Part 36 (2/2)

”Don't let me interrupt you,” whispered Helen to Mary. ”I'll run in and see Burdon for a few minutes--”

Absent-mindedly Mary began to look at the papers which the accountant placed before her--her thoughts elsewhere--but gradually her interest centred upon the matter in hand.

”What?” she exclaimed. ”A shortage as big as that last year? Never!”

The accountant looked at her with the same quizzical air as an astronomer might a.s.sume in looking at a child who had just said, ”What? The sun ninety million miles away from the earth? Never!”

”Either that,” he said, ”or a good many bearings were made in the factory last year--and lost in the river--”

”Oh, there's some mistake,” said Mary earnestly. ”Perhaps the factory didn't make as many bearings as you think.”

Again he gave her his astronomical smile, as though she were saying now, ”Perhaps the moon isn't as round as you think it is; it doesn't always look round to me.”

”I thought it best to show you this, confidentially,” he said, gathering the papers together, ”because we have lately become conscious of a feeling of opposition--in trying to trace the source of this discrepancy.

It seems to us,” he suggested, speaking always in his impersonal manner, ”that this is a point which needs clearing up--for the benefit of every one concerned.”

”Yes,” said Mary after a pause ”Of course you must do that. It isn't right to raise suspicions and then not clear them up.... Besides,” she added, ”I know that you'll find it's just a mistake somewhere--”

After he had gone, Helen looked in, Burdon standing behind her, holding his cane horizontally, one hand near the handle, the other near the ferrule. In the half gloom of the hall he looked more das.h.i.+ng--more reckless--than Mary had ever visioned him. His cane might have been a sword ... his hat three-cornered with a sable feather in it....

”I just looked in to say good-bye,” said Helen. ”I'm going to take Burdon home.”

”I need somebody to mind me,” said Burdon, flas.h.i.+ng Mary one of his violent smiles; and turning to go he said to Helen over his shoulder, ”Come, child. We're late.”

”He calls her 'child'...” thought Mary.

That night Wally was a visitor at the house on the hill--and when Mary saw how subdued he was--how chastened he looked--her heart went out to him.

”It seems so good to be here, calling again like this,” he said. ”Does it remind you of old times, the same as it does me?”

But Mary wouldn't follow him there. As they talked it occurred to her more than once that while Wally appeared to be listening to her, his thoughts were elsewhere--his ears attuned for other sounds.

”What are you listening for!” she asked him once.

He answered her with a puzzle.

”For the Lorelei's song,” he said, and going to the piano he sang it, his clear, plaintive tenor still retaining its power to make her nose smart and the dumb chills to run up and down her back. She was sitting near the piano and when he was through, he turned around on the bench.

”Have you ever been the least bit sorry,” he asked, ”that you turned me down--for a business career?”

”I didn't turn you down,” she said. ”We couldn't agree on certain things: that's all.”

”On what, for instance?”

”That love is the one great thing in life, for instance. You always said it was--especially to a girl. And I always said there were other things in a woman's life, too--that love shouldn't monopolize her any more than it does a man.”

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