e." With
that he was into the cab and off in a trice.

Two days afterwards Miss Wallen called at the Beaulieu on her way down
town, clambered to the fourth floor, and asked her friends the name of
the gentleman who occupied the left front room, ground-floor. They said
he was a Mr. Forrest, but he'd gone away--he was often away; from which
she decided him to be one of the knights errant of the commercial
world, but vastly unlike in tone and manner those who usually accosted
her. Two weeks afterwards, as she was seated at her desk in the big
office building, while her friend Miss Bonner was clicking away at the
opposite window, the door opened, and in came an elderly lawyer for whom
she had done many a page of accurate work. "Miss Wallen," said he, "can
you do some quick copying for a friend of mine? Let me present
Lieutenant Forrest, of the regular army."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI.

That Miss Wallen was no more surprised than her new customer was
apparent at a glance, but there was no time wasted in remarks on
previous meetings or present weather. It seemed that the gentleman in
question needed three typewritten copies of a long essay he had written,
and needed them at once. It was now four P.M. on Tuesday. He came for
the work at five o'clock Wednesday afternoon, and, although she had
wrought hard and faithfully, it lacked completion by just a page. "It
will be ready in ten minutes, sir, if you can wait," said Miss Wallen,
rising.

"Pray be in no hurry," said Mr. Forrest. "I have nothing to do to-night
but read it over." He took a vacant chair and produced the evening
paper, but through its pages he had already glanced while at the club;
over its pages he was glancing now at the slender, fragile-looking girl
with those busy, flying fingers and the intent gaze in her tired eyes.
He saw how wan, even sallow, she looked. The lines of care were on her
forehead and already settling about the corners of the soft, sensitive
mouth. He did not know that all alone she had returned to the office the
previous evening and worked until midnight, then hied her homeward fast
as cable-car could bear her, only, with racking nerves and aching limbs,
to toss through almost sleepless hours until the pallid dawn. He did not
know that in order that he might have this work on time she had never
left the building since eight A.M. that day. Silently she finished the
last page, counted and arranged the sheets, sh