appeared--this other one, this man of the world, of affairs, mature,
experienced, whom she hardly knew. It was charming she told herself,
exciting. Life never had seemed half so delightful. Romantic, she
felt Romance, unseen, intangible, at work all about her. And love,
which of all things knowable was dearest to her, came to her
unsought.

Her first aversion to the Great Grey City was fast disappearing. She
saw it now in a kindlier aspect.

"I think," she said at last, as she still knelt before the fire,
looking deep into the coals, absorbed, abstracted, "I think that I
am going to be very happy here."






III





On a certain Monday morning, about a month later, Curtis Jadwin
descended from his office in the Rookery Building, and turning
southward, took his way toward the brokerage and commission office
of Gretry, Converse and Co., on the ground floor of the Board of
Trade Building, only a few steps away.