"Silence!" shouted Gregory, quivering from head to foot. The word was like an imprecation, and for a time it kept hissing between his locked teeth.
"And of course," Fran continued, tilting up her chin as if to drive in the words, "since you know all of his secrets—all of them—you have naturally been told the most important one. And so you know that when he was boarding with his cousin in Springfield and attending the college there, something like twenty years ago—"
"Leave us!" Gregory cried, waving a violent arm at his secretary, as if to sweep her beyond the possibility of overhearing another word.
"Leave you—with her?" Grace stammered, too amazed by his attitude to feel offended.
"Yes, yes, yes! Go at once!" He seemed the victim of some mysterious terror.
Grace compressed her full lips till they were thinned to a white line.
"Do you mean for ever?"
"Oh, Grace—I beg your pardon—Miss Grace—I don't mean that, of course. What could I do without you? Nothing, nothing, Grace—you are the soul of my work. Don't look at me so cruelly."
"Then you just mean," Grace said steadily, "for me to go away for a little while?"
"Only half an hour; that's all. Only half an hour, and then come back to me, and I will explain."
"You needn't go at all, on my account," observed Fran, with a twist of her mouth. "It's nothing to me whether you go or stay."