She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently but firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a power stronger than herself, a masculine power, was delicious. Her arm seemed to burn where he touched her.
"Have I done something to offend you?" she heard him say. "Or is it because you don't like me?"
"I'm not sure whether I like you or not," she told him. "I don't like seeing you--this way. And why should you want to know me and see me outside of the office? I'm only your stenographer."
"Because you're you--because you're different from any woman I ever met. You don't understand what you are--you don't see yourself."
"I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any longer," she informed him.
"For God's sake, why?" he exclaimed. "I've been afraid of that. Don't go--I don't know what I'd do. I'll be careful--I won't get you talked about."
"Talked about!" She tore herself away from him. "Why should you get me talked about?" she cried.
He was frightened. "No, no," he stammered, "I didn't mean--"
"What did you mean?"
"Well--as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we shouldn't be friends. I only meant--I wouldn't do anything to make our friendship the subject of gossip."
Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and penitence, she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over him.
"Why should you want me? I don't know anything, I've never had any advantages--and you have so much. I read an article in the newspaper about you today--Mr. Caldwell gave it to me--"
"Did you like it?" he interrupted, naively.
"Well, in some places it was rather funny."
"Funny? How?"
"Oh, I don't know." She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic lack of restraint hinted at by Caldwell. "I liked it, but I thought it praised you too much, it didn't criticize you enough."
He laughed. In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing. From the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got anything but flattery.
"I want you to criticize me," he said.
But she went on relentlessly:--"When I read in that article how successful you were, and how you'd got everything you'd started out to get, and how some day you might be treasurer and president of the Chippering Mill, well--" Despairing of giving adequate expression to her meaning, she added, "I didn't see how we could be friends."
"You wanted me for a friend?" he interrupted eagerly.
"I couldn't help knowing you wanted me--you've shown it so plainly. But I didn't see how it could be. You asked me where I lived--in a little flat that's no better than a tenement. I suppose you would call it a tenement.
It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of cooking. You couldn't come there--don't you see how impossible it is? And you wouldn't care to be talked about yourself, either," she added vehemently.
This defiant sincerity took him aback. He groped for words.
"Listen!" he urged. "I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me. I've come to depend on you.
And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I thought of you, I said to myself 'She'll be pleased, she'll help me to put it over.'"
She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to herself, to take her arm again.
"How could I help you?"
"Oh, in a thousand ways--you ought to know, you do a good deal of thinking for me, and you can help me by just being there. I can't explain it, but I feel somehow that things will go right. I've come to depend on you."
He was a little surprised to find himself saying these things he had not intended to say, and the lighter touch he had always possessed in dealing with the other sex, making him the envied of his friends, had apparently abandoned him. He was appalled at the possibility of losing her.
"I've never met a woman like you," he went on, as she remained silent. "You're different--I don't know what it is about you, but you are." His voice was low, caressing, his head was bent down to her, his shoulder pressed against her shoulder. "I've never had a woman friend before, I've never wanted one until now."
She wondered about his wife.
"You've got brains--I've never met a woman with brains."
"Oh, is that why?" she exclaimed.
"You're beautiful," he whispered. "It's queer, but I didn't know it at first.
You're more beautiful to-night than I've ever seen you."
They had come almost to Warren Street. Suddenly realizing that they were standing in the light, that people were passing to and fro over the end of the bridge, she drew away from him once more, this time more gently.
"Let's walk back a little way," he proposed.
"I must go home--it's late."
"It's only nine o'clock."
"I have an errand to do, and they'll expect me. Good night."
"Just one more turn!" he pleaded.
But she shook her head, backing away from him.
"You'll see me to-morrow," she told him. She didn't know why she said that.
She hurried along Warren Street without once looking over her shoulder; her feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the sound of music was in her ears, the lights sparkled. She had had an adventure, at last, an adventure that magically had transformed her life! She was beautiful! No one had ever told her that before. And he had said that he needed her. She smiled as, with an access of tenderness, in spite of his experience and power she suddenly felt years older than Ditmar. She could help him!...
She was breathless when she reached the shop in Faber Street.
"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said.
"Oh no, we don't close until ten," answered the saleswoman. She was seated quietly sewing under the lamp.
"I wonder whether you'd mind if I put on my old suit again, and carried this?"
Janet asked.
