"It's neither the one nor the other," said he with exasperating deliberateness.
She quivered. "Then what is it?" she cried. "You are driving me crazy with your evasions." Pleadingly, "You must admit they are evasions."
He buttoned his coat in tranquil preparation to depart. She instantly took alarm. "I don't mean that. It's my fault, not asking you straight out. Fred, tell me—won't you? But if you are too cross with me, then—don't tell me." She laughed nervously, hiding her submission beneath a seeming of mocking exaggeration of humility. "I'll be good. I'll behave."
A man who admired her as a figure, a man who liked her, a man who had no feeling for her beyond the general human feeling of wishing well pretty nearly everybody—in brief, any man but one who had loved her and had gotten over it would have deeply pitied and sympathized with her. Fred Norman said, his look and his tone coolly calm:
"I am backing Mr. Hallowell in a company for which he is doing chemical research work. We are hatching eggs, out of the shell, so to speak. Also we are aging and rejuvenating arthropods and the like. So far we have declared no dividends. But we have hopes."
She gave a hysterical sob of relief. "Then it's only business—not the girl at all!"
"Oh, yes, it's the girl, too," replied he. "She's an officer of the company. In fact, it was to make a place for her that I went into the enterprise originally." With an engaging air of frankness he inquired, "Anything more?"
She was gazing soberly, almost somberly, into the fire. "You'll not be offended if I ask you one question?"
"Certainly not."
"Is there anything between you and—her?"