hesitated a moment longer, as if weighing what he had said. "No, it
will do no harm," she finally said. Then, with a delightful color and a
quick transformation into a vision of young shyness, "Thank you, Mr.
Norman. Thank you so much."

"Not at all--not in the least," he stammered, the impulse strong to take
the note back and ask her to return to her desk.

When the door closed behind her he rose and paced about the room
uneasily. He was filled with disquiet, with hazy apprehension. His
nerves were unsteady, as if he were going through an exhausting strain.
He sat and tried to force himself to work. Impossible. "What sort of
damn fool attack is this?" he exclaimed, pacing about again. He searched
his mind in vain for any cause adequate to explain his unprecedented
state. "If I did not know that I was well--absolutely well--I'd think I
was about to have an illness--something in the brain."

He appealed to that friend in any trying hour, his sense of humor. He
laughed at himself; but his nerves refused to return to the normal. He
rushed from his private office on various pretexts, each time lingered
in the general room, talking aimlessly with Tetlow--and watching the
door. When she at last appeared, he guiltily withdrew, feeling that
everyone was observing his perturbation and was wondering at it and
jesting about it. "And what the devil am I excited about?" he demanded
of himself. What indeed? He seated himself, rang the bell.

"If Miss Hallowell has got back," he said to the office boy, "please ask
her to come in."

"I think she's gone out to lunch," said the boy. "I know she came in a
while ago. She passed along as you was talking to Mr. Tetlow."

Norman felt himself flushing. "Any time will do," he said, bending over
the papers spread out before him--the papers in the case of the General
Traction Company resisting the payment of its taxes. A noisome odor
seemed to be rising from the typewritten sheets. He made a wry face and
flung the papers aside with a gesture of disgust. "They never do
anything honest," he said to himself. "From the stock-jobbing owners
down to the nickel-filching conductors they steal--steal--steal!" And
then he wondered at, laughed at, his heat. What did it matter? An ant
pilfering from another ant and a sparrow stealing the crumb found by
another sparrow--a man robbing another man--all part of the universal
scheme. Only a narrow-minded ignoramus would get himself wrought up over
it; a phi