About noon two days later, as Norman was making one of his excursions past the Equitable elevators, he saw Bob Culver at the news stand. It so happened that as he recognized Culver, Culver cast in the direction of the elevators the sort of look that betrays a man waiting for a woman. Unseen by Culver, Norman stopped short.
Into his face blazed the fury of suspicion, jealousy, and hate--one of the cyclones of passion that swept him from time to time and revealed to his own appalled self the full intensity of his feeling, the full power of the demon that possessed him. Culver was of those glossy, black men who are beloved of women. He was much handsomer than Norman, who, indeed, was not handsome at all, but was regarded as handsome because he had the air of great distinction. Many times these two young men had been pitted against each other in legal battles. Every time Norman had won. Twice they had contended for the favor of the same lady. Each had scored once. But as Culver's victory was merely for a very light and empty-headed lady of the stage while he had won Josephine Burroughs away from Culver, the balance was certainly not against him.
As Norman slipped back and into the cross corridor to avoid meeting Culver, Dorothy Hallowell hurried from a just descended elevator and, with a quick, frightened glance toward Culver, in profile, almost ran toward Norman. It was evident that she had only one thought --to escape being seen by her new employer. When she realized that some one was standing before her and moved to one side to pass, she looked up. "Oh!" she gasped, starting back. And then she stood there white and shaking.
"Is that beast Culver hounding you?" demanded Norman.
She recovered herself quickly. With flashing eyes, she cried: "How dare you! How dare you!"
Norman, possessed by his rage against Culver, paid no attention. "If he don't let you alone," he said, "I'll thrash him into a hospital for six months. You must leave his office at once. You'll not go back there."
"You must be crazy," replied she, calm again.
"I've no complaint to make of the way I'm being treated. I never was so well off in my life. And Mr. Culver is very kind and polite."
"You know what that means," said Norman harshly.
"Everyone isn't like you," retorted she.
He was examining her from head to foot, as if to make sure that it was she with no charm missing. He noted that she was much less poorly dressed than when she worked for his firm. In those days she often looked dowdy, showed plainly the girl who has to make a hasty toilet in a small bedroom, with tiny wash-stand and looking-glass, in the early, coldest hours of a cold morning.
Now she looked well taken care of physically, not so well, not anything like so well as the women uptown--the ladies with nothing to do but make toilettes; still, unusually well looked after for a working girl. At first glance after those famished and ravening days of longing for her and seeking her, she before him in rather dim reality of the obvious office-girl, seemed disappointing.
It could not be that this insignificance was the cause of all his fever and turmoil. He began to hope that he was recovering, that the cloud of insane desire was clearing from his sky. But a second glance killed that hope. For, once more he saw her mystery, her beauties that revealed their perfection and splendor only to the observant.
While he looked she was regaining her balance, as the fading color in her white skin and the subsidence of the excitement in her eyes evidenced. "Let me pass, please," she said coldly--for, she was against the wall with him standing before her in such a way that she could not go until he moved aside.
"We'll lunch together," he said. "I want to talk with you. Did that well-meaning ass--Tetlow--tell you?"
"There is nothing you can say that I wish to hear," was her quiet reply.
"Your eyes--the edges of the lids are red. You have been crying?"
She lifted her glance to his and he had the sense of a veil drawing aside to reveal a desolation. "For my father," she said.
His face flushed. He looked steadily at her. "Now that he is gone, you have no one to protect you. I am----"
"I need no one," said she with a faintly contemptuous smile.
"You do need some one--and I am going to undertake it."
Her face lighted up. He thought it was because of what he had said. But she immediately undeceived him.
