The boy departed; swaggering into the main office with all the conscious heroism of a lion-tamer. The door, wind-caught, swung shut behind him with a slam that turned swagger into helpless panic. But no dreaded voice howled a reprimand through the panels. Caleb Conover was reading and re-reading a few scribbled lines in exaggeratedly large writing. The Fighter’s face softened as he read. Then, glancing about in shame-faced caution, he hastily lifted the note; brushed it across his lips with a furtive, yet careless mien; as though the gesture might have been employed to cover a yawn. Contemptuous of the first covert loverly deed of his career, he cleared his throat and for the sixth time read the scrawled words. Half audibly, he perused them; smiling to himself. “_Please, I’m good now. I don’t think I’m EVER going to be bad again. Wouldn’t it be fine if you should come and take me for a walk this afternoon? D. S._” “Isn’t she the dandiest ever?” Caleb asked himself gleefully as he straightened his tie before the office mirror and jammed his felt hat down over his forehead, “Why can’t the Letty girl be like her? Then there’d be some pleasure in gettin’ married. Hope she and Dey’ll be friends. If they ain’t--” He strode through the outer office, looking so human that his expression, combined with the far more important fact that he was evidently departing for the day, put the whole staff into the utmost good humor for the rest of the afternoon. It was a very natural, self-controlled Desirée who met Conover on the porch of the Shevlin cottage. If hers had been the muffled sobs that had sent him home with a lump in his throat--if she had lain wide-eyed, tortured, till broad daylight--there was no hint of such excess in her flower face nor in the girlish vigor of her pose. Conover, doubtful as to how he might best refer to the quarrel of the previous night, for once did an absolutely wise and tactful thing. He made no mention whatever of the affair. “It was such a gorgeous day,” Desirée was saying, “that I felt I ought to let you know what beautiful weather it was. You’d never have thought to look, for yourself. You know you wouldn’t. Now take me somewhere. Anywhere, so long as it’s far enough. And I want to walk; not drive. Where are we going? It’s got to be somewhere outside of this squiffy, hot old town. Out where there’s a whole sky-ful of air.” “How’d you like to walk out to the Arareek?” he suggested, “We can sit on the stoop there and drink seltzer lem’nade an’ watch the paretics chase gutta percha pills over the golf links. Would you care ’about doin’ that? There’s a big view there for folks that cares for that sort of rot.”