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And she was impressed by the fact that he seemed to know as much about the machine as the salesman himself. In spite of protests, denials, appeals, he remained firm. "When you get rid of the defects I've mentioned come back, Mr. Hicks but don't come back until then." And Mr. Hicks departed, discomfited.... Ditmar knew what he wanted.
"Oh sure," said Lise, and added darkly: "I guess Ditmar likes to see you look well." After this Janet refused obstinately to speak to Lise, to answer, when they reached home, her pleadings and complaints to their mother that Janet had bought a new suit and refused to exhibit it.
Ditmar was like all other men who exploited her sex without compunction, but the thought that she was like Lise, asleep in a drunken stupor, that their cases differed only in degree, was insupportable.
In this strange mood she fell asleep nor did she waken when, at midnight, Lise stealthily crept in beside her. Ditmar stood staring after the trolley car that bore Janet away until it became a tiny speck of light in the distance.
Why should she feel her body hot with shame, her cheeks afire? At such moments she would turn to the typewriter, her fingers striking the keys with amazing rapidity, with extraordinary accuracy and force, force vaguely disturbing to Mr. Claude Ditmar as he entered the office one morning and involuntarily paused to watch her.
Ditmar," she begged. "You see he wanted to take me himself." "Not a word," Caldwell promised as they left the office together and went downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton Department. The showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather tiresome; but now his curiosity and interest were aroused, he was conscious of a keen stimulation when he glanced at Janet's face.
There were moments when she believed herself to hate Mr. Ditmar, when she treated him with an aloofness, an impersonality unsurpassed; moments when he paused in his dictation to stare at her in astonishment. He, who flattered himself that he understood women! She would show him! such was her dominating determination.
And Ditmar went away, wondering.... Thus she studied him, without permitting him to suspect it, learning his idiosyncrasies, his attitude toward all those with whom daily he came in contact, only to find herself approving. She was forced to admit that he was a judge of men, compelled to admire his adroitness in dealing with them.
Janet had escaped. "Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me. I was just going to ring you up," Ditmar informed him. "She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things," Orcutt observed. "And she's always on the job. Only yesterday I saw her going through the mill with young Caldwell." Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held. "Oh, she went through, did she?"
From such anecdotes she pieced together her new Ditmar. He spoke of a large world she had never seen, of New York and Washington and Chicago, where he intended to take her. In the future he would never travel alone. And he told her of his having been a delegate to the last National Republican Convention, explaining what a delegate was.
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