n if it had, which you are a goose for thinking, you're just as
good in your line as your father is in his. I've been expecting any time
to hear of your leaving me for a handsomer man!"

He had been what he would have termed jollying her back to normality
again. But to his intense surprise she suddenly leaned back and looked
up into his face. There was no doubting what he saw there. Just for a
moment the situation threatened to get out of hand. Then he patted her
shoulders and put the safety of his desk between them.

"Run away and bathe your eyes," he said, "and then come back here
looking like the best secretary in the state, and not like a winter
thaw. We have the deuce of a lot of work to do."

But after she had gone he sat for some little time idly rapping a pencil
on the top of his desk. By Jove! Anna Klein! Of all girls in the world!
It was rather a pity, too. She was a nice little thing, and in the
last few months she had changed a lot. She had been timid at first, and
hideously dressed. Lately she had been almost smart. Those ear-rings
now--they changed her a lot. Queer--how things went on in a girl's mind,
and a fellow didn't know until something happened. He settled his tie
and smoothed back his heavy hair.

During the remainder of the day he began to wonder if he had not been
a fatuous idiot. Anna did her work with the thoroughness of her German
blood plus her American training. She came back minus her hat, and with
her eyes carefully powdered, and not once during the morning was he able
to meet her eyes fully. By the middle of the afternoon sex vanity
and curiosity began to get the better of his judgment, and he made an
excuse, when she stood beside him over some papers, her hand on the
desk, to lay his fingers over hers. She drew her hand away quickly, and
when he glanced up, boyishly smiling, her face was flushed.

"Please," she said. And he felt hurt and rebuffed. He had no sentiment
for her whatever, but the devil of mischief of twenty-two was behind
him, urging him on to the eternal experiment. He was very formal with
her for the rest of the day, and had the satisfaction of leaving her, at
four o'clock, white-faced and miserable over her machine in the little
office next to his.

He forgot her immediately, in the attempt to leave the mill without
encountering his father. Clayton, he knew, would be staying late, and
would be exacting similar tribute to the emergency from the entire
force. Also, he