dwindled away.

He nodded with a half-smile.

"Say," he said, a little later, "I don't know about your writing--I
don't believe we'd better--" he got the words out more rapidly--"I'll
tell you what you do--you come along with me and we won't have to
write."

"Come--where?"

"Up to the St. Lawrence. We can start on the third just the same."

She did not answer, and he stopped. Then, after a moment, she slowly
turned, and looked at him.

"Why--" she said--"I don't think I----"

"I've just been thinking about it. I guess I can't do anything else--I
mean I don't want to go anywhere alone. I guess that's pretty plain,
isn't it--what I mean?"

She leaned back against the wall and looked at him; it was as if she
could not take her eyes from his face.

"Perhaps I oughtn't to expect you to say anything now," he went on. "I
just thought if you felt anything like I did, you'd know pretty well, by
this time, whether it was yes or no."

She was still looking at him. He had said it all, and now he waited, his
fists knotted tightly, and a peculiar expression on his face, almost as
if he were smiling, but it came from a part of his nature that had never
before got to the surface. Finally she said:--

"I think we'd better go back."

He did not seem to understand, and she turned away and started off
alone. In a moment he was at her side. He guided her back as they had
come, and neither spoke until they had reached the stairway. Then he
said, in a low tone that the carpenters could not hear:--

"You don't mean that--that you can't do it?"

She shook her head and hurried to the office.

CHAPTER XVI

Bannon stood looking after her until she disappeared in the shadow of an
arc lamp, and after that he continued a long time staring into the blot
of darkness where the office was. At last the window became faintly
luminous, as some one lighted the wall lamp; then, as if it were a
signal he had been waiting for, Bannon turned away.

An hour before, when he had seen the last bolt of the belt gallery drawn
taut, he had become aware that he was quite exhausted. The fact was so
obvious that he had not tried to evade it, but had admitted to himself,
in so many words, that he was at the end of his rope. But when he turned
from gazing at the dimly lighted window, it was not toward his
boarding-house, where he knew he ought to be, but back into the
elevator, that his feet led him. For once, his presence accomplished
nothin