from Wahlbaum himself in his private office--his own
stenographer having triumphantly secured a supporting husband, and a
general alarm having been sent out for another to replace her--Athalie
suddenly found herself in a permanent position. And, automatically,
all annoyances ceased.

Wahlbaum was a Jew, big, hearty, honest, and keen as a razor. Never
was he in a hurry, never flustered or impatient, never irritable. And
she had never seen him angry, or rude to anybody. He laughed a great
deal in a tremendously resonant voice, smoked innumerable big, fat,
light-coloured cigars, never neglected to joke with Athalie when she
came in the morning and when she left at night, and never as much as
by the flutter of an eyelid conveyed to her anything that any girl
might not hear without offence.

Grossman's reputation was different, but except for a smirk or two he
had never bothered her. Nor did anybody else connected with the firm.
They all were too much afraid of Wahlbaum.

So, except for the petty, contemptible annoyances to which all young
girls are more or less subjected in any cosmopolitan metropolis,
Athalie had found business agreeable enough except for the
confinement.

That was hard on a country-bred girl; and she could scarcely endure
the imprisonment when the warm sun of April looked in through the
windows of Mr. Wahlbaum's private office, and when soft breezes
stirred the curtains and fluttered the papers on her desk.

Always in the spring the voice of brook and surf, of woodland and
meadow called to her. In her ears was ever the happy tumult of the
barn-yard, the lowing of cattle at the bars, the bleat of sheep. And
her heart beat passionate response.

Athalie was never ill. The nearest she came to it was a dull feeling
of languor in early spring. But it did not even verge on either
resentment or despondency.

In winter it was better. She had learned to accept with philosophy the
noises of the noisiest of cities. Even, perhaps, she rather liked
them, or at least, on her two weeks' vacation in the country, she
found, to her surprise, that she missed the accustomed and incessant
noises of New York.

Her real hardships were two; poverty and loneliness.

The combined earnings of herself and her sisters did not allow them a
better ventilated, or more comfortable apartment than the grimy one
they lived in. Nor did their earnings permit them more or better
clothing and food.

As for loneliness, she had, of