"Suppose the world knew this--our little business world?"

"Hang the world!"

"You never did. You flattered it, and were delighted when the world
patted you on the head and said, 'Nice Stevens, come in and bring your
bags of gold--the living's fine.'"

"Are you starting in to tell me that people would misunderstand my
motives? Sezanne del Monte has chapters along those lines. And
Beatrice has quite a fad of slumming and taking a notebook along to
write down new slang phrases or oaths or bits of heart-broken
philosophy spilled in a drunken moment.... I've grown careless to
everything presumably orderly and conventional. I'm ready to walk the
plank for my indifference if need be--but I do want to come home with
you for supper!"

Mary did not answer for a moment. Then she said, in a quick breathless
tone, as if she did not want to hear her own words: "I wonder if it
would do any good to try explaining--really explaining and not fibbing
or pretending----"

"It has always done me good when you have explained--and I can't
imagine you telling cheap untruths."

"Then I will try it." The gray eyes grew stormy. "For if we are to
continue as employer and secretary--and you must have such a person
and I must earn my living--it would be much easier if you really
understood and it was all settled. You've talked about early
hardships, misunderstood childhood, goat tending, and what not; and
the world gives you credit for your achievements. Then surely you must
understand the woman's end of the game--the American woman's part in
business, for it's not easy to be errand girl or to fill endless
underpaid clerical positions. It's not easy to pile out every morning
at such and such an hour and stand at a desk and work as if you had
neither heart nor eye for the other things in life until gradually the
woman part of yourself is changed and it is often too late to enjoy
anything but desk drudgery--and a bonus!

"Now the man in the business game forgoes nothing; he has the world's
applause if he succeeds and the kisses of the woman he loves for his
recreation, and all is complete and as it should be. But we commercial
women of to-day do a man's work and earn a man's wage. We do stay
starved women, even if that fact doesn't appear on the surface. We
cannot have the things of romance as well as our livelihood. And by
the very nature of the average business woman's life she is often in
love with someone in her office--from propinqui