half of his startled exclamation, "What the dev--"

The elevator came and Laurie leaped into it.
"Down," he said briefly.

The operator was on his way up to the twelfth floor, but something in the expression of his passenger made him change his plans. Also, it accelerated his movements. The car descended briskly to the ground floor, from which point the operator was privileged to watch the progress of the temperamental Mr. Devon, who had plunged through the main entrance of the building and across the square without a word to the hall attendants, or a backward glance.

As he reached the studio building Laurie recalled himself to a memory of the conventions. He entered without undue haste and sought the door of the waiting lift. It was noon, and an operator he had not seen before was on duty. 
"Top floor," directed Laurie, and stepped into the car. The operator hesitated. He did not remember this tenant, but he must belong to the house, as he wore no hat or coat. Probably he was a newcomer and had run downstairs to mail an important letter, as the old building held no mail-chute. While these reflections passed slowly through his mind, his car rose as slowly. To the mentally fuming young man at his side its progress was intolerably deliberate. He held himself in, however, and even went through the pantomime of pausing in the top-floor hall to search a pocket as if for a latch-key.

Satisfied, the attendant started the elevator on its descent, and as it sank from sight Laurie looked around him for Number Twenty-nine. He discovered it in an eye-flash, on the door at the right. The next instant he had reached this door and was softly turning the knob.

The door did not yield. He had not expected it to give, and he knew exactly what he meant to do. He stepped back a few feet, then with a rush hurled his shoulder against the wood with the full force of his football training in the effort. The lock yielded, and under the force of his own momentum, the visitor shot into the room. Then, recovering his equilibrium, he pushed the door into place and stood with his back against it, breathing heavily and feeling rather foolish.

He was staring at the girl before him, who had risen at his entrance. Her expression was so full of astonished resentment, and so lacking in any other emotion, that for a sickening moment he believed he had made an idiot of himself, that he had not really seen what he thought he had seen in the glass. A small table separated him from the girl. Still staring at her, in the 

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