undertake it."

Her face lighted up. He thought it was because of what he had said. But
she immediately undeceived him. She said in a tone of delighted relief,
"Here comes Mr. Tetlow. You must excuse me."

"Dorothy--listen!" he cried. "We are going to be married at once."

The words exploded dizzily in his ears. He assumed they would have a far
more powerful effect upon her. But her expression did not change. "No,"
she said hastily. "I must go with Mr. Tetlow." Tetlow was now at hand,
his heavy face almost formidable in its dark ferocity. She said to him:
"I was waiting for you. Come on"

Norman turned eagerly to his former friend. He said: "Tetlow, I have
just asked Miss Hallowell to be my wife."

Tetlow stared. Then pain and despair seemed to flood and ravage his
whole body.

"I told you the other day," Norman went on, "that I was ready to do the
fair thing. I have just been saying to Miss Hallowell that she must have
some one to protect her. You agree with me, don't you?"

Tetlow, fumbling vaguely with his watch chain, gazed straight ahead.
"Yes," he said with an effort. "Yes, you are right, Norman. An office is
no place for an attractive girl as young as she is."

"Has Culver been annoying her?" inquired Norman.

Tetlow started. "Ah--she's told you--has she? I rather hoped she hadn't
noticed or understood."

Both men now looked at the girl. She had shrunk into herself until she
was almost as dim and unimpressive, as cipher-like as when Norman first
beheld her. Also she seemed at least five years less than her twenty.
"Dorothy," said Norman, "you will let me take care of you--won't you?"

"No," she said--and the word carried all the quiet force she was somehow
able to put into her short, direct answers.

Tetlow's pasty sallowness took on a dark red tinge. He looked at her in
surprise. "You don't understand, Miss Dorothy," he said. "He wants to
marry you."

"I understand perfectly," replied she, with the far-away look in her
blue eyes. "But I'll not marry him. I despise him. He frightens me. He
sickens me."

Norman clinched his hands and the muscles of his jaw in the effort to
control himself. "Dorothy," he said, "I've not acted as I should. Tetlow
will tell you that there is good excuse for me. I know you don't
understand about those things--about the ways of the world----"

"I understand perfectly," she interrupted. "It's you that don't
understand. I never saw anyone so conceited. Haven't I told yo