All the rest of his life seemed small and unimportant. Often at home he sang aloud and talked to himself until his mother rebuked him. Then he would atone by performing all sorts of little services for her. In the office he felt that the silly day's work could be done in ten minutes--nine o'clock, work till a quarter past, send the whole world whizzing round, and then away to Annette. . . . But Annette's days were long and laborious, and the presiding powers at the office demanded his attendance from nine till five. He found his work easier and quite interesting. He began dimly to perceive a purpose in its processes. Talk with one or two of the elder men enlightened him. A great deal of what they said seemed absurd to him. The world did not exist for business. It existed for Annette. He had a trembling desire to tell them so . . . One man told him that though immense fortunes had been made in the cotton trade, they were a mere trifle compared with the misery that had been created in the making of them. "But that," said the man gloomily, "is the way of the world. It's happened so often that nobody worries when it happens again. All business is dirty business. A man must live, though I can never understand why." . . . Such pessimism seemed utterly absurd to Bennett. He did not want to understand why. He had only a general desire to be pleasant to everybody, and became so willing and busy and obliging that his superiors began to reverse their opinion of him. They had thought him conceited, reserved, and, at bottom, stupid. One of the senior clerks went out of his way to speak a few encouraging words to him. Such a thing had never happened before, and Bennett rushed away to Annette to tell her that the ball was at his feet, and he would quickly make his fortune, and then he would call for her one day, and they would be married by the bishop and for ever and ever they would live in a delicious dream. They were always making plans, and living in them, in a future that was so near the present as to be almost indistinguishable from it. There was no past. They ignored obstacles and impediments, lived in and for each other, and it seemed that it had always been so. They hardly ever kissed each other in those young days. When they did so they set stirring in each other forces that instinctively they felt to be dangerous. What they had was so very precious, just the few hours every week of unclouded happiness. Always--wet or fine--they were out of doors, wandering blindly, oblivious of all else save each other. They would take meals in their pockets the more to be independent.