She, Brodrick's secretary, might have been about five-and-thirty. She was fair with the fairness which is treacherous to women of her age, which suffers when they suffer. But Gertrude's skin still held the colours of her youth as some strong fabric holds its dye. Her face puzzled you; it was so broad across the cheek-bones that you would have judged it coarse; it narrowed suddenly in the jaws, pointing her chin to subtlety. Her nose, broad also across the nostrils and bridge, showed a sharp edge in profile; it was alert, competent, inquisitive. But there was mystery again in the long-drawn, pale-rose lines of her mouth. A wide mouth with irregular lips, not coarse, but coarsely finished. Its corners must once have drooped with pathos, but this tendency was overcome or corrected by the serene habit of her smile. It was not the face of a dreamer. Yet at the moment you would have said she dreamed. Her eyes, light coloured, slightly prominent, stared unsheltered under their pale lashes and insufficient brows. They were eyes that at first sight had no depths in them. Yet they seemed to hold vapour. They dreamed. They showed her dream. She started as the silver-chiming clock struck the quarter. She went up-stairs to the room that was her own, and examined herself carefully in the looking-glass. Then she did something to her hair. Waved slightly and kept in place by small amber-coloured combs, Gertrude's hair, though fragile, sustained the effect of her almost Scandinavian fairness. Next she changed her cotton blouse for an immaculate muslin one. As she drew down the blouse and smoothed it under the clipping belt, she showed a body flat in the back, sharp-breasted, curbed in the waist; the body of a thoroughly competent, serviceable person. Her face now almost suggested prettiness, as she turned and turned its little tilted profile between two looking-glasses. At half-past three she was seated at her place in Brodrick's library. A table was set apart for her and her type-writer on a corner by the window. The editor was at work at his own table in the centre of the room. He did not look up at her as she came in. His eyes were lowered, fixed on the proof he was reading. Once, as he read, he shrugged his shoulders slightly, and once he sighed. Then he called her to him. She rose and came, moving dreamily as if drawn, yet holding herself stiffly and aloof. He continued to gaze at the proof. "You sat up half the night to correct this, I suppose?" "Have I done it very badly?"