uite big. "Pay to the
order of Frank Theodore Pinny," he re-read, "twenty----"

The pen made a sudden descent. "And no-hundredths," it wrote swiftly.

Charles-Norton signed the check, tore it from the book, folded it, and
presented it to Pinny, a bit patronizingly. Pinny stuck it into a side
pocket without looking at it. He was standing on one leg and seemed in a
hurry to get away. Charles-Norton, suddenly, had the same feeling. The
sense of comradeship which had been with them for the last hour had
abruptly flown with this passing of money. Each man was embarrassed, as
before a stranger. "So long," said Pinny; "so long," said Charles-Norton.
Pinny, with averted head, turned and walked away.

Charles-Norton pivoted on his heel, and started for the office, worried
suddenly by the thought that he was late. He took three long steps,
collided with a sodden old gentleman who was just arising from a
bench--and then was standing very still, looking about him as in a daze,
unconscious of the mutter of apology which, together with an odor of
stale beer, was fermenting beneath his nose. The old gentleman, pursuing
a ray of sun, slipped on to a farther bench. But Charles-Norton still
stood there, gazing about him in a sort of mild astonishment, as if,
while he was not looking, the scene about him had been transformed like
so much cardboard scenery.

To the shock of the collision, as to the stroke of a finger upon a
chemical beaker the reluctant crystallization abruptly takes place, there
had come to Charles-Norton the realization _that he did not have to go to
the office_.

He did not have to go to the office! Here, against his heart, represented
by three black figures within a little yellow book, was eight hundred
dollars, practically eight months' salary, the assurance of eight months
almost of independence, of freedom!

"And Dolly?"

You will think, perhaps, that Charles-Norton was seized by an ardent
desire immediately to run to Dolly, spring up the five flights of
stairs, push open the door, catch her by the waist and, seating her on
his knees, to pantingly tell her of the wondrous news? You are mistaken.

For with the vision of Dolly, the thought that irresistibly came to
Charles-Norton was----

That he didn't have to go to Dolly.

He didn't have to go to Dolly and be clipped. He didn't have to go to the
glass cage, and he didn't have to go to Dolly. The scissors of Dolly.

Charles-Norton, very pale, his long, s