ers, as he jerked some ejaculation across the table.

Corvet leaned over to the frosted window, as he had done when alone,
and looked out. Spearman shot a comment which made Corvet wince and
draw back from the window; then Spearman rose. He delayed, standing,
to light another cigar deliberately and with studied slowness. Corvet
looked up at him once and asked a question, to which Spearman replied
with a snap of the burnt match down on the table; he turned abruptly
and strode from the room. Corvet sat motionless.

The revulsion to self-control, sometimes even to apology, which
ordinarily followed Corvet's bursts of irritation had not come to him;
his agitation plainly had increased. He pushed from him his uneaten
luncheon and got up slowly. He went out to the coat room, where the
attendant handed him his coat and hat. He hung the coat upon his arm.
The doorman, acquainted with him for many years, ventured to suggest a
cab. Corvet, staring strangely at him, shook his head.

"At least, sir," the man urged, "put on your coat."

Corvet ignored him.

He winced as he stepped out into the smarting, blinding swirl of sleet,
but his shrinking was not physical; it was mental, the unconscious
reaction to some thought the storm called up. The hour was barely four
o'clock, but so dark was it with the storm that the shop windows were
lit; motorcars, slipping and skidding up the broad boulevard, with
headlights burning; kept their signals clattering constantly to warn
other drivers blinded by the snow. The sleet-swept sidewalks were
almost deserted; here or there, before a hotel or one of the shops, a
limousine came to the curb, and the passengers dashed swiftly across
the walk to shelter.

Corvet, still carrying his coat upon his arm, turned northward along
Michigan Avenue, facing into the gale. The sleet beat upon his face
and lodged in the folds of his clothing without his heeding it.

Suddenly he aroused. "One--two--three--four!" he counted the long,
booming blasts of a steam whistle. A steamer out on that snow-shrouded
lake was in distress. The sound ceased, and the gale bore in only the
ordinary storm and fog signals. Corvet recognized the foghorn at the
lighthouse at the end of the government pier; the light, he knew, was
turning white, red, white, red, white behind the curtain of sleet;
other steam vessels, not in distress, blew their blasts; the long four
of the steamer calling for help cut in again.

C