“You two girls have talked enough in duet for one day,” remonstrated another girl, a little distance down the table from Cis and Nan. “We like a whack at Cis ourselves, Nan Dowling!” “Won’t get much more chance to talk, duet or chorus,” said Cis. “Half past two, and the afternoon buzz is beginning.” It was a particularly busy afternoon in this uptown exchange. Nan went off duty at five, but she waited that night to go out to supper with Cis, whose hours did not end till ten at night, and who supped in the restaurant on the top floor of the building, and returned to the exchange to finish her eight-hours’ shift. Cis did not know what fear was; she went about the quiet streets after ten o’clock at night, when she was returning to her boarding place, with the same careless assurance with which she walked the streets at ten o’clock in the morning. There was that about her carriage, her free, graceful walk, her faultless complexion, her glowing, abundant, striking hair that made her a conspicuous figure; yet there was also in her entire effect that indifference to notice, that light-hearted frankness, that absence of self-consciousness, which reveals the Una-like girl who walks the earth fearing no man because she seeks no man’s admiration. It is the glory of our American curious compound, that such a maidenly girl is rarely molested if she keeps within decent neighborhoods at not too-late hours, and Cicely Adair went and came as safely as if she were a child playing in her father’s garden. “I hate to leave you, Cis, but nothing ever does happen to you,” said Nan, after they had supped, and Cicely was preparing to return to the office and Nan to go home. “You wouldn’t be a mighty protection, small Nan,” laughed Cis. “Nonsense, child! I’m off by ten, and that’s only an hour after nine, and nine is curfew hour, so that’s all right! I’ll go back to the office and join up the rest of the world on wires, and go home as I always do. Don’t you know, no one would dare molest a red-haired girl? I fly a danger signal on top, and they turn out for me!” CHAPTER II THE RÔLE OF PERSEUS