t, opposition--nothing
seemed able to sway her from her purpose. In the end he had been too
touched by her attitude to put his foot down firmly against the
move... She got on well with Hilmer, too, he noticed. Usually at the
end of one of these late afternoon conferences with their chief patron
Fred and Hilmer ended up by shaking for an early evening cocktail at
Collins & Wheeland's, just around the corner. Hilmer always saw to it
that Fred returned to the office with something for Helen--a handful
of ginger-snaps from the free-lunch counter, a ham sandwich, or a
paper of ripe olives. Once he stopped in a candy shop on Leidesdorff
Street and bought two ice-cream cornucopias. Fred used to shake a
puzzled head as he deposited these gastronomic trifles upon Helen's
desk as he said:

"I don't get this man Hilmer... One minute he insults you and the next
minute he's as considerate as a canteen worker... What's he throwing
business my way for?"

Helen, munching a gingersnap, would go on with her laborious
typewriting, and return:

"Why look a gift horse in the mouth, Freddie?... Women aren't the only
riddles in the world."

"I think he comes to see you," he used to throw out in obvious jest.
"That's the only way I can figure it."

"He's like every man ... he wants an audience... I guess Mother Hilmer
is tired of hearing him rave."

And so the banter would go on until Fred would pull up with a round
turn, realizing quite suddenly that he was talking to his wife and not
just to his stenographer.

"He'll be at me one of these days on that commission question, you
mark my words," he would venture.

"And what are you going to do?"

"Why, refuse, of course, and lose the business."

"Well, don't cross the bridge till you come to it."

She puzzled him more and more. She seemed disturbed at nothing, and
yet she glowed with a leashed restlessness that he could not define.

"It's the strain," he would conclude. "She's putting more into this
venture of mine than she's willing to admit... After all, women are
amazing... They pull and cling at you and drag you back ... and then,
all of a sudden, they take the bit in their teeth and you can't hold
them in... Who would have thought that Helen..."

And here he would halt, overcome with the soft wonder of it.

Business began to pour in from Brauer and, frankly, Fred was
disturbed. He wasn't sure of Brauer's business scruples.

"I wonder if he's promising these people rebate