“Like lightning!” he answered.  “At this rate, there’s nothing to it at all.  Have the press boys showed up yet?”

“They are over at the hotel, getting their dinners,” she explained.  “And we have borrowed lamps from the hotel to use here this evening.  Did you hear that Martin, of the Press, you know, has offered to send over the A.P. news as fast as it comes in?  Isn’t that very decent of him?  Here’s Miss Porter’s stuff.”

She sat down, and began to assort papers on her desk, quite absorbed in what she was doing.  Barry, at his own desk, opened and shut a drawer or two noisily, but he was really watching her, with a thumping heart.  Watching the bare brown head, the lowered lashes, the mouth that moved occasionally in time with her busy thoughts—­

Suddenly she looked up, and their eyes met.

Without the faintest consciousness of what he did, Barry crossed the floor between them, and as, on an equally unconscious impulse, she stood up, paling and breathless, he laid his hand over hers on the littered desk, and they stood so, staring at each other, the desk between them.

“Sidney,” he said incoherently, “who—­where—­where did your father’s money go—­who got it?”

She looked at him in utter bewilderment.

“Where did what—­father’s money?  Who got it?  Are you crazy, Barry?” she stammered.

“Ah, Sidney, tell me!  Did it come to you?”

“Why—­why—­” She seemed suddenly to understand that there was some reason for the question, and answered quite readily:  “It belonged to my father’s first wife, Barry, most of it.  And it went to her daughters, my step-sisters, they are older than I and both married—­ "

“Then you’re not worth eight million dollars?”

“I—?  Why, you know I’m not!” Her eyes were at their widest.  “Who ever said I was? I never said so!”

“But everyone in town thinks so!” Barry’s great sigh of relief came from his very soul.

Sidney, pale before, grew very red.  She freed her hands, and sat down.

“Well, they are very silly, then!” she said, almost crossly.  And as the thought expanded, she added, “But I don’t see how anyone could!  They must have thought my letting them help me out with the Flower Show and begging for the Old Paloma girls was a nice piece of affectation!  If I had eight million dollars, or one million, don’t you suppose I’d be doing something, instead of puttering away with just the beginning of things!” The annoyed color deepened.  “I hope you’re mistaken, Barry,” said she.  “Why didn’t you set them right?”

“I!  Why, I thought so too!”

“Oh, Barry!  What a hypocrite you must have thought me!” She buried her rosy face in her hand for a moment.  Presently she rushed on, half indignantly, “—­With all my talk about the sinfulness of American women, who persistently attempt a scheme of living that is far beyond their incomes!  And talking of the needs of the poor all over the world, with all that money lying idle!”