ly making summer out of a chill
autumnal day. Nor, curiously enough, was her delight lessened by Davy
Hull's blundering betrayal of himself. His color, his eccentric
twitchings of the lips and the hands would have let a far less astute
young woman than Jane Hastings into the secret of the reason for his
presence in that office when he had said he couldn't "afford" to go.
So guilty did he feel that he stammered out:

"I dropped in to see Dorn."

"You wished to see Victor?" exclaimed the guileless Selma. "Why didn't
you say so? I'd have told you at once that he was in Indianapolis and
wouldn't be back for two or three days."

Jane straightway felt still better. The disgusting mystery of the
books that did not come was now cleared up. Secure in the certainty of
Selma's indifference to Davy she proceeded to punish him. "What a
stupid you are, Davy!" she cried mockingly. "The instant I saw your
face I knew you were here to flirt with Miss Gordon."

"Oh, no, Miss Hastings," protested Selma with quaint intensity of
seriousness, "I assure you he was not flirting. He was telling me
about the reform movement he and his friends are organizing."

"That is his way of flirting," said Jane. "Every animal has its own
way--and an elephant's way is different from a mosquito's."

Selma was eyeing Hull dubiously. It was bad enough for him to have
taken her time in a well-meaning attempt to enlighten her as to a new
phase of local politics; to take her time, to waste it, in
flirting--that was too exasperating!

"Miss Hastings has a sense of humor that runs riot at times," said Hull.

"You can't save yourself, Davy," mocked Jane. "Come along. Miss Gordon
has no time for either of us."

"I do want YOU to stay," she said to Jane. "But, unfortunately, with
Victor away----" She looked disconsolately at the half-finished page
of copy.

"I came only to snatch Davy away," said Jane.

"Next thing we know, he'll be one of Mr. Dorn's lieutenants."

Thus Jane escaped without having to betray why she had come. In the
street she kept up her raillery. "And a WORKING girl, Davy! What would
our friends say! And you who are always boasting of your
fastidiousness! Flirting with a girl who--I've seen her three times,
and each time she has had on exactly the same plain, cheap little
dress."

There was a nastiness, a vulgarity in this that was as unworthy of Jane
as are all the unlovely emotions of us who are always sweet and refi