Without a word she descended the stairs side by side with Stella. When she reached the front door she held out her hand to Stella and smiled.
"I hope I shall meet you again some day," she said, with gracious sincerity. "I enjoyed our little talk together very much."
She said nothing whatever about Marian.
CHAPTER V
It was a very hot morning in July, a morning when work begins slowly, continues irritably, and is likely to incite human paroxysms of forgetfulness and temper. It took the form with Mr. Leslie Travers of his being more definite than usual. He was an extremely intelligent man, and most of his intelligence consisted in knowing where other people were wrong. The heat lent an almost unbearable edge to these inspirations; the office boy, the mayor's secretary, and two typists withdrew from his sanctum as if they had been in direct contact with a razor.
Stella wished, as she had often wished before, that the inner office in which she worked could not be invaded by the manner in which Mr. Travers conducted his interviews. She respected him as her chief, she even considered him with a kind of loyal awe augmented by her daily duty. She pleased him, she catered for him, she never in any circumstances let him down or confused him by a miscalculation or a mistake.
It is impossible to do this for any man for two years and, if he has treated you with fairness and respect, not at the end of that time, to regard him with a certain proprietary affection. This was how Stella regarded Mr. Travers. He was a clever man, and he never expected any one under him to work miracles or to give him trouble. He knew what you were worth, and sometimes he let you see it.
He was handsome in a thin, set, rather dry way, and when he put his finger-tips together and smiled a little ironic smile he had, and leaned forward with his shoulders hunched and his eyes unusually bright, as if they'd been polished like a boot-button, he had an air of intellectual strength which usually brought terror to an opponent. He always knew when his adversary was in the wrong. It sometimes seemed to Stella as if he never knew anything else.
He had reduced life to a kind of game in which you caught the other fellow out. She got very tired of hearing him say, "You see, Miss Waring, the weak point of this case is—" or, "I think we may just point out to him that he renders himself liable to—"