Almost anyone on his staff, Lee reflected, knew more about the processes of his business than he did; he supplied the energy, the responsibility of the decisions, more than the brains of his organization; and it perfected the details. The stenographer, Miss Mathews, was very elaborately blonde, very personable; and, dictating to her, Lee Randon remembered the advice given him by a large wielder of labor and finance. “Lee,” he had said, touching him with the emphasis of a finger, “never play around with an employee or a client.” He, John Lenning Partins, had been a man of eccentric humors, and--like all individuals who supported heavy mental burdens, inordinately taxed their brains--he had his hours, unknown to the investing public, of erratic, but the word was erotic, conduct. On more than one occasion he had peremptorily telegraphed for Lee to join him at some unexpected place, for a party. Once, following a ball at the Grand Opera House, in Paris, they had motored in a taxi-cab, with charming company, to Calais. During that short stay in France John Partins had spent, flung variously away, four hundred thousand dollars. The industrious, the clerks, efficient women like Mrs. Wald, the middle-aged lawyers in his office, were rewarded...by a pension. It was all very strange, upside down: what rot that was about the infinite capacity for taking pains! He supposed it wouldn't do to make this public, the tritest maxims were safer for the majority; but it was too bad; it spread the eternal hypocrisies of living. He asked Miss Mathews: “You're not thinking of getting married, are you? Because if you do I'll have your young man deported; I simply won't let go of you.” “I don't see any signs of it, Mr. Randon,” she replied, half serious and half smiling; “my mother thinks it's awful, but I'm not in any hurry. There are men I know, who might like me; they show me a very good time; but somehow I am not anxious. I guess in a way it's the other married girls I see: either they housework at home, and I couldn't be bothered with that; or they are in an office and, somehow, that seems wrong, too. I want so much,” she admitted; “and with what clothes cost now it's terrible.” “Moralists and social investigators would call you a bad girl,” he told her; “but I agree with you; get your pretty hats and suits, and smart shoes, as long as you are able. You're not a bit better in a kitchen than you are here, taking dictation from me; and I am not sure you would be more valuable at home with a child or two. You are a very unusual stenographer, rapid and accurate, and you have a good mind in addition to your figure. Why should you lose all that at once, give it up, for the accidents of cholera infantum and a man, as likely as not, with a consumptive lung?” “But what about love, Mr. Randon? That's what throws me off. Some say it's the only thing in life.”