He leaned back in his chair, stiff and weary. His head ached hotly. With
elbows on the desk he covered his forehead and eyes with his hands. All
the agony, the bitterness, the burden of preceding days swept over him,
but behind it was a cool and cleansing current of peace. "_Ich kann
nicht anders_," he whispered.

Then, turning swiftly to the machine, he typed rapidly:

"_God helping her, she can do no other_."




THE HEAD OF THE FIRM


He always lost his temper when the foreign mail came in. Sitting in his
private room, which overlooked a space of gardens where bright red and
yellow flowers were planted in rhomboids, triangles, parallelograms, and
other stiff and ugly figures, he would glance hastily through the papers
and magazines. He was familiar with several foreign languages, and would
skim through the text. Then he would pound the table with his fist, walk
angrily about the floor, and tear the offensive journals into strips.
For very often he found in these papers from abroad articles or cartoons
that were most annoying to him, and very detrimental to the business of
his firm.

His assistants tried to keep foreign publications away from him, but he
was plucky in his own harsh way. He insisted on seeing them. Always the