Rawn had lived a life singularly clean and innocent. His youth had
been gawky, his manhood ignorant. But now, somehow, somewhere, deep in
some unsuspected corner of his nature, John Rawn felt glowing something
heretofore unknown to him. He did not know what it was. At times it
seemed to him he could see opening out before him a new world of wide
and inviting expanses, a world of warmth and light and luxury and
color; in short, a world as unlike Kelly Row as you may well imagine,
inhabited by beings wholly different from those obtaining in Kelly Row.
And there, among all these, one.... It is to be seen, in fact, that
the life of the city began to open before John Rawn. The soul of the
city is woman, as it was the soul of Rome. Rawn was learning what
hitherto he had small opportunity to learn. At times he leaned back in
luxurious realization of the fact that he, John Rawn, late railway
clerk, but born to the purple, could by a touch upon this certain plate
of mother-of-pearl call before him in reality a vision which sometimes
he saw within his mind.
John Rawn reached out and touched the last button to the right in the
row. She appeared before him a moment later, silently, as calm, as
cool, as unsmiling and as dignified as was her wont. Not even the
quiver of an eyelid evinced concern as to what her next duty was to be.
IV
In appearance Virginia Delaware might have won approval from a closer
critic than John Rawn. Her face really was almost classical in its
lines, her poise and dignity now might have been that of some young,
clean-limbed wood-goddess of old. She always seemed unfit for humdrum
duties. Surely she had won the vast hatred of all her associates, who
had experienced no raise of salaries whatever, under the new régime;
whereas, it was well known that the president's secretary had had one,
two, or perhaps several. These others detested all forward and
superior persons; as was their irreverent and wholly logical right.
"We have some letters this morning, Miss Delaware," began Rawn. "You
couldn't quite take care of them all, eh?"
"We handled all we could, Mr. Rawn, I have referred a large number to
proper department heads, and answered quite a number. It seemed better
to refer these for your own action."
"Business growing, eh?" said Rawn, turning around to his desk. The
girl's reply was just properly enthusiastic for the business:
"It's wonderful the mail we get. Inquiries come from all over the
country. Yes, indeed, it seems to grow. The idea goes like wildfire.
I never knew anything like it. When we really have the installations
made, it will be only a question of administration."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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