"You see, it means a lot when a girl sticks in a man's mind that way," he continued. "Why, I've carried you around right through my Senior year at college and my first year out. So of course, it must mean something." The open windows of Eleanor's bower looked out upon a bay tree, a little thing awaiting its slaughter--for shade trees might not grow too near the windows in San Francisco. It was flopping its lance-leaves against the panes; puffs of the breeze brought in a suggestion of its pungency. That magic sense, so closely united with memory--it brought back a faint impression upon her. Her very panic at this ghost of old imaginations inspired the inquiry, barbed and shafted with secret malice: "How many really nice girls have you known in that time?" Bertram, sitting in considerable comfort on the window seat, flashed his eyes across his shoulder to her. "Oh, a few in my Senior year, not many this year. What's a man going to do on twelve a week?" She noticed the indelicacy of this, since he spoke in the house of his employer. But the next sentence from him was even more startling: "The last time I was in love was down in High School at Tulare. She's married a fellow in the salt business now. I guess she was pretty: anyway, her hair was the color of molasses candy. I wrote a poem to her the first day I saw her." "A poem?" asked Eleanor. "You do well to ask that," said Bertram, throwing on one of those literary phrases by which, in the midst of his plain, Anglo-Saxon speech, he was recalling that he was a university man. "It rhymed, after a fashion." "You don't know how to be in love until you're older," he went on. ("Even that bay scent brings up only wonder, not emotion; and I can laugh at him all the way," she thought. Yet in this tiny triumph Eleanor was not entirely happy. The vision, a little disturbing, a little shameful, but yet sweet, was quite gone.) "Tell me about this girl with the molasses hair. She interests me. And a lot about yourself." "Oh, I've forgotten most about her long ago. And I've something else to remember now, I hope. I'd like to talk about myself, though. I'd like some girl to hear about my ambitions. I really think it would do me good." He stopped, as though expecting an answer. None came. He bent his eyes closer on her and repeated: "It would!" And at that moment, a pair of high heels tapped in the doorway, a cheerful voice called for admission through the portieres, and enter Kate Waddington. Mr. Chester, Eleanor saw, rose to her entrance as one who has not always risen for women; there was something premeditated about the movement.