At four-thirty she rose impatiently, moved to the outer office, changed her mind and came back again to her desk.
"It costs a nickel and takes two minutes to 'phone. If he's that kind of a person, I don't want him mixed up in the thing at all. He needn't have answered my note if he isn't interested."
Jean looked over the notes again, and when she laid them aside for the second time it was almost five.
"Well, I'll be darned. If——"
The outer door opened, a man's voice asked for Mrs. Herrick and Josephine Grimes appeared. He stood close behind her. Without waiting to hear whether he was to be received, he stepped into the room.
"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting, but I hope it hasn't been too inconvenient." The tone implied, however, that it would not trouble him very much if it had.
Jean wanted to say that it had been very inconvenient, but in view of the fact that he had arrived, she said she was glad he had not been detained altogether and sat down again at the desk. Gregory Allen took the chair opposite and stretched out his feet, as if he were used to making himself as comfortable as he could. He was a tall man, about forty, with thick, dry, brown hair, full of reddish lights, and red-brown eyes. His face and neck and hands were tanned as if he were a great deal in the open, and the hands were long, bony and nervous. They seemed to express something hidden deep in the rather slouchy figure, under the ready-made suit that looked rumpled, although Jean saw that it was really quite new. His shoes were not well shined and his tie did not strike the note of the tanned skin and reddish hair.
He made no further explanation of why he had been detained and sat silent, waiting for Jean to begin. Jean wished he would say something to give her a better clew to his mental makeup, but as he didn't she plunged in.
"I don't know, Mr. Allen, how much you know about conditions among the poor, or whether you are specially interested in them. I think you would rather have to be, to take any joy in this work at all, there are so many restrictions."
Jean spoke as if she were handling an obstinate committee member, and Gregory Allen smiled behind his eyes. But the smile did not come through. Accustomed to classifying people in terms of architecture, he decided that Jean was like a tower, an old Roman tower, rugged, firm on its base, built for a purpose and for the accomplishment of it. Whatever charm there might be would come from perfect accord between form and purpose. He nodded.