Mr. Britt felt that he had broken the ice, at any rate.  Mr. Britt decided that the girl was heart-free and entertained sensible ideas about the main chance—­and she had had a good word to say about Britt’s kind heart.  Mr. Britt was sure that Frank Vaniman knew his place and was keeping it.  Therefore, Mr. Britt lighted a fresh cigar and blew visible smoke rings and inflated invisible mental bubbles and did not pay any more attention to what Prophet Elias was saying outside.  And as if the Prophet had received a psychological hint that his text shafts were no longer penetrating the money king’s tough hide, the diminuendo of his orotund marked the progress of his departure.

Usually Mr. Britt went across into the bank and hung around after the girl arrived.  On this morning he stayed in his office.  According to his notion, his advances to her in the corridor, though he had not intended to be so precipitate in the matter, had given her something to think about—­and he decided to keep away and let her think.  If she saw him following the usual routine, her thoughts might drop back into routine channels.

He thrilled at the memory of her touch on his arm, even though the touch had been a thrusting of her hands in self-defense and her eyes had been big with fright.

He sat down at his desk and tore the leaf off his pad calendar, starting his business day as usual.  He looked at the disclosed date and his eyes became humid.  It was February 14th, the day of St. Valentine.  An idea came to Mr. Britt.  He had been wondering how to approach the question with Vona without blurting the thing and making a mess of it.  He determined to do something that he had not attempted since he had beaued Hittie; he set himself to compose a few verses for a valentine—­verses that would pave the way for a formal declaration of his love and his hopes.

The determination indicated that Mr. Britt was having a severe run of a second attack of the same malady, and he acknowledged that much to himself as he sat there and chewed the soggy end of an extinguished cigar and gazed aloft raptly, seeking rhymes.

He made slow progress; his pen trailed as sluggishly as a tracking snail—­a word at a time.  He lost all notion of how the hours were slipping past.

A man walked in.  He was Stickney, a cattle buyer, and a minor stockholder in the bank.  Mr. Britt, his eyes filmy with prolonged abstraction, hooked his chin over his shoulder and scowled on the intruder; a man bringing business into that office that day was an intruder, according to Mr. Britt’s opinion.

Stickney walked close to the desk and displayed a flash of curiosity when Britt laid his forearm over his writing.

“Spring pome, or only a novel?” queried Stickney, genially, figuring that such a question was the height of humor when put to a man of Tasper Britt’s flinty, practical nature.

Mr. Britt, like a person touched smartly by a brad, twitched himself in his chair and asked in chilly tone what he could do for Stickney.  The caller promptly became considerable of an icicle himself.  He laid down a little sheaf of papers beside the shielding forearm.