of the stenographers, and his heart was torn when he heard the
surmises as to his employer's married or single estate. He used to
watch Carroll when he left the office at night, and satisfied himself
that he turned towards Sixth Avenue, and then he satisfied himself no
more. Carroll plunged into mystery at night as he did for Banbridge
in the morning. It was borne in upon the clerk who had an opulent
imagination that Carroll was a great swell and went every night to
one of the swellest of the up-town clubs, where he resided in luxury
and the most genteel and lordly dissipation. He had, at the same
time, a jealousy of and a profound pride in Carroll. Carroll himself
had a sort of kindly scorn of him, and treated him very well. He was
not of the description of weak character who antagonized him.

As for the girls in the inner office, Carroll only recognized them
there. Seen on the street, away from the environment, he would simply
not have dreamed he had ever seen them. He knew them only in their
frames. As for the middle-aged man at the book-keeper's desk, he
disturbed him in a way that he would not admit to himself. He spoke
to him rather curtly. If he could avoid speaking to him he did so. He
had a way of sending directions to the book-keeper by the young man.
The book-keeper, if he also surmised Carroll's private life, gave no
sign, although he had ample time. He sat at his desk faithfully from
eight o'clock until half-past four, but the work which he had to do
was somewhat amazing to a mind which stopped to reason. Sometimes
even this man, who understood the world in general as a place to be
painfully clambered and tramped and even crawled over, to the
accomplishment of the ulterior end of remaining upon it at all, and
who paid very little attention to other people's affairs, except as
they directly concerned the tragic pettiness of his own, wondered a
little at the nature of the accounts which he faithfully kept.