"Couldn't well avoid it. Here is train. Good-by; shall miss you terribly, but will be with you again to-morrow. Good-by." "Good-by. I am lonesome already," Nattie answered. As "C" made no reply, it was supposable he had gone, and probably had to run for the train, thought Nattie, as she took off her hat rather dejectedly. A broken companionship of any kind must ever leave a certain sense of loneliness, and this was none the less true now on account of the unique circumstances. Indeed, until to-day she had not fully realized how necessary "C" had become to her telegraphic life. Naturally, she had woven a sort of romance about him who was a friend "so near and yet so far." Perhaps too, a certain yearning for tenderness in her lonely heart, a feeling that every woman knows, found something, very pleasant in being always greeted with "Good morning, my dear," and hearing the last thing at night, "Good night, little girl at B m." Miss Kling undoubtedly would have been shocked at being thus addressed even on the wire, by a strange person--a person certainly, although unseen; but Nattie, used to the license that distance gave, whether wisely or unwisely, had never, thought it necessary to check the familiarity. Pondering over what he had hinted about leaving permanently, in the leisure usually devoted to chatting with him, but which that day she hardly knew how to fill, Nattie wondered if, should they ever come face to face, they would feel like the old friends they were, or if the nearness would bring a constraint now unknown? Yet she was fain to confess she would like to see him and ascertain the personal appearance of one who occupied so much of her thoughts. But how strange it would be, if, after all their friendly talks and gay confidences, he should pass out of the way that was both their ways now, and they never know anything more about each other than that one was "C" and one was "N!" something not impossible either, or even improbable; for fate is a sort of switch-board, and a slight move will switch two lives onto wires far asunder, even as the moving of a peg or two will alter everything on the board that shows its power so little. With such thoughts in her mind, Nattie was rather among the shadows that day, and presented no laughing face to the curious passers-by, much to that opposite clerk's relief, who came to the conclusion that she had once more recovered her senses. About an hour before the time for closing the office, as she was counting over her cash, and thinking how glad she was that "C" would be back to-morrow, she became conscious of some one waiting her attention outside, and went forward, scarcely looking at him, expecting, of course, a message. But instead, the individual, who filled the air with a suffocating odor of musk, asked, "You are the regular operator here, I suppose?"