Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/634

538 "For a year," she said. She had grown a little pale. In the room it was beginning to grow dark.

She got up and putting him gently aside went to the door leading into the outer office and slipped a bolt that would prevent the door being opened.

Now she was standing with her back to the door and with her hand on the knob as he had been standing some time before. He got up and went to his own desk, near a window that faced the spur of the railroad track, and sat in his office chair. Leaning forward he buried his face in his two arms. The trembling, shaking thing continued to go on within him. Still the little joyous voices called. The cleansing thing was going on and on.

Natalie spoke of the affairs of the office. "There were some letters, but I answered them and even dared to sign your name. I did not want you to be bothered to-day."

She came to where he sat, leaning forward on the desk, trembling, and knelt beside him. After a time he put an arm about her shoulder.

The outside noises of the office went steadily on. In the outer office someone was running a typewriting machine. It was quite dark in the inner office now, but above the railroad track, some two or three hundred yards away, there was a lamp suspended in the air and when it was lighted a faint light came into the dark room and fell upon the two crouched figures. Presently a whistle blew and the workers from the factory went off up the spur of track. In the outer office the four people were getting ready to go home.

In a few minutes they came out, closing a door behind them, and walked also along the spur of the tracks. Unlike the workers from the factory they knew the two people were still in the inner office and were curious. One of the three women came boldly up to the window and looked in. She went back to the others and they stood for a few minutes, making a small intense group in the half darkness. Then they went slowly away.

When the group broke up, on the embankment above the river, the book-keeper, a man of thirty-five, and the older of the three women went to the right along the tracks while the other two women went to the left. The book-keeper and the older of the women did not speak of what they had all seen. They walked for several hundred yards together and then parted, turning from the tracks into