eplied, "not until you improve it." And
she was impressed by the fact that he seemed to know as much about the
machine as the salesman himself. In spite of protests, denials, appeals,
he remained firm. "When you get rid of the defects I've mentioned come
back, Mr. Hicks--but don't come back until then."

And Mr. Hicks departed, discomfited....

Ditmar knew what he wanted. Of the mill he was the absolute master,
familiar with every process, carrying constantly in his mind how
many spindles, how many looms were at work; and if anything untoward
happened, becoming aware of it by what seemed to Janet a subconscious
process, sending for the superintendent of the department: for Mr.
Orcutt, perhaps, whose office was across the hall--a tall, lean,
spectacled man of fifty who looked like a schoolmaster.

"Orcutt, what's the matter with the opener in Cooney's room?"

"Why, the blower's out of order."

"Well, whose fault is it?"....

He knew every watchman and foreman in the mill, and many of the second
hands. The old workers, men and women who had been in the Chippering
employ through good and bad times for years, had a place in his
affections, but toward the labour force in general his attitude was
impersonal. The mill had to be run, and people to be got to run it. With
him, first and last and always it was the mill, and little by little
what had been for Janet a heterogeneous mass of machinery and human
beings became unified and personified in Claude Ditmar. It was odd how
the essence and quality of that great building had changed for her;
how the very roaring of the looms, as she drew near the canal in the
mornings, had ceased to be sinister and depressing, but bore now a
burden like a great battle song to excite and inspire, to remind her
that she had been snatched as by a miracle from the commonplace. And all
this was a function of Ditmar.

Life had become portentous. And she was troubled by no qualms of logic,
but gloried, womanlike, in her lack of it. She did not ask herself
why she had deliberately enlarged upon Miss Ottway's duties, invaded
debatable ground in part inevitably personal, flung herself with such
abandon into the enterprise of his life's passion, at the same time
maintaining a deceptive attitude of detachment, half deceiving herself
that it was zeal for the work by which she was actuated. In her soul she
knew better. She was really pouring fuel on the flames. She read him, up
to a certain point--as