in which she should disclose her unique value to a dazzled
world, but most of them had seemed, even to herself, extremely unlikely
to arrive. It was improbable that Mr. Asquith should fall into a river
just as she was passing, and that he should be so helpless and the
countryside so depopulated that she would be able to exact votes for
women as the price of his rescue; besides, she could not swim. It was
improbable, too, that she should be in a South American republic just
when a revolution was proclaimed, and that, the Latin attitude to women
being what it is, she should be given a high military command. But there
had been one triumph which she knew to be not impossible even in her
obscurity. It might conceivably happen that by some exhibition of the
prodigious bloom of her efficiency she would repay her debt to the firm
and make the first steps towards becoming the pioneer business queen.
For it was one of her dreams, perhaps the six hundred and seventy-ninth
in the series, that one day she would sit at a desk answering
innumerable telephone calls with projecting jaw, as millionaires do on
the movies, and crushing rivals like blackbeetles in order that, after
being reviled by the foolish as a heartless plutocrat, she might hand a
gigantic Trust over to the Socialist State.

"Mr. Philip," she said.

Apparently he did not hear her, though the other man turned his dark
glance on her.

"Mr. Philip," she said. He looked across at her with a blankness she
took as part of the business. "I've been taking Commercial Spanish at
Skerry's. I took a first-class certificate. Maybe I could manage the
letters?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Yaverland explosively. He appeared to be about to make
some objection, and then he bit back the speech that was already in his
mouth. And as he tried to find other words the beauty of her body caught
his attention. It was, as it happened, very visible at that moment. The
fulness of her overall had fallen to one side as she sat on the high
stool, and so that linen was tightly wrapped about her, disclosing that
she was made like a delicate fleet beast; in the valley between her high
small breasts there lay a shadow, which grew greater when she breathed
deeply. He looked at her with the dispassionateness which comes to men
who have lived much in countries where nakedness offers itself unashamed
to the sunlight, and said to himself, "I should like to see her run." He
knew that a body like this must possess an