“I am sorry,” said his assistant, flushing in a quite unaccustomed manner.  “I have been working more slowly than I realized.  I will finish it as rapidly as I can, sir.”

“Don’t apologize, Mr. Kendrick.  We all have our slow days.  I undoubtedly underestimated the amount of time the chapter would require.  Good afternoon to you.”

Richard sat down and plunged into the task he now saw he had merely played with during the morning.  By a tremendous effort he kept his eyes from lifting to the figure at the typewriter, whose steady clicking never ceased but for a moment at a time, putting him to shame.  Yet try as he would he could not apply himself with any real concentration; and the task called for concentration, all he could command.

“You are probably not used to working in the same room with a typewriter,” said his companion, quite unexpectedly, after a full half hour of silence.  She had stopped work to oil a bearing in her machine.  There was an odd note in her voice; it sounded to Richard as if she meant:  “You are not used to doing anything worth while.”

“I don’t mind it in the least,” he protested.

“I’m sorry not to take my work to another room,” Roberta went on, tipping up her machine and manipulating levers with skill as she applied the oil.  “But I shall soon be through.”

“Please don’t hurry.  I ought to be able to work under any conditions.  And I certainly enjoy having you at work in the same room,” he ventured to add.  It was odd how he found himself merely venturing to say to this girl things which he would have said without hesitation—­putting them much more strongly withal—­to any other girl he knew.

“One needs to be able to forget there’s anybody in the same room.”  There was a little curl of scorn about her lips.

“That might be easier to do under some conditions than others.”  He did not mean to be trampled upon.

But Roberta finished her oiling in silence and again applied herself to her typing with redoubled energy.

He went at his abstract, suddenly furious with himself.  He would show her that he could work as persistently as she.  He could not pretend to himself that she was not absorbed.  Only entire absorption could enable her to reel off those pages without more than an infrequent stop for the correction of an error.

Turning a page in the big volume of records of speeches in the State Legislature, which he was consulting, Richard came upon a sheet of paper on which was written something in verse.  His eye went to the bottom of the sheet to see there the source of the quotation—­Browning—­with reference to title and page.  No harm to read a quoted poem, certainly; his eyes sought it eagerly as a relief from the sonorous phrasing of the speech he was attempting to read.  He had never seen the words before; the first line—­and he must read to the end.  What a thing to find in a dusty volume of forgotten speeches of a date long past!