sorrow, and disappointment in a
copious flood of tears. In an hour, at the most, Dorothy would be her
sunny self again, penitent, and wholly ashamed of her undignified
outburst. By to-morrow she would have forgotten it, but Harlan, made of
sterner clay, would remember it for days.

"Loafer!" The cruel word seemed written accusingly on every wall of the
room. In a sudden flash of insight he perceived the truth of it--and it
hurt.

"Two months," bethought; "two months of besotted idleness. And I used to
chase news from the Battery to the Bronx every day from eight to six!
Murders, smallpox, East Side scraps, and Tammany Hall. Why in the
hereafter can't they have a fire at the sanitarium, or something that I
can wire in?"

"The Temple of Healing," as Dorothy had christened it in a happier moment,
stood on a distant hill, all but hidden now by trees and shrubbery. A
column of smoke curled lazily upward against the blue, but there was no
immediate prospect of a fire of the "news" variety.

Harlan stood at the window for a long time, deeply troubled. The call of
the city dinned relentlessly into his ears. Oh, for an hour in the midst
of it, with the rumble and roar and clatter of ceaseless traffic, the
hurrying, heedless throng rushing in every direction, the glare of the sun
on the many-windowed cliffs, the fever of the struggle in his veins!

And yet--was two months so long, when a fellow was just married, and
hadn't had more than a day at a time off for six years? Since the "cub
reporter" was first "licked into shape" in the office of _The Thunderer_,
there had been plenty of work for him, year in and year out.

"I wonder," he mused, "if the old man would take me back on my job?

"I can see 'em in the office now," went on Harlan, mentally, "when I go
back and tell 'em I want my place again. The old man will look up and say:
'The hell you do! Thought you'd accepted a position on the literary
circuit as manager of the nine muses! Better run along and look after 'em
before they join the union.'

"And the exchange man will yell at me not to slam the door as I go out,
and I'll be pointed out to the newest kid as a horrible example of
misdirected ambition. Brinkman will say: 'Sonny, there's a bloke that got
too good for his job and now he's come back, willing to edit The Mother's
Corner.'

"It'd be about the same in the other offices, too," he thought. "'Sorry,
nothing to-day, but there might be next month. Drop in aga