Presently she became aware that her telephone was ringing, and ringing as though it had been at it for some time.

“Oh bother!  They won’t let us have even a little minute together after all these years.  I suppose you must let me go—­”

She turned from the desk with the most beautiful smile he had ever seen upon a face.

“It’s for you!”

“For me?” he echoed like a man in a dream.  “That is—­very strange.”

Strange, indeed!  Outside, the dull world was wagging on as before, unaware that there had taken place in this enchanted room the most momentous event in history.

He took the receiver from her with a left hand which trembled, and with his untrained right somehow caught and imprisoned both of hers.  “Stand right by me,” he begged hurriedly.

Now he hoisted the receiver in the general direction of his ear, and said in what he doubtless thought was quite a businesslike manner:  “Well?”

“Mr. Queed?  This is Mr. Hickok,” said the incisive voice over the wire.  “Well, what in the mischief are you doing up there?”

“I’m—­I’m—­transacting some important business—­with the Department,” said Mr. Surface, and gave Sharlee’s hands a desperate squeeze.  “But my—­”

“Well, we’re transacting some important business down here.  Never should have found you but for Mr. Dayne’s happening along.  Did you know that West had resigned?”

“No, has he?  But I started—­”

“Peace to his ashes.  De mortuis nil nisi bonum.  The directors are meeting now to elect his successor.  Only one name has been mentioned.  There’s only one editor we’ll hear of for the paper.  Won’t you come back to us, my boy?”

The young man cleared his throat.  “Come?  I’d—­think it the greatest honor—­there’s nothing I’d rather have.  You are all too—­too kind to me—­I can’t tell you—­but—­”

“Oh, no buts!  But us no buts now!  I’ll go tell them—­”

“No—­wait,” called the young man, hastily.  “If I come, I don’t come as Queed, you know.  My name is Henry G. Surface.  That may make a difference—­”

“Come as Beelzebub!” said the old man, testily.  “We’ve had enough of hiring a name for the Post.  This time we’re after a man, and by the Lord, we’ve got one!”

Henry Surface turned away from the telephone, struggling with less than his usual success to show an unmoved face.

“You—­know?”

She nodded:  in her blue-spar eyes, there was the look of a winged victory.  “That was the little secret—­don’t you think it was a nice one?  It is your magnificent boast come true....  And you don’t even say ’I told you so’!”

He looked past her out into the park.  Over the budding trees, already bursting and spreading their fans of green, far off over the jagged stretch of roofs, his gaze sought the battered gray Post building and the row of windows behind which he had so often sat and worked.  A mist came before his eyes; the trees curveted and swam; and his visible world swung upside down and went out in a singing and spark-shot blackness.