Sometimes it was three o'clock before Roger squashed his last cigarette into the overloaded ashtray, and he would undress in the darkness, disembodied with fatigue, but with a sense of triumph that he had lasted out another day. Christmas came and went and he scarcely noticed that it was gone. He remembered it afterward as the day he completed the window-cards for Garrod's shoes. This was one of the eight large accounts for which he was pointing in January--if he got half of them he was assured a quarter of a million dollars' worth of business during the year. But the world outside his business became a chaotic dream. He was aware that on two cool December Sundays George Tompkins had taken Gretchen horseback riding, and that another time she had gone out with him in his automobile to spend the afternoon skiing on the country-club hill. A picture of Tompkins, in an expensive frame, had appeared one morning on their bedroom wall. And one night he was shocked into a startled protest when Gretchen went to the theatre with Tompkins in town. But his work was almost done. Daily now his layouts arrived from the printers until seven of them were piled and docketed in his office safe. He knew how good they were. Money alone couldn't buy such work; more than he realized himself, it had been a labor of love. December tumbled like a dead leaf from the calendar. There was an agonizing week when he had to give up coffee because it made his heart pound so. If he could hold on now for four days--three days---- On Thursday afternoon H. G. Garrod was to arrive in New York. On Wednesday evening Roger came home at seven to find Gretchen poring over the December bills with a strange expression in her eyes. "What's the matter?" She nodded at the bills. He ran through them, his brow wrinkling in a frown. "Gosh!" "I can't help it," she burst out suddenly. "They're terrible." "Well, I didn't marry you because you were a wonderful housekeeper. I'll manage about the bills some way. Don't worry your little head over it." She regarded him coldly. "You talk as if I were a child." "I have to," he said with sudden irritation. "Well, at least I'm not a piece of bric-à-brac that you can just put somewhere and forget." He knelt down by her quickly, and took her arms in his hands. "Gretchen, listen!" he said breathlessly. "For God's sake, don't go to pieces now! We're both all stored up with malice and reproach, and if we had a quarrel it'd be terrible. I love you, Gretchen. Say you love me--quick!" "You know I love you." The quarrel was averted, but there was an unnatural tenseness all through dinner. It came to a climax afterward when he began to spread his working materials on the table. "Oh, Roger," she protested, "I thought you didn't have to work to-night." "I didn't think I'd have to, but something came up." "I've invited George Tompkins over." "Oh, gosh!" he exclaimed. "Well, I'm sorry, honey, but you'll have to phone him not to come."