Manford drummed on his blotting-pad. "Look here, suppose we drop this for the present--"
She glanced at her wrist-watch. "If you can spare the time--"
"Spare the time?"
She answered softly: "I'm not going away till you've promised."
Manford could remember the day when that tone--so feminine under its firmness--would have had the power to shake him. Pauline, in her wifely dealings, so seldom invoked the prerogative of her grace, her competence, her persuasiveness, that when she did he had once found it hard to resist. But that day was past. Under his admiration for her brains, and his esteem for her character, he had felt, of late, a stealing boredom. She was too clever, too efficient, too uniformly sagacious and serene. Perhaps his own growing sense of power--professional and social--h
