in the afterglow
above the North River: smoke-clouds from Jersey factories drifting
across the long, carmine stain, air sweet and cool, and the
yellow-lighted windows of other skyscrapers giving distant
companionship. She fancied sometimes that she was watching the afterglow
over a far northern lake, among the pines; and with a sigh more of
content than of restlessness she turned back to her work.... Time ceased
to exist when she worked alone. Of time and of the office she was
manager. What if she didn't go out to dinner till eight? She could dine
whenever she wanted to. If a clumsy man called Eddie Schwirtz got hungry
he could get his own dinner. What if she did work slowly? There were no
telephone messages, no Mr. Truax to annoy her. She could be leisurely
and do the work as it should be done.... She was no longer afraid of the
rustling silence about her, as Una Golden had been at Troy Wilkins's.
She was a woman now, and trained to fill the blank spaces of the
deserted office with her own colored thoughts.

Hours of bustling life in the daytime office had their human joys as
well. Una went out of her way to be friendly with the ordinary
stenographers, and, as there was no vast Pembertonian system of caste,
she succeeded, and had all the warmth of their little confidences. Nor
after her extensive experience with Messrs. Schwirtz, Sanderson, and
McCullough, did even the noisiest of the salesmen offend her. She
laughed at the small signs they were always bringing in and displaying:
"Oh, forget it! I've got troubles of my own!" or, "Is that you again?
Another half hour gone to hell!" The sales-manager brought this latter
back from Philadelphia and hung it on his desk, and when the admiring
citizenry surrounded it, Una joined them.... As a married woman she was
not expected to be shocked by the word, "hell!"...

But most beautiful was Christmas Eve, when all distinctions were
suspended for an hour before the office closed, when Mr. Truax
distributed gold pieces and handshakes, when "Chas.," the hat-tilted
sales-manager, stood on a chair and sang a solo. Mr. Fein hung holly on
all their desks, and for an hour stenographers and salesmen and clerks
and chiefs all were friends.

When she went home to Schwirtz she tried to take some of the holiday
friendship. She sought to forget that he was still looking for the
hypothetical job, while he subsisted on her wages and was increasingly
apologetic. She boasted to herself that he