"What's the good of trying to do anything anyhow!" he muttered,
looking gloomily down into the street. "My level is just the
hack-work of a local Sunday supplement, and I am a fool to think
of anything else."

His enthusiasm in the matter of the "City of Everett" was cold and
dead in a moment. He could see no possibilities in the subject
whatever. His "idea" of a few minutes previous seemed ridiculous
and overwrought. He would go back to the office and grind out his
copy from the exchange editor's clipping.

Just then his eye was caught by a familiar figure in trim, well-
fitting black halted on the opposite corner waiting for the
passage of a cable car. It was Travis Bessemer. No one but she
could carry off such rigorous simplicity in the matter of dress so
well: black skirt, black Russian blouse, tiny black bonnet and
black veil, white kids with black stitching. Simplicity itself.
Yet the style of her, as Condy Rivers told himself, flew up and
hit you in the face; and her figure--was there anything more
perfect? and the soft pretty effect of her yellow hair seen
through the veil--could anything be more fetching? and her smart
carriage and the fling of her fine broad shoulders, and--no, it
was no use; Condy had to run down to speak to her.

"Come, come!" she said as he pretended to jostle against her on
the curbstone without noticing her; "you had best go to work.
Loafing at ten o'clock on the street corners--the idea!"

"It IS not--it can not be--and yet it is--it is SHE," he