“Oh, yes:  as soon as I’m up,” Ralph answered.  They understood each other.

Clare had urged him to come down to Long Island and complete his convalescence there, but he preferred to stay in Washington Square till he should be strong enough for the journey to the Adirondacks, whither Laura had already preceded him with Paul.  He did not want to see any one but his mother and grandfather till his legs could carry him to Mr. Spragg’s office.  It was an oppressive day in mid-August, with a yellow mist of heat in the sky, when at last he entered the big office-building.  Swirls of dust lay on the mosaic floor, and a stale smell of decayed fruit and salt air and steaming asphalt filled the place like a fog.  As he shot up in the elevator some one slapped him on the back, and turning he saw Elmer Moffatt at his side, smooth and rubicund under a new straw hat.

Moffatt was loudly glad to see him.  “I haven’t laid eyes on you for months.  At the old stand still?”

“So am I,” he added, as Ralph assented.  “Hope to see you there again some day.  Don’t forget it’s my turn this time:  glad if I can be any use to you.  So long.”  Ralph’s weak bones ached under his handshake.

“How’s Mrs. Marvell?” he turned back from his landing to call out; and Ralph answered:  “Thanks; she’s very well.”

Mr. Spragg sat alone in his murky inner office, the fly-blown engraving of Daniel Webster above his head and the congested scrap-basket beneath his feet.  He looked fagged and sallow, like the day.

Ralph sat down on the other side of the desk.  For a moment his throat contracted as it had when he had tried to question his sister; then he asked:  “Where’s Undine?”

Mr. Spragg glanced at the calendar that hung from a hat-peg on the door.  Then he released the Masonic emblem from his grasp, drew out his watch and consulted it critically.

“If the train’s on time I presume she’s somewhere between Chicago and Omaha round about now.”

Ralph stared at him, wondering if the heat had gone to his head.  “I don’t understand.”

“The Twentieth Century’s generally considered the best route to Dakota,” explained Mr. Spragg, who pronounced the word ROWT.

“Do you mean to say Undine’s in the United States?”

Mr. Spragg’s lower lip groped for the phantom tooth-pick.  “Why, let me see:  hasn’t Dakota been a state a year or two now?”

“Oh, God—­” Ralph cried, pushing his chair back violently and striding across the narrow room.

As he turned, Mr. Spragg stood up and advanced a few steps.  He had given up the quest for the tooth-pick, and his drawn-in lips were no more than a narrow depression in his beard.  He stood before Ralph, absently shaking the loose change in his trouser-pockets.

Ralph felt the same hardness and lucidity that had come to him when he had heard his sister’s answer.

“She’s gone, you mean?  Left me?  With another man?”