleasant
position." Mr. Harker spoke with a sort of somber monotony, with his
gaze on the ground. "The business requires the most particular
management at the moment--the most particular. I--" He raised his eyes
with such tragic earnestness that Lois realized for the first time that
this manner of his might not be his usual manner, but was called forth
by the stress of anxiety. For the first time also, the force of the
daily tie of business companionship was borne in upon her. She looked at
Mr. Harker. This man spent more waking hours with Justin than she
did--knew him, perhaps, in a sense, better.

He went on now, with a tremor in his voice: "Mrs. Alexander, your
husband and I have worked together for a year and a hal