To her surprise, Mr. Chase appeared at four o'clock. At the sight of him
the point of her little scissors slipped into the unoffending cuticle of
the hand she was grooming. She motioned him to a chair along the wall.

"In just a few minutes, Mr. Chase."

"Thank you," he replied, seating himself and watching her with
interested, near-sighted eyes.

A nervousness sent the blood rushing to her head. The low drone of
Ethyl's voice talking to a customer, the tick of the clock, the click
and sough of the elevator were thrice magnified. She could feel the gush
of color to her face.

The fat old gentleman whose fingers she had been administering placed a
generous bonus on the table and ambled out. She turned her burning eyes
upon Mr. Chase and spoke slowly to steady her voice. She was ashamed of
her unaccountable nervousness and of the suffocating dryness in her
throat.

"Ready for you, Mr. Chase."

He came toward her with a peculiar slowness of movement, a
characteristic slowness which was one of the trivial things which burned
his attractiveness into her consciousness. In the stuffiness of her own
little room she had more than once closed her eyes and deliberately
pictured him as he came toward her table, gentle yet eager, with a
deference which was new as it was delightful to her.

As he approached her she snapped a flexible file between her thumb and
forefinger, and watched it vibrate and come to a jerky stop; then she
looked up.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Chase."

"Good afternoon, Miss Sprunt. You see, I am following your advice." He
took the chair opposite her.

"I--I want to thank you for the violets. They are the first real hint of
May I've had."

"You knew they came from me?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Why--I--why, I just knew."

She covered her confusion by removing and replacing crystal
bottle-stoppers.

"I'm glad that you knew they came from me, Miss Sprunt."

"Yes, I knew that they could come from no one but you--they were so
simple and natural and--sweet."

She laughed a pitch too high and plunged his fingers into water some
degrees too hot. He did not wince, but she did.

"Oh, Mr. Chase, forgive me. I--I've scalded your fingers."

"Why," he replied, not taking his eyes from her face, "so you have!"
They both laughed.

Across the room Miss Ethyl coughed twice. "I always say," she observed
to her customer, "a workin'-girl can't be too careful of her actions.
That's why I am of a retiring disposit