moving through the broad swathes of dusty sunlight from barred windows, and seeming for instants to attain the appearance of figures on stained glass.

He smiled as the head shipper, a thick-set Cockney seated at a high desk, glanced up from a litter of papers and nodded a grizzled head at him. An assistant stooped above a packing - case, and, jerking back a flushed face to clear lank hair out of his eyes, gave him a cheerful goodmorning. At the end of the stock bunks that reached from floor to roof, an impish boy with chubby features and twiglike legs sprouting in huge boots, grinned shyly. His customary jest exchanged with the last, Emmet entered the little office which he occupied as Editor and First Reader to the firm.

Opened and neatly arranged, the morning mail lay on the blotter, with, to one side, an envelope marked personal. This contained a draft for fifty dollars, and a polite note from an American periodical accepting an article on medieval bookshops, which, after a casual glance, Emmet was thrusting into his pocket, when the door rattled. The general manager, an elongated individual with contracted shoulders and sallow inquisitive features, leant across the desk.

Mornin', Mr Emmet! Here are the proofs of Achievement'

He peered through rimless glasses. "I'm afraid he's a bit fed up."

Instinctively assuming the defensive, Emmet demanded sharply: "What's the matter now?

"Oh, nothing much, I expect. Just thought I'd warn you, that's all. Don't forget eleven sharp!" Nasal tones held a subtle malice, and he dropped a roll of sheets carelessly down upon the crowded desk.

Curtly acknowledging the message, the editor found himself once more alone. He lay back in his chair, oblivious of the unread letters before him. In the man man who had just spoken he saw an archetype of those in whose company circumstance forced him to spend the major portion of his working hours. Supersensitiveness made him increasingly receptive of their attitude towards him, that of the materialist to the dreamer, and it irritated. Aware that in their opinion he was not counted worthy of either fear or jealousy, merely of a cold if good-natured contempt, it did not help him to realise the correctness of their estimate: that he was incapable by character as by temperament of subscribing to the tenets of their religion, the worship of Success. What had been intuition in the youth now knowledge in the man; he did not even desire success in the world's present acceptance of the term. Never

was

"Still worrying because the world persists in preferring a Fox Trot and the Tango to a Minuet or Saraband ? ”

"At the moment it is an individual, not the Race that troubles me," he replied with gloom.

She nodded cheerfully. "I know; Mr Horton is Jazz at its worst."

Emmet

"You're right ! " laughed and sat forward in his chair. "He's only an unpleasant noise, as they say. Let's forget him. You always do me good, Miss Ware."

"And yet I am essentially modern," she suggested, seating herself quietly and opening her note-book.

He did not answer, but looked at her, as he always did, as if he were seeing her for the first time. She wore a white silk shirt with a low collar, against which her neck and the sweep of a cheek were smooth and creamed as a freshpeeled almond. Her hands, flattening the ruled paper, matched the curves of her body in their tense modelling; while a wandering shaft of sunlight, imprisoned in the alleyway outside the window, brushed the dark masses of her hair, and revealed a glint

was of the cool serenity of moonlit water, and the scented warmth of sunshine stored in clustering damask roses.

His assistant for less than a year, Emmet yet felt that he had been conscious of Anne Ware's existence all his life. At times this puzzled him; for although he had visited her home in Hampstead several times of late, and was by way of being a favourite of her aunt, Lady Savage, he knew but little of Anne's private affairs, except facts gleaned from her casual allusions. These totalled the mere knowledge that she had proved too progressive for her immediate family, and that from a financial point of view she did not need to work. Such other information as he had absorbed from their relationship told him she was exceptionally educated, and possessed an independence of spirit equal to his own, but coupled with a force and power of decision which he lacked. She looked on life through wide-open eyes, and a fearless pride was shown by the carriage of her head. For the rest, their friendship, and such it was, having its roots set in something deeper than either of them realised, was limited to the duration of the office hours. It was not a long day, but in it, despite their work, they found time to discuss various aspects of humanity,

most of the books they loved, and nearly all their thoughts. If as a result she knew him better than he did her, it was because she was a woman, and used her inherited instincts to advantage. Most dreamers are wrapped in the contemplation of their egos, if not abandoned to common selfishness. Paul Emmet was no exception to the rule, and he was perhaps the more oblivious to the passage of Fate's shuttle across the warp of life by reason of his strange and growing inability to perceive realities. He accepted Anne Ware as part of the design, forgetting that others less careless than he might watch, and that opportunity is more valuable than the fruition of time.

"And I am essentially modern," she repeated as if to herself.

"To each age its wonder and its beauty," he quoted unthinkingly, answering her wish. Then, suddenly aware of what he said, he snatched a letter at random from the desk, and began hastily to dictate a reply to it. He paused presently with a grimace. "I don't seem able to collect my thoughts properly somehow," he exclaimed in disgust. "It's like trying to chase feathers in a March wind."

Her eyes surveyed him gravely from under full brows.

he covered an instant's embarrassment with triteness. "There's no rest for the weary, I'm afraid."

Never mind. If you will give me the main points, I can manage the rest."

It was not the first time recently that she had helped him in that way, and he accepted her offer the more eagerly for the reason that he was unpleasantly conscious of a sensation of fulness in his head as if the blood in the sinuses were slowly thickening. To him it approached most nearly the feeling of cessation that is wont to precede immediate sleep. This he fought against, and with lips still moving mechanically, fixed his eyes upon the rows of filing cabinets behind the girl in a last effort to concentrate his thoughts. And then, quite suddenly, rising from nowhere, came the bank of fog. room and its contents were blotted out. He saw through a swirling cloud of vapour, with all the actuality of a tangible thing, the mainsail of a ship. Latticed rigging, a frayed rope quivering against a cloudless sky, were facts beyond dispute; and below them, sagging upon its yard, was the bleached canvas of the sail itself, with a jagged hole in it, whose edges seemed to smoulder blackly like burnt rags. At the moment he was unconscious of fear or even of surprise, only a curious excitement that effervesced and rose like bubbles in a glass of

and liked well. Instead of the small figure in figure in a crumpled tunic and stained khaki trousers, whose face gave the impression that he had been dragged out of bed in the cold hours of the morning to find himself confronted by some hideous task, Emmet saw a man perfectly poised and meticulously accurate in attire.

Arthur Porte sprang up from his desk, and as the hands of the two men clasped, both smiled at the unconscious use of an army nickname.

"My dear Apostle, I was beginning to think you had forgotten me and our evenings in the Little Hospital.'"

Shaking his head in protest, Emmet surrendered his hat and stick, and allowed himself to be pushed into a comfortable chair.

"I have been terribly busy, Arthur. I left it to you."

hasn't damned my chances long ago . . . it's so plebeian ! "

"How are things with you ? " Emmet asked, remembering the abrupt abandonment of a laboriously built-up practice in the early days of 1914.

There was contentment in the other's sigh. "I have been very lucky. And you, old chap? Are you still fighting Progress with the sword of Romance ? "

Yes. Only I'm afraid the edge is a bit blunted nowadays."

Porte studied the slender body, and the weary features with dark hair worn a shade too thick above a high forehead deeply lined. The small mouth was sensitive as ever, the grey eyes as strangely introspective.

"I see. You have lost weight, Paul. What's the trouble! "

"I don't know . . . age, perhaps." The tone was bitter, and in the silence which followed, Emmet was acutely aware of keenness and sympathy in the eyes that scrutinised him. ised him. While he waited he endured all the sensations of a naughty child in the presence of its nurse. He was relieved when the other spoke.

"I tell you what, Apostle. Let's pretend you are just an ordinary patient. We can talk afterwards."

Fifteen minutes more, and Emmet subsided panting into his chair. Porte, astride the corner of the desk, resumed his pipe.

"Nothing wrong with your