"It seems ages since I was here!" he remarked. "And yet it's like yesterday. What have I been doing? Dreaming? Will I walk into the printery, and will you come in with the 'Landing of the Pilgrims'?"
Myra laughed, both glad and sad.
"I should have charged you more," said Joe, brusquely. "Fifty cents was too little for that job."
"I told you it would ruin your business, Joe." Strangely then they thought of the fire … her order had been his last piece of business before the tragedy.
They walked east on Eighty-first Street and stopped before the old loft building. A new sign was riveted on the bulletin-board in the doorway.
MARTIN BRIGGS
SUCCESSOR TO
JOE BLAINE & HIS MEN.
Joe looked at it, and started.
"It's no dream, Myra," he sighed. "Times have changed, and we, too, have changed."
Then they went up the elevator to the clash and thunder on the eighth floor. And they felt more and more strange, double, as it were—the old Myra and the old Joe walking with the new Myra and the new Joe. Myra felt a queerness about her heart, a subtle sense of impending events; of great dramatic issues. Something that made her want to cry.
Then they stood a moment before the dirty door, and Joe said: