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He pleaded:

“B-but—Of course I’ll be glad to do that, but don’t you want—How about the human side? Don’t you want to meet real New Yorkers?”

“No. ”

“Houses where you could drop in for tea on Sunday?”

“No. ”

“Girls of your own age, and dances, and—”

“No. I’m a business woman, nothing else. Shan’t be anything else, I’m afraid. Not strong enough. I have to get to bed at ten. Spartan. It isn’t much fun but it—oh, it keeps me going. ”

“Very well. I shall do as you wish. I’ll telephone you by tomorrow noon. ”

He tried to make it sound politely disagreeable, but it is to be suspected that he was rather plaintive, for a glimmer of a smile touched her face as she said: “Thank you. If I could just find an opening. I don’t know many employers here. I was in a Boston office for several years. ”

This ending, so like a lecture on auditing and costs, concluded Bates’ quest for high romance.

He was horribly piqued and dignified, and he talked in an elevated manner of authors whom he felt he must have read, seeing that he had always intended to read them when he got time. Inside he felt rather sick. He informed himself that he had been a fool; that Emily—no, Miss Sarah Pardee!—was merely an enameled machine; and that he never wanted to see her again.

It was all of six minutes before he begged: “Did you like my waving good-night to you every evening?”

Dubiously: “Oh—yes. ”

“Did you make up foolish stories about me as I did about you?”

“No. I’ll tell you. ” She spoke with faint, measured emphasis. “I have learned that I can get through a not very appealing life only by being heartless and unimaginative—except about my work. I was wildly imaginative as a girl; read Keats, and Kipling of course, and pretended that every man with a fine straight back was Strickland Sahib. Most stenographers keep up making believe. Poor tired things, they want to marry and have children, and file numbers and vocabularies merely bewilder them. But I—well, I want to succeed. So—work. And keep clear-brained, and exact. Know facts. I never allow fancies to bother me in office hours. I can tell you precisely the number of feet and inches of sewer pipe at Floral Heights, and I do not let myself gurgle over the pigeons that come up and coo on my window sill. I don’t believe I shall ever be sentimental about anything again. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake. But—I’m not so sure. My father was full of the choicest sentiment, especially when he was drunk. Anyway, there I am. Not a woman, but a business woman. ”

“I’m sorry!”

He took her home. At her suggestion they walked up, through the late-winter clamminess. They passed a crying child on a doorstep beside a discouraged delicatessen. He noted that she looked at the child with an instant of mothering excitement, then hastened on.

“I’m not angry at her now. But even if I did want to see her again, I never would. She isn’t human,” he explained to himself.

At her door—door of a smug semiprivate rooming house on West Seventy-fourth Street—as he tried to think of a distinguished way of saying good-by he blurted: “Don’t get too interested in the young man with spectacles. Make him wait till you study the genus New Yorker a little more. Your Mr. Simmons is amiable but shallow. ”

“How did you know I knew Mr. Simmons?” she marveled. “How did you know his name?”

It was the first time she had been off her guard, and he was able to retreat with a most satisfactory “One notices! Good-night. You shall have your big job. ”