a sewing machine since she was fifteen years old.  And even in his wife’s early childhood people were still using lamps for soft effects and intensive reading.  Any woman who knew the art of keeping a kerosene lamp in shape must of necessity find the oiling and cleaning of a typewriting machine mere child’s play.  He didn’t realize the affinities of training.  It would never have occurred to him to fancy that because he kept his office desk in perfect order he was qualified to do the same thing with a kitchen stove, or that the method he had acquired as office boy, copying letters in the letterpress, would have stood him in good stead if he suddenly had been called upon to make up his own bed.  What he did realize was that the leveling process which goes hand in hand with the mingling of sexes in a workday world was setting in.  And he resented it.  He wanted to coddle illusion ... he had no wish for a world practical to the point of bleakness.

One afternoon Hilmer came in at the usual time with a handful of memoranda.  It was a violently rainy day—­an early March day, to be exact—­the sort that refused to be softened even by the beguilements of California.  The rain wind, generally warm and humid, had been chilled in its flight over the snow-piled Sierras, and it had pelted down in a wintry flood, banking up piles of stinging hail between warmer showerings.  Fred had decided to forgo his soliciting and stay indoors instead.  Hilmer greeted him with biting raillery.

“Well, I should think this was a good day to bag a prospective customer,” he flung out as he laid his umbrella aside.  “Or is business swamping you?”

Fred tossed back a trite rejoinder.  Helen went on pounding her machine ... she did not even lift her eyes.

“I’ve got something for you to-day,” Hilmer went on, as he unbound the bundle of papers and sat down beside Fred.

Starratt saw the edge of a blue print in Hilmer’s hand.  This spelled all manner of possibilities, but he checked a surge of illogical hope.  “That’s fine,” he answered, heartily.  “But why didn’t you send for me?  I could have come over.  It’s bad enough to take your business without letting you bring it in on a day like this...”

Hilmer made a contemptuous gesture.  “Wind and weather never made any difference to me...  I’ve traveled twenty miles in a blizzard to court a girl.”

“Oh, when a woman’s involved, that’s different,” Fred laughed back.  “There’s nothing as alluring here.”

“Well, Mrs. Starratt, what do you say?” Hilmer called out to her.  “Your husband doesn’t seem to count you in at all.”

Helen was erasing a misspelled word.  “Married women are used to that,” she retorted, flippantly.  “Sometimes it’s just as well that they overlook us.  We get a chance to play our own hand once in a while.”

Everybody laughed, including Fred, but the effort hurt him.  There was a suggestion of unpleasant mockery in Helen’s tone.  She seemed to be hiding her contempt behind a thin veil of acrid humor.  And somehow this revelation in the presence of Hilmer stung him.