"Too high!" He laughed excitedly and caught her hand when she moved to go. "You didn't mind my telling you?" Then, without awaiting a reply, he blurted: "There's a heap more to say. I want to take you out of all this--away from such riffraff as the girl you didn't see; I want--I want you, Jean." She tried to speak, but he read refusal in her troubled eyes and cut her short. "Don't answer now," he begged. "I didn't expect to tell you this so soon. I don't expect you to say yes straight off. I'm not good enough for you, Lord knows, but nobody could care more. Promise me you'll think it over. Promise me that, anyhow." She would have promised anything to escape. Again at her desk, she strove to think things out, but from the whirl of her thoughts only one fixed purpose emerged: she must know the day and hour of Stella's intended return, for this detail had escaped her. Making some excuse, therefore, when Paul came for her at closing time, she watched him to the street and then hurried to search his operating-room for the little red-covered book in which his personal appointments were kept. It was not in its usual place, however, nor in his office-coat behind the door, nor in any possible drawer of the cabinet. He had evidently slipped it into some pocket of the suit he wore. She dragged home in miserable anxiety, pinning all her hopes on obtaining a glance at the book while the dentist was at dinner; but this plan failed her, too, since that night, contrary to his custom, Paul made no change in his dress. The book was in his possession. Of this she was certain, for a corner of its red binding gleamed evilly at her from beneath his coat. Once, in an after-dinner comparison of biceps, which the insurance agent inaugurated in the hall, the thing actually fell to the floor at her feet, only to be noted by a watchful chorus before she might even think of advancing a casual ruffle. She devised a score of pretexts for asking Paul to let her see it, any one of which would have passed muster before his enamored eyes, but she dismissed each as too flimsy and open to suspicion; and so, before a safe course suggested itself, the evening was gone, and she climbed her three flights to spend hours in horrid wakefulness succeeded by even more merciless dreams. Fate was kinder on the morrow. Paul laid the appointment-book upon an open shelf of his cabinet in the course of the forenoon, and she seized a moment when he was scouring the establishment for one of his ever-vagrant instruments, to wrest its secret at last. She found the record easily. It was among the engagements for that very day: "Miss Wilkes, 11-11.30." The little clock on the cabinet indicated ten minutes of eleven now!