"I'm very much interested," said she.
"Yes, she was a curiosity," said he carelessly.
"Has she been there—long?" inquired Josephine, with a feigned indifference that did not deceive him.
"Several months, I believe. I never noticed her until a few days ago. And until to-day I had forgotten her. She's one of the kind it's difficult to remember."
He fell to glancing round the house, pretending to be unconscious of the furtive suspicion with which she was observing him. She said:
"She's your secretary now?"
"Merely a general office typewriter."
The curtain went up for the second act. Josephine fixed her attention on the stage—apparently undivided attention. But Norman felt rather than saw that she was still worrying about the "curiosity." He marveled at this outcropping of jealousy. It seemed ridiculous—it was ridiculous. He laughed to himself. If she could see the girl—the obscure, uninteresting cause of her agitation—how she would mock at herself! Then, too, there was the absurdity of thinking him capable of such a stoop. A woman of their own class—or a woman of its corresponding class, on the other side of the line—yes. No doubt she had heard things that made her uneasy, or, at least, ready to be uneasy. But this poorly dressed obscurity, with not a charm that could attract even a man of her own lowly class—It was such a good joke that he would have teased Josephine about it but for his knowledge of the world—a knowledge in whose primer it was taught that teasing is both bad taste and bad judgment. Also, it was beneath his dignity, it was offense to his vanity, to couple his name with the name of one so beneath him that even the matter of sex did not make the coupling less intolerable.
When the curtain fell several people came into the box, and he went to make a few calls round the parterre. He returned after the second act. They were again alone—the deaf old aunt did not count. At once Josephine began upon the same subject. With studied indifference—how amusing for a woman of her inexperience to try to fool a man of his experience!—she said:
"Tell me some more about that typewriter girl. Women who work always interest me."