“Not at all—­not in the least,” he stammered, the impulse strong to take the note back and ask her to return to her desk.

When the door closed behind her he rose and paced about the room uneasily.  He was filled with disquiet, with hazy apprehension.  His nerves were unsteady, as if he were going through an exhausting strain.  He sat and tried to force himself to work.  Impossible.  “What sort of damn fool attack is this?” he exclaimed, pacing about again.  He searched his mind in vain for any cause adequate to explain his unprecedented state.  “If I did not know that I was well—­absolutely well—­I’d think I was about to have an illness—­something in the brain.”

He appealed to that friend in any trying hour, his sense of humor.  He laughed at himself; but his nerves refused to return to the normal.  He rushed from his private office on various pretexts, each time lingered in the general room, talking aimlessly with Tetlow—­and watching the door.  When she at last appeared, he guiltily withdrew, feeling that everyone was observing his perturbation and was wondering at it and jesting about it.  “And what the devil am I excited about?” he demanded of himself.  What indeed?  He seated himself, rang the bell.

“If Miss Hallowell has got back,” he said to the office boy, “please ask her to come in.”

“I think she’s gone out to lunch,” said the boy.  “I know she came in a while ago.  She passed along as you was talking to Mr. Tetlow.”

Norman felt himself flushing.  “Any time will do,” he said, bending over the papers spread out before him—­the papers in the case of the General Traction Company resisting the payment of its taxes.  A noisome odor seemed to be rising from the typewritten sheets.  He made a wry face and flung the papers aside with a gesture of disgust.  “They never do anything honest,” he said to himself.  “From the stock-jobbing owners down to the nickel-filching conductors they steal—­steal—­steal!” And then he wondered at, laughed at, his heat.  What did it matter?  An ant pilfering from another ant and a sparrow stealing the crumb found by another sparrow—­a man robbing another man—­all part of the universal scheme.  Only a narrow-minded ignoramus would get himself wrought up over it; a philosopher would laugh—­and take what he needed or happened to fancy.

The door opened.  Miss Hallowell entered, a small and demure hat upon her masses of thick fair hair arranged by anything but unskillful fingers.  “You wished to see me?” came in the quiet little voice, sweet and frank and shy.

He roused himself from pretended abstraction.

“Oh—­it’s you?” he said pleasantly.  “They said you were out.”

“I was going to lunch.  But if you’ve anything for me to do, I’ll be glad to stay.”

“No—­no.  I simply wished to say that if Miss Burroughs wished to make an arrangement with you, we’d help you about carrying out your part of it.”