From the last vantage point, before he slipped townward to his monotonous duties, Starratt stood, shading his eyes, watching the stately exit of this maritime giant. This was a morning for starting adventure...for setting out upon a quest!... He had been stirred before to such Homeric longings ... spring sunshine could always prick his blood with sharp-pointed desire. But to-day there was a poignant melancholy in his flair for a wider horizon. He was touched by weariness as well as longing. He was like a pocket hunter whose previous borrowings had beguiled him with flashing grains that proved valueless. He would not abandon his search, but he must pack up and move on to new, uncertain, unproved ground. And he felt all the weight of hidden and heartbreaking perils with which his spiritual faring forth must of necessity be hedged. At the corner of California and Montgomery streets he met the tide of nine-o'clock commuters surging toward the insurance offices and banks. His widened vision suddenly contracted. Middle class! The phrase leaped forward from the flock mind which this standardized concourse diffused. In many of the faces he read the potentialities of infinite variety, smothered by a dull mask of conformity. What a relief if but one in that vast flood would go suddenly mad! He tried fantastically to picture the effect upon the others--the momentary cowardice and braveries that such an event would call into life. For a few brief moments certain personalities and acts would stand out sharply glorified, like grains of dust dancing in the slanting rays of the sun. Then, the angle of yellow light restored to white normality, the whirling particles would drift back into their colorless oblivion. For a moment he had a taste of desire for unspringing power. If he could but be the wind to shake these dry reeds of custom into a semblance of life!... One by one they passed him with an air of growing preoccupation ... each step was carrying them nearer to the day's pallid slavery, and an unconscious sense of their genteel serfdom seemed gradually to settle on them. There were no bent nor broken nor careworn toilers among this drab mass...the stamp of long service here was a withered, soul-quenched gentility that came of accepting life instead of struggling against it. Gradually the temper of the crowd communicated itself to him. It was time to descend from his speculative heights and face the problems of his workday world. He turned sharply toward his office. Young Brauer was just mounting the steps. "Well, what's new?" Brauer threw out, genially. "Not a thing in the world!" escaped Starratt. They went into the office together. Old Wetherbee was carrying his cash book out of the safe. The old man smiled. He was usually in good humor early in the morning. "Well, what's new?" he inquired, gayly. "Not a thing in the world!" they chimed, almost in chorus.