got a definite life plan, and it's as
complete and detailed as an engineering blue print. I don't intend to
let you spoil it. I've made a real start here. If you want to, I've no
doubt you can end it. But before you do, I want to warn you that I'll
make a pretty stiff fight for it. I'm no silent sufferer. I'll say
things. And people usually believe me when I talk."

Still the silent, concentrated gaze. With a little impatient exclamation
Fanny walked toward the door. Fenger, startlingly light and agile for
his great height, followed.

"I'm sorry, Miss Brandeis, terribly sorry. You see, you interest me very
much. Very much."

"Thanks," dryly.

"Don't go just yet. Please. I'm not a villain. Really. That is, not a
deliberate villain. But when I find something very fine, very intricate,
very fascinating and complex--like those etchings, for example--I am
intrigued. I want it near me. I want to study it."

Fanny said nothing. But she thought, "This is a dangerously clever man.
Too clever for you. You know so little about them." Fenger waited. Most
women would have found refuge in words. The wrong words. It is only the
strong who can be silent when in doubt.

"Perhaps you will dine with Mrs. Fenger and me at our home some evening?
Mrs. Fenger will speak to you about it."

"I'm afraid I'm usually too tired for further effort at the end of the
day. I'm sorry----"

"Some Sunday night perhaps, then. Tea."

"Thank you." And so out, past the spare secretary, the anxious-browed
stenographer, the academic office boy, to the hallway, the elevator, and
finally the refuge of her own orderly desk. Slosson was at lunch in one
of the huge restaurants provided for employees in the building across
the street. She sat there, very still, for some minutes; for more
minutes than she knew. Her hands were clasped tightly on the desk, and
her eyes stared ahead in a puzzled, resentful, bewildered way. Something
inside her was saying over and over again:

"You lied to him on that very first day. That placed you. That stamped
you. Now he thinks you're rotten all the way through. You lied on the
very first day."

Ella Monahan poked her head in at the door. The Gloves were on that
floor, at the far end. The two women rarely saw each other, except at
lunch time.

"Missed you at lunch," said Ella Monahan. She was a pink-cheeked,
bright-eyed woman of forty-one or two, prematurely gray and therefore
excessively young in her manner, as women