She spoke with such a commonplace intonation that one might have thought it her business to attend to loneliness and worries. "As a matter of fact," answered Ben Connor, instinctively dodging the direct query, "I've been wondering how they happened to stick a number-one artist on this wire. "I'm not kidding," he explained hastily. "You see, I used to jerk lightning myself." For the first time she really smiled, and he discovered what a rare thing a smile may be. Up to that point he had thought she lacked something, just as the white dress lacked a touch of color. "Oh," she nodded. "Been off the wire long?" Ben Connor grinned. It began with his lips; last of all the dull gray eyes lighted. "Ever since a hot day in July at Aqueduct. The Lorrimer Handicap on the 11th of July, to be exact. I tossed up my job the next day." "I see," she said, becoming aware of him again. "You played Tip-Top Second." "The deuce! Were you at Aqueduct that day?" "I was here--on the wire." He restrained himself with an effort, for a series of questions was Connor's idea of a dull conversation. He merely rubbed his knuckles against his chin and looked at her wistfully. "He nipped King Charles and Miss Lazy at the wire and squeezed home by a nose--paid a fat price, I remember," went on the girl. "I suppose you had something down on him?" "Did a friend of yours play that race?" "Oh, no; but I was new to the wire, then, and I used to cut in and listen to everything that came by." "I know. It's like having some one whisper secrets in your ear, at first, isn't it? But you remember the Lorrimer, eh? That was a race!" The sounder stopped chattering, and by an alternation in her eyes he knew that up to that moment she had been giving two-thirds of her attention to the voice of the wire and the other fraction to him; but now she centered upon him, and he wanted to talk. As if, mysteriously, he could share some of the burden of his unrest with the girl. Most of all he wished to talk because this office had lifted him back to the old days of "lightning jerking," when he worked for a weekly pay-check. The same nervous eagerness which had been his in that time was now in this girl, and he responded to it like a call of blood to blood. "A couple of wise ones took me out to Aqueduct that day: I had all that was coming to me for a month in my pocket, and I kept saying to myself: 'They think I'll fall for this game and drop my wad; here's where I fool 'em!'" He chuckled as he remembered. "Go on," said the girl. "You make me feel as if I were about to make a clean-up!" "Really interested?" She fixed an eager glance on him, as though she were judging how far she might let herself go. Suddenly she leaned closer to Connor. "Interested? I've been taking the world off the wire for six years--and you've been where things happen."