hallways. It is plain that she wants to seduce me. I am all woman, Mr. Jones. The first time I was generous enough to overlook her insults to my person but now I have taken more than enough. I demand her dismissal. If she is not fired immediately I will complain to higher authorities. Yours respectfully. " Below followed Maxene's signature, in a childish, uneven scrawl.

Mr. Jones had been watching Elsa intently as she read the letter. When it was obvious that she had finished he waited quietly for her to speak, but she did not speak, She sat hunched in her chair with a face growing so pale and contorted that Mr. Jones became alarmed for her. But suddenly she took a deep breath, and calmed, and laid the letter back on Mr. Jones' desk. Still she was wordless.

"Well, Elsa . . . Elsa." Mr. Jones spoke in a low, compassionate tone. "I think you've answered by your silence better than you could with words." He leaned his elbows on the desk for several moments, his face resting in his hands.

"I'm sorrier than I can say, Elsa," he finally resumed, "but I'll have to ask for your resignation, the end of this week." Elsa nodded dumbly, as if she had expected this.

"I wish it could be some other way, Elsa," he continued. "Even with things as they are I would rather see this this other woman go, than you. I think. I understand you. There've been plenty of tales going around about this Miss, er . . . about Maxene. She may be . . ah. normal, but she's hardly the one to play the part of outraged innocence, of that I'm sure.

"But I see the situation this way, Elsa. Now all this is still a private matter, and I could and would gladly help you get some other position in the city, outside of State employ. But if you stayed on, this other party would make so much noise that you'd have to leave anyhow, and by the time she got through with you, you couldn't find a job in this or any city. Have your resignation on my desk tomorrow morning. Say that you've been offered a position at a better salary. I promise you that I'll help you get it." The finality of tone in these last words indicated that their conversation was at a close. Elsa rose from her chair with effort and started haltingly for the door.

“All right, Mr. Jones," she said brokenly, in a rough, strange voice. “I'll have it ready for you . . . tomorrow."

It was five after twelve and the rest of the office staff had vacated for lunch. Elsa fell into the chair at her desk. She felt choked, stifled, the thought of food sickened her. She must get out, she thought, somewhere outside where she could be alone. The roof . . . yes, the roof. It was six flights up. She did not want to see anyone just then. She would take the stair. Slowly she mounted the long flights, breathing more and more heavily, stopping for a moment at each landing to rest against the balustrade. At the twentieth floor the stair rose to the roof through a dismal attic-like passage, criss-crossed by bleak steel beams. Dust lay thickly everywhere and the air was scorching. Elsa's head throbbed and her heart pounded as she reached the heavy, metal-clad door that opened onto the roof, Leaning her weight against it, she pulled on the heavy latch, and the door creaked slowly open.

The midsummer sun blinded her after the gloom of the twentieth floor and the wind over the black tarred roof struck her face like a breath from an inferno. The steel door clanged shut as she sought a narrow strip of shade to one side of the covered exit. It's all over, she told herself, I can't go on.. I can't go back to the office . . . there's nowhere for me to go. The pain around her heart became exquisite, like dagger-points, pressing. She gasped for breath and began to make her way with pitiful tottering steps towards the low parapet that skirted the edge of the roof. The sun and the brazen sky blazed mercilessly and at the parapet the noises of the city swept up in a loud discordant roar. The babel of sights and sounds was meaningless, it was not for her. She was alone in a vast world that excluded her inflexibly, unfeelingly. Her brain felt caught in the relentless pressure of a vise. She was with-

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