not now with her was solely a detail
of bookkeeping. It was a matter of such fundamental inconsequence as
the amount of his salary. He was separated from her by a single
cipher.

But that cipher had nothing whatever to do with his regard for her. It
had played no part in his first meeting with her, or in the subsequent
meetings, when frank admiration had developed into an ardent
attachment. It had nothing to do with the girl herself, as he had seen
her for the moment he succeeded in isolating her in a corner of the
upper deck before she sailed. It had nothing to do with certain
moments at the piano when she sang for him. It had nothing to do with
her eyes, as he had seen them that night she had consented to marry
him. To be sure, these were only detached moments which were not
granted him often; but he had a conviction that they stood for
something deeper in her than the everyday moments.

CHAPTER XVI

A MEMORANDUM

During that next week Don found a great deal of time in which to
think. He was surprised at how much time he had. It was as if the
hours in the day were doubled. Where before he seldom had more than
time to hurry home and dress for his evening engagements, he now found
that, even when he walked home, he was left with four or five idle
hours on his hands.

If a man is awake and hasn't anything else to do, he must think. He
began by thinking about Frances, and wondering what she was doing,
until young Schuyler intruded himself,--Schuyler, as it happened, had
taken the same boat, having been sent abroad to convalesce from
typhoid,--and after that there was not much satisfaction in wondering
what she was doing. He knew how sympathetic Frances was, and how good
she would be to Schuyler under these circumstances. Not that he
mistrusted her in the least--she was not the kind to lose her head
and forget. But, at the same time, it did not make him feel any the
less lonesome to picture them basking in the sun on the deck of a
liner while he was adding innumerable little figures beneath an
electric light in the rear of the cashier's cage in a downtown office.
It did not do him any good whatever.

However, the conclusion of such uneasy wondering was to force him back
to a study of the investment securities of Carter, Rand & Seagraves.
Right or wrong, the ten thousand was necessary, and he must get it. On
the whole, this had a wholesome effect. For the next few weeks he
doubled his energies in the offic