But the fact that she had refused him carried with
it a certain elation. In refusing him she had
refused his thirty million dollars. That was
going some for a ninety dollar-a-month stenographer
who had known better ties. She wasn’t after
money, that was patent. Every woman he had encountered
had seemed willing to swallow him down for the sake
of his money. Why, he had doubled his fortune,
made fifteen millions, since the day she first came
to work for him, and behold, any willingness to marry
him she might have possessed had diminished as his
money had increased.
“Gosh!” he muttered. “If I
clean up a hundred million on this land deal she won’t
even be on speaking terms with me.”
But he could not smile the thing away. It remained
to baffle him, that enigmatic statement of hers that
she could more easily have married the Elam Harnish
fresh from the Klondike than the present Elam Harnish.
Well, he concluded, the thing to do was for him to
become more like that old-time Daylight who had come
down out of the North to try his luck at the bigger
game. But that was impossible. He could
not set back the flight of time. Wishing wouldn’t
do it, and there was no other way. He might as
well wish himself a boy again.
Another satisfaction he cuddled to himself from their
interview. He had heard of stenographers before,
who refused their employers, and who invariably quit
their positions immediately afterward. But Dede
had not even hinted at such a thing. No matter
how baffling she was, there was no nonsensical silliness
about her. She was level headed. But, also,
he had been level-headed and was partly responsible
for this. He hadn’t taken advantage of
her in the office. True, he had twice overstepped
the bounds, but he had not followed it up and made
a practice of it. She knew she could trust him.
But in spite of all this he was confident that most
young women would have been silly enough to resign
a position with a man they had turned down.
And besides, after he had put it to her in the right
light, she had not been silly over his sending her
brother to Germany.
“Gee!” he concluded, as the car drew up
before his hotel. “If I’d only known
it as I do now, I’d have popped the question
the first day she came to work. According to
her say-so, that would have been the proper moment.
She likes me more and more, and the more she likes
me the less she’d care to marry me! Now
what do you think of that? She sure must be
fooling.”
Once again, on a rainy Sunday, weeks afterward, Daylight
proposed to Dede. As on the first time, he restrained
himself until his hunger for her overwhelmed him and
swept him away in his red automobile to Berkeley.
He left the machine several blocks away and proceeded
to the house on foot. But Dede was out, the
landlady’s daughter told him, and added, on second
thought, that she was out walking in the hills.
Furthermore, the young lady directed him where Dede’s
walk was most likely to extend.
