“I stepped in,” said a voice above his head.
Glancing up quickly, Sam sprang to his feet. “She must have been there some minutes looking down at me,” he thought, and had a thrill of pleasure in the thought.
Into his mind came the contents of the letter he had written her, and he wondered if after all he had been a fool, and whether the thoughts of a marriage with her were but vagaries. “Perhaps it would not be attractive to either her or myself when we came up to it,” he decided.
“I stepped in,” she began again. “I have been thinking. Some things you said--in the letter and when you talked of your friend Janet who died--some things of men and women and work. You may not remember them. I--I got interested. I--are you a socialist?”
“I believe not,” Sam answered, wondering what had given her that thought. “Are you?”
“Just what are you?” she went on. “What do you believe? I am curious to know. I thought your note--you will pardon me--I thought it a kind of pretence.”
Sam winced. A shadow of doubt of the sincerity of his business philosophy crossed his mind accompanied by the swaggering figure of Windy McPherson. He came around the desk and leaning against it looked at her. His secretary had gone out of the room and they were alone together. Sam laughed.
“There was a man in the town where I was raised used to say that I was a little mole working underground, intent upon worms,” he said, and then, waving his arms toward the papers on the desk, added, “I am a business man. Isn’t that enough? If you could go with me through some of these cost sheets you would agree they are needed.”
“What should I be doing with beliefs?” he asked.
“Well, I think you have them--some kind of beliefs,” she insisted, “you must have them. You get things done. You should hear the men talk of you. Sometimes at the house they are quite foolish about what a wonderful fellow you are and what you are doing here. They say that you drive on and on. What drives you? I want to know.”
For the moment Sam half suspected that she was secretly laughing at him. Finding her quite serious he started to reply and then stopped, regarding her.
The silence between them went on and on. A clock on the wall ticked loudly.
Sam stepped nearer to her and stood looking down into the face she slowly turned up to his.