She felt no embarrassment. His tone prevented; it was businesslike, and polite rather than friendly.
"I need some one badly—some one I shan't have to teach. You like the work. You need the experience. A few weeks of the sort of thing I'd put you at now would fit you for a place in a first-class laboratory." A little constrainedly—"I know why you hesitate. But I assure you, that's foolish. What I'm proposing will not interfere with—with our plans for freeing each other. It's purely business—and good business for you as well as for me."
She looked directly at him for the first time. "You're quite sure you'd not misunderstand?"
"Quite," he assured her.
She still hesitated. "I want to accept," she confessed, "for business reasons. But I've an instinct against it."
He smiled with good-humored mockery. "A vanity, you mean."
She colored guiltily, though she also was smiling. Her nervous fingers were pulling the ice from a branch of a bush.
He noted that Winchie, rolling up a huge snowball, had got safely out of hearing. "Just a vanity," he went on. "Well—pitch it overboard. I make you a business proposition. I need you. You need the experience. I hope you'll accept. I can well afford to pay you what I'll pay Carter. He's tied up until January—perhaps a little later. If you'll accept, I can accomplish a lot this winter. If not, I'll be nearly helpless."
Thus it naturally and easily and sensibly came about that, a few months later, at the very moment when Judge Vanosdol was signing the decree of divorce, Dick and Courtney were in the laboratory, their heads touching as they bent over a big retort, heedless of the strong fumes rising from its boiling and hissing contents. The heat subsided. The compound slowly cleared—a beautiful shade of green instead of the black they hoped for—and confidently expected. They looked dejectedly at each other; she felt like weeping for his chagrin.
"What the devil is the matter?" demanded he, glowering at her. "Sure you didn't make a mistake?"