ess. He felt sometimes as though
his heart had been broken off from some great whole, to which it yearned
to be reunited. It felt like a bone that had been buried, which God
would some day dig up. Sometimes, in his caninomorphic conception
of deity, he felt near him the thunder of those mighty paws. In rare
moments of silence he gazed from his office window upon the sun-gilded,
tempting city. Her madness was upon him--her splendid craze of haste,
ambition, pride. Yet he wondered. This God he needed, this liberating
horizon, was it after all in the cleverest of hiding-places--in himself?
Was it in his own undeluded heart?

Miss Whippet came scurrying in to say that the Display Manager begged
him to attend a conference. The question of apportioning window space
to the various departments was to be reconsidered. Also, the book
department had protested having rental charged against them for books
exhibited merely to add a finishing touch to a furniture display. Other
agenda: the Personnel Director wished an appointment to discuss
the ruling against salesbitches bobbing their hair. The Commissary
Department wished to present revised figures as to the economy that
would be effected by putting the employees' cafeteria on the same floor
as the store's restaurant. He must decide whether early closing on
Saturdays would continue until Labor Day.

As he went about these and a hundred other fascinating trivialities, he
had a painful sense of treachery to Mr. Beagle senior. The old gentleman
was so touchingly certain that he had found in him the ideal shoulders
on which to unload his honourable and crushing burden. With more than
paternal pride old Beagle saw Gissing, evidently urbane and competent,
cheerfully circulating here and there. The shy angel of doubt that lay
deep in Gissing's cider-coloured eye, the proprietor did not come near
enough to observe.

If there is tragedy in our story, alas here it is. Gissing, incorrigible
seceder from responsibilities that did not touch his soul, did not dare
tell his benefactor the horrid truth. But the worm was in his heart.
Late one night, in his room at Mrs. Purp's, he wrote a letter to Mr.
Poodle. After mailing it at a street-box, he had a sudden pang. To the
dreamer, decisions are fearful. Then he shook himself and ran lightly to
a little lunchroom on Amsterdam Avenue, where he enjoyed doughnuts and
iced tea. His mind was resolved. The doughnuts, by a simple symbolism,
made him thin