Manton carried on various lines of business, and for Middleville, he was held to be something of a merchant and broker.  Lane was wholly familiar with the halls, the several lettered doors, the large unpartitioned office at the back of the building.  Here his slow progress was intercepted by a slip of a girl who asked him what he wanted.  Before answering, Lane took stock of the girl.  She might have been all of fifteen—­no older.  She had curly bobbed hair, and a face that would have been comely but for the powder and rouge.  She was chewing gum, and she ogled Lane.

“I want to see Mr. Manton,” Lane said.

“What name, please.”

“Daren Lane.”

She tripped off toward the door leading to Manton’s private offices, and Lane’s gaze, curiously following her, found her costume to be startling even to his expectant eyes.  Then she disappeared.  Lane’s gaze sought the corner and desk that once upon a time had been his.  A blond young lady, also with bobbed hair, was operating a typewriter at his desk.  She glanced up, and espying Lane, she suddenly stopped her work.  She recognized him.  But, if she were Hattie Wilson, it was certain that Lane did not recognize her.  Then the office girl returned.

“Step this way, please.  Mr. Smith will see you.”

How singularly it struck Lane that not once in three years had he thought of Smith.  But when he saw him, the intervening months were as nothing.  Lean, spare, pallid, with baggy eyes, and the nose of a drinker, Smith had not changed.

“How do, Lane.  So you’re back?  Welcome to our city,” he said, extending a nerveless hand that felt to Lane like a dead fish.

“Hello, Mr. Smith.  Yes, I’m back,” returned Lane, taking the chair Smith indicated.  And then he met the inevitable questions as best he could in order not to appear curt or uncivil.

“I’d like to see Mr. Manton to ask for my old job,” interposed Lane, presently.

“He’s busy now, Lane, but maybe he’ll see you.  I’ll find out.”

Smith got up and went out.  Lane sat there with a vague sense of absurdity in the situation.  The click of a typewriter sounded from behind him.  He wanted to hurry out.  He wanted to think of other things, and twice he drove away memory of the girl he had just left at Doctor Bronson’s office.  Presently Smith returned, slipping along in his shiny black suit, flat-footed and slightly bowed, with his set dull expression.

“Lane, Mr. Manton asks you to please excuse him.  He’s extremely busy,” said Smith.  “I told him that you wanted your old job back.  And he instructed me to tell you he had been put to the trouble of breaking in a girl to take your place.  She now does the work you used to have—­very satisfactorily, Mr. Manton thinks, and at less pay.  So, of course, a change is impossible.”

“I see,” returned Lane, slowly, as he rose to go.  “I had an idea that might be the case.  I’m finding things—­a little different.”