lvanic
current profoundly disturbing. Sometimes when he bent over her she
experienced a commingled ecstasy and fear that he would seize her in
his arms. Yet the tension was not constant, rising and falling with his
moods and struggles, all of which she read--unguessed by him--as easily
as a printed page by the gift that dispenses with laborious processes
of the intellect. On the other hand, a resentment boiled within her his
masculine mind failed to fathom. Stevenson said of John Knox that many
women had come to learn from him, but he had never condescended to
become a learner in return--a remark more or less applicable to Ditmar.
She was, perforce, thrilled that he was virile and wanted her, but
because he wanted her clandestinely her pride revolted, divining his
fear of scandal and hating him for it like a thoroughbred. To do her
justice, marriage never occurred to her. She was not so commonplace.

There were times, however, when the tension between them would relax,
when some incident occurred to focus Ditmar's interest on the enterprise
that had absorbed and unified his life, the Chippering Mill. One day in
September, for instance, after an absence in New York, he returned
to the office late in the afternoon, and she was quick to sense his
elation, to recognize in him the restored presence of the quality of
elan, of command, of singleness of purpose that had characterized him
before she had become his stenographer. At first, as he read his mail,
he seemed scarcely conscious of her presence. She stood by the window,
awaiting his pleasure, watching the white mist as it rolled over the
floor of the river, catching glimpses in vivid, saffron blurs of the
lights of the Arundel Mill on the farther shore. Autumn was at hand.
Suddenly she heard Ditmar speaking.

"Would you mind staying a little while longer this evening, Miss
Bumpus?"

"Not at all," she replied, turning.

On his face was a smile, almost boyish.

"The fact is, I think I've got hold of the biggest single order that
ever came into any mill in New England," he declared.

"Oh, I'm glad," she said quickly.

"The cotton cards--?" he demanded.

She knew he referred to the schedules, based on the current prices of
cotton, made out in the agent's office and sent in duplicate to the
selling house, in Boston. She got them from the shelf; and as he went
over them she heard him repeating the names of various goods now
become familiar, pongees, poplins, percales