“I like machinery,” he told her as he replaced the boards.  “I like to take care of it myself.”

“It must be interesting,” she assented, aware of the inadequacy of the remark, and resenting in herself an inarticulateness seemingly imposed by inhibition connected with his nearness.  Fascination and antagonism were struggling within her.  Her desire to get away grew desperate.

“Thank you for showing it to me.”  With an effort of will she moved toward the bridge, but was impelled by a consciousness of the abruptness of her departure to look back at him once—­and smile, to experience again the thrill of the current he sped after her.  By lifting his hat, a little higher, a little more confidently than in the first instance, he made her leaving seem more gracious, the act somehow conveying an acknowledgment on his part that their relationship had changed.

Once across the bridge and in the mill, she fairly ran up the stairs and into the empty office, to perceive her bag lying on the desk where she had left it, and sat down for a few minutes beside the window, her heart pounding in her breast as though she had barely escaped an accident threatening her with physical annihilation.  Something had happened to her at last!  But what did it mean?  Where would it lead?  Her fear, her antagonism, of which she was still conscious, her resentment that Ditmar had thus surreptitiously chosen to approach her in a moment when they were unobserved were mingled with a throbbing exultation in that he had noticed her, that there was something in her to attract him in that way, to make his voice thicker and his smile apologetic when he spoke to her.  Of that “something-in-her” she had been aware before, but never had it been so unmistakably recognized and beckoned to from without.  She was at once terrified, excited—­and flattered.

At length, growing calmer, she made her way out of the building.  When she reached the vestibule she had a moment of sharp apprehension, of paradoxical hope, that Ditmar might still be there, awaiting her.  But he had gone....

In spite of her efforts to dismiss the matter from her mind, to persuade herself there had been no significance in the encounter, when she was seated at her typewriter the next morning she experienced a renewal of the palpitation of the evening before, and at the sound of every step in the corridor she started.  Of this tendency she was profoundly ashamed.  And when at last Ditmar arrived, though the blood rose to her temples, she kept her eyes fixed on the keys.  He went quickly into his room:  she was convinced he had not so much as glanced at her....  As the days went by, however, she was annoyed by the discovery that his continued ignoring of her presence brought more resentment than relief, she detected in it a deliberation implying between them a guilty secret:  she hated secrecy, though secrecy contained a thrill.  Then, one morning when she was alone in the office with young Caldwell, who was absorbed in some reports, Ditmar entered unexpectedly and looked her full in the eyes, surprising her into answering his glance before she could turn away, hating herself and hating him.  Hate, she determined, was her prevailing sentiment in regard to Mr. Ditmar.