Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/369

358 "Oh, I don't know about cost of life," replied Dunbar cheerfully. "But a hospital's the last place where one ought to put up with inconvenience."

"As for enlarging the windows or increasing the number of them, that would simply ruin the buildings architecturally," said Stewart. "More light is out of the question."

"There is n't enough," insisted Dunbar.

"I suppose I can perhaps make some alterations," Stewart continued reluctantly. "But I've worked over these things till I'm sick of them; I'd been looking forward to joining Lydia next week and giving myself a good month's rest. From an architectural point of view the plans are all right, just as they are; I couldn't improve them if I worked over them the rest of my life.—But you think that for practical reasons they could n't be adopted?"

"I should feel almost certain that there would be more practical plans submitted," said Dunbar. "I don't know how the judges will feel; they may not regard the utmost practicability as essential. With a man like Edwards on the committee, though, I should think you'd better sit up nights—even about such matters as wash-bowls and chandeliers and ventilating-shafts."

That evening two windows on the twelfth floor of the great building glowed until after midnight, the loftiest lights in the city street. Within the one illuminated room, above all the dark and empty tiers of offices, Stewart sat at his great drawing-table with plans spread out before him and others lying beside his chair on the floor. He was without coat or collar; his shirt was open at the throat, his sleeves were rolled up above his elbows. He had begun one sketch after another, and pushed them all aside unfinished, and now with his head on his hands he sat wearily looking at the work of which he had been so proud. And as he gazed at it, the beauty of it all became to him more than ever convincing; he saw in his mind