"Very good place to be. Go there now."
"Right ho! Well, toodle-oo!"
"The elevator is at the foot of the stairs," said Wally. "You press the bell and up it comes. You hop in and down you go! It's a great invention! Good night!"
"Oh, I say. One moment...."
"Good night!" said Wally.
He closed the door, and ran down the passage.
"Jill!" he called. He opened the bedroom window and stepped out. "Jill!"
There was no reply.
"Jill!" called Wally once again, but again there was no answer.
Wally walked to the parapet, and looked over. Below him the vastness of the city stretched itself in a great triangle, its apex the harbour, its sides the dull silver of the East and Hudson Rivers. Directly before him, crowned with its white lantern, the Metropolitan Tower reared its graceful height to the stars. And all around, in the windows of the tall buildings that looked from this bastion on which he stood almost squat, a million lights stared up at him, the unsleeping eyes of New York. It was a scene of which Wally, always sensitive to beauty, never tired: but to-night it had lost its appeal. A pleasant breeze from the Jersey shore greeted him with a quickening whisper of springtime and romance, but it did not lift the heaviness of his heart. He felt depressed and apprehensive.