He had gone to work one morning, haggard after a sleepless night.
As he approached the Treasury, the big building seemed to loom up before him like a prison. What, after all, were those thousands who wended their way every morning to the great beehives of Uncle Sam but slaves chained to an occupation which was deadening?
He flung the question later at the little stenographer who sat next to him. "Miss Terry," he asked, "how long have you been here?"
She looked up at him, brightly. She was short and thin, with a sprinkle of gray in her hair. But she was well-groomed and nicely dressed in her mannish silk shirt and gray tailored skirt.
"Twenty years," she said, snapping a rubber band about her note-book.
"And always at this desk?"
"Oh, dear, no. I came in at nine hundred, and now I am getting twelve hundred."
"But always in this room?"
She nodded. "Yes. And it is very nice. Most of the people have been here as long as I, and some of them much longer. There's Major Orr, for example, he has been here since just after the War."
"Do you ever feel as if you were serving sentence?"