She could not reply. She glanced around to see if the waiters could hear. "Can't you tell me?" he was saying. "It's been a week." She gazed at the napkin until it grew misty and indistinct. Then she slowly nodded. A waiter was almost within hearing. Bannon stood looking at her, heedless of everything but that she was there before him, that her eyes were trying to peep up at him through the locks of red gold hair that had strayed over her forehead. "Please"--she whispered--"please put them up." And so they set to work. He got the ladder and she told him what to do. Her directions were not always clear, but that mattered little, for he could not have followed them. Somehow the flags went up, and if the effect was little better than Max's attempt had been, no one spoke of it. Pete and Max came in together soon with the napkins, and a little time slipped by before Bannon could draw Max aside and grip his hand. Then they went at the napkins, and as they sat around the table, Hilda and Bannon, Pete and the waiters, folding them with rapid fingers, Bannon found opportunity to talk to her in a low voice, during the times when Pete was whistling, or was chaffing with the waiters. He told her, a few words at a time, of the new work Mr. MacBride had assigned to him, and in his enthusiasm he gave her a little idea of what it would mean to him, this opportunity to build an elevator the like of which had never been seen in the country before, and which would be watched by engineers from New York to San Francisco. He told her, too, something about the work, how it had been discovered that piles could be made of concrete and driven into the ground with a pile driver, and that neither beams nor girders--none of the timbers, in fact--were needed in this new construction. He was nearly through with it, and still he did not notice the uncertain expression in her eyes. It was not until she asked in a faltering undertone, "When are you going to begin?" that it came to him. And then he looked at her so long that Pete began to notice, and she had to touch his foot with hers under the table to get him to turn away. He had forgotten all about the vacation and the St. Lawrence trip. Hilda saw, in her side glances, the gloomy expression that had settled upon his face; and she recovered her spirits first. "It's all right," she whispered; "I don't care." Max came up then, from a talk with James out on the stairway, and for a few moments there was no chance to reply. But after Bannon had caught Max's signals to step out of hearing of the others, and before he had risen, there was a moment when Pete's attention was drawn by one of the waiters, and he said:-- "Can you go with me--Monday?" She looked frightened, and the blood rose in her cheeks so that she had to bend low over her pile of napkins. "Will you?" He was pushing back his chair. She did not look up, but her head nodded once with a little jerk. "And you'll stay for the dinner, won't you--now?"