ealing a
glance past it at her down-bent face.

"Not necessarily. Somebody may merely have been attracted by the music
of the lines. Put it back, Mr. Secretary, and concern yourself with
Judge Cahill. It's to be hoped that you won't find any more distracting
verse between his pages."

"Why not? Oughtn't one to get all the poetry one can out of life?"

"Not in business hours."

He laughed in spite of himself at the failure of his effort to make her
self-conscious by any reading of such lines in his presence. Clearly she
meant to allow no personal relation to arise between them while they
were thrown together by Judge Gray's need of them. She fell to typing
again with even more energy than before, if that were possible, while
he--it must be confessed that before he laid the verses away between the
pages for another fifty years' sleep he had made note of their identity,
that he might look them up again in a seldom opened copy of the English
poet on his shelves at home. They belonged to him now!

In half an hour more Roberta's machine stopped clicking. Swiftly she
covered it, set it away in the book-cupboard, and put her table in
order. She laid the typewritten sheets together upon Judge Gray's desk
in a straight-edged pile, a paperweight on top. In her simple dress of
dark blue, trim as any office woman's attire, she might have been a
hired stenographer--of a very high class--putting her affairs in order
for the day.

Richard waited till she approached his desk, which she had to pass on
her way out. Then he rose to his feet.

"Allow me to congratulate you," said he, "on having accomplished a long
task in the minimum length of time possible. I am lost in wonder that a
hand which can play the 'cello with such art can play the typewriter
with such skill."

"Thank you." There was a flash of mirth in her eyes. "There's music in
both if you have ears to hear."

"I have recognized that to-day."

"You never heard it before? Music in the hammer on the anvil, in the
throb of the engine, in the hum of the dynamo."

"And in the scratch of the pen, the pounding of the boiler shop, and
the--the--slide and grind of the trolley-car, I suppose?"

"Indeed, yes--even in those. And there'll surely be melody in the
closing of the door which shuts you in to solitude after this
distracting day. Listen to it! Good-bye."

He long remembered the peculiar parting look she gave him, satiric,
mischievous, yet charmingly provocative. S