As the intimacy grew, Hal found himself looking forward to these swift-winged little visits.  They made a welcome break in the detailed drudgery; added to the day a glint of color, bright like the ripple of half-hidden flame that crowned Milly’s head.  Once Veltman, intruding on their talk, had glared blackly and, withdrawing, had waited for the girl in the hallway outside from whence, as she left, Hal could hear the foreman’s deep voice in anger and her clear replies tauntingly stimulating his chagrin.

Having neglected the Willards for several days, Hal received a telephone message, about a month after Esme Elliot’s departure, asking him to stop in.  He found Mrs. Willard waiting him in the conservatory.  His old friend looked up as he entered, with a smile which did not hide the trouble in her eyes.

“Aren’t you a lily-of-the-field!” admired the visitor, contemplating her green and white costume.

“It’s the Vanes’ dance.  Not going?”

“Not asked.  Besides, I’m a workingman these days.”

“So one might infer from your neglect of your friends.  Hal, I’ve had a letter from Esme Elliot.”

“Any message?” he asked lightly, but with startled blood.

There was no answering lightness in her tones.  “Yes.  One I hate to give.  Hal, she’s engaged herself to Will Douglas.  It must have been by letter, for she wasn’t engaged when she left.  ‘Tell Hal Surtaine’ she says in her letter to me.”

“Thank you, Lady Jinny,” said Hal.

The diminutive lady looked at him and then looked away, and suddenly a righteous flush rose on her cheeks.

“I’m fond of Esme,” she declared.  “One can’t help but be.  She compels it.  But where men are concerned she seems to have no sense of her power to hurt.  I could kill her for making me her messenger.  Hal, boy,” she rose, slipping an arm through his caressingly, “I do hope you’re not badly hurt.”

“I’ll get over it, Lady Jinny.  There’s the job, you know.”

He started for the office.  Then, abruptly, as he went, “the job” seemed purposeless.  Unrealized, hope had still persisted in his heart—­the hope that, by some possible turn of circumstance, the shattered ideal of Esme Elliot would be revivified.  The blighting of his love for her had been no more bitter, perhaps less so, than the realization which she had compelled in him of her lightness and unworthiness.  Still, he had wanted her, longed for her, hoped for her.  Now that hope was gone.  There seemed nothing left to work for, no adequate good beyond the striving.  He looked with dulled vision out upon blank days.  With a sudden weakening of fiber he turned into a hotel and telephoned McGuire Ellis that he wouldn’t be at the office that evening.  To the other’s anxious query was he ill, he replied that he was tired out and was going home to bed.