"No," said Max, "it ain't high. And the stairs are done, you know."
Hilda lifted the coat a little way with both hands, and put out one small toe. Bannon looked at it, and shook his head. "You'll get your feet wet," he said.
She looked up and met Bannon's eyes again, with an expression that puzzled
Max.
"I don't care. It's almost time to go home, anyway."
So they went out, and closed the door; and Max, who had been told to "stay behind and keep house," looked after them, and then at the door, and an odd expression of slow understanding came into his face. It was not in what they had said, but there was plainly a new feeling between them. For the first time in his life, Max felt that another knew Hilda better than he did. The way Bannon had looked at her, and she at him; the mutual understanding that left everything unsaid; the something—Max did not know what it was, but he saw it and felt it, and it disturbed him. He sat on the table, and swung his feet, while one expression chased another over his face. When he finally got himself together, he went to the door, and opening it, looked out at the black, dim shape of the elevator that, stood big and square, only a little way before him, shutting out whatever he might else have seen of rushing sky or dim-lighted river, or of the railroads and the steamboats and the factories and rolling mills beyond. It was as if this elevator were his fate, looming before him and shutting out the forward view. In whatever thoughts he had had of the future, in whatever plans, and they were few, which he had revolved in his head, there had always been a place for Hilda. He did not see just what he was to do, just what he was to become, without her. He stood there for a long time, leaning against the door-jamb with his hands in his pockets, and the sharper gusts of rain whirled around the end of the little building and beat on him. And then—well, it was Charlie Bannon; and Max knew that he was glad it was no one else.
The narrow windows in the belt gallery had no glass, and the rain came driving through them into the shadows, each drop catching the white shine of the electric lights outside. The floor was trampled with mud and littered with scraps of lumber, tool boxes, empty nail kegs, and shavings. The long, gloomy gallery was empty when Bannon and Hilda stepped into it, excepting a group of men at the farther end, installing the rollers for the belt conveyor—they could be seen indistinctly against a light in the river house.
The wind came roaring around the building, and the gallery trembled and shook. Hilda caught her breath and stopped short.
"It's all right," said Bannon. "She's bound to move some."
"I know—" she laughed—"I wasn't expecting it—it startled me a little."
"Watch where you step." He took her arm and guided her slowly between the heaps of rubbish.