when it troubled her, she thought herself the most inconsistent and vacillating of creatures.  She had resolved, far instance, before she fell asleep, to leave the Chippering Mill, to banish Ditmar from her life, to get a position in Boston, whence she could send some of her wages home:  and in the morning, as she made her way to the office, the determination gave her a sense of peace and unity.  But the northwest wind was blowing.  It had chased away the mist and the clouds, the smoke from Canada.  The sun shone with a high brilliancy, the elms of the Common cast sharp, black shadow-patterns on the pavements, and when she reached the office and looked out of his window she saw the blue river covered with quicksilver waves chasing one another across the current.  Ditmar had not yet returned to Hampton.  About ten o’clock, as she was copying out some figures for Mr. Price, young Mr. Caldwell approached her.  He had a Boston newspaper in his hand.

“Have you seen this article about Mr. Ditmar?” he asked.

“About Mr. Ditmar?  No.”

“It’s quite a send-off for the Colonel,” said Caldwell, who was wont at times to use the title facetiously.  “Listen; `One of the most notable figures in the Textile industry of the United States, Claude Ditmar, Agent of the Chippering Mill.’” Caldwell spread out the page and pointed to a picture.  “There he is, as large as life.”

A little larger than life, Janet thought.  Ditmar was one of those men who, as the expression goes, “take” well, a valuable asset in semi-public careers; and as he stood in the sunlight on the steps of the building where they had “snap-shotted” him he appeared even more massive, forceful, and preponderant than she had known him.  Beholding him thus set forth and praised in a public print, he seemed suddenly to have been distantly removed from her, to have reacquired at a bound the dizzy importance he had possessed for her before she became his stenographer.  She found it impossible to realize that this was the Ditmar who had pursued and desired her; at times supplicating, apologetic, abject; and again revealed by the light in his eyes and the trembling of his hand as the sinister and ruthless predatory male from whom—­since the revelation in her sister Lise she had determined to flee, and whom she had persuaded herself she despised.  He was a bigger man than she had thought, and as she read rapidly down the column the fascination that crept over her was mingled with disquieting doubt of her own powers:  it was now difficult to believe she had dominated or could ever dominate this self-sufficient, successful person, the list of whose achievements and qualities was so alluringly set forth by an interviewer who himself had fallen a victim.