"Oh, it will!" But he said good-bye at the vestibule with a vague idea that she might have trouble explaining him to any very particular friends. He saw her mount an old-fashioned carry-all, saw her turn to wave a farewell. The carry-all disappeared. He started toward the Hill ambulance, but he was still thinking, "Now what is the thing which a girl like _that_ would consider more self-sacrificing than nursing?" II MR. NORCROSS WASTES TIME Robert H. Norcross looked up from a sheet of figures, and turned his vision upon the serrated spire of old Trinity Church, far below. Since his eyes began to fail, he had cultivated the salutary habit of resting them every half-hour or so. The action was merely mechanical; his mind still lingered on the gross earnings of the reorganized L.D. and M. railroad. It was a sultry afternoon in early fall. The roar of lower New York came up to him muffled by the haze. The traffic seemed to move more slowly than usual, as though that haze clogged its wheels and congealed its oils. The very tugs and barges, on the river beyond, partook of the season's languor. They crept over the oily waves at a sluggard pace, their smoke-streamers dropping wearily toward the water. The eyes of Robert H. Norcross swept this vista for the allotted two minutes of rest. Presently--and with the very slightest change of expression--they fixed themselves on a point so far below that he needs must lean forward and rest his arms on the window sill in order to look. He wasted thus a minute; and such a wasting, in the case of Robert H. Norcross, was a considerable matter. The Sunday newspapers--when in doubt--always played the income of Robert H. Norcross by periods of months, weeks, days, hours and minutes. Every minute of his time, their reliable statisticians computed, was worth a trifle less than forty-seven dollars. Regardless of the waste of time, he continued to gaze until the watch on his desk had ticked off five minutes, or two hundred and thirty-five dollars. The thing which had caught and held his attention was a point in the churchyard of old Trinity near to the south door.