Laura, after a while, lost in thought, spoke but little. It had been a great evening--because of other things than mere music. Corthell had again asked her to marry him, and she, carried away by the excitement of the moment, had answered him encouragingly. On the heels of this she had had that little talk with the capitalist Jadwin, and somehow since then she had been steadied, calmed. The cold air and the rain in her face had cooled her flaming cheeks and hot temples. She asked herself now if she did really, honestly love the artist. No, she did not; really and honestly she did not; and now as the carriage rolled on through the deserted streets of the business districts, she knew very well that she did not want to marry him. She had done him an injustice; but in the matter of righting herself with him, correcting his false impression, she was willing to procrastinate. She wanted him to love her, to pay her all those innumerable little attentions which he managed with such faultless delicacy. To say: "No, Mr. Corthell, I do not love you, I will never be your wife," would--this time--be final. He would go away, and she had no intention of allowing him to do that. But abruptly her reflections were interrupted. While she thought it all over she had been looking out of the carriage window through a little space where she had rubbed the steam from the pane. Now, all at once, the strange appearance of the neighbourhood as the carriage turned north from out Jackson Street into La Salle, forced itself upon her attention. She uttered an exclamation. The office buildings on both sides of the street were lighted from basement to roof. Through the windows she could get glimpses of clerks and book-keepers in shirt-sleeves bending over desks. Every office was open, and every one of them full of a feverish activity. The sidewalks were almost as crowded as though at noontime. Messenger boys ran to and fro, and groups of men stood on the corners in earnest conversation. The whole neighbourhood was alive, and this, though it was close upon one o'clock in the morning! "Why, what is it all?" she murmured. Corthell could not explain, but all at once Page cried: "Oh, oh, I know. See this is Jackson and La Salle streets. Landry was telling me. The 'commission district,' he called it. And these are the brokers' offices working overtime--that Helmick deal, you know."