er with women deliberately to
make the mistake--rather, to commit the breach of tact and
courtesy--involved in praising one woman to another. But in this case it
never occurred to him that he was talking to a woman of a woman.
Josephine Burroughs was a lady; the other was a piece of office
machinery--and a very trivial piece at that. But he saw and instantly
understood the look in her eyes--the strained effort to keep the
telltale upper lip from giving its prompt and irrepressible signal of
inward agitation.

"I'm very much interested," said she.

"Yes, she was a curiosity," said he carelessly.

"Has she been there--long?" inquired Josephine, with a feigned
indifference that did not deceive him.

"Several months, I believe. I never noticed her until a few days ago.
And until to-day I had forgotten her. She's one of the kind it's
difficult to remember."

He fell to glancing round the house, pretending to be unconscious of the
furtive suspicion with which she was observing him. She said:

"She's your secretary now?"

"Merely a general office typewriter."

The curtain went up for the second act. Josephine fixed her attention on
the stage--apparently undivided attention. But Norman felt rather than
saw that she was still worrying about the "curiosity." He marveled at
this outcropping of jealousy. It seemed ridiculous--it _was_ ridiculous.
He laughed to himself. If she could see the girl--the obscure,
uninteresting cause of her agitation--how she would mock at herself!
Then, too, there was the absurdity of thinking him capable of such a
stoop. A woman of their own class--or a woman of its corresponding
class, on the other side of the line--yes. No doubt she had heard
things that made her uneasy, or, at least, ready to be uneasy. But this
poorly dressed obscurity, with not a charm that could attract even a man
of her own lowly class--It was such a good joke that he would have
teased Josephine about it but for his knowledge of the world--a
knowledge in whose primer it was taught that teasing is both bad taste
and bad judgment. Also, it was beneath his dignity, it was offense to
his vanity, to couple his name with the name of one so beneath him that
even the matter of sex did not make the coupling less intolerable.

When the curtain fell several people came into the box, and he went to
make a few calls round the parterre. He returned after the second act.
They were again alone--the deaf old aunt did not count. At onc