s Winthrop receded until she became scarcely more
than a figure behind a typewriter. When he was sent out by Farnsworth,
he made as long an errand of it as he could. He was gone an hour, or
an hour and a half, on commissions that should not have taken half the
time.

It was the week of the Moore cotillion that Miss Winthrop observed the
change in him. She took it to be a natural enough reaction and had
half-expected it. There were very few men, her observation had told
her, who could sustain themselves at their best for any length of
time. This was an irritating fact, but being a fact had to be
accepted. As a man he was entitled to an off day or two--possibly to
an off week.

But when the second and third and fourth week passed without any
notable improvement in him, Miss Winthrop became worried.

"You ought to put him wise," she ventured to suggest to Powers.

"I?" Powers had inquired.

"Well, he seems like a pretty decent sort," she answered indifferently.

"So he is," admitted Powers, with an indifference that was decidedly
more genuine than her own. It was quite clear that Powers's interest
went no further. He had a wife and two children and his own
ambitions.

For a long time she saw no more of him than she saw of Blake. He
nodded a good-morning when he came in, and then seemed to lose himself
until noon. Where he lunched she did not know. For a while she had
rather looked for him, and then, to cure herself of that, had changed
her own luncheon place. At night he generally hurried out early--a bad
practice in itself: at least once, Farnsworth had wanted him for
something after he was gone; he had made no comment, but it was the
sort of thing Farnsworth remembered. When, on the very next day, Mr.
Pendleton started home still earlier, it had required a good deal of
self-control on her part not to stop him. But she did not stop him.
For one thing, Blake was at his desk at the time.

It was a week later that Miss Winthrop was called into the private
office of Mr. Seagraves one afternoon. His own stenographer had been
taken ill, and he wished her to finish the day. She took half a dozen
letters, and then waited while Farnsworth came in for a confidential
consultation upon some business matters. It was as the latter was
leaving that Mr. Seagraves called him back.

"How is Pendleton getting along?" he inquired.

Miss Winthrop felt her heart stop for a beat or two. She bent over her
notebook to conceal the col