s departure.

Usually Mr. Britt went across into the bank and hung around after the
girl arrived. On this morning he stayed in his office. According to his
notion, his advances to her in the corridor, though he had not intended
to be so precipitate in the matter, had given her something to think
about--and he decided to keep away and let her think. If she saw him
following the usual routine, her thoughts might drop back into routine
channels.

He thrilled at the memory of her touch on his arm, even though the touch
had been a thrusting of her hands in self-defense and her eyes had been
big with fright.

He sat down at his desk and tore the leaf off his pad calendar, starting
his business day as usual. He looked at the disclosed date and his eyes
became humid. It was February 14th, the day of St. Valentine. An idea
came to Mr. Britt. He had been wondering how to approach the question
with Vona without blurting the thing and making a mess of it. He
determined to do something that he had not attempted since he had beaued
Hittie; he set himself to compose a few verses for a valentine--verses
that would pave the way for a formal declaration of his love and his
hopes.

The determination indicated that Mr. Britt was having a severe run of
a second attack of the same malady, and he acknowledged that much to
himself as he sat there and chewed the soggy end of an extinguished
cigar and gazed aloft raptly, seeking rhymes.

He made slow progress; his pen trailed as sluggishly as a tracking
snail--a word at a time. He lost all notion of how the hours were
slipping past.

A man walked in. He was Stickney, a cattle buyer, and a minor
stockholder in the bank. Mr. Britt, his eyes filmy with prolonged
abstraction, hooked his chin over his shoulder and scowled on the
intruder; a man bringing business into that office that day was an
intruder, according to Mr. Britt's opinion.

Stickney walked close to the desk and displayed a flash of curiosity
when Britt laid his forearm over his writing.

"Spring pome, or only a novel?" queried Stickney, genially, figuring
that such a question was the height of humor when put to a man of Tasper
Britt's flinty, practical nature.

Mr. Britt, like a person touched smartly by a brad, twitched himself in
his chair and asked in chilly tone what he could do for Stickney. The
caller promptly became considerable of an icicle himself. He laid down a
little sheaf of papers beside the shielding forearm.