Deep in his reading, he was roused an hour later by a knock at his door.

He opened it, to find Mary on the threshold.

“May I come in?” she asked, and she seemed breathless.  “It is Susan’s night out, and Aunt Isabelle is at the opera with some old friends.  Barry expected to be here with me, but he hasn’t come.  And I sat in the dining-room—­and waited,” she shivered, “until I couldn’t stand it any more.”

She tried to laugh, but he saw that she was very pale.

“Please don’t think I’m a coward,” she begged.  “I’ve never been that.  But I seemed suddenly to have a sort of nervous panic, and I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I sat with you—­until Barry—­came——­”

“I’m glad he didn’t come, if it is going to give me an evening with you.”  He drew a chair to the fire.

They had talked of many things when she asked, suddenly, “Mr. Poole, I wonder if you can tell me—­about the examinations for stenographers in the Departments—­are they very rigid?”

“Not very.  Of course they require speed and accuracy.”

She sighed.  “I’m accurate enough, but I wonder if I can ever acquire speed.”

He stared.  “You——?”

She nodded.  “I haven’t mentioned it to any one.  One’s family is so hampering sometimes—­they’d all object—­except Aunt Isabelle, but I want to be prepared to work, if I ever need to earn my living.”

“May you never need it,” he said, fervently, visions rising of little Miss Terry and her machine-made personality.  What had this girl with the fair hair and the shining eyes to do with the blank life between office walls?

“May you never need it,” he repeated.  “A woman’s place is in the home—­it’s a man’s place to fight the world.”

“But if there isn’t a man to fight a woman’s battles?”

“There will always be some one to fight yours.”

“You mean that I can—­marry?  But what if I don’t care to marry merely to be—­supported?”

“There would have to be other things, of course,” gravely.

“What, for example?”

“Love.”

“You mean the ‘honor and obey’ kind?  But don’t want that when I marry.  I want a man to say to me, ’Come, let us fight the battle together.  If it’s defeat, we’ll go down together.  If its victory, we’ll win.’”

This was to him a strange language, yet there was that about it which thrilled him.

Yet he insisted, dogmatically, “There are men enough in the world to take care of the women, and the women should let them.”

“No, they should not.  Suppose I should not marry.  Must I let Barry take care of me, or Constance—­and go on as Aunt Isabelle has, eating the bread of dependence?”

“But you?  Why, one only needs to look at you to know that there’ll be a live-happy-ever-after ending to your romance.”

“That’s what they thought about Aunt Isabelle.  But she lost her lover, and she couldn’t love again.  And if she had had an absorbing occupation, she would have been saved so much humiliation, so much heart-break.”