David took her hand and kissed that, tenderly, hopelessly. Lois laughed. She thought he was teasing her. She fell in with his little game.
Work was already a tune David knew by heart. Fortunately, since his head was dull. The year approached its scintillant climax. And David’s head was dull and his heart was heavy.
One bitter cold day he stepped out for his lunch.
When he could he lunched alone. It was a problem of avoiding Duer Tibbetts whom he emphatically did not like, but who went on blandly liking David. It surprised David how little his own attitude and his inner mood affected his relations with that blossoming gentleman of affairs. It was almost as if, in the reality of their business and family connections, so slight a thing as personal taste must fade away, did not count. He had often lunched with other boys in the office—the sort who Duer said were not “their sort.” He liked them, until he began in this very approach to have discomfort in their friendship. Since the bursting of his wound with Lois he sought to be alone. He was equally surprised by the sensitive response of these others. They felt his aloofness in the office: they honored it. They were different indeed from Duer.
He walked toward the cluttered food-pen where the waitresses sweated visibly at the arm-pits. Here lunch cost him only twenty cents. The place was at least clean, and the food good. The eggs for instance, and the butter—details that meant much for David. He sat huddled at a long porcelain board. From whirling waitresses in white the dishes fell with clamorous approximation near his place. In the rear was an endless catatonic beat of crockery and voices. The whole place roared like the shatter of a mighty loom that wove the calls of women into the brittle shower of china, the glint of knives into the shuffle of feet. David sat and took his food and held his big arms tight to his body. The fresh air as he left gave him the cumulated picture.
This day he heard a clear voice at his side speak his name in the cold street.
He turned: there was Miss Lord.
Caroline Lord held a higher place in Deane and Company than any other woman. These were days before the spread of advertising agents. Miss Lord was in charge of the correspondence department. She had a little office of her own, and a male assistant and a stenographer. She was known as a remarkable woman.
“How do you do, Mr. Markand?” She had evidently overtaken David and now they were walking together.
He saw her casually in and out of the long packed room where David fumbled figures and papers. She was a remote business detail of this still strange world. One day, Tibbetts dragged him into her little office and introduced him. He remembered the way she sat on her desk and chatted cannily and bit at a pencil. The smile of her white teeth was beyond the reach of David’s comfort. He was glad to get away.