With a gesture that gave her a new insight into Ditmar, reverently he took the picture from her hand and placed it back in the drawer.  She was stirred, almost to tears, and moved away from him a little, as though to lessen by distance the sudden attraction he had begun to exert:  yet she lingered, half leaning, half sitting on the corner of the big desk, her head bent toward him, her eyes filled with light.  She was wondering whether he could ever love a woman as he loved this man of whom he had spoken, whether he could be as true to a woman.  His own attitude seemed never to have been more impersonal, but she had ceased to resent it; something within her whispered that she was the conductor, the inspirer..

“I wish Stephen Chippering could have lived to see this order,” he exclaimed, “to see the Chippering Mill to-day!  I guess he’d be proud of it, I guess he wouldn’t regret having put me in as agent.”

Janet did not reply.  She could not.  She sat regarding him intently, and when he raised his eyes and caught her luminous glance, his expression changed, she knew Stephen Chippering had passed from his mind.

“I hope you like it here,” he said.  His voice had become vibrant, ingratiating, he had changed from the master to the suppliant—­and yet she was not displeased.  Power had suddenly flowed back into her, and with it an exhilarating self-command.

“I do like it,” she answered.

“But you said, when I asked you to be my stenographer, that you didn’t care for your work.”

“Oh, this is different.”

“How?”

“I’m interested, the mill means something to me now you see, I’m not just copying things I don’t know anything about.”

“I’m glad you’re interested,” he said, in the same odd, awkward tone.  “I’ve never had any one in the office who did my work as well.  Now Miss Ottway was a good stenographer, she was capable, and a fine woman, but she never got the idea, the spirit of the mill in her as you’ve got it, and she wasn’t able to save me trouble, as you do.  It’s remarkable how you’ve come to understand, and in such a short time.”

Janet coloured.  She did not look at him, but had risen and begun to straighten out the papers beside her.

“There are lots of other things I’d like to understand,” she said.

“What?” he demanded.

“Well—­about the mill.  I never thought much about it before, I always hated it,” she cried, dropping the papers and suddenly facing him.  “It was just drudgery.  But now I want to learn everything, all I can, I’d like to see the machinery.”

“I’ll take you through myself—­to-morrow,” he declared.

His evident agitation made her pause.  They were alone, the outer office deserted, and the Ditmar she saw now, whom she had summoned up with ridiculous ease by virtue of that mysterious power within her, was no longer the agent of the Chippering Mill, a boy filled with enthusiasm by a business achievement, but a man, the incarnation and expression of masculine desire desire for her.  She knew she could compel him, if she chose, to throw caution to the winds.