The office had expanded in keeping with the rest of the plant. It now bore little resemblance to the room in which Nat had kept bitter-sweet rendezvous with Carol in those Memory Nights. A private office—two of them, because Johnathan had insisted upon one—had been constructed off on the right. And Nathan stumbled into his own, leaving all doors open and lamps burning. He sank in his swivel chair and his forehead went down in his arms. * * * * * “Hello!” called a cheery voice. Nathan raised his head. His face was the countenance of a middle-aged man. A girl was standing in the doorway. She was hatless, despite the winter chill. She wore an oversized cloak of heavy green plaid. The sleeves were too long and had been folded back. The cloak was unbuttoned; two of the buttons, in fact, were missing, and a third was due to fall off momentarily. Underneath the cloak was a plain white shirtwaist with an inappropriate low neck. But her hair was done very prettily and her face was flushed with health and the nip of the night wind. It was Milly Richards. “Hello!” returned Nat lifelessly. “Why! What’s the matter, Nathan? You’re sick!” The boy’s hollow eyes fastened upon the girl. Deliberately he looked down her figure as she stood in the doorway, from the pile of brown hair with its marcelled wave to the curve of her neck, the slightly heaving bosom, the ample torso and hips, the stolid ankles. “Shut the door!” said Nathan. Milly was puzzled, not a little alarmed. But she shut the door. Across to a chair she moved. Keeping her eyes intently upon him, she raised her forearms, with locked hands, and rested them across the corner of the intervening desk top. The lad continued to gaze upon her. The color of his lips was gruesome. No word was spoken. The clock on the wall showed seventeen minutes past eight. The night wind blew some papers from Charley Newton’s desk in the outer office where the door had been left open. “Nathan! Something horrible’s happened! Can’t you tell me?” “Milly! You know how much trouble father and I are always having around the shop, here?” “Yes! ’Course I know! So does everybody!” “It’s reached the point, Milly, where I can’t stand it any longer.” “All the fellers and girls would follow you out to a person, if you was to ask ’em.” “I’m especially thinking—of—home. You can imagine, can’t you, that if dad quarrels with me here, he acts the same way at home. Well, he does, anyhow! And I’m sick of it!” “Then I should think you’d get out and,” she dropped her eyes, adding unsteadily, “get a home o’ your own.” “I—haven’t—any one—to do it with, Milly.” His face returned to his arms. “I thought I had, but I haven’t.” “You thought you had?” “I thought I had, yes. But the girl went off and married somebody else. I just learned it—to-night!” “She couldn’t have loved you very much to do that, Nathan.” “I suppose not! No!”