It became dark.  The streets were less crowded.  There were fewer lights.  There was an unpleasant smell of old fish and garbage.  The people Barbara now observed seemed each and all intent upon something or other.  They were not merely loafing in the pure evening air, but hurrying.  There were no more children.  The taxi passed slowly (because of the uneven pavement) through a short, narrow street.  The few lights in this street were nearly all red.

Save for the light in Blizzard’s manufactory, Marrow Lane was dark and deserted.  For some reason or other the city lights had gone out, or had been passed over by the lamplighter.

Through the glazed door Barbara saw the vast black shadow of Blizzard’s profile on the white wall of his office.  There was no bell.  She turned the knob and pushed open the door.  A bell clanged almost in her ear with fierce suddenness.  It was like an alarm.  Her heart beat the quicker for it; the number of her respirations increased.  She was sorry that she had come.  She was frightened; still she stepped through the door-way, and called in her clear? resolute voice: 

“Mr. Blizzard!  It’s Miss Ferris.”

His vast shadow remained motionless like a stain on the wall.  And for a moment he did not answer.  Could she have seen his face itself, instead of only its shadow, she must have turned with a cry of fear and found that the door which had closed behind her, clanging its bell, was locked, and that there was no escape that way.

If she had turned her head she must have seen that her taxi had gone quietly away.

[Illustration:  In the dim light she looked wonderfully young and beautiful.]

In the dim light she looked wonderfully young and beautiful.  The parted opera-cloak disclosed her round straight throat and the broad smooth modelling of the neck from which it rose.  She seemed taller and more stately than in street-dress, and at once younger, more defenceless, more virginal.  There was not enough light in the place to bring out the contrasting colors of her hair.  She looked like a black-haired beauty with ivory-white skin, instead of an amber, red, and brown beauty, with rosy, brown skin.  Her head, small, round, and carried very high, lent her an air of extraordinary breeding and distinction.  She had no thought for the short rose-brocade train of her dinner-dress, and let it trail over the dirty floor.

“Mr. Blizzard!”

This time he answered.  It sounded less like a voice than the hoarse bass croak of a very enormous bull-frog.

“Please step this way.”

Her head, if anything, a little higher than ever, she walked swiftly forward right into the legless man’s office.

His face was very white, swollen, it looked, and blotched with purple.  The veins in his forehead looked like mountain ranges on a topographical map.

“I’ve only a minute,” said Barbara.

He lowered his head now over his ledger, but said nothing.  Then he looked up and into her face steadily, and one by one the purple blotches in his own face paled, and vanished, like the extinguishing of as many hellish lights.  And then to Barbara’s horror a low groan, more like a dog’s than a man’s, passed his tightly pressed lips, came out, and was cut short off, as if with a keen knife.