She had set her methodical mind in order; had told herself that she would have time to think and observe. Yet if a census had been taken of her thoughts, not sex nor economics, not improving observations of the flora and fauna of western Massachusetts, would have been found, but a half-glad, half-hysterical acknowledgment that she had not known how tired and office-soaked she was till now, when she had relaxed, and a dull, recurrent wonder if two weeks would be enough to get the office poison out of her body. Now that she gave up to it, she was so nearly sick that she couldn't see the magic of the sheer green hillsides and unexpected ponds, the elm-shrined winding road, towns demure and white. She did not notice the huge, inn-like farm-house, nor her bare room, nor the noisy dining-room. She sat on the porch, exhausted, telling herself that she was enjoying the hill's slope down to a pond that was yet bright as a silver shield, though its woody shores had blurred into soft darkness, the enchantment of frog choruses, the cooing pigeons in the barn-yard. "Listen. A cow mooing. Thank the Lord I'm away from New York--clean forgotten it--might be a million miles away!" she assured herself. Yet all the while she continued to picture the office--Bessie's desk, Mr. Wilkins's inkwell, the sinister gray scrub-rag in the wash-room, and she knew that she needed some one to lure her mind from the office. She was conscious that some man had left the chattering rocking-chair group at the other end of the long porch and had taken the chair beside her. "Miss Golden!" a thick voice hesitated. "Yes." "Say, I thought it was you. Well, well, the world's pretty small, after all. Say, I bet you don't remember me." In the porch light Una beheld a heavy-shouldered, typical American business man, in derby hat and clipped mustache, his jowls shining with a recent shave; an alert, solid man of about forty-five. She remembered him as a man she had been glad to meet; she felt guiltily that she ought to know him--perhaps he was a Wilkins client, and she was making future difficulty in the office. But place him she could not. "Oh yes, yes, of course, though I can't just remember your name. I always can remember faces, but I never can remember names," she achieved. "Sure, I know how it is. I've often said, I never forget a face, but I never can remember names. Well, sir, you remember Sanford Hunt that went to the commercial college--" "Oh, _now_ I know--you're Mr. Schwirtz of the Lowry Paint Company, who had lunch with us and told me about the paint company--Mr. Julius Schwirtz."