live in an Italian villa.
Who knows what new tortures that will bring? But for a few months I am
certain of my whereabouts, so plan on going alone."

"So you won't come with me! Oh, Steve, sometimes I can just see the
whole mistake--you should never have made a fortune. Rather you should
have been a nice foreman with a meek little wife in four-dollar hats
and a large portion of offspring. You should have lived in a model
bungalow with even a broom closet in the kitchen and leaded windows at
one side. You would have been a socialist and headed labour-union
picnics. But as my husband and my father's assistant and all that--you
are as impossible as that Faithful woman would be if she tried to be a
lady!"

For a moment Steve hesitated. But the average day does not include
losing ten thousand on the stock exchange from sheer folly, finding
out that your blood pressure is too high, that your faithful secretary
loves you and is truer blue than ever, and discovering at the same
moment that you love her yet may not tell her so. Nor is a day so
hectic usually concluded by finding an impromptu parlour picnic in
full swing at home where rest was sought--finding, too, the full
realization that you not only do not love your wife but you do not
even approve of her.

So he said, quietly: "If you wish to make some radical change
regarding your husband would you mind waiting until he has had a
chance at a shower bath and some breakfast?"

For the first time in her life the Gorgeous Girl found herself
gathering up Monster, the candy, and the novel manuscript in her
lace-draped arms and standing outside her husband's firmly closed
door.

The shock was so great that she could not squeeze out a single tear.

CHAPTER XIV

Mary Faithful felt no regrets at having told the truth about her love
for Steve O'Valley. The regrets were all on Steve's side of the
ledger. Contrary to customary procedure it was he who practised
nonchalance and indifference, and the office force saw no whit of
difference in the attitude of the president toward his private
secretary or vice versa.

Long ago the force had accepted the attitude of these two persons as
strictly businesslike and their conception of Mary Faithful was tinged
with awe and a bit of envy at her success. To imagine her desperately
in love with her employer, working for and with him each day, and
finally in extreme desperation telling the truth as brutally as women
sometimes tell