It took him a few minutes to get the sense of what they said. He stared at them dully. But when he first repeated it to himself aloud, it seemed already old news; he felt as if he had known it for a very long time: "The MAIL office caught fire yesterday, and the whole thing is burned to the ground." "Caught fire yesterday, and the whole thing is burned to the ground: yes, of course," Barry said. He was not conscious of starting for the scene, he was simply there. A fringe of idle watchers, obscured in the fog, stood about the sunken ruins of what had been the MAIL building. Barry joined them. He did not answer when a dozen sympathetic murmurs addressed him, because he was not conscious of hearing a single voice. He stood silently, looking down at the twisted great knots of metal that had been the new presses, the great wave of soaked and half-burned newspapers that had been the last issue of the MAIL. The fire had been twenty-four hours ago, but the ruins were still smoking. Lengths of charred woodwork, giving forth a sickening odor, dripped water still; here and there brave little spurts of flame still sucked noisily. A twisted typewriter stood erect in steaming ashes; a lunch-basket, with a red, fringed napkin in it, had somehow escaped with only a wetting. Barry noticed that the walls of the German bakery next door were badly singed, that one show-window was cracked across, and that the frosted wedding-cake inside stood in a pool of dirty water. He was presently aware that someone was telling him that nobody was to blame. Details were volunteered, and he listened quietly, like a dispassionate onlooker. "Hits you pretty hard, Barry," sympathetic voices said. "Ruins me," he answered briefly. And it dawned upon him sickly and certainly that it was true. He was ruined now. All his hopes had been rooted here, in what was now this mass of wet ashes steaming up into the fog. Here had been his chance for a livelihood, and a name; his chance to stand before the community for what was good, and strong, and helpful. He had been proud because his editorials were beginning to be quoted here and there; he had been keenly ambitious for Sidney's plans, her hopes for Old Paloma. How vain it all was now, and how preposterous it seemed that only an hour ago he had let his thoughts of the future include her--always so far above him, and now so infinitely removed! She would be sympathetic, he knew; she would be all kindness and generosity. And perhaps, six months ago, he would have accepted more generosity from her; but Barry had found himself now, and he knew that she had done for him all he would let her do.