With Barcroft, for the first time, she could permit herself to be natural, and this sense of ease increased her value enormously in “meeting the trade” and handling difficult people in his absence. She checked him up on his errors of dictation without shame, but she had the rare good sense to know just when he was wiser in being wrong. She grew to respect, rather than disdain, the qualities that made men successful in business. They were qualities that did not interest her essentially, yet Barcroft’s mind had mysterious powers of insight that often called for silent applause. Their relations developed into friendliness, and she felt his honest admiration without the fear that it would lead to complications. She had never yet herself encountered the boss-turned-lover--and the case was reputed to be so common that she felt far from flattered. She tried to account for it on the score of her natural dignity, her quiet mode of dressing, her application to work, and her reticence; but these did not explain. She was not conspicuously dignified--when it seemed to her good to laugh she did so. Nor did she dress unattractively, much as she respected her budget. And her efficiency was not nearly so obtrusive as some brands of it she had observed. Moreover these qualities, she believed, in a young and good-looking woman, would only make her more pleasing to men. She mocked at the whole business; it was another of those favourite American panics, like the white slave traffic, the German spy-hunt, and the innumerable other horrors that supported the newspapers and bred the violence of mobs. She congratulated herself, nevertheless, that in spite of Barcroft’s understanding and deference, nothing of that sort was remotely likely to happen. She had found a good post, agreeably within her powers and therefore easy, and she would be able to keep it indefinitely, with the hope of a steadily mounting salary. Then one evening they fell into a conversation after office hours. It ranged everywhere from the staging of Arthur Hopkins to the value of rotogravure as an advertising medium, from the proper length of skirts to the latest novel, and Barcroft broke into the discussion suddenly by making love to her. He too was a victim, as it appeared, of the quarrelsome and haphazard home. She had often asked herself, with some bitterness, what advantage her early life gave her in such a career as she now had to follow. She found it in this instance the most useful equipment she could have. Another girl would have thrown up the job. She managed adroitly to save it. She was not at all shocked by Barcroft’s love-making. She felt sorry for him; she talked to him sympathetically about his troubles, and in the end they were better friends than ever. Moreover, he was not long afterward grateful to her ... the wife had come out victor over her lord ... the yoke was again pleasing to his neck.