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Updated: May 28, 2025
Each had assumed a fresh stand-point in the other's thought. The passing astonishment, the half-impersonal curiosity that had previously tinged their relationship, was cast aside, never to be reassumed. In each, the other saw himself and something more. As usual, Loder was the first to recover himself. "I was expecting you," he said. "Won't you come in?"
Chilcote hazarded the word uncertainly. There was a faint pause, then Loder laughed brusquely. "My pay?" The other was embarrassed. "I didn't want to put it quite like that." "But that was what you thought. Why are you never honest even with yourself?" Chilcote drew his chair closer to the table.
The immediate effect of the little scene at the breakfast table was unfortunately that of an increased intimacy between Toni Rose and Herrick's wife. Although Toni's exit from the battlefield had been quiet and even dignified, she found it hard to forgive Owen's plain-speaking on the subject of what he supposed to be her silly prejudice against Miss Loder.
On what might be called the literary side of him, he thought Millicent Loder an excellent secretary, the one woman with whom he found it possible to work; but on what might be called the personal side, his interest was nil. True, he liked her trim appearance, though he would never have dreamed of comparing it with Toni's more unconventional attraction.
In his own home he shook off the conventions of the office, became more human, more approachable; and no woman, least of all one as mentally alert, as open-eyed as Miss Loder, could have passed with him through those strenuous hours in which his book was born without gaining a pretty complete insight into his character. And with knowledge came a new and less comprehensible emotion.
"No, I don't think I ever saw you look so well." She was quite unconscious and very charming as she made the admission. It struck Loder that her coloring of hair and eyes gained by daylight were brightened and vivified by their setting of sombre river and sombre stone. Fraide smiled at her affectionately; then looked at Loder. "Chilcote has got anew lease of nerves, Eve," he said, quietly.
From the farther end of a well-lighted corridor a maid was coming straight in his direction. For one short second all things seemed to whiz about him; the certainty of detection overpowered his mind. The indisputable knowledge that he was John Loder and no other, despite all armor of effrontery and dress, so dominated him that all other considerations shrank before it.
"I did not help at all." "Miss Loder my secretary at the office came down to help me," said Owen easily. "She is used to the work, you see, and does it excellently." "I see." The kindly eyes had seen Ton's flush. "Well, no doubt Mrs. Rose is satisfied to inspire your work and let others do the manual labour. The power behind the throne, eh, Mrs. Rose?
All the same Toni mistrusted the other woman; and it was with a feeling of intensest apprehension that she received Owen's announcement that Barry had arranged for a substitute at the office thus setting Miss Loder free to resume her work at Greenriver.
Loder looked at her uncertainly. "Eve " he began afresh with his odd, characteristic perseverance, but she instantly checked him. There was a finality, a faint suggestion of fear, in her protest. "Don't!" she said. "Don't! I don't want explanations. I want to to enjoy the moment without having things analyzed or smoothed away. Can't you understand?
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