He walked faster, for the night was cold.  And there was a chill, too, in this long waiting game.

* * * * *

Roger heard Deborah come up to bed, and he wondered what they had been talking about.  Of the topic he himself had broached—­each other, love and marriage?

“Possibly—­for a minute or two—­but no more,” he grumbled.  “For don’t forget there’s work to discuss, there’s that mass meeting still on her mind.  And God knows a woman’s mind is never any child’s play.  But when you load a mass meeting on top—­”

Here he yawned long and noisily.  His head ached, he felt sore and weak—­“from the evening’s entertainment my other daughter gave me.”  No, he was through, he had had enough.  They could settle things to suit themselves.  Let Edith squander her money on frills, the more expensive the better.  Let her turn poor Johnny out of the house, let her give full play to her motherhood.  And if that scared Deborah out of marrying, let her stay single and die an old maid.  He had worried enough for his family.  He wanted a little peace in his house.

Drowsily he closed his eyes, and a picture came into his mind of the city as he had seen it only a few nights before.  It had been so cool, so calm and still.  At dusk he had been in the building of the great tower on Madison Square; and when he had finished his business there, on an impulse he had gone up to the top, and through a wide low window had stood a few moments looking down.  A soft light snow was falling; and from high up in the storm, through the silent whirling flakes, he had looked far down upon lights below, in groups and clusters, dancing lines, between tall phantom buildings, blurred and ghostly, faint, unreal.  From all that bustle and fever of life there had risen to him barely a sound.  And the town had seemed small and lonely, a little glow in the infinite dark, fulfilling its allotted place for its moment in eternity.  Suddenly from close over his head like a brazen voice out of the sky, hard and deafening and clear, the great bell had boomed the hour.  Then again had come the silence, and the cool, soft, whirling snow.

Like a dream it faded all away, and with a curious smile on his face presently Roger fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXX

And now he felt the approach at last of another season of quiet, one of those uneventful times which come in family histories.  As he washed and dressed for dinner, one night a little later, he thought with satisfaction, “How nicely things are smoothing out.”  His dressing for dinner, as a rule, consisted in changing his low wing collar and his large round detachable cuffs; but to-night he changed his cravat as well, from a black to a pearl gray one.  He hoped the whole winter would be pearl gray.