upstairs there could be heard occasionally the faint clear cry of Deborah's
child. And once again to Roger came a season of repose. He was far from
unhappy. His disease, although progressing fast, gave him barely any pain;
it rather made its presence felt by the manner in which it affected his
mind. His inner life grew uneven. At times his thoughts were as in a fog,
again they were amazingly clear and vistas opened far ahead. He could not
control his thinking.

This bothered him at the office, in the work he still had to do. For some
months he had been considering an offer from one of his rivals, a modern
concern which wished to buy out his business together with that of three
other firms and consolidate them all into one corporation. And Roger was
selling, and it was hard; for the whole idea of bargaining was more
distasteful than ever now. He had to keep reminding himself of Edith and
her children.

At last it was over, his books were closed, and there was nothing left to
be done. Nor did he care to linger. These rooms had meant but little to
him; they had been but a place of transition from the old office far
downtown, so full of memories of his youth, to the big corporation looming
ahead, the huge impersonal clipping mill into which his business was to
merge. And it came to his mind that New York was like that--no settled calm
abiding place cherishing its memories, but only a town of transition, a
great turbulent city of change, restlessly shaking off its past, tearing
down and building anew, building higher, higher, higher, rearing to the
very stars, and shouting, "Can you see me now?" What was the goal of this
mad career? What dazzling city would be here? For a time he stared out of
his window as into a promised land. Slowly at last he rose from his desk.
Clippings, clippings, clippings. He looked at those long rows of girls
gleaning in items large and small the public reputations of all kinds of
men and women, new kinds in a new nation seething with activities, sweeping
on like some wide river swollen at flood season to a new America, a world
which Roger would not know. And yet it would be his world still, for in it
he would play a part.

"In their lives, too, we shall be there--the dim strong figures of the
past."

From his desk he gathered a few belongings. Then he looked into John's
small room, with the big gold motto over the desk: "This is no place for
your troubles or mine." On the desk lay that small a