usually luminous.

Even the roar of the subway did not pull his spirits down, and when he
briskly entered the office of Fields, Jones & Houseman, the
old-fashioned high desks and stools and all the worn, dingy furniture of
the room seemed to the little clerk with the shining face to be
strangely new. The chief clerk, sitting at a dusty old roll-top desk in
the corner, looked up at Mr. Neal sharply as he entered. The chief clerk
always looked up sharply. There was a preternatural leanness about the
chief clerk which was accentuated by his sharp hawk's nose, and when he
looked up quickly from his position hunched over his desk, his sharp
little eyes pierced his subordinate through and through, and his
glasses, perched halfway down his nose, trembled from the quickness of
his movements.

"Morning!" he said briefly, and dived down again into his work, with his
shoulders humped.

But Mr. Neal was more expansive.

"Good morning!" he called, so cheerily that the whole office felt the
effect of his good humor.

A young man with a very blond pompadour was just slipping into a worn
office coat.

"Well, Mr. Neal!" he exclaimed. "I swear you're getting younger every
day!"

Mr. Neal laughed happily as he changed his own coat and climbed upon his
familiar stool. His desk neighbor turned and regarded him
good-naturedly.

"He'll be running off and getting married pretty soon," prophesied the
neighbor, for the benefit of the whole office force.

Mr. Neal laughed again.

"You're judging me by your own case, Bob," he rejoined. Then in a lower
tone, "That romance of yours now--how is it coming?"

That was enough to cause the young man to pour into Mr. Neal's willing
ear all the latest developments of Bob's acquaintance with the only girl
in the world.

For a long time Mr. Neal lived in daily hope of seeing the face again.
He got into the habit of changing to a local at Fourteenth Street
because it was at that station he had seen the face before, but he
caught not a glimpse of any face resembling the one that he could see at
any time he closed his eyes. Yet he was not discouraged. He was happy,
because he felt that something big and noble had come into his
life--that now he had something to live for. It was only a question of
time, he told himself, until he should find the face. It was but a
question of time--and he could wait.

So the weeks and months passed by. Mr. Neal never relaxed his search for
the face; it had beco