These, if appreciated, were more or less expected, too.  But beside them, this year, was a great box of violets,—­Susan never forgot the delicious wet odor of those violets!—­and inside the big box a smaller one, holding an old silver chain with a pendant of lapis lazuli, set in a curious and lovely design.  Susan honestly thought it the handsomest thing she had ever seen.  And to own it, as a gift from him!  Small wonder that her heart flew like a leaf in a high wind.  The card that came with it she had slipped inside her silk blouse, and so wore against her heart.  “Mr. Peter Webster Coleman,” said one side of the card.  On the other was written, “S.B. from P.—­ Happy Fourth of July!” Susan took it out and read it a hundred times.  The “P” indicated a friendliness that brought the happy color over and over again to her face.  She dashed him off a gay little note of thanks; signed it “Susan,” thought better of that and re-wrote it, to sign it “Susan Ralston Brown”; wrote it a third time, and affixed only the initials, “S.B.”  All day long she wondered at intervals if the note had been too chilly, and turned cold, or turned rosy wondering if it had been too warm.

Mr. Coleman did not come into the office during the following week, and one day a newspaper item, under the heading of “The Smart Set,” jumped at Susan with the familiar name.  “Peter Coleman, who is at present the guest of Mrs. Rodney Chauncey, at her New Year’s house party,” it ran, “may accompany Mr. Paul Wallace and Miss Isabel Wallace in a short visit to Mexico next week.”  The news made Susan vaguely unhappy.

One January Saturday she was idling along the deck, when he came suddenly up behind her, to tell her, with his usual exuberant laughter, that he was going away for a fortnight with the Wallaces, just a flying trip, “in the old man’s private car.”  He expected “a peach of a time.”

“You certainly ought to have it!” smiled Susan gallantly, “Isabel Wallace looks like a perfect darling!”

“She’s a wonder!” he said absently, adding eagerly, “Say, why can’t you come and help me buy some things this afternoon?  Come on, and we’ll have tea at the club?”

Susan saw no reason against it, they would meet at one.

“I’ll be down in J.G.’s office,” he said, and Susan went back to her desk with fresh joy and fresh pain at her heart.

On Saturdays, because of the early closing, the girls had no lunch hour.  But they always sent out for a bag of graham crackers, which they nibbled as they worked, and, between eleven and one, they took turns at disappearing in the direction of the lunch-room, to return with well scrubbed hands and powdered noses, fresh collars and carefully arranged hair.  Best hats were usually worn on Saturdays, and Susan rejoiced that she had worn her best to-day.  After the twelve o’clock whistle blew, she went upstairs.

On the last flight, just below the lunch-room, she suddenly stopped short, her heart giving a sick plunge.  Somebody up there was laughing—­crying—­making a horrible noise—!  Susan ran up the rest of the flight.