little space where she had rubbed the steam from the pane. Now, all
at once, the strange appearance of the neighbourhood as the carriage
turned north from out Jackson Street into La Salle, forced itself
upon her attention. She uttered an exclamation.

The office buildings on both sides of the street were lighted from
basement to roof. Through the windows she could get glimpses of
clerks and book-keepers in shirt-sleeves bending over desks. Every
office was open, and every one of them full of a feverish activity.
The sidewalks were almost as crowded as though at noontime.
Messenger boys ran to and fro, and groups of men stood on the
corners in earnest conversation. The whole neighbourhood was alive,
and this, though it was close upon one o'clock in the morning!

"Why, what is it all?" she murmured.

Corthell could not explain, but all at once Page cried:

"Oh, oh, I know. See this is Jackson and La Salle streets. Landry
was telling me. The 'commission district,' he called it. And these
are the brokers' offices working overtime--that Helmick deal, you
know."

Laura looked, suddenly stupefied. Here it was, then, that other
drama, that other tragedy, working on there furiously, fiercely
through the night, while she and all those others had sat there in
that atmosphere of flowers and perfume, listening to music. Suddenly
it loomed portentous in the eye of her mind, terrible, tremendous.
Ah, this drama of the "Provision Pits," where the rush of millions
of bushels of grain, and the clatter of millions of dollars, and the