n. She let her eyes rise as high as
the flags, then slowly, higher and higher, until they met his, fluttered,
and dropped. But the glance was enough. She could not have resisted the
look in his eyes.

"Did you mean it?" he asked, almost breathlessly. "Did you mean the whole
thing?"

She could not reply. She glanced around to see if the waiters could hear.

"Can't you tell me?" he was saying. "It's been a week."

She gazed at the napkin until it grew misty and indistinct. Then she
slowly nodded.

A waiter was almost within hearing. Bannon stood looking at her, heedless
of everything but that she was there before him, that her eyes were trying
to peep up at him through the locks of red gold hair that had strayed over
her forehead.

"Please"--she whispered--"please put them up."

And so they set to work. He got the ladder and she told him what to do.
Her directions were not always clear, but that mattered little, for he
could not have followed them. Somehow the flags went up, and if the effect
was little better than Max's attempt had been, no one spoke of it.

Pete and Max came in together soon with the napkins, and a little time
slipped by before Bannon could draw Max aside and grip his hand. Then they
went at the napkins, and as they sat around the table, Hilda and Bannon,
Pete and the waiters, folding them with rapid fingers, Bannon found
opportunity to talk to her in a low voice, during the times when Pete was
whistling, or was chaffing with the waiters. He told her, a few words at a
time, of the new work Mr. MacBride had assigned to him, and in his
enthusiasm he gave her a little idea of what it would mean to him, this
opportunity to build an elevator the like of which had never been seen in
the country before, and which would be watched by engineers from New York
to San Francisco. He told her, too, something about the work, how it had
been discovered that piles could be made of concrete and driven into the
ground with a pile driver, and that neither beams nor girders--none of the
timbers, in fact--were needed in this new construction. He was nearly
through with it, and still he did not notice the uncertain expression in
her eyes.

It was not until she asked in a faltering undertone, "When are you going
to begin?" that it came to him. And then he looked at her so long that
Pete began to notice, and she had to touch his foot with hers under the
table to get him to turn away. He had forgotten all about the vac