Paul shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that maddened her. "All right; I won't, then. Go and find some one else for a companion, and don't be a young silly. Can't Ted get off for to-day?"
"You have never said so many horrid things to me before," cried Katharine passionately.
"You have never been so difficult to please before," observed Paul coolly. "Besides, I was under the impression that I was making rather a good suggestion."
"You always drag up Ted when you are being particularly unkind! If I had wanted to go out with Ted, I shouldn't have come to you first."
Paul began to fear a scene; and he had more than a man's horror of scenes. But he could not help seeing the tears in her eyes as she walked away to the door, and he caught her up just as she was opening it.
"Aren't you going to say good-bye? It may be some time before I see you again." He determined, as he spoke, that it should certainly be a very long time before he saw her again. But she disarmed him by turning round swiftly without a trace of her anger left.
"Oh, why must it be some time? You don't mean it, do you? Say you don't mean it, Mr. Wilton," she implored.
"No, no; I was only joking," he said reassuringly. "Quite soon, of course." And he dropped a kiss on the little pink ear that was nearest to him. But when he saw the look on her face, and the quick way in which her breath was coming and going, he blamed himself for his indiscretion, and pushed her playfully outside the door.
When Phyllis Hyam came home from the office, that evening, she found Katharine on the floor of her cubicle, mending stockings; while the rest of her wardrobe occupied all the available space to be seen. Katharine never did things by halves, and she very rarely had the impulse to mend her clothes.
"Hullo! do you mean to say you are back already?" cried Phyllis, tripping clumsily over the dresses on the floor.