'Well, I'm twenty-five! And where've I got? I love a woman. Hen, I hope you'll never be torn as I'm torn now. You think you've been through things. Why, you're an innocent babe. I've got a woman's name--and that's a woman's life, Hen!--in my hands. It's a muddle. Maybe there's tragedy in it. May never work out. Sometimes I feel as if we were going straight over a precipice, she and I. It goes dark. It suffocates me.... It's costing me everything. It'll take money--a lot of it--money I haven't got. If the paper goes, my last hopes go with it. If we can't turn that corner. Everything comes down bang. No use.' Henry tried to say, 'Oh, I guess we'll turn our corner all right;' but if the words passed his lips at all it was only as a whisper. They were a hundred feet from the alley back of Parmenter's. It was dark now, there in the shade of the double row of maples. Humphrey stopped short; pressed his hands to his eyes; then looked at Henry. 'You coming to the rooms, too?' he asked. Henry nodded. 'I don't know's I--I was forgetting, so many things--Oh well, come along. It hardly matters.' At the alley entrance a man intercepted them; said, 'This is Henry Calverly, ain't it?' Struck a match and read an extraordinary mumble of words. He struck other matches, and read hurriedly on. Then he moved apologetically away, leaving Henry backed limply against a board fence. Humphrey stood waiting, a tall shadow of a man. To him Henry turned, feeling curiously weak in the legs and gone at the stomach. 'What is it?' he asked, weakly, meekly. 'I couldn't understand. Did he ar--arrest me or something?' 'Charlie Waterhouse has sued you for libel. Ten thousand dollars. Come on. I can't wait.' 'But--but--but that's foolish. He can't----' 'That's how it is.' Humphrey was grim. They walked in silence up the alley. Henry stood by while his partner unlocked the neat front door to the old barn, a white door, with one white step and an iron scraper. He could just make them out in the dusk. He wondered if he mightn't presently wake up and find it a dream.... Old Hump! They stood in the shop. Humphrey had switched on one light; he looked now, his face deeply seamed, his eyes a little sunken, at the dim shadowy metal lathes, the huge reels of copper wire, the tool benches, the rows of wall boxes filled with machine parts, the small electric motors hanging by twisted strings or wires from the ceiling joists, the heavy steel wheels in frames, the great box kites and the spruce and silk planes, in sections, the gas engine, the water motor, the wheels, shafts, and belting overhead. He bent his sombre eyes on Henry. That youth, aching at heart, bruised of spirit, unaware of the figure he made, was too far gone to be further puzzled by the weary, mocking smile that flitted across Humphrey's face. 'Hump!' he cried out: 'What'll we do!' 'Do? Sleep over it. Raise some more money?' 'But how?'