"Call me Jim," he said.
"Jim," she repeated, softly, after him.
The day was crowded with appointments. She worked unceasingly until the nerves at the back of her head were strained and aching, and tired shadows appeared under her eyes. The languor of spring oppressed her.
To her surprise, Mr. Chase appeared at four o'clock. At the sight of him the point of her little scissors slipped into the unoffending cuticle of the hand she was grooming. She motioned him to a chair along the wall.
"In just a few minutes, Mr. Chase."
"Thank you," he replied, seating himself and watching her with interested, near-sighted eyes.
A nervousness sent the blood rushing to her head. The low drone of Ethyl's voice talking to a customer, the tick of the clock, the click and sough of the elevator were thrice magnified. She could feel the gush of color to her face.
The fat old gentleman whose fingers she had been administering placed a generous bonus on the table and ambled out. She turned her burning eyes upon Mr. Chase and spoke slowly to steady her voice. She was ashamed of her unaccountable nervousness and of the suffocating dryness in her throat.
"Ready for you, Mr. Chase."
He came toward her with a peculiar slowness of movement, a characteristic slowness which was one of the trivial things which burned his attractiveness into her consciousness. In the stuffiness of her own little room she had more than once closed her eyes and deliberately pictured him as he came toward her table, gentle yet eager, with a deference which was new as it was delightful to her.