everything," Ransom answered, smiling.

"Well, I guess they didn't come here to listen to that organ. We'll hear
something else before long, if he doesn't stop."

"You will hear a good deal, very soon," Ransom remarked.

The serenity of his self-confidence appeared at last to make an
impression on his antagonist, who lowered his head a little, like some
butting animal, and looked at the young man from beneath bushy eyebrows.
"Well, I _have_ heard a good deal, since I've been in Boston."

"Oh, Boston's a great place," Ransom rejoined inattentively. He was not
listening to the policeman or to the organ now, for the sound of voices
had reached him from the other side of the door. The policeman took no
further notice of it than to lean back against the panels, with folded
arms; and there was another pause, between them, during which the
playing of the organ ceased.

"I will just wait here, with your permission," said Ransom, "and
presently I shall be called."

"Who do you s'pose will call you?"

"Well, Miss Tarrant, I hope."

"She'll have to square the other one first."

Ransom took out his watch, which he had adapted, on purpose, several
hours before, to Boston time, and saw that the minutes had sped with
increasing velocity during this interview, and that it now marked five
minutes past eight. "Miss Chancellor will have to square the public," he
said in a moment; and the words were far from being an empty profession
of security, for the conviction already in possession of him, that a
drama in which he, though cut off, was an actor, had been going on for
some time in the apartment he was prevented from entering, that the
situation was extraordinarily strained there, and that it could not come
to an end without an appeal to him--this transcendental assumption
acquired an infinitely greater force the instant he perceived that
Verena was even now keeping her audience waiting. Why didn't she go on?
Why, except that she knew he was there, and was gaining time?

"Well, I guess she has shown herself," said the door-keeper, whose
discussion with Ransom now appeared to have passed, on his own part, and
without the slightest prejudice to his firmness, into a sociable,
gossiping phase.

"If she had shown herself, we should hear the reception, the applause."

"Well, there they air; they are going to give it to her," the policeman
announced.

He had an odious appearance of being in the right, for there indeed they
seem