Not being able to strike straight at their subject they’d framed up a story, one that would give them scope for questions and be a sufficiently plausible excuse to get her there. It seemed to me absurd, but the old man was satisfied with it. Everybody now knew that Harland had been her silent partner. Their story was that they’d heard Barker was also in the enterprise, she’d had a double backing, his visits to her office gave color to the rumor, and so forth and so on. I left the office while they were conning it over. As I mounted the stairs to her apartment I felt a good deal of a cad. If it had been anyone else, or any other kind of a woman—but that fine, high-spirited creature! A group of men trying to make a fool of her—beastly! Why had I said I’d do it—and why the devil had she got mixed up in such an ugly business? A servant opened the door and showed me up a hall into the parlor. She was there sitting at a desk littered with papers, and rose with a faint surprised smile when she saw me. As we sat down and I made my apologies for intruding, I had a chance to observe her and was struck by the change in her. It was less than a year since we’d last met and she looked singularly different. Handsome of course—she’d always be that—but another kind of woman. At first I thought it was because she was paler and thinner—she’d been a radiant, blooming Amazon in the country—but after a few minutes I saw it was something—how can I express it?—more of the spirit than the body. The joyousness and gayety had gone out of her, and the spontaneity—I noticed that especially. I could feel constraint in her composure as if she was on her dignity. As I explained my mission—I couldn’t say much, and felt beastly uncomfortable while I was doing it—she listened with an expressionless, polite attention. When I had finished she made no comment, merely saying she would be only too happy to do anything for Mr. Whitney, then passed on to her own affairs, mentioning the failure of the Azalea Woods Estates and that she thought she and her mother would return to the country. I was on the verge of offering to finance her in a new deal and then remembered I was there as an emissary, not as a friend. It rattled me and the rattling wasn’t helped when I met her eyes, brown and soft, but with something scrutinizing and watchful under their velvety darkness.