He did as he pleased.  And, on the whole, he pleased to do far less inconsiderately than his desires, his abilities, and his opportunities tempted.  Have not men been acclaimed good for less?

In the offices, where he was canvased daily by partners, clerks, everyone down to the cleaners whose labors he so often delayed, opinion varied from day to day.  They worshiped him; they hated him.  They loved him; they feared him.  They regarded him as more than human, as less than human; but never as just human—­though always as endowed with fine human virtues and even finer human weaknesses.  Miss Tillotson, next to the head clerk in rank and pay—­and a pretty and pushing young person—­dreamed of getting acquainted with him—­really well acquainted.  It was a vain dream.  For him, between up town and down town a great gulf was fixed.  Also, he had no interest in or ammunition for sparrows.

It was in December that Miss Hallowell—­Miss Dorothea Hallowell—­got her temporary place at ten dollars a week—­that obscure event, somewhat like a field mouse taking quarters in a horizon-bounded grain field.  It was not until mid-February that she, the palest of personalities, came into direct contact with Norman, about the most refulgent.  This is how it happened.

Late in that February afternoon, an hour or more after the last of the office force should have left, Norman threw open the door of his private office and glanced round at the rows on rows of desks.  The lights in the big room were on, apparently only because he was still within.  With an exclamation of disappointment he turned to re-enter his office.  He heard the click of typewriter keys.  Again he looked round, but could see no one.

“Isn’t there some one here?” he cried.  “Don’t I hear a typewriter?”

The noise stopped.  There was a slight rustling from a far corner, beyond his view, and presently he saw advancing a slim and shrinking slip of a girl with a face that impressed him only as small and insignificant.  In a quiet little voice she said, “Yes, sir.  Do you wish anything?”

“Why, what are you doing here?” he asked.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”

“Yes.  I took dictation from you several times,” replied she.

He was instantly afraid he might have hurt her feelings, and he, who in the days when he was far, far less than now, had often suffered from that commonplace form of brutality, was most careful not to commit it.  “I never know what’s going on round me when I’m thinking,” explained he, though he was saying to himself that the next time he would probably again be unable to remember one with nothing distinctive to fix identity.  “You are—­Miss——?”

“Miss Hallowell.”

“How do you happen to be here?  I’ve given particular instructions that no one is ever to be detained after hours.”

A little color appeared in the pale, small face—­and now he saw that she had a singularly fair and smooth skin, singularly beautiful—­and he wondered why he had not noticed it before.  Being a close observer, he had long ago noted and learned to appreciate the wonders of that most amazing of tissues, the human skin; and he had come to be a connoisseur.  “I’m staying of my own accord,” said she.