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live?”
    “In the next street from us. I’d better go home——”
    “It would be much better to get it over first. You can’t stand any more of this. Come along now—you won’t feel anything.”
    “But what’s he like? Have you tried him?” cried Miss Green, shrinking as if asked to jump from a window into a sheet sixty feet below.
    “It’ll be all right. Really it will.” Katherine pulled Miss Green’s arm: the girl resisted a little, then finally gave way. “It’ll be much the best thing. Don’t be afraid.”
    So Miss Green, looking dazed at the pain rooted in her head, allowed herself to be led across the snow and across the street, avoiding the traffic, and a brewer’s wagon drawn by two dray-horses that tossed plumes of breath into the cold air amid a jingling of medallions. Merion Street was a narrow connection between one of the streets leading from this square and Bank Street, where they had been going. On one side of it were dark offices, the premises of an oculist, a chemist’s shop. On the other were the backentrances to some large stores, and the warehouse of a wine and spirit merchant. The two of them passed un-remarked along the wide pavements, for everyone out that day seemed contracted by the cold, having no attention to spare for others. A warm breath came from the swing doors of a club just before they turned into the narrow entrance of Merion Street, which bore its name high up on the wall in elaborate and out-moded letters.
    “It’s just along here,” said Katherine. They reached an entrance with a plate bearing the name of A. G. Talmadge . Miss Green looked apprehensively up the dark steps, like a dog knowing it has been brought to be destroyed .
    “I think——” she began, in a whisper. “Is this it?”
    “Don’t be afraid,” said Katherine, wishing that in some way she could put more strength into Miss Green’s thin body. Her wristwatch said five to eleven. They mounted the steps, and climbed the stairs to the first landing.
    There was a sour smell here, as if the floors swabbed by the cleaner were never properly dry, and the woodwork was varnished a dark brown. The landing should have been lit by an inaccessible window, but this had been painted over with streaky black paint, and they had difficulty in seeing more than the outlines of things: the banisters, a bucket of sand on the linoleum. Then they noticed a small board directing them into a poky corridor. They could hardly see. There were four doors in this corridor, with glass upper panels: two of them were blank. The others said “waiting room” and “surgery”.
    Katherine tried the first one. It was locked.
    “Perhaps,” said Miss Green, whispering, “there’s nobody here.”
    “Surely there must be,” said Katherine. She was somewhat puzzled.
    Then a shadow rose slowly up against the glass panels of the surgery door, and hung there for a moment, makingthe passage even more obscure. It was broad and humped, as if bent in thought. They watched it silently. At last the door began to open, and a man stood on the threshold, his hand groping in his jacket pocket. He looked at them, fingers still busy.
    In the darkness of the corridor they could see that he was a youngish man, but he had about him no youthful qualities. He wore spectacles and had pale blue eyes. His arms and shoulders were powerful, and he was dressed in a pale green sports coat buttoned closely and looking too small, and tubular flannel trousers. He half-resembled an idiot boy whose body had developed at the expense of his mind.
    “Good morning,” she said. “We——”
    “If you’re looking for me,” he said, disregarding her, in a slow, flat voice that sounded as if his tongue was too large for his mouth, “I don’t work on Saturday mornings.”
    “Oh—but my friend here——”
    The man did not answer. Lowering his head, he took a Yale key from his pocket and opened one of the nameless doors. When he was in, he pushed it nearly