ing and amazed, was able to see it. Then a
change came over him; gloom fell from him, and he grew radiant.

"Don't! Don't" she cried. "You mustn't--"

"I won't tell him," said Sheridan, from the doorway. "I won't tell
anybody anything!"

CHAPTER XXXIII

There was a heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the
sanctuary of the temple. The people went about in it, busy and dirty,
thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt,
sulphurous acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men
liked to breathe and to have upon their skins and garments and upon
their wives and babies and sweethearts. The growth of the city was
visible in the smoke and the noise and the rush. There was more smoke
than there had been this day of February a year earlier; there was more
noise; and the crowds were thicker--yet quicker in spite of that. The
traffic policeman had a hard time, for the people were independent--they
retained some habits of the old market-town period, and would cross
the street anywhere and anyhow, which not only got them killed more
frequently than if they clung to the legal crossings, but kept the
motormen, the chauffeurs, and the truck-drivers in a stew of profane
nervousness. So the traffic policemen led harried lives; they themselves
were killed, of course, with a certain periodicity, but their main
trouble was that they could not make the citizens realize that it was
actually and mortally perilous to go about their city. It was strange,
for there were probably no citizens of any length of residence who had
not personally known either some one who had been killed or injured in
an accident, or some one who had accidentally killed or injured others.
And yet, perhaps it was not strange, seeing the sharp preoccupation of
the faces--the people had something on their minds; they could not stop
to bother about dirt and danger.

Mary Vertrees was not often down-town; she had never seen an accident
until this afternoon. She had come upon errands for her mother connected
with a timorous refurbishment; and as she did these, in and out of the
department stores, she had an insistent consciousness of the Sheridan
Building. From the street, anywhere, it was almost always in sight, like
some monstrous geometrical shadow, murk-colored and rising limitlessly
into the swimming heights of the smoke-mist. It was gaunt and grimy
and repellent; it had nothing but strength and size--but in t