“And I’m afraid Bella wouldn’t pay much attention to anything that was contrary to her own desires, anyway. I don’t like the kind of influence Mr. Brand seems to be having over her. I understand it, because he used to make me feel that way myself—dissatisfied and selfish and wishful of all sorts of delightful things that I couldn’t have. Well, I went through it all right, without any bad results except my own ugly feelings; and she’s so dear and sweet and so happy-natured I guess she will, too, after a little.”
She reached the avenue where ran the trolley line that carried her to the ferry and saw that she had just missed a car.
“Oh, dear! Isn’t that provoking?” she muttered as she watched it rattling on its way. “And there isn’t another one in sight yet. I hope I won’t have to wait long, for I do want to get there early this morning, there’s so much to do today.”
Her thoughts sped on to her office and the duties that awaited her and hovered over the familiar figure of her employer at work at his desk.
“I don’t see,” she argued with herself, “how it can be true that he is living a bad life when he is working so hard.”
She remembered how eagerly upon his return he had plunged into the work awaiting him and with what absorption he had devoted himself to it ever since. Repeatedly during the last two or three weeks he had told her that never before had he worked so rapidly and so easily and with such satisfaction in the results.
With keen pleasure and interest she was watching his design for the capitol building take form beneath his fingers, thinking it more beautiful than anything he had done before. Once she had told him, laughingly, that she believed the fairies must come in the night and touch his pencil with magic, else it would not be possible for him to put upon paper so rapidly a thing so lovely.
Only yesterday he had shown her the finished cartoon for the front elevation and with a catch of her breath she had exclaimed, “Oh, Mr. Brand, it is exquisite! I don’t know why it is so beautiful, for it looks simple, but, somehow, it seems exactly right.”
And he had nodded and smiled in a pleased way and said:
“Yes, that’s just it—that’s what I wanted to do. It’s all in the proportions, and I think, for the first time in my life, I have got them just right.”