Had there been anything about Palla––the faintest hint of inferiority of any sort––Elorn Sharrow could have dismissed the episode with proud, if troubled, philosophy. For many among her girl friends had cub brothers. And the girl had learned that men are men––sometimes even the nicest––although she could not understand it.
But this brown-eyed girl in black was evidently her own sort––Jim’s sort. And that preoccupied her; and she lent only an inattentive ear to the animated monologue of the man beside her.
Before the offices of Sharrow & Co. her car stopped.
“I’m sorry, Jim,” she said, “that I’m so busy this week. But we ought to meet at many places, unless you continue to play the recluse. Don’t you really go anywhere any more?”
“No. But I’m going,” he said bluntly.
“Please do. And call me up sometimes. Take a sporting chance whenever you’re free. We ought to get in an hour together now and then. You’re coming to my dance of course, are you not?”
“Of course I am.”
The girl smiled in her sweet, generous way and gave him her hand again.
And he went into the office feeling rather miserable and beginning to realise why.
For in spite of what he had said to Palla about the wisdom of absenting himself, the mere sight of her had instantly set him afire.