"I'll bet that girl has been tempted to steal. But she didn't,
because she was afraid." With this satisfactory conclusion of
her wonderment, the secretary hurried on her way, quite content.
It never occurred to her that the girl might have been tempted to
steal--and had not resisted the temptation.
It was on account of this brief conversation with the salesgirl
that Sarah was thinking intently of Mary Turner, after her return
to the office, from which Gilder himself happened to be absent
for the moment. As the secretary glanced up at the opening of
the door, she did not at first recognize the figure outlined
there. She remembered Mary Turner as a tall, slender girl, who
showed an underlying vitality in every movement, a girl with a
face of regular features, in which was a complexion of blended
milk and roses, with a radiant joy of life shining through all
her arduous and vulgar conditions. Instead of this, now, she saw
a frail form that stood swaying in the opening of the doorway,
that bent in a sinister fashion which told of bodily impotence,
while the face was quite bloodless.
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