fail to notice it, when he was always looking for signs of a good skin
down town--and up town, too--in these days of the ravages of pastry and
candy? . . . What long graceful fingers she had--yet what small hands!
Certainly here was a peculiarity that persisted. No--absurd though it
seemed, no! One way he looked at those hands, they were broad and
strong, another way narrow and gracefully weak.

He said to himself: "The man who gets that girl will have Solomon's
wives rolled into one. A harem at the price of a wife--or a--" He left
the thought unfinished. It seemed an insult to this helpless little
creature, the more rather than the less cowardly for being unspoken;
for, no doubt her ideas of propriety were firmly conventional.

"About done?" he asked impatiently.

She glanced up. "In a moment. I'm sorry to be so slow."

"You're not," he assured her truthfully. "It's my impatience. Let me see
the pages you've finished."

With them he was able to concentrate his mind. When she laid the last
page beside his arm he was absorbed, did not look at her, did not think
of her. "Take the machine away," said he abruptly.

He was leaving for the day when he remembered her again. He sent for
her. "I forgot to thank you. It was good work. You will do well. All you
need is practice--and confidence. Especially confidence." He looked at
her. She seemed frail--touchingly frail. "You are not strong?"

She smiled, and in an instant the frailty seemed to have been mere