the level of
consciousness, was that experience at Silliston in the May weather when
she had had a glimpse--just a glimpse! of a garden where strange and
precious flowers were in bloom. On the other hand, this mysterious
perception by her of things unseen and hitherto unguessed, of rays of
delight in the spectrum of values to which his senses were unattuned,
was for Ditmar the supreme essence of her fascination. At moments he was
at once bewildered and inebriated by the rare delicacy of fabric of the
woman whom he had somehow stumbled upon and possessed.

Then there were the hours when they worked together in the office. Here
she beheld Ditmar at his best. It cannot be said that his infatuation
for her was ever absent from his consciousness: he knew she was there
beside him, he betrayed it continually. But here she was in the presence
of what had been and what remained his ideal, the Chippering Mill; here
he acquired unity. All his energies were bent toward the successful
execution of the Bradlaugh order, which had to be completed on the
first of February. And as day after day went by her realization of the
magnitude of the task he had undertaken became keener. Excitement was
in the air. Ditmar seemed somehow to have managed to infuse not only
Orcutt, the superintendent, but the foremen and second hands and even
the workers with a common spirit of pride and loyalty, of interest, of
determination to carry off this matter triumphantly. The mill seemed
fairly to hum with effort. Janet's increasing knowledge of its
organization and processes only served to heighten her admiration for
the confidence Ditmar had shown from the beginning. It was superb. And
now, as the probability of the successful execution of the task tended
more and more toward certainty, he sometimes gave vent to his boyish,
exuberant spirits.

"I told Holster, I told all those croakers I'd do it, and by thunder I
will do it, with three days' margin, too! I'll get the last shipment off
on the twenty-eighth of January. Why, even George Chippering was afraid
I couldn't handle it. If the old man was alive he wouldn't have had cold
feet." Then Ditmar added, half jocularly, half seriously, looking down
on her as she sat with her note-book, waiting for him to go on with
his dictation: "I guess you've had your share in it, too. You've been a
wonder, the way you've caught on and taken things off my shoulders. If
Orcutt died I believe you could step right into his