the coat a little way with both hands, and put out one small
toe. Bannon looked at it, and shook his head. "You'll get your feet wet,"
he said.

She looked up and met Bannon's eyes again, with an expression that puzzled
Max.

"I don't care. It's almost time to go home, anyway."

So they went out, and closed the door; and Max, who had been told to "stay
behind and keep house," looked after them, and then at the door, and an
odd expression of slow understanding came into his face. It was not in
what they had said, but there was plainly a new feeling between them. For
the first time in his life, Max felt that another knew Hilda better than
he did. The way Bannon had looked at her, and she at him; the mutual
understanding that left everything unsaid; the something--Max did not know
what it was, but he saw it and felt it, and it disturbed him. He sat on
the table, and swung his feet, while one expression chased another over
his face. When he finally got himself together, he went to the door, and
opening it, looked out at the black, dim shape of the elevator that, stood
big and square, only a little way before him, shutting out whatever he
might else have seen of rushing sky or dim-lighted river, or of the
railroads and the steamboats and the factories and rolling mills beyond.
It was as if this elevator were his fate, looming before him and shutting
out the forward view. In whatever thoughts he had had of the future, in
whatever plans, and they were few, which he had revolved in his head,
there had always been a place for Hilda. He did not see just what he was
to do, just what he was to become, without her. He stood there for a long
time, leaning against the door-jamb with his hands in his pockets, and the
sharper gusts of rain whirled around the end of the little building and
beat on him. And then--well, it was Charlie Bannon; and Max knew that he
was glad it was no one else.

The narrow windows in the belt gallery had no glass, and the rain came
driving through them into the shadows, each drop catching the white shine
of the electric lights outside. The floor was trampled with mud and
littered with scraps of lumber, tool boxes, empty nail kegs, and shavings.
The long, gloomy gallery was empty when Bannon and Hilda stepped into it,
excepting a group of men at the farther end, installing the rollers for
the belt conveyor--they could be seen indistinctly against a light in the
river house.

The wind came roaring around