An interesting and highly complicated enterprise is such a construction. It was of the kind in which Norman's mind especially delighted; Hercules is himself only in presence of an herculean labor. But on that day he could not concentrate, and because of a trifle! He felt like a giant disabled by a grain of dust in the eye—yes, a mere grain of dust! "I must love Josephine even more than I realize, to be fretted by such a paltry thing," thought he. And after patiently enduring the client for half an hour without being able to grasp the outlines of the project, he rose abruptly and said: "I must get into my mind the points you've given me before we can go further. So I'll not waste your time."

This sounded very like "Clear out—you've bored me to my limit of endurance." But the motions of a mind such as he knew Norman had were beyond and high above the client's mere cunning at dollar-trapping. He felt that it was the part of wisdom—also soothing to vanity—to assume that Norman meant only what his words conveyed. When Norman was alone he rang for an office boy and said:

"Please ask Miss Halliday to come here."

The boy hesitated. "Miss Hallowell?" he suggested.

"Hallowell—thanks—Hallowell," said Norman.

And it somehow pleased him that he had not remembered her name. How significant it was of her insignificance that so accurate a memory as his should make the slip. When she, impassive, colorless, nebulous, stood before him the feeling of pleasure was, queerly enough, mingled with a sense of humiliation. What absurd vagaries his imagination had indulged in! For it must have been sheer hallucination, his seeing those wonders in her. How he would be laughed at if those pictures he had made of her could be seen by any other eyes! "They must be right when they say a man in love is touched in the head. Only, why the devil should I have happened to get these crazy notions about a person I've no interest in?" However, the main point—and most satisfactory—was that Josephine would be at a glance convinced—convicted—made ashamed of her absurd attack. A mere grain of dust.

"Just a moment, please," he said to Miss Hallowell. "I want to give you a note of introduction."

He wrote the note to Josephine Burroughs: "Here she is. I've told her you wish to talk with her about doing some work for you." When he finished he looked up. She was standing at the window, gazing out upon the tremendous panorama of skyscrapers that makes New York the most astounding of the cities of men. He was about to speak. The words fell back unuttered. For once more the hallucination—or whatever it was—laid hold of him. That figure by the window—that beautiful girl, with the great dreamy eyes and the soft and languorous nuances of golden haze over her hair, over the skin of perfectly rounded cheek and perfectly moulded chin curving with ideal grace into the whitest and firmest of throats——

"Am I mad? or do I really see what I see?" he muttered.

He turned away to clear his eyes for a second view, for an attempt to settle it whether he saw or imagined. When he looked again, she was observing him—and once more she was the obscure, the cipherlike Miss Hallowell, ten-dollar-a-week typewriter and not worth it. Evidently she noted his confusion and was vaguely alarmed by it. He recovered himself as best he could and debated whether it was wise to send her to Josephine. Surely those transformations were not altogether his own hallucinations; and Josephine might see, might humiliate him by suspecting more strongly—... Ridiculous! He held out the letter.

"The lady to whom this is addressed wishes to see you. Will you go there, right away, please? It may be that you'll get the chance to make some extra money. You've no objection, I suppose?"

She took the letter hesitatingly.

"You will find her agreeable, I think," continued he. "At any rate, the trip can do no harm."

She hesitated a moment longer, as if weighing what he had said. "No, it will do no harm," she finally said. Then, with a delightful color and a quick transformation into a vision of young shyness, "Thank you, Mr. Norman. Thank you so much."

"Not at all—not in the least," he stammered, the impulse strong to take the note back and ask her to return to her desk.

When the door closed behind her he rose and paced about the room uneasily. He was filled with disquiet, with hazy apprehension. His nerves were unsteady, as if he were going through an exhausting strain. He sat and tried to force himself to work. Impossible. "What sort of damn fool attack is this?" he exclaimed, pacing about again. He searched his mind in vain for any cause adequate to explain his unprecedented state. "If I did not know that I was well—absolutely well—I'd think I was about to have an illness—something in the brain."

He appealed to that friend in any trying hour, his sense of humor. He laughed at himself; but his nerves refused to return to the normal. He rushed from his private office on various pretexts, each time lingered in the general room, talking aimlessly with Tetlow—and watching the door. When she at last appeared, he guiltily withdrew, feeling that everyone was observing his perturbation and was wondering at it and jesting about it. "And what the devil am I excited about?" he demanded of himself. What indeed? He seated himself, rang the bell.

"If Miss Hallowell has got back," he said to the office boy, "please ask her to come in."

"I think she's gone out to lunch," said the boy. "I know she came in a while ago. She passed along as you was talking to Mr. Tetlow."

Norman felt himself flushing. "Any time will do," he said, bending over the papers spread out before him—the papers in the case of the General Traction Company resisting the payment of its taxes. A noisome odor seemed to be rising from the typewritten sheets. He made a wry face and flung the papers aside with a gesture of disgust. "They never do anything honest," he said to himself. "From the stock-jobbing owners down to the nickel-filching conductors they steal—steal—steal!" And then he wondered at, laughed at, his heat. What did it matter? An ant pilfering from another ant and a sparrow stealing the crumb found by another sparrow—a man robbing another man—all part of the universal scheme. Only a narrow-minded ignoramus would get himself wrought up over it; a philosopher would laugh—and take what he needed or happened to fancy.

The door opened. Miss Hallowell entered, a small and demure hat upon her masses of thick fair hair arranged by anything but unskillful fingers. "You wished to see me?" came in the quiet little voice, sweet and frank and shy.

He roused himself from pretended abstraction.

"Oh—it's you?" he said pleasantly. "They said you were out."

"I was going to lunch. But if you've anything for me to do, I'll be glad to stay."

"No—no. I simply wished to say that if Miss Burroughs wished to make an arrangement with you, we'd help you about carrying out your part of it."

She was pale—so pale that it brought out strongly the smooth dead-white purity of her skin. Her small features wore an expression of pride, of haughtiness even. And in the eyes that regarded him steadily there shone a cold light—the light of a proud and lonely soul that repels intrusion even as the Polar fastnesses push back without effort assault upon their solitudes. "We made no arrangement," said she.

"You are not more than eighteen, are you?" inquired he abruptly.

The irrelevant question startled her. She looked as if she thought she had not heard aright. "I am twenty," she said.

"You have a most—most unusual way of shifting to various ages and personalities," explained he, with some embarrassment.

She simply looked at him and waited.

His embarrassment increased. It was a novel sensation to him, this feeling ill at ease with a woman—he who was at ease with everyone and put others at their ease or not as he pleased. "I'm sorry you and Miss Burroughs didn't arrange something. I suppose she found the hours difficult."

"She made me an offer," replied the girl. "I refused it."

"But, as I told you, we can let you off—anything within reason."

"Thank you, but I do not care to do that kind of work. No doubt any kind of work for wages classes one as a servant. But those people up there—they make one feel it—feel menial."

"Not Miss Burroughs, I assure you."

A satirical smile hovered round the girl's lips. Her face was altogether lovely now, and no lily ever rose more gracefully from its stem than did her small head from her slender form. "She meant to be kind, but she was insulting. Those people up there don't understand. They're vain and narrow. Oh, I don't blame them. Only, I don't care to be brought into contact with them."

He looked at her in wonder. She talked of Josephine as if she were Josephine's superior, and her expression and accent were such that they contrived to convey an impression that she had the right to do it. He grew suddenly angry at her, at himself for listening to her. "I am sorry," he said stiffly, and took up a pen to indicate that he wished her to go.

He rather expected that she would be alarmed. But if she was, she wholly concealed it. She smiled slightly and moved toward the door. Looking after her, he relented. She seemed so young—was so young—and was evidently poor. He said:

"It's all right to be proud, Miss Hallowell. But there is such a thing as supersensitiveness. You are earning your living. If you'll pardon me for thrusting advice upon you, I think you've made a mistake. I'm sure Miss Burroughs meant well. If you had been less sensitive you'd soon have realized it."

"She patronized me," replied the girl, not angrily, but with amusement. "It was all I could do not to laugh in her face. The idea of a woman who probably couldn't make five dollars a week fancying she was the superior of any girl who makes her own living, no matter how poor a living it is."

Norman laughed. It had often appealed to his own sense of humor, the delusion that the tower one happened to be standing upon was part of one's own stature. But he said: "You're a very foolish young person. You'll not get far in the world if you keep to that road. It winds through Poverty Swamps to the Poor House."

"Oh, no," replied she. "One can always die."

Again he laughed. "But why die? Why not be sensible and live?"

"I don't know," replied she. She was looking away dreamily, and her eyes were wonderful to see. "There are many things I feel and do—and I don't at all understand why. But—" An expression of startling resolution flashed across her face. "But I do them, just the same."

A brief silence; then, as she again moved toward the door, he said, "You have been working for some time?"

"Four years."

"You support yourself?"

"I work to help out father's income. He makes almost enough, but not quite."

Almost enough! The phrase struck upon Norman's fancy as both amusing and sad. Almost enough for what? For keeping body and soul together; for keeping body barely decently clad. Yet she was content. He said:

"You like to work?"

"Not yet. But I think I shall when I learn this business. One feels secure when one has a trade."

"It doesn't impress me as an interesting life for a girl of your age," he suggested.

"Oh, I'm not unhappy. And at home, of evenings and Sundays, I'm happy."

"Doing what?"

"Reading and talking with father and—doing the housework—and all the rest of it."

What a monotonous narrow little life! He wanted to pity her, but somehow he could not. There was no suggestion in her manner that she was an object of pity. "What did Miss Burroughs say to you—if I may ask?"

"Certainly. You sent me, and I'm much obliged to you. I realize it was an opportunity—for another sort of girl. I half tried to accept because I knew refusing was only my—queerness." She smiled charmingly. "You are not offended because I couldn't make myself take it?"

"Not in the least." And all at once he felt that it was true. This girl would have been out of place in service. "What was the offer?"

Suddenly before him there appeared a clever, willful child, full of the childish passion for imitation and mockery. And she proceeded to "take off" the grand Miss Burroughs—enough like Josephine to give the satire point and barb. He could see Josephine resolved to be affable and equal, to make this doubtless bedazzled stray from the "lower classes" feel comfortable in those palatial surroundings. She imitated Josephine's walk, her way of looking, her voice for the menials—gracious and condescending. The exhibition was clever, free from malice, redolent of humor. Norman laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks.

"You ought to go on the stage," said he. "How Josephine—Miss Burroughs would appreciate it! For she's got a keen sense of humor."

"Not for the real jokes—like herself," replied Miss Hallowell.

"You're prejudiced."

"No. I see her as she is. Probably everyone else—those around her—see her money and her clothes and all that. But I saw—just her."

He nodded thoughtfully. Then he looked penetratingly at her. "How did you happen to learn to do that?" he asked. "To see people as they are?"

"Father taught me." Her eyes lighted up, her whole expression changed. She became beautiful with the beauty of an intense and adoring love. "Father is a wonderful man—one of the most wonderful that ever lived. He——"

There was a knock at the door. She startled, he looked confused. Both awakened to a sense of their forgotten surroundings, of who and what they were. She went and Mr. Sanders entered. But even in his confusion Norman marveled at the vanishing of the fascinating personality who had been captivating him into forgetting everything else, at the reappearance of the blank, the pale and insignificant personality attached to a typewriting machine at ten dollars a week. No, not insignificant, not blank—never again that, for him. He saw now the full reality—and also why he, everyone, was so misled. She made him think of the surface of the sea when the sky is gray and the air calm. It lies smooth and flat and expressionless—inert, monotonous. But let sunbeam strike or breeze ever so faint start up, and what a commotion of unending variety! He could never look at her again without being reminded of those infinite latent possibilities, without wondering what new and perhaps more charming, more surprising varieties of look and tone and manner could be evoked.

And while Sanders was talking—prosing on and on about things Norman either already knew or did not wish to know—he was thinking of her. "If she happens to meet a man with enough discernment to fall in love with her," he said to himself, "he certainly will never weary. What a pity that such a girl shouldn't have had a chance, should be wasted on some unappreciative chucklehead of her class! What a pity she hasn't ambition—or the quality, whatever it is—that makes those who have it get on, whether they wish or no."

During the rest of the day he revolved from time to time indistinct ideas of somehow giving this girl a chance. He wished Josephine would and could help, or perhaps his sister Ursula. It was not a matter that could be settled, or even taken up, in haste. No man of his mentality and experience fails to learn how perilous it is in the least to interfere in the destiny of anyone. And his notion involved not slight interference with advice or suggestion or momentarily extended helping hand, but radical change of the whole current of destiny. Also, he appreciated how difficult it is for a man to do anything for a young woman—anything that would not harm more than it would help. Only one thing seemed clear to him—the "clever child" ought to have a chance.

He went to see Josephine after dinner that night His own house, while richly and showily furnished, as became his means and station, seemed—and indeed was—merely an example of simple, old-fashioned "solid comfort" in comparison with the Burroughs palace. He had never liked, but, being a true New Yorker, had greatly admired the splendor of that palace, its costly art junk, its rotten old tapestries, its unlovely genuine antiques, its room after room of tasteless magnificence, suggesting a museum, or rather the combination home and salesroom of an art dealer. This evening he found himself curious, critical, disposed to license a long-suppressed sense of humor. While he was waiting for Josephine to come down to the small salon into which he had been shown, her older sister drifted in, on the way to a late dinner and ball. She eyed him admiringly from head to foot.

"You've such an air, Fred," said she. "You should hear the butler on the subject of you. He says that of all the men who come to the house you are most the man of the world. He says he could tell it by the way you walk in and take off your hat and coat and throw them at him."

Norman laughed and said, "I didn't know. I must stop that."

"Don't!" cried Mrs. Bellowes. "You'll break his heart. He adores it. You know, servants dearly love to be treated as servants. Anyone who thinks the world loves equality knows very little about human nature. Most people love to look up, just as most women love to be ruled. No, you must continue to be the master, the man of the world, Fred."

She was busy with her gorgeous and trailing wraps and with her cigarette or she would have seen his confusion. He was recalling his scene with the typewriter girl. Not much of the man of the world, then and there, certainly. What a grotesque performance for a man of his position, for a serious man of any kind! And how came he to permit such a person to mimic Josephine Burroughs, a lady, the woman to whom he was engaged? In these proud and pretentious surroundings he felt contemptibly guilty—and dazed wonder at his own inexplicable folly and weakness.

Mrs. Bellowes departed before Josephine came down. So there was no relief for his embarrassment. He saw that she too felt constrained. Instead of meeting him half way in embrace and kiss, as she usually did, she threw him a kiss and pretended to be busy lighting a cigarette and arranging the shades of the table lamp. "Well, I saw your 'poor little creature,'" she began. She was splendidly direct in all her dealings, after the manner of people who have never had to make their own way—to cajole or conciliate or dread the consequences of frankness.

"I told you you'd not find her interesting."

"Oh, she was a nice little girl," replied Josephine with elaborate graciousness—and Norman, the "take off" fresh in his mind, was acutely critical of her manner, of her mannerisms. "Of course," she went on, "one does not expect much of people of that class. But I thought her unusually well-mannered—and quite clean."

"Tetlow makes 'em clean up," said Norman, a gleam of sarcasm in his careless glance and tone. And into his nostrils stole an odor of freshness and health and youth, the pure, sweet odor that is the base of all the natural perfumes. It startled him, his vivid memory of a feature of her which he had not been until now aware that he had ever noted.

"I offered her some work," continued Josephine, "but I guess you keep her too busy down there for her to do anything else."

"Probably," said Norman. "Why do you sit on the other side of the room?"

"Oh, I don't know," laughed Josephine. "I feel queer to-night. And it seems to me you're queer, too."

"I? Perhaps rather tired, dear—that's all."

"Did you and Miss Hallowell work hard to-day?"

"Oh, bother Miss Hallowell. Let's talk about ourselves." And he drew her to the sofa at one end of the big fireplace. "I wish we hadn't set the wedding so far off." And suddenly he found himself wondering whether that remark had been prompted by eagerness—a lover's eagerness—or by impatience to have the business over and settled.

"You don't act a bit natural to-night, Fred. You touch me as if I were a stranger."

"I like that!" mocked he. "A stranger hold your hand like this?—and—kiss you—like this?"

She drew away, suddenly laid her hands on his shoulders, kissed him upon the lips passionately, then looked into his eyes. "Do you love me, Fred?—really?"

"Why so earnest?"

"You've had a great deal of experience?"

"More or less."

"Have you ever loved any woman as you love me?"

"I've never loved any woman but you. I never before wanted to marry a woman."

"But you may be doing it because—well, you might be tired and want to settle down."

"Do you believe that?"

"No, I don't. But I want to hear you say it isn't so."

"Well—it isn't so. Are you satisfied?"

"I'm frightfully jealous of you, Fred."

"What a waste of time!"

"I've got something to confess—something I'm ashamed of."

"Don't confess," cried he, laughing but showing that he meant it. "Just—don't be wicked again That's much better than confession."

"But I must confess," insisted she. "I had evil thoughts evil suspicions about you. I've had them all day—until you came. As soon as I saw you I felt bowed into the dust. A man like you, doing anything so vulgar as I suspected you of—oh, dearest, I'm so ashamed!"

He put his arms round her and drew her to his shoulder. And the scene of mimicry in his office flashed into his mind, and the blood burned in his cheeks. But he had no such access of insanity as to entertain the idea of confession.

"It was that typewriter girl," continued Josephine. She drew away again and once more searched his face. "You told me she was homely."

"Not exactly that."

"Insignificant then."

"Isn't she?"

"Yes—in a way," said Josephine, the condescending note in her voice again—and in his mind Miss Hallowell's clever burlesque of that note. "But, in another way—Men are different from women. Now I—a woman of my sort—couldn't stoop to a man of her class. But men seem not to feel that way."

"No," said he, irritated. "They've the courage to take what they want wherever they find it. A man will take gold out of the dirt, because gold is always gold. But a woman waits until she can get it at a fashionable jeweler's, and makes sure it's made up in a fashionable way. I don't like to hear you say those things."

Her eyes flashed. "Then you do like that Hallowell girl!" she cried—and never before had her voice jarred upon him.

"That Hallowell girl has nothing to do with this," he rejoined. "I like to feel that you really love me—that you'd have taken me wherever you happened to find me—and that you'd stick to me no matter how far I might drop."

"I would! I would!" she cried, tears in her eyes. "Oh, I didn't mean that, Fred. You know I didn't—don't you?"

She tried to put her arms round his neck, but he took her hands and held them. "Would you like to think I was marrying you for what you have?—or for any other reason whatever but for what you are?"

It being once more a question of her own sex, the obstinate line appeared round her mouth. "But, Fred, I'd not be me, if I were—a working girl," she replied.

"You might be something even better if you were," retorted he coldly. "The only qualities I don't like about you are the surface qualities that have been plated on in these surroundings. And if I thought it was anything but just you that I was marrying, I'd lose no time about leaving you. I'd not let myself degrade myself."

"Fred—that tone—and don't—please don't look at me like that!" she begged.



But his powerful glance searched on. He said, "Is it possible that you and I are deceiving ourselves—and that we'll marry and wake up—and be bored and dissatisfied—like so many of our friends?"

"No—no," she cried, wildly agitated. "Fred, dear we love each other. You know we do. I don't use words as well as you do—and my mind works in a queer way—Perhaps I didn't mean what I said. No matter. If my love were put to the test—Fred, I don't ask anything more than that your love for me would stand the tests my love for you would stand."

He caught her in his arms and kissed her with more passion than he had ever felt for her before. "I believe you, Jo," he said. "I believe you."

"I love you so—that I could be jealous even of her—of that little girl in your office. Fred, I didn't confess all the truth. It isn't true that I thought her—a nobody. When she first came in here—it was in this very room—I thought she was as near nothing as any girl I'd ever seen. Then she began to change—as you said. And—oh, dearest, I can't help hating her! And when I tried to get her away from you, and she wouldn't come——"

"Away from me!" he cried, laughing.

"I felt as if it were like that," she pleaded. "And she wouldn't come—and treated me as if she were queen and I servant—only politely, I must say, for Heaven knows I don't want to injure her——"

"Shall I have her discharged?"

"Fred!" exclaimed she indignantly. "Do you think I could do such a thing?"

"She'd easily get another job as good. Tetlow can find her one. Does that satisfy you?"

"No," she confessed. "It makes me feel meaner than ever."

"Now, Jo, let's drop this foolish seriousness about nothing at all. Let's drop it for good."

"Nothing at all—that's exactly it. I can't understand, Fred. What is there about her that makes her haunt me? That makes me afraid she'll haunt you?"

Norman felt a sudden thrill. He tightened his hold upon her hands because his impulse had been to release them. "How absurd!" he said, rather noisily.

"Isn't it, though?" echoed she. "Think of you and me almost quarreling about such a trivial person." Her laugh died away. She shivered, cried, "Fred, I'm superstitious about her. I'm—I'm—afraid!" And she flung herself wildly into his arms.

"She is somewhat uncanny," said he, with a lightness he was far from feeling. "But, dear—it isn't complimentary to me, is it?"

"Forgive me, dearest—I don't mean that. I couldn't mean that. But—I love you so. Ever since I began to love you I've been looking round for something to be afraid of. And this is the first chance you've given me."

"I've given you!" mocked he.

She laughed hysterically. "I mean the first chance I've had. And I'm doing the best I can with it."

They were in good spirits now, and for the rest of the evening were as loverlike as always, the nearer together for the bit of rough sea they had weathered so nicely. Neither spoke of Miss Hallowell. Each had privately resolved never to speak of her to the other again. Josephine was already regretting the frankness that had led her to expose a not too attractive part of herself—and to exaggerate in his eyes the importance of a really insignificant chit of a typewriter. When he went to bed that night he was resolved to have Tetlow find Miss Hallowell a job in another office.

"She certainly is uncanny," he said to himself. "I wonder why—I wonder what the secret of her is. She's the first woman I ever ran across who had a real secret. Is it real? I wonder."



V

Toward noon the following day Norman, suddenly in need of a stenographer, sent out for Miss Purdy, one of the three experts at eighteen dollars a week who did most of the important and very confidential work for the heads of the firm. When his door opened again he saw not Miss Purdy but Miss Hallowell.

"Miss Purdy is sick to-day," said she. "Mr. Tetlow wishes to know if I would do."

Norman shifted uneasily in his chair. "Just as well—perfectly—certainly," he stammered. He was not looking at her—seemed wholly occupied with the business he was preparing to dispatch.

She seated herself in the usual place, at the opposite side of the broad table. With pencil poised she fixed her gaze upon the unmarred page of her open notebook. Instead of abating, his confusion increased. He could not think of the subject about which he wished to dictate. First, he noted how long her lashes were—and darker than her hair, as were her well-drawn eyebrows also. Never had he seen so white a skin or one so smooth. She happened to be wearing a blouse with a Dutch neck that day. What a superb throat! What a line of beauty its gently swelling curve made. Then his glance fell upon her lips, rosy-red, slightly pouted. And what masses of dead gold hair—no, not gold, but of the white-gray of wood ashes, and tinted with gold! No wonder it was difficult to tell just what color her hair was. Hair like that was ready to be of any color. And there were her arms, so symmetrical in her rather tight sleeves, and emerging into view in the most delicate wrists. What a marvelous skin!

"Have you ever posed?"

She startled and the color flamed in her cheeks. Her eyes shot a glance of terror at him. "I—I," she stammered. Then almost defiantly, "Yes, I did—for a while. But I didn't suppose anyone knew. At the time we needed the money badly."

Norman felt deep disgust with himself for bursting out with such a question, and for having surprised her secret. "There's nothing to be ashamed of," he said gently.

"Oh, I'm not ashamed," she returned. Her agitation had subsided. "The only reason I quit was because the work was terribly hard and the pay small and uncertain. I was confused because they discharged me at the last place I had, when they found out I had been a model. It was a church paper office."

Again she poised her pencil and lowered her eyes. But he did not take the hint. "Is there anything you would rather do than this sort of work?" he asked.

"Nothing I could afford," replied she.

"If you had been kind to Miss Burroughs yesterday she would have helped you."

"I couldn't afford to do that," said the girl in her quiet, reticent way.

"To do what?"

"To be nice to anyone for what I could get out of it."

Norman smiled somewhat cynically. Probably the girl fancied she was truthful; but human beings rarely knew anything about their real selves. "What would you like to do?"

She did not answer his question until she had shrunk completely within herself and was again thickly veiled with the expression which made everyone think her insignificant. "Nothing I could afford to do," said she. It was plain that she did not wish to be questioned further along that line.

"The stage?" he persisted.

"I hadn't thought of it," was her answer.

"What then?"

"I don't think about things I can't have. I never made any definite plans."

"But isn't it a good idea always to look ahead? As long as one has to be moving, one might as well move in a definite direction."

She was waiting with pencil poised.

"There isn't much of a future at this business."

She shrank slightly. He felt that she regarded his remark as preparation for a kindly hint that she was not giving satisfaction. . . . Well, why not leave it that way? Perhaps she would quit of her own accord—would spare him the trouble—and embarrassment—of arranging with Tetlow for another place for her. He began to dictate—gave her a few sentences mockingly different from his usual terse and clear statements—interrupted himself with:

"You misunderstood me a while ago. I didn't mean you weren't doing your work well. On the contrary, I think you'll soon be expert. But I thought perhaps I might be able to help you to something you'd like better."

He listened to his own words in astonishment. What new freak of madness was this? Instead of clearing himself of this uncanny girl, he was proposing things to her that would mean closer relations. And what reason had he to think she was fitted for anything but just what she was now doing—doing indifferently well?

"Thank you," she said, so quietly that it seemed coldly, "but I'm satisfied as I am."

Her manner seemed to say with polite and restrained plainness that she was not in the least appreciative of his interest or of himself. But this could not be. No girl in her position could fail to be grateful for his interest. No woman, in all his life, had ever failed to respond to his slightest advance. No, it simply could not be. She was merely shy, and had a peculiar way of showing it. He said:

"You have no ambition?"

"That's not for a woman."

She was making her replies as brief as civility permitted. He observed her narrowly. She was not shy, not embarrassed. What kind of game was this? It could not be in sincere nature for a person in her position thus to treat overtures, friendly and courteous overtures, from one in his position. And never before—never—had a woman been thus unresponsive. Instead of feeling relief that she had disentangled him from the plight into which his impulsive offer had flung him, he was piqued—angered—and his curiosity was inflamed as never before about any woman.

The relations of the sexes are for the most part governed by traditions of sex allurements and sex tricks so ancient that they have ceased to be conscious and have become instinctive. One of these venerable first principles is that mystery is the arch provoker. Norman, an old and expert student of the great game—the only game for which the staidest and most serious will abandon all else to follow its merry call—Norman knew this trick of mystery. The woman veils herself and makes believe to fly—an excellent trick, as good to-day as ever after five thousand years of service. And he knew that in it lay the explanation for the sudden and high upflaming of his interest in this girl. "What an ass I'm making of myself!" reflected he. "When I care nothing about the girl, why should I care about the mystery of her? Of course, it's some poor little affair, a puzzle not worth puzzling out."

All true and clear enough. Yet seeing it did not abate his interest a particle. She had veiled herself; she was pretending—perhaps honestly—to fly. He rose and went to the window, stood with his back to her, resumed dictating. But the sentences would not come. He whirled abruptly. "I'm not ready to do the thing yet," he said. "I'll send for you later."

Without a word or a glance she stood, took her book and went toward the door. He gazed after her. He could not refrain from speaking again. "I'm afraid you misunderstood my offer a while ago," said he, neither curt nor friendly. "I forgot how such things from a man to a young woman might be misinterpreted."

"I never thought of that," replied she unembarrassed. "It was simply that I can't put myself under obligation to anyone."

As she stood there, her full beauty flashed upon him—the exquisite form, the subtly graceful poise of her body, of her head—the loveliness of that golden-hued white skin—the charm of her small rosy mouth—the delicate, sensitive, slightly tilted nose—and her eyes—above all, her eyes!—so clear, so sweet. Her voice had seemed thin and faint to him; its fineness now seemed the rarest delicacy—the exactly fitting kind for so evasive and delicate a beauty as hers. He made a slight bow of dismissal, turned abruptly away. Never in all his life, strewn with gallant experiences—never had a woman thus treated him, and never had a woman thus affected him. "I am mad—stark mad!" he muttered. "A ten-dollar-a-week typewriter, whom nobody on earth but myself would look at a second time!" But something within him hurled back this scornful fling. Though no one else on earth saw or appreciated—what of it? She affected him thus—and that was enough. "I want her! . . . I want her! I have never wanted a woman before."

He rushed into the dressing room attached to his office, plunged his face into ice-cold water. This somewhat eased the burning sensation that was becoming intolerable. Many were the unaccountable incidents in his acquaintance with this strange creature; the most preposterous was this sudden seizure. He realized now that his feeling for her had been like the quiet, steady, imperceptible filling of a reservoir that suddenly announces itself by the thunder and roar of a mighty cascade over the dam. "This is madness—sheer madness! I am still master within myself. I will make short work of this rebellion." And with an air of calmness so convincing that he believed in it he addressed himself to the task of sanity and wisdom lying plain before him. "A man of my position caught by a girl like that! A man such as I am, caught by any woman whatever!" It was grotesque. He opened his door to summon Tetlow.

The gate in the outside railing was directly opposite, and about thirty feet away. Tetlow and Miss Hallowell were going out—evidently to lunch together. She was looking up at the chief clerk with laughing eyes—they seemed coquettish to the infuriated Norman. And Tetlow—the serious and squab young ass was gazing at her with the expression men of the stupid squab sort put on when they wish to impress a woman. At this spectacle, at the vision of that slim young loveliness, that perfect form and deliciously smooth soft skin, white beyond belief beneath its faintly golden tint—the hot blood steamed up into Norman's brain, blinded his sight, reddened it with desire and jealousy. He drew back, closed his door with a bang.

"This is not I," he muttered. "What has happened? Am I insane?"

* * * * *

When Tetlow returned from lunch the office boy on duty at the gate told him that Mr. Norman wished to see him at once. Like all men trying to advance along ways where their fellow men can help or hinder, the head clerk was full of more or less clever little tricks thought out with a view to making a good impression. One of them was to stamp upon all minds his virtue of promptness—of what use to be prompt unless you forced every one to feel how prompt you were? He went in to see Norman, with hat in hand and overcoat on his back and one glove off, the other still on. Norman was standing at a window, smoking a cigarette. His appearance—dress quite as much as manner—was the envy of his subordinate—as, indeed, it was of hundreds of the young men struggling to rise down town. It was so exactly what the appearance of a man of vigor and power and high position should be. Tetlow practiced it by the quarter hour before his glass at home—not without progress in the direction of a not unimpressive manner of his own.

As Tetlow stood at attention, Norman turned and advanced toward him. "Mr. Tetlow," he began, in his good-humored voice with the never wholly submerged under-note of sharpness, "is it your habit to go out to lunch with the young ladies employed here? If so, I wish to suggest—simply to suggest—that it may be bad for discipline."

Tetlow's jaw dropped a little. He looked at Norman, was astonished to discover beneath a thin veneer of calm signs of greater agitation than he had ever seen in him. "To-day was the first time, sir," he said. "And I can't quite account for my doing it. Miss Hallowell has been here several months. I never specially noticed her until the last few days—when the question of discharging her came up. You may remember it was settled by you." Norman flung his cigarette away and stalked to the window.

"Mr. Norman," pursued Tetlow, "you and I have been together many years. I esteem it my greatest honor that I am able—that you permit me—to class you as my friend. So I'm going to give you a confidence—one that really startles me. I called on Miss Hallowell last night."

Norman's back stiffened.

"She is even more charming in her own home. And—" Tetlow blushed and trembled—"I am going to make her my wife if I can."

Norman turned, a mocking satirical smile unpleasantly sparkling in his eyes and curling his mouth "Old man," he said, "I think you've gone crazy."

Tetlow made a helpless gesture. "I think so myself. I didn't intend to marry for ten years—and then—I had quite a different match in mind."

"What's the matter with you, Billy?" inquired Norman, inspecting him with smiling, cruelly unfriendly eyes.

"I'm damned if I know, Norman," said the head clerk, assuming that his friend was sympathetic and dropping into the informality of the old days when they were clerks together in a small firm. "I'd have proposed to her last night if I hadn't been afraid I'd lose her by being in such a hurry. . . . You're in love yourself."

Norman startled violently.

"You're going to get married. Probably you can sympathize. You know how it is to meet the woman you want and must have."

Norman turned away.

"I've had—or thought I had—rather advanced ideas on the subject of women. I've always had a horror of being married for a living or for a home or as an experiment or a springboard. My notion's been that I wouldn't trust a woman who wasn't independent. And theoretically I still think that's sound. But it doesn't work out in practice. A man has to have been in love to be able to speak the last word on the sex question."

Norman dropped heavily into his desk chair and rumpled his hair into disorder. He muttered something—the head clerk thought it was an oath.

"I'd marry her," Tetlow went on, "if I knew she was simply using me in the coldest, most calculating way. My only fear is that I shan't be able to get her—that she won't marry me."

Norman sneered. "That's not likely," he said.

"No, it isn't," admitted Tetlow. "They—the Hallowells—are nice people—of as good family as there is. But they're poor—very poor. There's only her father and herself. The old man is a scientist—spends most of his time at things that won't pay a cent—utterly impractical. A gentleman—an able man, if a little cracked—at least he seemed so to me who don't know much about scientific matters. But getting poorer steadily. So I think she will accept me."

A gloomy, angry frown, like a black shadow, passed across Norman's face and disappeared. "You'd marry her—on those terms?" he sneered.

"Of course I hope for better terms——"

Norman sprang up, strode to the window and turned his back.

"But I'm prepared for the worst. The fact is, she treats me as if she didn't care a rap for the honor of my showing her attention."

"A trick, Billy. An old trick."

"Maybe so. But—I really believe she doesn't realize. She's queer—has been queerly brought up. Yes, I think she doesn't appreciate. Then, too, she's young and light—almost childish in some ways. . . . I don't blame you for being disgusted with me, Fred. But—damn it, what's a man to do?"

"Cure himself!" exploded Norman, wheeling violently on his friend. "You must act like a man. Billy, such a marriage is ruin for you. How can we take you into partnership next year? When you marry, you must marry in the class you're moving toward, not in any of those you're leaving behind."

"Do you suppose I haven't thought of all that?" rejoined Tetlow bitterly. "But I can't help myself. It's useless for me to say I'll try. I shan't try."

"Don't you want to get over this?" demanded Norman fiercely.

"Of course—No—I don't. Fred, you'd think better of me if you knew her. You've never especially noticed her. She's beautiful."

Norman dropped to his chair again.

"Really—beautiful," protested Tetlow, assuming that the gesture was one of disgusted denial. "Take a good look at her, Norman, before you condemn her. I never was so astonished as when I discovered how good-looking she is. I don't quite know how it is, but I suppose nobody ever happened to see how—how lovely she is until I just chanced to see it." At a rudely abrupt gesture from Norman he hurried on, eagerly apologetic, "And if you talk with her—She's very reserved. But she's the lady through and through—and has a good mind. . . . At least, I think she has. I'll admit a man in love is a poor judge of a woman's mind. But, anyhow, I know she's lovely to look at. You'll see it yourself, now that I've called your attention to it. You can't fail to see it."

Norman threw himself back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. "Why do you want to marry her?" he inquired, in a tone his sensitive ear approved as judicial.

"How can I tell?" replied the head clerk irritably. "Does a man ever know?"

"Always—when he's sensibly in love."

"But when he's just in love? That's what ails me," retorted Tetlow, with a sheepish look and laugh.

"Billy, you've got to get over this. I can't let you make a fool of yourself."

Tetlow's fat, smooth, pasty face of the overfed, underexercised professional man became a curious exhibit of alarm and obstinacy.

"You've got to promise me you'll keep away from her—except at the office—for say, a week. Then—we'll see."

Tetlow debated.

"It's highly improbable that anyone else will discover these irresistible charms. There's no one else hanging round?"

"No one, as I told you the other day, when you questioned me about her."

Norman shifted, looked embarrassed.

"I hope I didn't give you the impression I was ashamed of loving her or would ever be ashamed of her anywhere?" continued Tetlow, a very loverlike light in his usually unromantic eyes. "If I did, it wasn't what I meant—far from it. You'll see, when I marry her, Norman. You'll be congratulating me."

Norman sprang up again. "This is plain lunacy, Tetlow. I am amazed at you—amazed!"

"Get acquainted with her, Mr. Norman," pleaded the subordinate. "Do it, to oblige me. Don't condemn us——"

"I wish to hear nothing more!" cried Norman violently. "Another thing. You must find her a place in some other office—at once."

"You're right, sir," assented Tetlow. "I can readily do that."

Norman scowled at him, made an imperious gesture of dismissal. Tetlow, chopfallen but obdurate, got himself speedily out of sight.

Norman, with hands deep in his pockets, stared out among the skyscrapers and gave way to a fit of remorse. It was foreign to his nature to do petty underhanded tricks. Grand strategy—yes. At that he was an adept, and not the shiftiest, craftiest schemes he had ever devised had given him a moment's uneasiness. But to be driving a ten-dollar-a-week typewriter out of her job—to be maneuvering to deprive her of a for her brilliant marriage—to be lying to an old and loyal retainer who had helped Norman full as much and as often as Norman had helped him—these sneaking bits of skullduggery made him feel that he had sunk indeed. But he ground his teeth together and his eyes gleamed wickedly. "He shan't have her, damn him!" he muttered. "She's not for him."

He summoned Tetlow, who was obviously low in mind as the result of revolving the things that had been said to him. "Billy," he began in a tone so amiable that he was ashamed for himself, "you'll not forget I have your promise?"

"What did I promise?" cried Tetlow, his voice shrill with alarm.

"Not to see her, except at the office, for a week."

"But I've promised her father I'd call this evening. He's going to show me some experiments."

"You can easily make an excuse—business."

"But I don't want to," protested the head clerk. "What's the use? I've got my mind made up. Norman, I'd hang on after her if you fired me out of this office for it. And I can't rest—I'm fit for nothing—until this matter's settled. I came very near taking her aside and proposing to her, just after I went out of here a while ago."

"You damn fool!" cried Norman, losing all control of himself. "Take the afternoon express for Albany instead of Harcott and attend to those registrations and arrange for those hearings. I'll do my best to save you. I'll bring the girl in here and keep her at work until you get out of the way."

Tetlow glanced at his friend; then the tears came into his eyes. "You're a hell of a friend!" he ejaculated. "And I thought you'd sympathize because you were in love."

"I do sympathize, Billy," Norman replied with an abrupt change to shamefaced apology. "I sympathize more than you know. I feel like a dog, doing this. But it can't result in any harm, and I want you to get a little fresh air in that hot brain of yours before you commit yourself. Be reasonable, old man. Suppose you rushed ahead and proposed—and she accepted—and then, after a few days, you came to. What about her? You must act on the level, Tetlow. Do the fair thing by yourself and by her."

Norman had often had occasion to feel proud of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of his brain. He had never been quite so proud as he was when he finished that speech. It pacified Tetlow; it lightened his own sense of guilt; it gave him a respite.

Tetlow rewarded Norman with the look that in New York is the equivalent of the handclasp friend seeks from friend in times of stress. "You're right, Fred. I'm much obliged to you. I haven't been considering her side of it enough. A man ought always to think of that. The women—poor things—have a hard enough time to get on, at best."

Norman's smile was characteristically cynical. Sentimentality amused him. "I doubt if there are more female wrecks than male wrecks scattered about the earth," rejoined he. "And I suspect the fact isn't due to the gentleness of man with woman, either. Don't fret for the ladies, Tetlow. They know how to take care of themselves. They know how to milk with a sure and a steady hand. You may find it out by depressing experience some day."

Tetlow saw the aim. His obstinate, wretched expression came back. "I don't care. I've got——"

"You went over that ground," interrupted Norman impatiently. "You'd better be catching the train."

As Tetlow withdrew, he rang for an office boy and sent him to summon Miss Hallowell.

Norman had been reasoning with himself—with the aid of the self that was both better and more worldly wise. He felt that his wrestlings had not been wholly futile. He believed he had got the strength to face the girl with a respectful mind, with a mind resolute in duty—if not love—toward Josephine Burroughs. "I love Josephine," he said to himself. "My feeling for this girl is some sort of physical attraction. I certainly shall be able to control it enough to keep it within myself. And soon it will die out. No doubt I've felt much the same thing as strongly before. But it didn't take hold because I was never bound before—never had the sense of the necessity for restraint. That sense is always highly dangerous for my sort of man."

This sounded well. He eyed the entering girl coldly, said in a voice that struck him as excellent indifference, "Bring your machine in here, Miss Hallowell, and recopy these papers. I've made some changes. If you spoil any sheets, don't throw them away, but return everything to me."

"I'm always careful about the waste-paper baskets," said she, "since they warned me that there are men who make a living searching the waste thrown out of offices."

He made no reply. He could not have spoken if he had tried. Once more the spell had seized him—the spell of her weird fascination for him. As she sat typewriting, with her back almost toward him, he sat watching her and analyzing his own folly. He knew that diagnosing a disease does not cure it; but he found an acute pleasure in lingering upon all the details of the effect she had upon his nerves. He did not dare move from his desk, from the position that put a huge table and a revolving case of reference books between them. He believed that if he went nearer he would be unable to resist seizing her in his arms and pouring out the passion that was playing along his nerves as the delicate, intense flame flits back and forth along the surface of burning alcohol.

A knock at the door. He plunged into his papers. "Come!" he called.

Tetlow thrust in his head. Miss Hallowell did not look up. "I'm off," the head clerk said. His gaze was upon the unconscious girl—a gaze that filled Norman with longing to strangle him.

"Telegraph me from Albany as soon as you get there," said Norman. "Telegraph me at my club."

Tetlow was gone. The machine tapped monotonously on. The barette which held the girl's hair at the back was so high that the full beauty of the nape of her neck was revealed. That wonderful white skin with the golden tint! How soft—yet how firm—her flesh looked! How slender yet how strong was her build——

"How do you like Tetlow?" he asked, because speak to her he must.

She glanced up, turned in her chair. He quivered before the gaze from those enchanting eyes of hers. "I beg pardon," she said. "I didn't hear."

"Tetlow—how do you like him?"

"He is very kind to me—to everyone."

"How did your father like him?"

He confidently expected some sign of confusion, but there was no sign. "Father was delighted with him," she said merrily. "He took an interest in the work father's doing—and that was enough."

She was about to turn back to her task. He hastened to ask another question. "Couldn't I meet your father some time? What Tetlow told me interested me greatly."

"Father would be awfully pleased," replied she. "But—unless you really care about—biology, I don't think you'd like coming."

"I'm interested in everything interesting," replied Norman dizzily. What was he saying? What was he doing? What folly was his madness plunging him into?

"You can come with Mr. Tetlow when he gets back."

"I'd prefer to talk with him alone," said Norman. "Perhaps I might see some way to be of service to him."

Her expression was vividly different from what it had been when he offered to help her. She became radiant with happiness. "I do hope you'll come," she said—her voice very low and sweet, in the effort she was making to restrain yet express her feelings.

"When? This evening?"

"He's always at home."

"You'll be there?"

"I'm always there, too. We have no friends. It's not easy to make acquaintances in the East—congenial acquaintances."

"I'd want you to be there," he explained with great care, "because you could help him and me in getting acquainted."

"Oh, he'll talk freely—to anyone. He talks only the one subject. He never thinks of anything else."

She was resting her crossed arms on the back of her chair and, with her chin upon them, was looking at him—a childlike pose and a childlike expression. He said: "You are sure you are twenty?"

She smiled gayly. "Nearly twenty-one."

"Old enough to be in love."

She lifted her head and laughed. She had charming white teeth—small and sharp and with enough irregularity to carry out her general suggestion of variability. "Yes, I shall like that, when it comes," she said; "But the chances are against it just now."

"There's Tetlow."

She was much amused. "Oh, he's far too old and serious."

Norman felt depressed. "Why, he's only thirty-five."

"But I'm not twenty-one," she reminded him. "I'd want some one of my own age. I'm tired of being so solemn. If I had love, I'd expect it to change all that."

Evidently a forlorn and foolish person—and doubtless thinking of him, two years the senior of Tetlow and far more serious, as an elderly person, in the same class with her father. "But you like biology?" he said. The way to a cure was to make her talk on.

"I don't know anything about it," said she, looking as frivolous as a butterfly or a breeze-bobbed blossom. "I listen to father, but it's all beyond me."

Yes—a light-weight. They could have nothing in common. She was a mere surface—a thrillingly beautiful surface, but not a full-fledged woman. So little did conversation with him interest her, she had taken advantage of the short pause to resume her work. No, she had not the faintest interest in him. It wasn't a trick of coquetry; it was genuine. He whom women had always bowed before was unable to arouse in her a spark of interest. She cared neither for what he had nor for what he was, in himself. This offended and wounded him. He struggled sulkily with his papers for half an hour. Then he fell to watching her again and——

"You must not neglect to give me your address," he said. "Write it on a slip of paper after you finish. I might forget it."

"Very well," she replied, but did not turn round.

"Why, do you think, did Tetlow come to see you?" he asked. He felt cheapened in his own eyes—he, the great man, the arrived man, the fiance of Josephine Burroughs, engaged in this halting and sneaking flirtation! But he could not restrain himself.

She turned to answer. "Mr. Tetlow works very hard and has few friends. He had heard of my father and wanted to meet him—just like you."

"Naturally," murmured Norman, in confusion. "I thought—perhaps—he was interested in you."

She laughed outright—and he had an entrancing view of the clean rosy interior of her mouth. "In me?—Mr. Tetlow? Why, he's too serious and important for a girl like me."

"Then he bored you?"

"Oh, no. I like him. He is a good man—thoroughly good."

This pleased Norman immensely. It may be fine to be good, but to be called good—that is somehow a different matter. It removes a man at once from the jealousy-provoking class. "Good exactly describes him," said Norman. "He wouldn't harm a fly. In love he'd be ridiculous."

"Not with a woman of his own age and kind," protested she. "But I'm neglecting my work."

And she returned to it with a resolute manner that made him ashamed to interrupt again—especially after the unconscious savage rebukes she had administered. He sat there fighting against the impulse to watch her—denouncing himself—appealing to pride, to shame, to prudence—to his love for Josephine—to the sense of decency that restrains a hunter from aiming at a harmless tame song bird. But all in vain. He concentrated upon her at last, stared miserably at her, filled with longing and dread and shame—and longing, and yet more longing.

When she finished and stood at the other side of the desk, waiting for him to pass upon her work, she must have thought he was in a profound abstraction. He did not speak, made a slight motion with his hand to indicate that she was to go. Shut in alone, he buried his face in his arms. "What madness!" he groaned. "If I loved her, there'd be some excuse for me. But I don't. I couldn't. Yet I seem ready to ruin everything, merely to gratify a selfish whim—an insane whim."

On top of the papers she had left he saw a separate slip. He drew it toward him, spread it out before him. Her address. An unknown street in Jersey City!

"I'll not go," he said aloud, pushing the slip away. Go? Certainly not. He had never really meant to go. He would, of course, keep his engagement with Josephine. "And I'll not come down town until she has taken another job and has caught Tetlow. I'll stop this idiocy of trying to make an impression on a person not worth impressing. What weak vanity—to be piqued by this girl's lack of interest!"

Nevertheless—he at six o'clock telephoned to the Burroughs' house that he was detained down town. He sent away his motor, dined alone in the station restaurant in Jersey City. And at half past seven he set out in a cab in search of—what? He did not dare answer that interrogation.



VI

Life many another chance explorer from New York, Norman was surprised to discover that, within a few minutes of leaving the railway station, his cab was moving through a not unattractive city. He expected to find the Hallowells in a tenement in some more or less squalid street overhung with railway smoke and bedaubed with railway grime. He was delighted when the driver assured him that there was no mistake, that the comfortable little cottage across the width of the sidewalk and a small front yard was the sought-for destination.

"Wait, please," he said to the cabman. "Or, if you like, you can go to that corner saloon down there. I'll know where to find you." And he gave him half a dollar.

The cabman hesitated between two theories of this conduct—whether it was the generosity it seemed or was a ruse to "side step" payment. He—or his thirst—decided for the decency of human nature; he drove confidingly away. Norman went up the tiny stoop and rang. The sound of a piano, in the room on the ground floor where there was light, abruptly ceased. The door opened and Miss Hallowell stood before him. She was throughout a different person from the girl of the office. She had changed to a tight-fitting pale-blue linen dress made all in one piece. Norman could now have not an instant's doubt about the genuineness, the bewitching actuality, of her beauty. The wonder was how she could contrive to conceal so much of it for the purposes of business. It was a peculiar kind of beauty—not the radiant kind, but that which shines with a soft glow and gives him who sees it the delightful sense of being its original and sole discoverer. An artistic eye—or an eye that discriminates in and responds to feminine loveliness—would have been captivated, as it searched in vain for flaw.

If Norman anticipated that she would be nervous before the task of receiving in her humbleness so distinguished a visitor, he must have been straightway disappointed. Whether from a natural lack of that sense of social differences which is developed to the most pitiful snobbishness in New York or from her youth and inexperience, she received him as if he had been one of the neighbors dropping in after supper. And it was Norman who was ill at ease. Nothing is more disconcerting to a man accustomed to be received with due respect to his importance than to find himself put upon the common human level and compelled to "make good" all over again from the beginning. He felt—he knew—that he was an humble candidate for her favor—a candidate with the chances perhaps against him.

The tiny parlor had little in it beside the upright piano because there was no space. But the paper, the carpet and curtains, the few pieces of furniture, showed no evidence of bad taste, of painful failure at the effort to "make a front." He was in the home of poor people, but they were obviously people who made a highly satisfactory best of their poverty. And in the midst of it all the girl shone like the one evening star in the mystic opalescence of twilight.

"We weren't sure you were coming," said she. "I'll call father. . . . No, I'll take you back to his workshop. He's easier to get acquainted with there."

"Won't you play something for me first? Or—perhaps you sing?"

"A very little," she admitted. "Not worth hearing."

"I'm sure I'd like it. I want to get used to my surroundings before I tackle the—the biology."

Without either hesitation or shyness, she seated herself at the piano. "I'll sing the song I've just learned." And she began. Norman moved to the chair that gave him a view of her in profile. For the next five minutes he was witness to one of those rare, altogether charming visions that linger in the memory in freshness and fragrance until memory itself fades away. She sat very straight at the piano, and the position brought out all the long lines of her figure—the long, round white neck and throat, the long back and bosom, the long arms and legs—a series of lovely curves. It has been scientifically demonstrated that pale blue is pre-eminently the sex color. It certainly was pre-eminently her color, setting off each and every one of her charms and suggesting the roundness and softness and whiteness her drapery concealed. She was one of those rare beings whose every pose is instinct with grace. And her voice—It was small, rather high, at times almost shrill. But in every note of its register there sounded a mysterious, melancholy-sweet call to the responding nerves of man.

Before she got halfway through the song Norman was fighting against the same mad impulse that had all but overwhelmed him as he watched her in the afternoon. And when her last note rose, swelled, slowly faded into silence, it seemed to him that had she kept on for one note more he would have disclosed to her amazed eyes the insanity raging within him.

She turned on the piano stool, her hands dropped listlessly in her lap. "Aren't those words beautiful?" she said in a dreamy voice. She was not looking at him. Evidently she was hardly aware of his presence.

He had not heard a word. He was in no mood for mere words. "I've never liked anything so well," he said. And he lowered his eyes that she might not see what they must be revealing.

She rose. He made a gesture of protest. "Won't you sing another?" he asked.

"Not after that," she said. "It's the best I know. It has put me out of the mood for the ordinary songs."

"You are a dreamer—aren't you?"

"That's my real life," replied she. "I go through the other part just to get to the dreams."

"What do you dream?"

She laughed carelessly. "Oh, you'd not be interested. It would seem foolish to you."

"You're mistaken there," cried he. "The only thing that ever has interested me in life is dreams—and making them come true."

"But not my kind of dreams. The only kind I like are the ones that couldn't possibly come true."

"There isn't any dream that can't be made to come true."

She looked at him eagerly. "You think so?"

"The wildest ones are often the easiest." He had a moving voice himself, and it had been known to affect listening ears hypnotically when he was deeply in earnest, was possessed by one of those desires that conquer men of will and then make them irresistible instruments. "What is your dream?—happiness? . . . love?"

She gazed past him with swimming eyes, with a glance that seemed like a brave bright bird exploring infinity. "Yes," she said under her breath. "But it could never—never come true. It's too perfect."

"Don't doubt," he said, in a tone that fitted her mood as the rhythm of the cradle fits the gentle breathing of the sleeping child. "Don't ever doubt. And the dream will come true."

"You have been in love?" she said, under the spell of his look and tone.

He nodded slowly. "I am," he replied, and he was under the spell of her beauty.

"Is it—wonderful?"

"Like nothing else on earth. Everything else seems—poor and cheap—beside it."

He drew a step nearer. "But you couldn't love—not yet," he said. "You haven't had the experience. You will have to learn."

"You don't know me," she cried. "I have been teaching myself ever since I was a little girl. I've thought of nothing else most of the time. Oh—" she clasped her white hands against her small bosom—"if I ever have the chance, how much I shall give!"

"I know it! I know it!" he replied. "You will make some man happier than ever man was before." His infatuation did not blind him to the fact that she cared nothing about him, looked on him in the most unpersonal way. But that knowledge seemed only to inflame him the more, to lash him on to the folly of an ill-timed declaration. "I have felt how much you will give—how much you will love—I've felt it from the second time I saw you—perhaps from the first. I've never seen any woman who interested me as you do—who drew me as you do—against my ambition—against my will. I—I——"

He had been fighting against the words that would come in spite of him. He halted now because the food of emotion suffocated speech. He stood before her, ghastly pale and trembling. She did not draw back. She seemed compelled by his will, by the force of his passion, to stay where she was. But in her eyes was a fascinated terror—a fear of him—of the passion that dominated him, a passion like the devils that made men gash themselves and leap from precipices into the sea. To unaccustomed eyes the first sight of passion is always terrifying and is usually repellent. One must learn to adventure the big wave, the great hissing, towering billow that conceals behind its menace the wild rapture of infinite longing realized.

"I have frightened you?" he said.

"Yes," was her whispered reply.

"But it is your dream come true."

She shrank back—not in aversion, but gently. "No—it isn't my dream," she replied.

"You don't realize it yet, but you will."

She shook her head positively. "I couldn't ever think of you in that way."

He did not need to ask why. She had already explained when they were talking of Tetlow. There was a finality in her tone that filled him with despair. It was his turn to look at her in terror. What power this slim delicate girl had over him! What a price she could exact if she but knew! Knew? Why, he had told her—was telling her in look and tone and gesture—was giving himself frankly into captivity—was prostrate, inviting her to trample. His only hope of escape lay in her inexperience—that she would not realize. In the insanities of passion, as in some other forms of dementia, there is always left a streak of reason—of that craft which leads us to try to get what we want as cheaply as possible. Men, all but beside themselves with love, will bargain over the terms, if they be of the bargaining kind by nature. Norman was not a haggler. But common prudence was telling him how unwise his conduct was, how he was inviting the defeat of his own purposes.

He waved his hand impatiently. "We'll see, my dear," he said with a light good-humored laugh. "I mustn't forget that I came to see your father."

She looked at him doubtfully. She did not understand—did not quite like—this abrupt change of mood. It suggested to her simplicity a lack of seriousness, of sincerity. "Do you really wish to see my father?" she inquired.

"Why else should I come away over to Jersey City? Couldn't I have talked with you at the office?"

This seemed convincing. She continued to study his face for light upon the real character of this strange new sort of man. He regarded her with a friendly humorous twinkle in his eyes. "Then I'll take you to him," she said at length. She was by no means satisfied, but she could not discover why she was dissatisfied.

"I can't possibly do you any harm," he urged, with raillery.

"No, I think not," replied she gravely. "But you mustn't say those things!"

"Why not?" Into his eyes came their strongest, most penetrating look. "I want you. And I don't intend to give you up. It isn't my habit to give up. So, sooner or later I get what I go after."

"You make me—afraid," she said nervously.

"Of what?" laughed he. "Not of me, certainly. Then it must be of yourself. You are afraid you will end by wanting me to want you."

"No—not that," declared she, confused by his quick cleverness of speech. "I don't know what I'm afraid of."

"Then let's go to your father. . . . You'll not tell Tetlow what I've said?"

"No." And once more her simple negation gave him a sense of her absolute truthfulness.

"Or that I've been here?"

She looked astonished. "Why not?"

"Oh—office reasons. It wouldn't do for the others to know."

She reflected on this. "I don't understand," was the result of her thinking. "But I'll do as you ask. Only, you must not come again."

"Why not? If they knew at the office, they'd simply talk—unpleasantly."

"Yes," she admitted hesitatingly after reflecting. "So you mustn't come again. I don't like some kinds of secrets."

"But your father will know," he urged. "Isn't that enough for—for propriety?"

"I can't explain. I don't understand, myself. I do a lot of things by instinct." She, standing with her hands behind her back and with clear, childlike eyes gravely upon him, looked puzzled but resolved. "And my instinct tells me not to do anything secret about you."

This answer made him wonder whether after all he might not be too positive in his derisive disbelief in women's instincts. He laughed. "Well—now for your father."

The workshop proved to be an annex to the rear, reached by a passage leading past a cosy little dining room and a kitchen where the order and the shine of cleanness were notable even to masculine eyes. "You are well taken care of," he said to her—she was preceding him to show the way.

"We take care of ourselves," replied she. "I get breakfast before I leave and supper after I come home. Father has a cold lunch in the middle of the day, when he eats at all—which isn't often. And on Saturday afternoons and Sundays I do the heavy work."

"You are a busy lady!"

"Oh, not so very busy. Father is a crank about system and order. He has taught me to plan everything and work by the plans."

For the first time Norman had a glimmer of real interest in meeting her father. For in those remarks of hers he recognized at once the rare superior man—the man who works by plan, where the masses of mankind either drift helplessly or are propelled by some superior force behind them without which they would be, not the civilized beings they seem, but even as the savage in the dugout or as the beast of the field. The girl opened a door; a bright light streamed into the dim hallway.

"Father!" she called. "Here's Mr. Norman."

Norman saw, beyond the exquisite profile of the girl's head and figure, a lean tallish old man, dark and gray, whose expression proclaimed him at first glance no more in touch with the affairs of active life in the world than had he been an inhabitant of Mars.

Mr. Hallowell gave his caller a polite glance and handshake—evidence of merest surface interest in him, of amiable patience with an intruder. Norman saw in the neatness of his clothing and linen further proof of the girl's loving care. For no such abstracted personality as this would ever bother about such things for himself. These details, however, detained Norman only for a moment. In the presence of Hallowell it was impossible not to concentrate upon him.

As we grow older what we are inside, the kind of thoughts we admit as our intimates, appears ever more strongly in the countenance. This had often struck Norman, observing the men of importance about him, noting how as they aged the look of respectability, of intellectual distinction, became a thinner and ever thinner veneer over the selfishness and greediness, the vanity and sensuality and falsehood. But never before had he been so deeply impressed by its truth. Evidently Hallowell during most of his fifty-five or sixty years had lived the purely intellectual life. The result was a look of spiritual beauty, the look of the soul living in the high mountain, with serenity and vast views constantly before it. Such a face fills with awe the ordinary follower of the petty life of the world if he have the brains to know or to suspect the ultimate truth about existence. It filled Norman with awe. He hastily turned his eyes upon the girl—and once more into his face came the resolute, intense, white-hot expression of a man doggedly set upon an earthy purpose.

There was an embarrassed silence. Then the girl said, "Show him the worms, father."

Mr. Hallowell smiled. "My little girl thinks no one has seen that sort of thing," said he. "I can't make her believe it is one of the commonplaces."

"You've never had anyone here more ignorant than I, sir," said Norman. "The only claim on your courtesy I can make is that I'm interested and that I perhaps know enough in a general way to appreciate."

Hallowell waved his hand toward a row of large glass bottles on one of the many shelves built against the rough walls of the room. "Here they are," said he. "It's the familiar illustration of how life may be controlled."

"I don't understand," said Norman, eying the bottled worms curiously.

"Oh, it's simply the demonstration that life is a mere chemical process——"

Norman had ceased to listen. The girl was moving toward the door by which they had entered—was in the doorway—was gone! He stood in an attitude of attention; Hallowell talked on and on, passing from one thing to another, forgetting his caller and himself, thinking only of the subject, the beloved science, that has brought into the modern world a type of men like those who haunted the deserts and mountain caves in the days when Rome was falling to pieces. With those saintly hermits of the Dark Ages religion was the all-absorbing subject. And seeking their own salvation was the goal upon which their ardent eyes were necessarily bent. With these modern devotees, science—the search for the truth about the world in which they live—is their religion; and their goal is the redemption of the world. They are resolved—step by step, each worker contributing his mite of discovery—to transform the world from a hell of discomfort and pain and death to a heaven where men and women, free and enlightened and perhaps immortal, shall live in happiness. They even dream that perhaps this race of gods shall learn to construct the means to take them to another and younger planet, when this Earth has become too old and too cold and too nakedly clad in atmosphere properly to sustain life.

From time to time Norman caught a few words of what Hallowell said—words that made him respect the intelligence that had uttered them. But he neither cared nor dared to listen. He refused to be deflected from his one purpose. When he was as old as Hallowell, it would be time to think of these matters. When he had snatched the things he needed, it would be time to take the generous, wide, philosopher view of life. But not yet. He was still young; he could—and he would!—drink of the sparkling heady life of the senses, typefied now for him in this girl. How her loveliness flamed in his blood—flamed as fiercely when he could not see the actual, tangible charms as when they were radiating their fire into his eyes and through his skin! First he must live that glorious life of youth, of nerves aquiver with ecstasy. Also, he must shut out the things of the intellect—must live in brain as well as in body the animal life—in brain the life of cunning and strategy. For the intellectual life would make it impossible to pursue such ignoble things. First, material success and material happiness. Then, in its own time, this intellectual life to which such men as Hallowell ever beckon, from their heights, such men as Norman, deep in the wallow that seems to them unworthy of them, even as they roll in it.

As soon as there came a convenient pause in Hallowell's talk, Norman said, "And you devote your whole life to these things?"

Hallowell's countenance lost its fine glow of enthusiasm. "I have to make a living. I do chemical analyses for doctors and druggists. That takes most of my time."

"But you can dispatch those things quickly."

Hallowell shook his head. "There's only one way to do things. My clients trust me. I can't shirk."

Norman smiled. He admired this simplicity. But it amused him, too; in a world of shirking and shuffling, not to speak of downright dishonesty, it struck the humorous note of the incongruous. He said:

"But if you could give all your time you would get on faster."

"Yes—if I had the time—and the money. To make the search exhaustive would take money—five or six thousand a year, at the least. A great deal more than I shall ever have."

"Have you tried to interest capitalists?"

Hallowell smiled ironically. "There is much talk about capitalists and capital opening up things. But I have yet to learn of an instance of their touching anything until they were absolutely sure of large profits. Their failed enterprises are not miscarriage of noble purpose but mistaken judgment, judgment blinded by hope and greed."

"I see that a philosopher can know life without living it," said Norman. "But couldn't you put your scheme in such a way that some capitalist would be led to hope?"

"I'd have to tell them the truth. Possibly I might discover something with commercial value, but I couldn't promise. I don't think it is likely."

Norman's eyes were on the door. His thoughts were reaching out to the distant and faint sound of a piano. "Just what do you propose to search for?" inquired he.

He tried to listen, because it was necessary that he have some knowledge of Hallowell's plans. But he could not fix his attention. After a few moments he glanced at his watch, interrupted with, "I think I understand enough for the present. I've stayed longer than I intended. I must go now. When I come again I may perhaps have some plan to propose."

"Plan?" exclaimed Hallowell, his eyes lighting up.

"I'm not sure—not at all sure," hastily added Norman. "I don't wish to give you false hopes. The matter is extremely difficult. But I'll try. I've small hope of success, but I'll try."

"My daughter didn't explain to me," said the scientist. "She simply said one of the gentlemen for whom she worked was coming to look at my place. I thought it was mere curiosity."

"So it was, Mr. Hallowell," said Norman. "But I have been interested. I don't as yet see what can be done. I'm only saying that I'll think it over."

"I understand," said Hallowell. He was trying to seem calm and indifferent. But his voice had the tremulous note of excitement in it and his hands fumbled nervously, touching evidence of the agitated gropings of his mind in the faint, perhaps illusory, light of a new-sprung hope. "Yes, I understand perfectly. Still—it is pleasant to think about such a thing, even if there's no chance of it. I am very fond of dreaming. That has been my life, you know."

Norman colored, moved uneasily. The fineness of this man's character made him uncomfortable. He could pity Hallowell as a misguided failure. He could dilate himself as prosperous, successful, much the more imposing and important figure in the contrast. Yet there was somehow a point of view at which, if one looked carefully, his own sort of man shriveled and the Hallowell sort towered.

"I must be going," Norman said. "No—don't come with me. I know the way. I've interrupted you long enough." And he put out his hand and, by those little clevernesses of manner which he understood so well, made it impossible for Hallowell to go with him to Dorothy.

He was glad when he shut the door between him and her father. He paused in the hall to dispel the vague, self-debasing discomfort—and listening to her voice as she sang helped wonderfully. There is no more trying test of a personality than to be estimated by the voice alone. That test produces many strange and startling results. Again and again it completely reverses our judgment of the personality, either destroys or enhances its charm. The voice of this girl, floating out upon the quiet of the cottage—the voice, soft and sweet, full of the virginal passion of dreams unmarred by experience—It was while listening to her voice, as he stood there in the dimly lighted hall, that Frederick Norman passed under the spell in all its potency. In taking an anaesthetic there is the stage when we reach out for its soothing effects; then comes the stage when we half desire, half fear; then a stage in which fear is dominant, and we struggle to retain our control of the senses. Last comes the stage when we feel the full power of the drug and relax and yield or are beaten down into quiet. Her voice drew him into the final stage, was the blow of the overwhelming wave's crest that crushed him into submission.

She glanced toward the door. He was leaning there, an ominous calm in his pale, resolute face. She gazed at him with widening eyes. And her look was the look of helplessness before a force that may, indeed must, be struggled against, but with the foregone certainty of defeat.

A gleam of triumph shone in his eyes. Then his expression changed to one more conventional. "I stopped a moment to listen, on my way out," said he.

Her expression changed also. The instinctive, probably unconscious response to his look faded into the sweet smile, serious rather than merry, that was her habitual greeting. "Mr. Tetlow didn't get away from father so soon."

"I stayed longer than I intended. I found it even more interesting than I had expected. . . . Would you be glad if your father could be free to do as he likes and not be worried about anything?"

"That is one of my dreams."

"Well, it's certainly one that might come true. . . . And you—It's a shame that you should have to do so much drudgery—both here and in New York."

"Oh, I don't mind about myself. It's all I'm fit for. I haven't any talent—except for dreaming."

"And for making—some man's dreams come true."

Her gaze dropped. And as she hid herself she looked once more almost as insignificant and colorless as he had once believed her to be.

"What are you thinking about?"

She shook her head slowly without raising her eyes or emerging from the deep recess of her reserve.

"You are a mystery to me. I can't decide whether you are very innocent or very—concealing."

She glanced inquiringly at him. "I don't understand," she said.

He smiled. "No more do I. I've seen so much of faking—in women as well as in men—that it's hard for me to believe anyone is genuine."

"Do you think I am trying to deceive you? About what?"

He made an impatient gesture—impatience with his credulity where she was concerned. "No matter. I want to make you happy—because I want you to make me happy."

Her eyes became as grave as a wondering child's. "You are laughing at me," she said.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I could not make you happy."

"Why not?"

"What could a serious man like you find in me?"

His intense, burning gaze held hers. "Some time I will tell you."

She shut herself within herself like a flower folding away its beauty and leaving exposed only the underside of its petals. It was impossible to say whether she understood or was merely obeying an instinct.

He watched her a moment in silence. Then he said:

"I am mad about you—mad. You must understand. I can think only of you. I am insane with jealousy of you. I want you—I must have you."

He would have seized her in his arms, but the look of sheer amazement she gave him protected her where no protest or struggle would. "You?" she said. "Did you really mean it? I thought you were just talking."

"Can't you see that I mean it?"

"Yes—you look as if you did. But I can't believe it. I could never think of you in that way."

Once more that frank statement of indifference infuriated him. He must compel her to feel—he must give that indifference the lie—and at once! He caught her in his arms. He rained kisses upon her pale face. She made not the least resistance, but seemed dazed. "I will teach you to love me," he cried, drunk now with the wine of her lips, with the perfume of her exquisite youth. "I will make you happy. We shall be mad with happiness."