He walked toward the cluttered food-pen where the waitresses sweated visibly at the arm-pits. Here lunch cost him only twenty cents. The place was at least clean, and the food good. The eggs for instance, and the butter--details that meant much for David. He sat huddled at a long porcelain board. From whirling waitresses in white the dishes fell with clamorous approximation near his place. In the rear was an endless catatonic beat of crockery and voices. The whole place roared like the shatter of a mighty loom that wove the calls of women into the brittle shower of china, the glint of knives into the shuffle of feet. David sat and took his food and held his big arms tight to his body. The fresh air as he left gave him the cumulated picture. This day he heard a clear voice at his side speak his name in the cold street. He turned: there was Miss Lord. Caroline Lord held a higher place in Deane and Company than any other woman. These were days before the spread of advertising agents. Miss Lord was in charge of the correspondence department. She had a little office of her own, and a male assistant and a stenographer. She was known as a remarkable woman. “How do you do, Mr. Markand?” She had evidently overtaken David and now they were walking together. He saw her casually in and out of the long packed room where David fumbled figures and papers. She was a remote business detail of this still strange world. One day, Tibbetts dragged him into her little office and introduced him. He remembered the way she sat on her desk and chatted cannily and bit at a pencil. The smile of her white teeth was beyond the reach of David’s comfort. He was glad to get away. Here she was being affable again. “I presume you were going to lunch, Mr. Markand?” He noticed that she kept step with him. She was a big and capable woman. “Y--yes,” he admitted. “Do you like your work? Perhaps you are tired at night. Am I right? Oh, never worry about that. When you get used--more used to it, it will take less out of you.” They had passed his eating place. What should he do? He began cursing himself. It was so wide in him that he did not want to invite her to lunch. In her, that this was precisely what she expected. He was a reed before her silent pressure. There she was talking, as if they had an hour to be together. “We were up on the Palisades last Sunday. You must really have some of your friends take you----” David fumbled in his pocket. His fare downtown that morning had broken his last dollar. He had a way of not keeping much of his money with him. It seemed a risky thing to do in a wild City. His pocket held ninety-five cents! Lunch for two at a decent restaurant was a catastrophe that simply could not be! She was trudging along: subtly pushing him toward Broadway. The lunch-places of the rich were near. “Doubtless you have a lunch engagement ...?” “No. But....” He stopped, she stopped. He blushed and she smiled.