“I came home,” he informed her, somewhat superfluously, his eyes never leaving her, wandering hungrily from her face to her new suit, and back again to her face.  “I got here on the seven o’clock train, I wanted to see about those new Blubbers.”

“They finished setting them up this afternoon,” she said.

“How did you know?”

“I asked Mr. Orcutt about it—­I thought you might telephone.”

“You’re a wonder,” was his comment.  “Well, we’ve got a running start on that order,” and he threw a glance over his shoulder at the mill.  “Everything going full speed ahead.  When we put it through I guess I’ll have to give you some of the credit.”

“Oh, I haven’t done anything,” she protested.

“More than you think.  You’ve taken so much off my shoulders I couldn’t get along without you.”  His voice vibrated, reminding her of the voices of those who made sentimental recitations for the graphophone.  It sounded absurd, yet it did not repel her:  something within her responded to it.  “Which way were you going?” he inquired.

“Home,” she said.

“Where do you live?”

“In Fillmore Street.”  And she added with a touch of defiance:  “It’s a little street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street.”

“Oh yes,” he said vaguely, as though he had not understood.  “I’ll come with you as far as the bridge—­along the canal.  I’ve got so much to say to you.”

“Can’t you say it to-morrow?”

“No, I can’t; there are so many people in the office—­so many interruptions, I mean.  And then, you never give me a chance.”

She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her.  He had proposed the route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize them, and her pride resented this.  On the other hand, there was the sweet allurement of the adventure she craved, which indeed she had come out to seek and by a strange fatality found—­since he had appeared on the bridge almost as soon as she reached it.  The sense of fate was strong upon her.  Curiosity urged her, and, thanks to the eulogy she had read of him that day, to the added impression of his power conveyed by the trip through the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than ever in her consciousness.

“What do you want to say?” she asked.

“Oh, lots of things.”

She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently but firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a power stronger than herself, a masculine power, was delicious.  Her arm seemed to burn where he touched her.

“Have I done something to offend you?” she heard him say.  “Or is it because you don’t like me?”

“I’m not sure whether I like you or not,” she told him.  “I don’t like seeing you—­this way.  And why should you want to know me and see me outside of the office?  I’m only your stenographer.”

“Because you’re you—­because you’re different from any woman I ever met.  You don’t understand what you are—­you don’t see yourself.”