nted to spend the summer--most of it, that is--in Holzhausen
Am Ammersee, which is a little village, or artist's colony in the
valley, an hour's ride from here, and within sight of the Bavarian Alps.
We had Kurt Stein's little villa for almost nothing. But Olga was bored,
and she wasn't well, poor girl, so we went to Interlaken and it was
awful. And that brings me to what I want to tell you.

"There's going to be a baby. No use saying I'm glad, because I'm not,
and neither is Olga. About February, I think. Olga has been simply
wretched, but the doctor says she'll feel better from now on. The truth
of it is she needs a lot of things and I can't give them to her. I told
you I'd been working on this concerto of mine. Sometimes I think it's
the real thing, if only I could get the leisure and the peace of mind
I need to work on it. You don't know what it means to be eaten up with
ambition and to be handicapped."

"Oh, don't I!" said Fanny Brandeis, between her teeth, and crumpled the
letter in her strong fingers. "Don't I!" She got up from her chair and
began to walk up and down her little office, up and down. A man often
works off his feelings thus; a woman rarely. Fenger, who had not been
twice in her office since her coming to the Haynes-Cooper plant, chose
this moment to visit her, his hands full of papers, his head full of
plans. He sensed something wrong at once, as a highly organized human
instrument responds to a similarly constructed one.

"What's wrong, girl?"

"Everything. And don't call me girl."

Fenger saw the letter crushed in her hand.

"Brother?" She had told him about Theodore and he had been tremendously
interested.

"Yes."

"Money again, I suppose?"

"Yes, but----"

"You know your salary's going up, after Christmas."

"Catalogue or no catalogue?"

"Catalogue or no catalogue."

"Why?"

"Because you've earned it."

Fanny faced him squarely. "I know that Haynes-Cooper isn't exactly a
philanthropic institution. A salary raise here usually means a battle.
I've only been here three months." Fenger seated himself in the chair
beside her desk and ran a cool finger through the sheaf of papers in his
hand. "My dear girl--I beg your pardon. I forgot. My good woman
then--if you like that better--you've transfused red blood into a dying
department. It may suffer a relapse after Christmas, but I don't think
so. That's why you're getting more money, and not because I happen to be
tremendously intere