"The lady to whom this is addressed wishes to see you. Will you go there, right away, please? It may be that you'll get the chance to make some extra money. You've no objection, I suppose?"
She took the letter hesitatingly.
"You will find her agreeable, I think," continued he. "At any rate, the trip can do no harm."
She hesitated a moment longer, as if weighing what he had said. "No, it will do no harm," she finally said. Then, with a delightful color and a quick transformation into a vision of young shyness, "Thank you, Mr. Norman. Thank you so much."
"Not at all—not in the least," he stammered, the impulse strong to take the note back and ask her to return to her desk.
When the door closed behind her he rose and paced about the room uneasily. He was filled with disquiet, with hazy apprehension. His nerves were unsteady, as if he were going through an exhausting strain. He sat and tried to force himself to work. Impossible. "What sort of damn fool attack is this?" he exclaimed, pacing about again. He searched his mind in vain for any cause adequate to explain his unprecedented state. "If I did not know that I was well—absolutely well—I'd think I was about to have an illness—something in the brain."
He appealed to that friend in any trying hour, his sense of humor. He laughed at himself; but his nerves refused to return to the normal. He rushed from his private office on various pretexts, each time lingered in the general room, talking aimlessly with Tetlow—and watching the door. When she at last appeared, he guiltily withdrew, feeling that everyone was observing his perturbation and was wondering at it and jesting about it. "And what the devil am I excited about?" he demanded of himself. What indeed? He seated himself, rang the bell.
"If Miss Hallowell has got back," he said to the office boy, "please ask her to come in."
"I think she's gone out to lunch," said the boy. "I know she came in a while ago. She passed along as you was talking to Mr. Tetlow."
Norman felt himself flushing. "Any time will do," he said, bending over the papers spread out before him—the papers in the case of the General Traction Company resisting the payment of its taxes. A noisome odor seemed to be rising from the typewritten sheets. He made a wry face and flung the papers aside with a gesture of disgust. "They never do anything honest," he said to himself. "From the stock-jobbing owners down to the nickel-filching conductors they steal—steal—steal!" And then he wondered at, laughed at, his heat. What did it matter? An ant pilfering from another ant and a sparrow stealing the crumb found by another sparrow—a man robbing another man—all part of the universal scheme. Only a narrow-minded ignoramus would get himself wrought up over it; a philosopher would laugh—and take what he needed or happened to fancy.
The door opened. Miss Hallowell entered, a small and demure hat upon her masses of thick fair hair arranged by anything but unskillful fingers. "You wished to see me?" came in the quiet little voice, sweet and frank and shy.
He roused himself from pretended abstraction.
"Oh—it's you?" he said pleasantly. "They said you were out."
"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 fastness’s 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 super sensitiveness. 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