Ding Dong procured rolls and made coffee; then three partook of the meal, for there were always three, the inventor, Ding Dong and, to furnish the feminine element, Lulu, a tiny South American monkey. Pinched and sad Lulu seemingly was not devoid of coquetry, for she wrapped herself in a bit of bright flannel which she held together beneath her chin with one small black hand, while she peeped out from between the folds with her little mournful eyes. Of all the prisoners in the great building, none was more miserable than this little monkey. A present to the wife of one of the partners, who detested her, she had been brought down to the factory where she led a truly miserable life. In order to be out of reach of the furnace man, who had once treated her cruelly, she ran up among the asbestos-covered pipes, and there remained, save when she suffered herself to be lured down by Ding Dong. It was as if these two touching creatures, the one so nearly bestial and the other so nearly human, strove to lessen each other's profound loneliness. As Emil pulled at his long pipe, resting after his exertions of the night, something of his serenity stole over his companions and wrapped in the same mood of abstracted dreaminess, they watched the dawn together. When the department overseer appeared, a shudder ran through the building. The presses rumbled and boys began to feed them with great sheets of paper. The band of pale, dispirited youths in the art department etched their designs. With dust, sweat, oaths, grinding muscles, shriek and thunder of machinery,--the day began. Hour after hour the passionate clamour increased to a poem, a hymn, a pæan to the God of Work. At twelve o'clock the tension relaxed. Men from the different departments poured into the streets and sought the cafes and restaurants of the neighbourhood. A few, however, always remained in the building. For that hour they were no longer slaves. The head bookkeeper, an old man, stretched his legs, glad to get down from his high stool; one of the stenographers, with flying fingers resumed her work on a little red jacket for Lulu. Even Emil was affected by the sudden contagion of idleness that swept the building. Leaving the model of his press, he took time to stare from the windows at the roofs of New York. But despite his interest in his work these surroundings were beginning to tell upon him. One day in July, unable to bear the heat, he staggered out into the passage to get a drink from a pail of water that stood there. He was lifting the dripping dipper to his lips, when a pair of eyes met his with a sort of shock. When he stumbled back into the little den, Annie Lawless, springing up from a chair in her father's office, followed him.