"What has that to do with it?"
The boy was silent. To Clayton he looked furtive, guilty. His very
expression condemned him far more than the incident itself. And Clayton,
along with his anger, was puzzled as to his best course. Dunbar had
said to leave the girl where she was. But--was it feasible under these
circumstances? He was rather irritated than angry. He considered a
flirtation with one's stenographer rotten bad taste, at any time. The
business world, to his mind, was divided into two kinds of men, those
who did that sort of thing, and those who did not. It was a code, rather
than a creed, that the boy had violated.
Besides, he had bad a surprise. The girl who sat laughing into Graham's
face was not the Anna Klein he remembered, a shy, drab little thing,
badly dressed, rather sallow and unsmiling. Here was a young woman
undeniably attractive; slightly rouged, trim in her white blouse, and
with an air of piquancy that was added, had he known it, by the large
imitation pearl earrings she wore.
"Get your hat and go to lunch, Graham," he said. "And you might try to
remember that a slightly different standard of conduct is expected from
my son, here, than may be the standard of some of the other men."
"It doesn't mean anything, that sort of fooling."
"You and I may know that. The girl may not."
Then he went out, and Graham returned unhappily to the inner room.
Anna was not crying; she was too frightened to cry. She had sat without
moving, her hand still clutching her untouched sandwich. Graham looked
at her and tried to smile.
"I'm gone, I suppose?"
"Don't you worry about that," he said, with boyish bravado. "Don't you
worry about that, little girl."
"Father will kill me," she whispered. "He's queer these days, and if I
go home and have to tell him--" She shuddered.
"I'll see you get something else, if the worst comes, you know."
She glanced up at him with that look of dog-like fidelity that always
touched him.
"I'll find you something good," he promised.
"Something good," she repeated, with sudden bitterness. "And you'll get
another girl here, and flirt with her, and make her crazy about you,
and--"
"Honestly, do you like me like that?"
"I'm just mad about you," she said miserably.
Frightened though he was, her wretchedness appealed to him. The thought
that she cared for him, too, was a salve to his outraged pride. A
moment ago, in the other room, he had felt like a bad small boy. As
with Marion, Anna made him feel every inch a man. But she gave him what
Marion did not, the feeling of her complete surrender. Marion would
take; this girl would give.