but she knew now that she had been only coldly polite. But, as a matter
of fact, the prospect of delving through a box of Gertrude Sinclair's
discarded finery moved her this morning to a dull fury. She felt
suddenly tired of cast-offs, of compromise, of all the other shabby
adjustments of genteel poverty. And by the time she reached the office
of the Falcon Insurance Company her soul was seething with a curious and
unreasonable revolt. The feminine office force seemed seething also, but
with an impersonal, quivering excitement. Nellie Whitehead had been
dismissed!

This Nellie Whitehead, the stenographer-in-chief, was big, vigorous,
blond--vulgar, energetic, vivid; and Miss Munch, her assistant, a thin,
hollow-chested spinster, who loafed upon her job so that she might save
her sight for the manufacture of incredible yards of tatting, never
missed an opportunity to lift her eyes significantly behind her
superior's back.

"And what do you suppose?" Miss Munch was querying as Claire stepped
into the dressing-room. "She told Mr. Flint to go to hell!... Yes,
positively, she used those very words. And I must say he was a gentleman
throughout it all. He told her gently but firmly that her example in the
office wasn't what it should be and that in justice to the other
girls...."

Claire turned impatiently away. The fiction of Mr. Flint's belated
interest in the morals of his feminine office force was unconvincing
enough to be irritating. For a man who never missed an opportunity to
force his attentions, he was showing an amazingly ethical viewpoint. On
second thought, Claire remembered that Miss Munch was never the
recipient of Mr. Flint's attentions, which to the casual eye might have