"I want to take a walk with you. May I?"

She became dead white, and the terror of nature's resistless purpose
with men and women, that awful gravitation, that passion of creation
that links worlds and uses men and women, went through them both.

"I may?" he was whispering.

Her "Yes" was almost inaudible.

So Joe put on his coat, and slapped over his head a queer gray slouch
hat, and called over Marty.

"I won't be back to-night, Marty!" he said.

Then at the door he gave one last glance at his life-work, the orderly
presses, the harnessed men, and left it all as if it must surely be
there when he returned. He was proud at that moment to be Joe Blaine,
with his name in red letters on the glass door, and under his name
"Power Printer." His wife would be able to hold her head high.

The frail elevator took them clanking, bumping, slipping, down, down
past eight floors, to the street level. The elevator boy, puffing at his
cigarette, remarked, amiably:

"Gee! it's a windy day. It's gittin' on to winter, all right....
Good-night, Mr. Blaine!"

"Good-night, Tom," said Joe.