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This is a love-story. But it is a love-story with a logical ending. Which means that in the last paragraph no one has any one else in his arms. Since logic and love have long been at loggerheads, the story may end badly. Still, what love passages there are shall be left intact. There shall be no trickery. There shall be no running breathless, flushed, eager-eyed, to the very gateway of Love’s garden, only to bump one’s nose against that baffling, impregnable, stone-wall phrase of “let us draw a veil, dear reader.” This is the story of the love of a man for a woman, a mother for her son, and a boy for a girl. And there shall be no veil.

Since 8 A.M., when she had unlocked her office door, Mrs. Emma McChesney had been working in bunches of six. Thus, from twelve to one she had dictated six letters, looked up memoranda, passed on samples of petticoat silk, fired the office-boy, wired Spalding out in Nebraska, and eaten her lunch. Emma McChesney was engaged in that nerve-racking process known as getting things out of the way. When Emma McChesney aimed to get things out of the way she did not use a shovel; she used a road-drag.

Now, at three-thirty, she shut the last desk-drawer with a bang, locked it, pushed back the desk-phone, discovered under it the inevitable mislaid memorandum, scanned it hastily, tossed the scrap of paper into the brimming waste-basket, and, yawning, raised her arms high above her head. The yawn ended, her arms relaxed, came down heavily, and landed her hands in her lap with a thud. It had been a whirlwind day. At that moment most of the lines in Emma McChesney’s face slanted downward.

But only for that moment. The next found her smiling. Up went the corners of her mouth! Out popped her dimples! The laugh-lines appeared at the corners of her eyes. She was still dimpling like an anticipatory child when she had got her wraps from the tiny closet, and was standing before the mirror, adjusting her hat.

The hat was one of those tiny, pert, head-hugging trifles that only a very pretty woman can wear. A merciless little hat, that gives no quarter to a blotched skin, a too large nose, colorless eyes. Emma McChesney stood before the mirror, the cruel little hat perched atop her hair, ready to give it the final and critical bash which should bring it down about her ears where it belonged. But even now, perched grotesquely atop her head as it was, you could see that she was going to get away with it.

It was at this critical moment that the office door opened, and there entered T. A. Buck, president of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat and Lingerie Company. He entered smiling, leisurely, serene-eyed, as one who anticipates something pleasurable. At sight of Emma McChesney standing, hatted before the mirror, the pleasurable look became less confident.

“Hello!” said T. A. Buck. “Whither?” and laid a sheaf of businesslike- looking papers on the top of Mrs. McChesney’s well cleared desk.

Mrs. McChesney, without turning, performed the cramming process successfully, so that her hat left only a sub-halo of fluffy bright hair peeping out from the brim.

Then, “Playing hooky,” she said. “Go ‘way.”

T. A. Buck picked up the sheaf of papers and stowed them into an inside coat-pocket. “As president of this large and growing concern,” he said, “I want to announce that I’m going along.”

Emma McChesney adjusted her furs. “As secretary of said firm I rise to state that you’re not invited.”

T. A. Buck, hands in pockets, stood surveying the bright-eyed woman before him. The pleasurable expression had returned to his face.

“If the secretary of the above-mentioned company has the cheek to play hooky at 3:30 P.M. in the middle of November, I fancy the president can demand to know where she’s going, and then go too.”

Mrs. McChesney unconcernedly fastened the clasp of her smart English glove.

“Didn’t you take two hours for lunch? Had mine off the top of my desk. Ham sandwich and a glass of milk. Dictated six letters between bites and swallows.”