Then the ship moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, from the wharf—­so slowly, so imperceptibly, that the people on board thought the city was sliding away from them.  The merchant saw the solid, trim, beautiful vessel turn her bow southward and outward, and glide gently down the river.  Her hull was soon lost to his eyes, but he could see the streamer fluttering at the mast-head over the masts of the other vessels.  While he looked it vanished—­the ship was gone.

Often enough Mr. Lawrence Newt stood leaning his head against the window-frame of his office after the ship had disappeared, and seemed to be looking at the ferry-boats or at the lofty city of Brooklyn.  But he saw neither.  Faster than ship ever sailed, or wind blew, or light flashed, the thought of Lawrence Newt darted, and the merchant, seemingly leaning against his office-window in South Street, was really sitting under palm-trees, or dandling in a palanquin, or chatting in a strange tongue, or gazing in awe upon snowier summits than the villagers of Chamouni have ever seen.

And what was that dark little hand he seemed to himself to press?—­and what were those eyes, soft depths of exquisite darkness, into which through his own eyes his soul seemed to be sinking?

There were clerks busily writing in the outer office.  It was dark in that office when Mr. Newt first occupied the rooms, and Thomas Tray, the book-keeper, who had the lightest place, said that the eyes of Venables, the youngest clerk, were giving out.  Young Venables, a lad of sixteen, supported a mother and sister and infirm father upon his five hundred dollars a year.

“Eyes giving out in my service, Thomas Tray!  I am ashamed of myself.”

And Lawrence Newt hired the adjoining office, knocked down all the walls, and introduced so much daylight that it shone not only into the eyes of young Venables, but into those of his mother and sister and infirm father.

It was scratch, scratch, scratch, all day long in the clerks’ office.  Messengers were coming and going.  Samples were brought in.  Draymen came for orders.  Apple-women and pie-men dropped in about noon, and there were plenty of cheap apples and cheap jokes when the peddlers were young and pretty.  Customers came and brother merchants, who went into Mr. Lawrence Newt’s room.  They talked China news, and South American news, and Mediterranean news.  Their conversation was full of the names of places of which poems and histories have been written.  The merchants joked complacent jokes.  They gossiped a little when business had been discussed.  So young Whitloe was really to marry Magot’s daughter, and the Doolittle money would go to the Magots after all!  And old Jacob Van Boozenberg had actually left off knee-breeches and white cravats, and none of his directors knew him when he came into the Bank in modern costume.  And there was no doubt that Mrs. Dagon wore cotton lace at the Orrys’, for Winslow’s wife said she saw it with her own eyes.