But Phillida saw in her imagination Mrs. Martin badgered by Eleanor Bowyer, and heard again the grievous cry of the frightened and suffering Tommy. After all, she could only make the matter understood imperfectly by means of a message. Why should she stand on delicacy in a matter of life and death? She reflected that there was no animosity between her and Millard, and she recalled his figure as he reached his hand to her that fatal evening, and she remembered the emotion in his voice when he said, "Part friends?" She resolved to go in person to the Graydon. The entrance to the apartment building displayed a good deal of that joint-stock grandeur which goes for much and yet costs each individual householder but little. Despite her anxiety, Phillida was so far impressed by the elaborate bronze mantelpiece over the great hall fireplace, the carved wooden seats, and the frescoing and gilding of the walls, as to remember that she was dressed for a tenement in Avenue C, and not for a west-side apartment house. The gray shawl she had left behind; but she felt sure that the important-looking hall boys and, above all, the plump and prosperous-seeming clerk at the desk, with an habitually neutral expression upon his countenance, must wonder why a woman had intruded into the sacred front entrance in so plain a hat and gown at seven o'clock in the morning. She felt in her pocket for her card-case, but of course that had been left in the pocket of a better dress, and she must write upon one of those little cards that the house furnishes; and all this while the clerk would be wondering who she was. But there was a native self-reliance about Phillida that shielded her from contempt. She asked for the card, took up a pen, and wrote: "Miss Callender wishes to see Mr. Millard in great haste, on a matter of the utmost importance." She was about to put this into an envelope, but she reflected that an open message was better. She handed the card to the clerk, who took it hesitatingly, and with a touch of "style" in his bearing, saying, "Mr. Millard will not be down for half an hour yet. He is not up. Will you wait?" "He must be called," said Phillida. "It is a matter of life and death." The clerk still held the note in his hand. "He will be very much annoyed if that is not delivered to him at once. It is his own affair, and, as I said, a matter of life and death," said Phillida, speaking peremptorily, her courage rising to the occasion. The clerk still held the note. He presently beckoned to a negro boy sitting on one of the carved benches. "Washington," he said. Washington came forward to the counter. "Wash," said the clerk in an undertone--an undress tone kept for those upon whom it would have been useless to waste his habitual bearing as the representative of the corporate proprietorship of the building--"has Mr. Millard's man come in yet?" "No, sir."