ellow-workers--for one of whom, a
fresh-coloured youth named Baldwin, he had come to cherish a positive
affection. It was stimulating to feel that somewhere he counted for
something in his bodily presence--even though the scene of his
importance was confined to the little smoke-stained office among the
chimney pots.

When, at the end of the day, he came out into the street again and
crossed to Fifth Avenue for his accustomed walk, he found that the snow
had ceased to fall, though a bitter wind was scattering the heavy drifts
in a succession of miniature blizzards. After the heated office the
tempestuous gale struck agreeably upon his face, and his mind, which he
had kept closely upon his work until the hour of release, began almost
with difficulty to detach itself from the fortunes of the _Review_. In
the effort to compel rather than seek distraction, he put his
imagination idly on the scent of the people in the street--ran down in
fancy the history of a woman in a purple velvet gown and a bedraggled
petticoat, catalogued an athletic young Englishman who tugged at his
heels a reluctant bulldog, and wove a tragic romance around a pretty
girl in a shabby coat who stood in a staring ecstasy before a window
filled with imitation jewels. Then two men, smoking cigars, came up
suddenly behind him and he amused himself with guessing at the brand of
the tobacco, which had a remarkably fragrant aroma.

"The only thing I know against her," said one of the men with a laugh as
he went by, "is that she dines alone with Brady. If you see nothing in
that beyond the simple act of dining--"

Reaching a corner they turned off abruptly down a cross street and the
rest of the sentence passed with the speaker into an obscurity of fog.
For an instant it did not occur to Adams to connect the phrase with an
allusion to his wife; then as he repeated it mechanically in his
thoughts, there sprang upon him, like some sinister outward visitation,
an indefinable horror--a presentiment which he dared not whisper even to
himself. Pshaw! there were perhaps, a dozen women who dined with Brady,
he insisted reassuringly, and for the matter of that, there were
probably a dozen Bradys. The name was common enough, and the only decent
thing to do was to get rid of the suspicion and to apologise to Connie
in his thoughts. To impute a low motive to a simple action had always
seemed to him the vulgarity of littleness, and littleness in a man he
had come to loo