“That’s what I told her—­when I saw the game was going against me.  But it was no use.”

Norman trifled nervously with the papers before him.  Presently he said, “Is it some one else?”

Tetlow shook his head.

“How do you know?”

“Because she said so,” replied the head clerk.

“Oh—­if she said so, that settles it,” said Norman with raillery.

“She’s given up work—­thank God,” pursued Tetlow.  “She’s getting more beautiful all the time—­Norman, if you had seen her last night, you’d understand why I’m stark mad about her.”

Norman’s eyes were down.  His hands, the muscles of his jaw were clinched.

“But, I mustn’t think of that,” Tetlow went on.  “As I was about to say, if she were to stay on in the offices some one—­some attractive man like you, only with the heart of a scoundrel——­”

Norman laughed cynically.

“Yes, a scoundrel!” reiterated the fat head-clerk.  “Some scoundrel would tempt her beyond her power to resist.  Money and clothes and luxury will do anything.  We all get to be harlots here in New York.  Some of us know it, and some don’t.  But we all look it and act it.  And she’d go the way of the rest—­with or without marriage.  It’s just as well she didn’t marry me.  I know what’d have become of her.”

Norman nodded.

Tetlow gave a weary sigh.  “Anyhow, she’s safe at home with her father.  He’s found a backer for his experiments.”

“That’s good,” said Norman.

“You can spare me for ten days,” Tetlow went on.  “I’d be of no use if I stayed.”

There was a depth of misery in his kind gray eyes that moved Norman to get up and lay a friendly hand on his shoulder.  “It’s the best thing, old man.  She wasn’t for you.”

Tetlow dropped into a chair and sobbed.  “It has killed me,” he groaned.  “I don’t mean I’ll commit suicide or die.  I mean I’m dead inside—­dead.”

“Oh, come, Billy—­where’s your good sense?”

“I know what I’m talking about,” said he.  “Norman, God help the man who meets the woman he really wants—­God help him if she doesn’t want him.  You don’t understand.  You’ll never have the experience.  Any woman you wanted would be sure to want you.”

Norman, his hand still on Tetlow’s shoulder, was staring ahead with a terrible expression upon his strong features.

“If she could see the inside of me—­the part that’s the real me—­I think she would love me—­or learn to love me.  But she can only see the outside—­this homely face and body of mine.  It’s horrible, Fred—­to have a mind and a heart fit for love and for being loved, and an outside that repels it.  And how many of us poor devils of that sort there are—­men and women both!”

Norman was at the window now, his back to the room, to his friend.  After a while Tetlow rose and made a feeble effort to straighten himself.  “Is it all right about the vacation?” he asked.