Yet she did not look particularly nerve-worn, lying there in the low chair, in her thin white frock, her round arms resting upon the arms of the chair, her head thrown back, as she regarded her visitor from under low-sweeping lashes. Neither did she look in the least like the young woman of business she had become. Brant was always trying to convince himself that her work was spoiling her--it would be a comforting realisation if he could think it. But as often as he had succeeded in making himself half believe that some other girl, whose ways of living were such as he approved, was nearly as attractive as Shirley Townsend, just so often did the sight of Shirley in some unbusinesslike surroundings upset his convictions. To-night she looked particularly feminine and alluring, in spite of her avowed fractiousness and her explanation of the cause. "All baffling things wear on one," he answered, with an air of being sympathetic. "I know how it is, from experience. I ’d like a dictionary or a phrase-book myself--one that would tell me what to say to you when you want to be ’soothed.’ Shall I go in and get a book of verse and read aloud to you?" "Please don’t." "Fiction, then? "Worse and worse." "History? Philosophy? Science? Travel?--Or humour?" "None of them. I don’t like to be read to--as a duty." "Duty! I’d be delighted." "I should n’t, then." "What _do_ you want?" "Silence, I think," said the girl in the chair, with a mischievous look at the back of her companion’s head. Her face was demure again, however, when he turned. "Don’t you like just to sit and gaze off into space on a languid night like this, and say nothing at all?" "If you prefer to have me go home----" "Not in the least. I ’d like to know you were there on call--if you would n’t talk." A silence of some length ensued. Brant stared moodily off over the darkening lawn, watching distant electric lights twinkle into existence along the rows of tree-tops which outlined the streets. Shirley closed her eyes. She really was more weary than she knew. It had been a busy winter in the office, and she had worked hard to be able to fill the place she held. Her achievements in the matter of the technical French correspondence had proved of considerable importance to the firm, and her satisfaction at becoming so useful had led her to spend much of her spare time in making herself proficient. It was fully fifteen minutes--he thought it at least an hour--before Brant looked around. He had vowed to himself that he would give her all the silence she wanted, that he would not speak until she spoke. But after a time her absolute motionlessness struck him as caused by something even less flattering to himself than her desire for absence of speech.