radlaugh order was
natural. During the morning, in the intervals between interviews with the
superintendents, he was self-absorbed, and she found herself
inconsistently resenting the absence of those expressions of
endearment--the glances and stolen caresses--for indulgence in which she
had hitherto rebuked him: and though pride came to her rescue, fuel was
added to her feeling by the fact that he did not seem to notice her
coolness. Since he failed to appear after lunch, she knew he must be
investigating the suspicions Orcutt had voiced; but at six o'clock, when
he had not returned, she closed up her desk and left the office. An odour
of cheap perfume pervading the corridor made her aware of the presence of
Miss Lottie Myers.

"Oh, it's you!" said that young woman, looking up from the landing of the
stairs. "I might have known it you never make a get-away until after six,
do you?"

"Oh, sometimes," said Janet.

"I stayed as a special favour to-night," Miss Myers declared. "But I'm
not so stuck on my job that I can't tear myself away from it."

"I don't suppose you are," said Janet.

For a moment Miss Myers looked as if she was about to be still more
impudent, but her eye met Janet's, and wavered. They crossed the bridge
in silence. "Well, ta-ta," she said. "If you like it, it's up to you.
Five o'clock for mine,"--and walked away, up the canal, swinging her hips
defiantly. And Janet, gazing after her, grew hot with indignation and
apprehension. Her relations with Ditmar were suspected, after all, made
the subject of the kind of comment indulged in, sotto voce, by Lottie
Myers and her friends at the luncheon hour. She felt a mad, primitive
desire to run after the girl, to spring upon and strangle her and compel
her to speak what was in her mind and then retract it; and the motor
impulse, inhibited, caused a sensation of sickness, of unhappiness and
degradation as she turned her steps slowly homeward. Was it a
misinterpretation, after all--what Lottie Myers had implied and feared to
say?...

In Fillmore Street supper was over, and Lise, her face contorted, her
body strained, was standing in front of the bureau "doing" her hair, her
glance now seeking the mirror, now falling again to consult a model in
one of those periodicals of froth and fashion that cause such numberless
heart burnings in every quarter of our democracy, and which are filled
with photographs of "prominent" persons at race meetings, horse shows,
a