It was the everlasting feminine: "_I need you!_" There was no "new woman" in it; no self-sufficiency; nothing but the old, dependent arrogance that has charmed and held the man by its flattering selfishness ever since the world began. He was opening the office door, but she laid a frankly anxious hand on his arm. "Promise me you won't go!" He would not commit himself. "It depends; if you get married, and shut up shop, you won't want a business adviser." "I sha'n't get married!" she said, and blushed to her temples. Mr. Weston saw the color, and his face, as he closed her door and stood waiting for the elevator, dulled a little. "She's head over ears in love with him. Well, he's a very decent chap; it's an excellent match for her,--Oh," he apologized to the elevator boy, on suddenly finding himself on the street floor; "I forgot to get off! You'll have to take me up again." In his own office he was distinctly curt. "I am very busy," he said, checking his stenographer's languid remark about a telephone call; "I am going to write letters. Don't let any one interrupt me"--and the door of his private office closed in her face. "What's the matter with _him_?" the young lady asked herself, idly; then took out her vanity glass and adjusted her marcel wave. Arthur Weston put his feet on his desk, and reflected. Why had he said what he did about going to Europe? When he went up to see Fred, nothing had been farther from his mind than leaving America. Well, he knew why he had said it.... Flight! Self-preservation! "Preposterous," he said, "what am I thinking of? I'm fond of her, and I'm confoundedly sorry for her, but that's all. Anyhow, Maitland settles the question. And if he wasn't in it--she's twenty-five and I'm forty-six." He got up and walked aimlessly about the room. "I've cut my wisdom teeth," he thought, with a dry laugh, and wondered where the lady was who had superintended that teething. For Kate's sake he had taken a broken heart to Europe. The remembrance of that heartbreak reassured him; the feeling he had about Fred wasn't in the least like his misery of that time. He gave a shrug of relief; it occurred to him that he would go and see some Chinese rugs which had been advertised in the morning paper; "might give her one for a wedding present?--oh, the devil! Haven't I anything else to think of than that girl?" He stood at the window for a long time, his hands in his pockets, looking at three pigeons strutting and balancing on a cornice of the Chamber of Commerce. "She interests me," he conceded; then he smiled,--"and she wants me to stay at home and 'take care of her'!" Well, there was nothing he would like better than to take care of Fred. The first thing he would do would be to shut up that ridiculous plaything of an "office" on the tenth floor. Billy Childs put it just right: "perfec' nonsense!" Then, having removed "F. Payton" from the index of the Sturtevant Building, they--he and Fred--would go off, to Europe.