Ditmar looked at his watch.

“Damn it, why didn’t they let me know yesterday?” he exclaimed.  “I won’t see anybody, Caldwell—­not even Orcutt—­just now.  You understand.  I’ve got to have a little time to do some letters.  I won’t be disturbed—­by any one—­for half an hour.”

Caldwell nodded.

“All right, Mr. Ditmar.”

Ditmar went into his office, closing the door behind him.  She was occupied as usual, cutting open the letters and laying them in a pile with the deftness and rapidity that characterized all she did.

“Janet!” he exclaimed.

“There’s a message for you from Boston.  I’ve made a note of it,” she replied.

“I know—­Caldwell told me.  But I wanted to see you before I went—­I had to see you.  I sat up half the night thinking of you, I woke up thinking of you.  Aren’t you glad to see me?”

She dropped the letter opener and stood silent, motionless, awaiting his approach—­a pose so eloquent of the sense of fatality strong in her as to strike him with apprehension, unused though he was to the appraisal of inner values.  He read, darkly, something of this mystery in her eyes as they were slowly raised to his, he felt afraid; he was swept again by those unwonted emotions of pity and tenderness—­but when she turned away her head and he saw the bright spot of colour growing in her cheek, spreading to her temple, suffusing her throat, when he touched the soft contour of her arm, his passion conquered....  Still he was acutely conscious of a resistance within her—­not as before, physically directed against him, but repudiating her own desire.  She became limp in his arms, though making no attempt to escape, and he knew that the essential self of her he craved still evaded and defied him.  And he clung to her the more desperately—­as though by crushing her peradventure he might capture it.

“You’re hurting me,” she said at last, and he let her go, standing by helplessly while she went through the movements of readjustment instinctive to women.  Even in these he read the existence of the reservation he was loth to acknowledge.

“Don’t you love me?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“You do!” he said.  “You—­you proved it—­I know it.”

She went a little away from him, picking up the paper cutter, but it lay idle in her hand.

“For God’s sake, tell me what’s the matter!” he exclaimed.  “I can’t stand this.  Janet, aren’t you happy?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?  I love you.  I—­I’ve never been so happy in my life as I was this morning.  Why aren’t you happy—­when we love each other?”

“Because I’m not.”

“Why not?  There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make you happy—­you know that.  Tell me!”

“You wouldn’t understand.  I couldn’t make you understand.”

“Is it something I’ve done?”

“You don’t love me,” she said.  “You only want me.  I’m not made that way, I’m not generous enough, I guess.  I’ve got to have work to do.”