she'd give him a good-by kiss and
steal away, and be the life of the party at the Randolphs' dinner, but
her thoughts would never leave him....

She knew she was being silly of course, and her beautiful wide mouth
smiled an acknowledgment of the fact, even while her checks flushed and
her eyes brightened over the picture. Of course it wouldn't come out
exactly like that.

Well, it didn't!

She found a single elevator in commission in the great gloomy rotunda of
the office building, and the watchman who ran her up made a terrible
noise shutting the gate after he had let her out on the fifteenth floor.
The dim marble corridor echoed her footfalls ominously, and when she
reached the door to his outer office and tried it, she found it locked.
The next door down the corridor was the one that led directly into his
private office, and here the light shone through the ground-glass.

She stole up to it as softly as she could, tried it and found it locked,
too, so she knocked. Through the open transom above it, she heard him
say "Hell!" in a heartfelt sort of way, and heard his chair thrust
back. The next moment he opened the door with a jerk.

His glare of annoyance changed to bewilderment at the sight of her, and
he said:

"Rose! Has anything happened? What's the matter?" And catching her by
the arm, he led her into the office. "Here, sit down and get your breath
and tell me about it!"

She smiled and took his face in both her hands. "But it's the other
way," she said. "There's nothing the matter with me. I came down, you
poor old boy, to see what was the matter with you."

He frowned and took her hands away and stepped back out of her reach.
Had it not been for the sheer incredibility of it, she'd have thought
that her touch was actually distasteful to him.

"Oh," he said. "I thought I told you over the phone there was nothing
the matter!--Won't you be awfully late to the Randolphs'?"

"I had ten minutes," she said, "and I thought ..."

She broke off the sentence when she saw him snap out his watch and look
at it.

"I know there's something," she said. "I can tell just by the way your
eyes look and the way you're so tight and--strained. If you'd just tell
me about it, and then sit down and let me--try to take the strain
away...."

Beyond a doubt the strain was there. The laugh he meant for a
good-humored dismissal of her fears, didn't sound at all as it was
intended to.

"Can't you tell me?" she repeated.