Suddenly, just as she had begun to feel so relieved that tears were on the way to her eyes, Meggison bent forward with an abrupt movement and laid his hot, plump hand heavily on hers.  Up jumped the girl and down fell the hand.  She seemed to hear herself excusing herself and explaining her rashness to Sadie:  “I couldn’t stand it.  I wouldn’t!  I didn’t care what happened.”

“What’s the matter?” he asked, blustering, his face now very red.  He kept his seat and looked up at her with a bullish stare.

“Nothing is the matter, Mr. Meggison,” she said.  “Only I think I’ve troubled you long enough.  You—­will be wanting me to go.”

As she spoke she gazed straight and steadily down into his eyes, as if he were an animal that could be mastered if your look never let his go.  She remembered how Sadie had said that Meggison wanted to be a “dog,” but his bark might be stopped if you showed him in time that you were not afraid.  Winifred was afraid, but she acted as if she were not, which was the great thing.  And the “stunt,” as Sadie would have called it, seemed to work—­if only for the moment.

When his face had cooled, he said:  “Yes, you can go, Miss Child.  I’ve nothing more to say to you—­at present.  Except this:  it won’t be the Gloves.”

* * * * *

Tingling, burning, whirling with the excitement of her interview—­fully felt only after it was over—­Win started to hurry back to work.  It was not a crowded time of the day in the shopping world.  Many ladies were lunching not buying, and employees, if on business, were permitted to use the elevators, white light going up, red light down.  Only the boy in smart shop livery, who rushed the lift from roof to basement, was in the mirrored vehicle when Win got in at the superintendent’s floor.

“Hats, Children’s Wardrobes, Games, Toys, Books, Stationery!” shouted the strident young voice mechanically as the doors whizzed back in their groove at the story below.

In streamed some jaded mothers and children, for whom Win backed humbly into a corner, and then, just as the doors were about to snap shut once more for a downward plunge, a young man and woman hurried laughing in.  Winifred Child shrank farther into her corner, plastering herself against the wall of the elevator, and turning her face away, for the newcomers were Lord Raygan and Ena Rolls.

As the wall consisted entirely of mirrors, however, turning away gave little protection.  The mothers, refusing to retire with their young before the latest arrivals, “swell” though they might be, Miss Rolls and her companion were forced to push past the forms which kept the door, and by the time the elevator had shot down a story or two farther the pair were close to Win.  Still she kept her face twisted as far over her shoulder as it would go, at risk of getting a cramp in the neck, and her heart was beating with such loud thuds under the respectable black blouse that she feared lest they should hear it.