Thereafter from eight o'clock A.M. to six-thirty P.M. for five days a week Kate sat in an inner room of the Water Street office, with the ancient Crewdson as a buffer between her and the world. She came into the place with a talent for figures, and a good general idea of the business, and she set herself first to the conversion of Mr. Crewdson. That worthy old person was entirely of opinion that what was good enough for poor Mr. Godfrey was quite good enough for anybody else, and (when pressed) said so with unfriendly plainness. A man, in Kate's shoes, would have dismissed him, and brought in younger blood. Kate preferred conversion. She knew that there was a great quarry of information on matters West African stowed beneath Mr. Crewdson's dull exterior, and she intended to dig at it. So she reduced his wages, which he quite agreed with her the firm could not afford, and then, unasked, offered him a fine commission on the next year's profits. It was curious to see how soon she galvanized him into an opinion that these profits must certainly be forthcoming. She laid in a typewriter, burned the office quills, wrote the firm's letters, signed them _For O'Neill and Craven, K. O'Neill_, and before she knew it had created a personality. Ten callers a day--captains, pursers, traders, merchants--wanted to shake hands with "your new head, Mr. K.," and went away with the idea that old Crewdson had suddenly developed capacity, and on the strength of it had stood himself a new signature. On Saturdays, during the summer, Miss O'Neill caught butterflies, and in the winter played golf. On Sunday morning she went to church. On Sunday afternoons and evenings she had something very nearly approaching a salon. On these latter occasions Mrs. Craven flattered herself that she brought success by her artistic attention to the commissariat. Now, the girl was attractive to men, and although she was emphatically a girl's girl, still she had as many friends of one sex as the other. She was good-looking, she was amusing, she was always well turned out, and she carried about with her that indescribable charm (above and beyond these other matters) which always makes people desirous of warming up a first acquaintance into intimacy. To one man only had she shown any special degree of preference, and he was enough encouraged thereby to propose marriage to her. She accepted him--provisionally. "I am not absolutely certain that I wish to be married just yet," she told him, "but I am going abroad now, and I will let you know definitely when I return. Those are not nice terms, but they are the best I can offer. I have always been able to give a 'yes' or 'no' decision on every other matter in life so far. But here I can't. It is weak of me. Perhaps it is merely womanly." "You are exquisite in your womanliness, as you are exquisite in everything else," he had replied. "I am grateful for any bone of comfort you throw me, Kitty dear."