But this girl--this Miss Hallowell--here was a tangible mystery--a mystery of physics, of chemistry. He sat watching her--watching the changes as she bent to her work, or relaxed, or puzzled over the meaning of one of her own hesitating stenographic hieroglyphics--watched her as the waning light of the afternoon varied its intensity upon her skin. Why, her very hair partook of this magical quality and altered its tint, its degree of vitality even, in harmony with the other changes. . . . What was the explanation? By means of what rare mechanism did her nerve force ebb and flow from moment to moment, bringing about these fascinating surface changes in her body? Could anything, even any skin, be better made than that superb skin of hers--that master work of delicacy and strength, of smoothness and color? How had it been possible for him to fail to notice it, when he was always looking for signs of a good skin down town--and up town, too--in these days of the ravages of pastry and candy? . . . What long graceful fingers she had--yet what small hands! Certainly here was a peculiarity that persisted. No--absurd though it seemed, no! One way he looked at those hands, they were broad and strong, another way narrow and gracefully weak. He said to himself: "The man who gets that girl will have Solomon's wives rolled into one. A harem at the price of a wife--or a--" He left the thought unfinished. It seemed an insult to this helpless little creature, the more rather than the less cowardly for being unspoken; for, no doubt her ideas of propriety were firmly conventional. "About done?" he asked impatiently. She glanced up. "In a moment. I'm sorry to be so slow." "You're not," he assured her truthfully. "It's my impatience. Let me see the pages you've finished." With them he was able to concentrate his mind. When she laid the last page beside his arm he was absorbed, did not look at her, did not think of her. "Take the machine away," said he abruptly. He was leaving for the day when he remembered her again. He sent for her. "I forgot to thank you. It was good work. You will do well. All you need is practice--and confidence. Especially confidence." He looked at her. She seemed frail--touchingly frail. "You are not strong?" She smiled, and in an instant the frailty seemed to have been mere delicacy of build--the delicacy that goes with the strength of steel wires, or rather of the spider's weaving thread which sustains weights and shocks out of all proportion to its appearance. "I've never been ill in my life," said she. "Not a day."