"I was going to lunch. But if you've anything for me to do, I'll be glad to stay."
"No—no. I simply wished to say that if Miss Burroughs wished to make an arrangement with you, we'd help you about carrying out your part of it."
She was pale—so pale that it brought out strongly the smooth dead-white purity of her skin. Her small features wore an expression of pride, of haughtiness even. And in the eyes that regarded him steadily there shone a cold light—the light of a proud and lonely soul that repels intrusion even as the Polar fastnesses push back without effort assault upon their solitudes. "We made no arrangement," said she.
"You are not more than eighteen, are you?" inquired he abruptly.
The irrelevant question startled her. She looked as if she thought she had not heard aright. "I am twenty," she said.
"You have a most—most unusual way of shifting to various ages and personalities," explained he, with some embarrassment.
She simply looked at him and waited.
His embarrassment increased. It was a novel sensation to him, this feeling ill at ease with a woman—he who was at ease with everyone and put others at their ease or not as he pleased. "I'm sorry you and Miss Burroughs didn't arrange something. I suppose she found the hours difficult."
"She made me an offer," replied the girl. "I refused it."
"But, as I told you, we can let you off—anything within reason."
"Thank you, but I do not care to do that kind of work. No doubt any kind of work for wages classes one as a servant. But those people up there—they make one feel it—feel menial."
"Not Miss Burroughs, I assure you."
A satirical smile hovered round the girl's lips. Her face was altogether lovely now, and no lily ever rose more gracefully from its stem than did her small head from her slender form. "She meant to be kind, but she was insulting. Those people up there don't understand. They're vain and narrow. Oh, I don't blame them. Only, I don't care to be brought into contact with them."
He looked at her in wonder. She talked of Josephine as if she were Josephine's superior, and her expression and accent were such that they contrived to convey an impression that she had the right to do it. He grew suddenly angry at her, at himself for listening to her. "I am sorry," he said stiffly, and took up a pen to indicate that he wished her to go.
He rather expected that she would be alarmed. But if she was, she wholly concealed it. She smiled slightly and moved toward the door. Looking after her, he relented. She seemed so young—was so young—and was evidently poor. He said:
"It's all right to be proud, Miss Hallowell. But there is such a thing as supersensitiveness. You are earning your living. If you'll pardon me for thrusting advice upon you, I think you've made a mistake. I'm sure Miss Burroughs meant well. If you had been less sensitive you'd soon have realized it."
"She patronized me," replied the girl, not angrily, but with amusement. "It was all I could do not to laugh in her face. The idea of a woman who probably couldn't make five dollars a week fancying she was the superior of any girl who makes her own living, no matter how poor a living it is."
Norman laughed. It had often appealed to his own sense of humor, the delusion that the tower one happened to be standing upon was part of one's own stature. But he said: "You're a very foolish young person. You'll not get far in the world if you keep to that road. It winds through Poverty Swamps to the Poor House."
"Oh, no," replied she. "One can always die."
Again he laughed. "But why die? Why not be sensible and live?"
"I don't know," replied she. She was looking away dreamily, and her eyes were wonderful to see. "There are many things I feel and do—and I don't at all understand why. But—" An expression of startling resolution flashed across her face. "But I do them, just the same."
A brief silence; then, as she again moved toward the door, he said, "You have been working for some time?"
"Four years."
"You support yourself?"
"I work to help out father's income. He makes almost enough, but not quite."
Almost enough! The phrase struck upon Norman's fancy as both amusing and sad. Almost enough for what? For keeping body and soul together; for keeping body barely decently clad. Yet she was content. He said:
"You like to work?"
"Not yet. But I think I shall when I learn this business. One feels secure when one has a trade."
"It doesn't impress me as an interesting life for a girl of your age," he suggested.
"Oh, I'm not unhappy. And at home, of evenings and Sundays, I'm happy."
"Doing what?"
"Reading and talking with father and—doing the housework—and all the rest of it."
What a monotonous narrow little life! He wanted to pity her, but somehow he could not. There was no suggestion in her manner that she was an object of pity. "What did Miss Burroughs say to you—if I may ask?"
"Certainly. You sent me, and I'm much obliged to you. I realize it was an opportunity—for another sort of girl. I half tried to accept because I knew refusing was only my—queerness." She smiled charmingly. "You are not offended because I couldn't make myself take it?"
"Not in the least." And all at once he felt that it was true. This girl would have been out of place in service. "What was the offer?"
Suddenly before him there appeared a clever, willful child, full of the childish passion for imitation and mockery. And she proceeded to "take off" the grand Miss Burroughs—enough like Josephine to give the satire point and barb. He could see Josephine resolved to be affable and equal, to make this doubtless bedazzled stray from the "lower classes" feel comfortable in those palatial surroundings. She imitated Josephine's walk, her way of looking, her voice for the menials—gracious and condescending. The exhibition was clever, free from malice, redolent of humor. Norman laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks.
"You ought to go on the stage," said he. "How Josephine—Miss Burroughs would appreciate it! For she's got a keen sense of humor."
"Not for the real jokes—like herself," replied Miss Hallowell.
"You're prejudiced."
"No. I see her as she is. Probably everyone else—those around her—see her money and her clothes and all that. But I saw—just her."
He nodded thoughtfully. Then he looked penetratingly at her. "How did you happen to learn to do that?" he asked. "To see people as they are?"
"Father taught me." Her eyes lighted up, her whole expression changed. She became beautiful with the beauty of an intense and adoring love. "Father is a wonderful man—one of the most wonderful that ever lived. He——"
There was a knock at the door. She startled, he looked confused. Both awakened to a sense of their forgotten surroundings, of who and what they were. She went and Mr. Sanders entered. But even in his confusion Norman marveled at the vanishing of the fascinating personality who had been captivating him into forgetting everything else, at the reappearance of the blank, the pale and insignificant personality attached to a typewriting machine at ten dollars a week. No, not insignificant, not blank—never again that, for him. He saw now the full reality—and also why he, everyone, was so misled. She made him think of the surface of the sea when the sky is gray and the air calm. It lies smooth and flat and expressionless—inert, monotonous. But let sunbeam strike or breeze ever so faint start up, and what a commotion of unending variety! He could never look at her again without being reminded of those infinite latent possibilities, without wondering what new and perhaps more charming, more surprising varieties of look and tone and manner could be evoked.
And while Sanders was talking—prosing on and