d put her hand on the
desk and hung her head and sobbed.

"Why, Antoinette," he asked, gently, bending over her, "are you so much
unused to the world? I thought you said you loved me. Do you want me
to forget all this and go on as before? I can, of course, if you can,
you know."

He knew that she loved him, wanted him.

She heard him plainly enough, shaking.

"Do you?" he said, after a time, giving her moments in which to recover.

"Oh, let me cry!" she recovered herself sufficiently to say, quite
wildly. "I don't know why I'm crying. It's just because I'm nervous,
I suppose. Please don't mind me now."

"Antoinette," he repeated, "look at me! Will you stop?"

"Oh no, not now. My eyes are so bad."

"Antoinette! Come, look!" He put his hand under her chin. "See, I'm
not so terrible."

"Oh," she said, when her eyes met his again, "I--" And then she folded
her arms against his breast while he petted her hand and held her close.

"I'm not so bad, Antoinette. It's you as much as it is me. You do
love me, then?"

"Yes, yes--oh yes!"

"And you don't mind?"

"No. It's all so strange." Her face was hidden.

"Kiss me, then."

She put up her lips and slipped her arms about him. He held her close.

He tried teasingly to make her say why she cried, thinking the while of
what Aileen or Rita would think if they knew, but she would not at
first--admitting later that it was a sense of evil. Curiously she also
thought of Aileen, and how, on occasion, she had seen her sweep in and
out. Now she was sharing with her (the dashing Mrs. Cowperwood, so
vain and superior) the wonder of his affection. Strange as it may
seem, she looked on it now as rather an honor. She had risen in her
own estimation--her sense of life and power. Now, more than ever
before, she knew something of life because she knew something of love
and passion. The future seemed tremulous with promise. She went back
to her machine after a while, thinking of this. What would it all come
to? she wondered, wildly. You could not have told by her eyes that she
had been crying. Instead, a rich glow in her brown cheeks heightened
her beauty. No disturbing sense of Aileen was involved with all this.
Antoinette was of the newer order that was beginning to privately
question ethics and morals. She had a right to her life, lead where it
would. And to what it would bring her. The feel of Cowperwood's lips
was still fresh on hers. What would the