Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/199

 of the hungry saws, and the shaking rumble of the hundred-handed engines. He was again in the little office, fresh with odors of resinous woods—seated at the tall desk whose thin legs trembled with the palpitation of the engine's heart. It seemed to him there was a vast press of work to be done,—enormous efforts to be made,—intricate contracts to be unknotted,—huge estimates to be made out,—agonizing errors to be remedied,—frightful miscalculations to be corrected,—a world of anxious faces impatiently watching him. Figures and diagrams swam before his eyes,—plans of facades,—mathematical calculations for stairways,—difficult angles of roofs,—puzzling arrangements of corridors. The drawings seemed to vary their shape with fantastic spitefulness; squares lengthened into parallelograms and distorted themselves into rhomboids,—circles mockingly formed themselves into ciphers,—triangles became superimposed, like the necromantic six-pointed star. Then numerals