t of her smile.

It was not the face of a dreamer. Yet at the moment you would have said
she dreamed. Her eyes, light coloured, slightly prominent, stared
unsheltered under their pale lashes and insufficient brows. They were
eyes that at first sight had no depths in them. Yet they seemed to hold
vapour. They dreamed. They showed her dream.

She started as the silver-chiming clock struck the quarter.

She went up-stairs to the room that was her own, and examined herself
carefully in the looking-glass. Then she did something to her hair.
Waved slightly and kept in place by small amber-coloured combs,
Gertrude's hair, though fragile, sustained the effect of her almost
Scandinavian fairness. Next she changed her cotton blouse for an
immaculate muslin one. As she drew down the blouse and smoothed it under
the clipping belt, she showed a body flat in the back, sharp-breasted,
curbed in the waist; the body of a thoroughly competent, serviceable
person. Her face now almost suggested prettiness, as she turned and
turned its little tilted profile between two looking-glasses.

At half-past three she was seated at her place in Brodrick's library. A
table was set apart for her and her type-writer on a corner by the
window.

The editor was at work at his own table in the centre of the room. He
did not look up at her as she came in. His eyes were lowered, fixed on
the proof he was reading. Once, as he read, he shrugged his shoulders
slightly, and once he sighed. Then he called her to him.

She rose and came, moving dreamily as if drawn, yet holding herself
stiffly and aloof. He continued to gaze at the proof.

"You sat up half the night to correct this, I suppose?"

"Have I done it very badly?"

He did not tell her that she had, that he had spent the best part of his
morning correcting her corrections. She was an inimitable housekeeper,
and a really admirable secretary. But her weakness was that she desired
to be considered admirable and inimitable in everything she undertook.
It would distress her to know that this time she had not succeeded, and
he did not like distressing people who were dependent on him. It used to
be so easy, so mysteriously easy, to distress Miss Collett; but she had
got over that; she was used to him now; she had settled down into the
silent and serene performance of her duties. And she had brought to her
secretarial work a silence and serenity that were invaluable to a man
who detested argument and a