|WHERE was Betty, anyway! And why hadn't she called up the office. It began to seem to him that she might have done that after her little effort of the morning. Hitherto, before that ridiculous marriage of hers, she had always put up with Sue Wilde, over in Tenth Street. Perhaps she was there now. Mental pictures began to form of Betty's luxuriant blonde beauty. And it was something for a peach like that to leave home and rich husband, come hurrying down to New York and call you up at an ungodly hour in the morning. He remembered suddenly, warmly, the time he had first kissed Betty--over in New Jersey, on a green hillside, of a glowing afternoon. His laziness fell away. Briskly he walked around into Tenth Street and rang Sue's bell. Betty answered--prettier than ever, a rounded but swaying young creature who said little and that slowly. “Hello!” she said, “Sue's out.” “I don't want Sue. Came to see you, Betty. I'm fired--out of a job--and while it lasts, hilariously happy. How about a bite at the Parisian?” So they had humorously early tea at the old French restaurant near the Square. Then Betty went up-town on the bus for a little shopping, and Hy walked, at last, back to the office. They had decided to meet again for dinner. Scripture House loomed before him--long, dingy, grim in the gay sunshine. He stood motionless on the farther curb, staring at it. Had three years of his life been spent, miserably spent, on a treadmill, in that haunt of hypocrisy? Had he been selling his presumably immortal soul on the instalment plan, at forty-five a week? Or was it a hideous dream? Was he dreaming now? He shuddered. Then, slowly, he walked across the street, deriding to pack up and get out for good just as swiftly as the thing could be done. He was glad, downright glad, that it was his character that had been so crudely assailed. That let him out. He needn't be decent--needn't wait a month to break in a new man--nothing like that! He wondered mildly what the Worm would say, and Peter? It might be necessary to borrow a bit until he could get going again. Though perhaps they would take him back on the old paper until he could find something regular. The sense of being haunted by a dream grew as he went up in the elevator and walked along the hall. He saw with new eyes the old building he had so long taken for granted--saw the worn hollows in the oak floors, the patched cracks in the plaster; he smelt the old musty odor with new' repugnance; noted the legends on office doors he passed with a wry smile, the Reverend This and the Reverend That, the Society for the Suppression of Such and Such, the commercially religious Somebody & Company.