at the mill.
"Everything going full speed ahead. When we put it through I guess I'll
have to give you some of the credit."

"Oh, I haven't done anything," she protested.

"More than you think. You've taken so much off my shoulders I couldn't
get along without you." His voice vibrated, reminding her of the voices
of those who made sentimental recitations for the graphophone. It
sounded absurd, yet it did not repel her: something within her responded
to it. "Which way were you going?" he inquired.

"Home," she said.

"Where do you live?"

"In Fillmore Street." And she added with a touch of defiance: "It's a
little street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street."

"Oh yes," he said vaguely, as though he had not understood. "I'll come
with you as far as the bridge--along the canal. I've got so much to say
to you."

"Can't you say it to-morrow?"

"No, I can't; there are so many people in the office--so many
interruptions, I mean. And then, you never give me a chance."

She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her. He had proposed
the route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize
them, and her pride resented this. On the other hand, there was the
sweet allurement of the adventure she craved, which indeed she had come
out to seek and by a strange fatality found--since he had appeared
on the bridge almost as soon as she reached it. The sense of fate was
strong upon her. Curiosity urged her, and, thanks to the eulogy she had
read of him that day, to the added impression of his power conveyed
by the trip through the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than ever in her
consciousness.

"What do you want to say?" she asked.

"Oh, lots of things."

She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently
but firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a
power stronger than herself, a masculine power, was delicious. Her arm
seemed to burn where he touched her.

"Have I done something to offend you?" she heard him say. "Or is it
because you don't like me?"

"I'm not sure whether I like you or not," she told him. "I don't like
seeing you--this way. And why should you want to know me and see me
outside of the office? I'm only your stenographer."

"Because you're you--because you're different from any woman I ever met.
You don't understand what you are--you don't see yourself."

"I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any
longer," she inf