ing a number of
meaningless diagrams.

"Yes," she replied, after a while. "Oh, yes. All reports are in. I've
gone through them all, and my summary is being prepared now. They're a
pretty bad story. Yes. What's that? How? Oh, yes. Some of the camps are
in pretty bad shape, I'd say. Output's fallen badly. Output! Yes. All
sorts of reasons and--" she laughed, "--to me, none quite satisfactory.
I think I've my finger on the real trouble, and fancy I've seen all this
coming quite a while back. Very well. I'll be right up. Yes, I'll bring
my rough notes if the summary isn't ready."

Nancy McDonald thrust the receiver back in its place and sat for a
moment gazing at it. She knew she had committed herself. She had
intended to. She knew that she had reached one of the important
milestones in her career. In her youth, in the springtime energy
abounding in her, she meant to pit her opinion against the considered
policy of those who formed the management of the great Skandinavia
Corporation she served. She understood her temerity. A surge of nervous
anticipation thrilled her. But she was resolved. Her ambition was great,
and her youthful courage was no less.

The brazen clack of typewriters beyond the glass partitions of her
little private office left her unaffected. It was incessant. She would
have missed it had it not been there. She would have lost that sense of
rush which the tuneless chorus of modern commercialism inspired. And, to
a woman of her temperament, that would have been a very real loss.

The great offices of the Skandinavia Corporation, in the heart of the
city of Quebec, with their machine-like precision of life, their
soulless method, their passionless progress towards the purpose of their
organisation, meant the open road towards the fulfilment of her desires
for independence and achievement.

All the promise of her earlier youth had been abundantly fulfilled.
Tall, gracious of figure, her beauty had a charm and dignity which owed
almost as much to mentality as it did to physical form. Yet, for all she
had already passed her twenty-fourth birthday, she was amazingly
innocent of those things which are counted as the governing factors of a
woman's life. Certainly she knew and loved the Titian hue of her wealth
of hair; her mirror was constantly telling her of the hazel depths of
her wide, intelligent eyes, with their fringes of dark, curling, Celtic
lashes. Then the almost classic moulding of her features. She