"She looked--jealous." "Nonsense! What an imagination you have!" "I saw what I saw," Ursula maintained. "Well, I suppose she has heard something--something recent. I thought you had sworn off, Fred. But I might have known." Norman was angry. He wondered at his own exasperation, out of all proportion to any apparent provoking cause. And it was most unusual for him to feel temper, all but unprecedented for him to show it, no matter how strong the temptation. "It's a good idea, to make her jealous," pursued his sister. "Nothing like jealousy to stimulate interest." "Josephine is not that sort of woman." "You know better. All women are that sort. All men, too. Of course, some men and women grow angry and go away when they get jealous while others stick closer. So one has to be judicious." "Josephine and I understand each other far too well for such pettiness." "Try her. No, you needn't. You have." "Didn't I tell you----" "Then what was she questioning you about?" "Just to show you how wrong you were, I'll tell you. She was asking me about a poor little girl down at the office--one she wants to help." Ursula laughed. "To help out of your office, I guess. I thought you'd lived long enough, Fred, to learn that no woman trusts _any_ man about _any_ woman. Who is this 'poor little girl'?" "I don't even know her name. One of the typewriters." "What made Josephine jealous of her?" "Haven't I told you Josephine was not----" "But I saw. Who is this girl?--pretty?" Norman pretended to stifle a yawn. "Josephine bored me half to death talking about her. Now it's you. I never heard so much about so little." "Is there something up between you and the girl?" teased Ursula. "Now, that's an outrage!" cried Norman. "She's got nothing but her reputation, poor child. Do leave her that." "Is she very young?" "How should I know?" "Youth is a charm in itself." "What sort of rot is this!" exclaimed he. "Do you think I'd drop down to anything of that kind--in _any_ circumstances? A little working girl--and in my own office?" "Why do you heat so, Fred?" teased the sister. "Really, I don't wonder Josephine was torn up." An auto almost ran into them--one of those innumerable hairbreadth escapes that make the streets of New York as exciting as a battle--and as dangerous. For a few minutes Ursula's mind was deflected. But a fatality seemed to pursue the subject of the pale obscurity whose very name he was uncertain whether he remembered aright. Said Ursula, as they entered the house, "A girl working in the office with a man has a magnificent chance at him. It's lucky for the men that women don't know their business, but are amateurs and too stuck on themselves to set and bait their traps properly. Is that girl trying to get round you?" "What possesses everybody to-night!" cried Norman. "I tell you the girl's as uninteresting a specimen as you could find." "Then why are _you_ so interested in her?" teased the sister.