Spencer snuggled close against her, without a word. Charles, after a businesslike inquiry into the state of her tickets, was silent. And Catherine's one clear thought was: it is lucky that I can't escape now--like a moving stairway, and I've stepped squarely on it. I couldn't, to-day, furnish the energy, the motive power, to go and leave them. PART V IMPASSE I Catherine moved slowly up the covered stairway from the Randolph Street station, sniffing at the strange smell of Chicago. What did make it so different from New York? Smoke, blown whirling back in the sharp east wind over the grinding of ice along the lake shore, something more composite than that, which, if she could but decipher, would give her the essential difference between the cities. She snatched at her hat, as she reached the gusty platform. There was Bill, lounging against the paper stand! As she edged through the home-bound crowd, he saw her, with a sharp lifting of his negligent, withdrawn look, and started toward her. "Catherine!" He drew her out of the crowd, into a little corner protected by the booth. "What a horrid place I made you wait!" Pleasure shimmered over Catherine, like sun in shallow water. "Have you had to stand here long? Oh, it is nice to see you!" The strange city, the unknown, hurrying people, walled them about in deepened intimacy. "Fine." Bill smiled down at her. "You look as if you had been eating up this west, and liked its taste." "I have. I do." Soft, clear brilliance in her eyes, in her smile. "Let's go somewhere, so I can tell you about it. I want to talk and talk." "There's a place just north of here. Would you like to walk? A little place I found. Wonderful dinners. Or if you want to celebrate, we can go to some huge hotel." "I don't care. Let's try your little place." They walked swiftly along the Avenue, the lake wind whipping against them, Bill answering Catherine's random questions about the gaunt, dark buildings they passed, about his work. "I'm chattering," she thought. "I don't care!" "Here we are." Bill's hand under her elbow guided her into the doorway of a small white building. "Wall papers," read Catherine from the hall sign, but Bill steered her to an opposite door. "Oh, I do like it." She nodded at Bill's fleet, anxious query. A long, irregular room, with scattered tables, dull gray enamel, shining in the soft orange light of small lamps, and a great brick fireplace where logs burned. "Sit here, where you can watch the fire without scorching." Bill chose a table in a small alcove. "Now tell us all about it. Have you been made president of one of these colleges? Or endowed? You look amazingly triumphant." "Do I strut?" Catherine laughed softly, slipping out of her coat, drawing off her gloves. "Not quite. But--you could, couldn't you?" "I've had a wonderful time, Bill. Incredibly wonderful!" "And you haven't been lonely, or homesick? How long since you left New York?"