matted, pinkish eyes, obsessed by an impotent fury.

An indolent voice drifted from above. "Cherette!" And a low, masculine
protest was audible. Mariana Jannan's face was inscrutable. The woman
continued audibly, "How can I--like this? You will have to see what it
is." A moment later James Polder, drawing on a coat, descended the
stairs. He saw Mariana at once, and stood arrested with one foot on the
floor, and a hand clutching the rail. A sudden pallor invaded his
countenance and Howat turned away, inspecting the print. But he could
not close his hearing to the suppressed eagerness, the stammering joy,
of Polder's surprise.

"And you, too," he said to the elder, with a crushing grip. Howat
immediately recognized that the other was marked by an obvious ill
health; his eyes were hung with shadows, like smudges of the iron dust,
and his palm was hot and wet. "Harriet," he called up the stair, "here's
Miss Jannan and Mr. Howat Penny to see us." A complete silence above,
then a sharp rustle, replied to his announcement. "Harriet will be right
down," he continued; "fixing herself up a little first. Have trouble
finding us? Second Street is high for a foreman, but we're moving out
against the future."

The dog maintained a stridulous barking; and James Polder carried her,
in an ecstasy of snarling ill-temper, out. "Cherette doesn't appreciate
callers," he stated, with an expression that contradicted the mildness
of his words. His gaze, Howat thought, rested on Mariana with the
intensity of a fanatic Arab at the apparition of Mohammed. And Mariana
smiled back with a penetrating comprehension and sympathy. The
proceeding made Howat Penny extremely uncomfortable; it was--was
barefaced. He hoped desperately that something more appropriately casual
would meet the appearance of Harriet. Mariana said:

"You haven't been well." Polder replied that it was nothing. "I get a
night shift," he explained, "and I've never learned to sleep through the
day. We're working under unusual pressure, too; inhuman contracts,
success." He smiled without gaiety. "You didn't answer my letter," the
outrageous Mariana proceeded. Howat withered mentally at her cool
daring, and Polder, now flushed, avoided her gaze. The necessity of
answer was bridged by the descent of his wife. Her face, as always,
brightly coloured, was framed in an instinctively effective twist of
gold hair; and she wore an elaborately braided, white cloth skirt, a
magenta georgett