"That's why you don't need children," insisted Catherine. "Just as Henrietta Gilbert takes it out on other people's children." "You make me sick! Drivel!" Margaret glowered, gave her soft green hat a quick poke, and stepped out of the lobby. "Good-by! You'll lose your job, maundering so!" "Good-by. Nice lunch." Catherine laughed as she hurried for the waiting elevator. She stood for a few minutes at the window of her office, before she settled down to the afternoon of work. There was snow enough in the air to veil the crawl of traffic far below, to blur the spires of the Cathedral. The clouds hung just above the buildings, heavy with storm. She would have to go home on the subway; no fun on the bus such an evening. Dim gold patches in distant windows--office workers needed light this afternoon. Her eyes dropped to the opposite windows. Revolving fussily before the great mirrors--how dull and white this snow-light made them--was a plump little man; the shade cut off his head, but his gestures were eloquent of concern about the fit of his shoulders. Her window, looking out on the honeycombing of many windows, and down on the crawling traffic, and off across the piling roofs, had come to be a sort of watch tower. For more than two months now, she had looked out at the city. She had come to know the city's hints of changing seasons, hints more subtle, far less frank than the bold statements of growing things in the country. A different color in the air, altering the sky line; a different massing of clouds; a new angle for the sun through her window in the morning; a gradual stretching of the shadows on the roof tops. She stood there, gazing out at the terrific, impersonal whirl. If she could see the atoms, separately, each would be as fussy, as intimately concerned in some detail as little Mr. Plump opposite, pulling up his knee to twist at his trouser leg. And yet, out of that tiny squirming could grow this enormous, intricate whole. The stenographer at the door drew her abruptly from the window. "Oh, yes, Miss Betts. I wanted you to take these letters." She bent swiftly to her work. * * * * *