§ 3
Love swept them tumultuously onward. There was no time to pause, to consider, no time to calculate, none to take stock of one’s self. In a week Jeannette Sturgis and Roy Beardsley were friends, in ten days they were lovers. Every morning he met her on the Avenue and walked with her to within a block of the office, and in the evening he joined her for the tramp homeward. He begged her again and again to lunch with him but to this she would not agree. They knew they loved each other now, but dared not speak of it. He was diffident, eager to ingratiate himself with her, fearful of her displeasure; and she,—while she confessed her love to herself,—passionately resolved he should never guess it nor persuade her to acknowledge it. She had an unreasonable primitive dread of what might follow if Roy should speak. Their love was all too sweet as it was. She did not want to risk spoiling it, and trembled at the thought of its avowal.
Yet in her heart she knew what must inevitably happen. Their attraction for one another was stronger than either; it was rushing them both headlong down the swift current of its precipitous course.
On the very day the words were trembling on her lover’s lips came the staggering announcement that on the fifteenth day of May the activities of the Soulé Publishing Company in selling the Universal History of the World would cease, and the services of all employees would terminate on that date.
The girls told Jeannette the news the moment she arrived at the office, and she found it confirmed on a slip of paper in an envelope on her typewriting table.
“All? Every one?” she asked blankly. She had confidently expected that she would be kept on,—for a month at least.
“Well, that’s what they say; Mr. Beardsley, Miss Gibson,—everybody.”
“Oh,” murmured Jeannette, betraying her disappointment.
“Did you think they’d keep you on the pay-roll after the rest of us were fired?” asked Miss Flannigan airily.
Jeannette perceptibly straightened herself and levelled a cool glance at the girl.