all from head to foot, but with the most captivating
long lines--long throat, long bust, long arms, long in body and in
legs--long and slender--yet somehow not tall. He--all this took but an
instant--returned his glance to her face. He was startled. The beauty
had fled, leaving not a trace behind. Before him wavered once more a
small insignificance. Even her skin now seemed commonplace.

She was saying, "Did you wish me to do something?"

"Yes--a letter. Come in," he said abruptly.

Once more the business in hand took possession of his mind. He became
unconscious of her presence. He dictated slowly, carefully choosing his
words, for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then he stopped and paced up
and down, revolving a new idea, a new phase of the business, that had
flashed upon him. When he had his thoughts once more in form he turned
toward the girl, the mere machine. He gazed at her in amazement. When he
had last looked, he had seen an uninteresting nonentity. But that was
not this person, seated before him in the same garments and with the
same general blondness. That person had been a girl. This time the
transformation was not into the sweet innocence of lovely childhood, but
into something incredibly different. He was gazing now at a woman, a
beautiful world-weary woman, one who had known the joys and then the
sorrows of life and love. Heavy were the lids of the large eyes gazing
mournfully into infinity--gazing upon the graves of a life, the long,
long vista of buried joys. Never had he seen anything so sad or so
lovely as her mouth. The soft, smooth skin was not merely pale; its
pallor was that of wakeful nights, of weeping until there were no more
tears to drain away.

"Miss Hallowell--" he began.

She startled; and like the flight of an interrupted dream, the woman he
had been seeing vanished. There sat the commonplace young person he had
first seen. He said to himself: "I must be a little off my base
to-night," and went on with the dictation. When he finished she withdrew
to transcribe the letter on the typewriter. He seated himself at his
desk and plunged into the masses of documents. He lost the sense of his
surroundings until she stood beside him holding the typewritten pages.
He did not glance up, but seized the sheets to read and sign.

"You may go," said he. "I am very much obliged to you." And he
contrived, as always, to put a suggestion of genuineness into the
customary phrase.

"I'm afraid it's not