th vague consciousness of the titanic energies ceaselessly grinding,
striving, achieving, beneath that surface of roofs and towers. And
now, as always when she stopped to gaze from her window for a few
moments, she felt her own pulses quicken in response and her own
inward being stir, as if those waving white plumes were trumpet calls
to activity.

She turned from the window, more restless than before, impatient with
the necessity of merely sitting there and waiting. In Brand's private
room the books she had got for him three weeks before still lay ranged
upon his desk, in readiness for his return at any moment. In her spare
hours she had been reading some of them herself and now she went to
get one as the best way in which to put in her time. As she brought it
back to her own room her thoughts, as they did a hundred times a day,
hovered over and around her various speculations concerning the
mystery of her employer's absence.

"I wonder," they presently ran, "if it could be possible that he is
hiding somewhere in the city just to indulge in some sort of orgy."
And this time denial of such a possibility did not, as formerly,
spring up spontaneously in her mind. "I don't like to think he could
be that sort of a man," she temporized with her budding doubt, "for he
always seems so refined and thoroughly nice, and he's always been such
a perfect gentleman to me. But it's evident that Mr. Gordon, who knows
him so well, hasn't a very high opinion of him, except in his art."

The telephone broke in upon her musing, and as she put the receiver to
her ear and said "hello" she was almost as much astonished as
delighted to hear in reply the voice of Felix Brand himself. He told
her that he had just got home, after another beastly trip into the
back woods of West Virginia, where he had had an accident. He had
slipped and sprained his ankle--no, it was nothing serious, and was
all right now, but it had kept him a prisoner for nearly two weeks in
a mountain cabin a thousand miles from anywhere, and he would be at
the office as soon as he had had his luncheon.

Glad as she was that he was there once more to take up the matters
that needed his attention so badly, Henrietta was almost afraid to
face him, when she heard his voice in the outer room, lest there might
be that in his appearance which would give form and force to the
doubts that were stirring in her mind.

But he seemed no different from his usual, affable and well-dress