"I'll venture you haven't thought of me the whole day," said she as he
dropped to the chair behind her.

It was a remark she often made--to give him the opportunity to say,
"I've thought of little else, I'm sorry to say--I, who have a career to
look after." He made the usual answer, and they smiled happily at each
other. "And you?" he said.

"Oh, I? What else has a woman to think about?"

Her statement was as true as his was false. He was indeed all she had to
think about--all worth wasting the effort of thought upon. But
he--though he did not realize it--had thought of her only in the
incidental way in which an ambition-possessed man must force himself to
think of a woman. The best of his mind was commandeered to his career.
An amiable but shakily founded theory that it was "our" career enabled
him to say without sense of lying that his chief thought had been she.

"How those men down town would poke fun at you," said she, "if they knew
you had me with you all the time, right beside you."

This amused him. "Still, I suspect there are lots of men who'd be
exposed in the same way if there were a general and complete show-down."

"Sometimes I wish I really were with you--working with you--helping you.
You have girls--a girl--to be your secretary--or whatever you call
it--don't you?"

"You should have seen the one I had to-day. But there's always something