stranger's lips parted in a flashing smile, and she extended her hand,

"I'm Maxene," she murmured, half in the elevator-boy's direction, "I've just taken a position with the Tax Department on the eighteenth floor . . . receptionist, you know."

Ordinarily quite stolid and mechanical in such encounters, Elsa now found herself unaccountably embarrassed. She met Maxene's gloved hand with a brief pressure of finger-tips, meanwhile quite unable to tear her gaze away from the magnificent hazel eyes which looked down into her own.

"Ten!" the operator's voice boomed, while Elsa stood speechless. Her flesh crawled. Strange new tensions began flashing through her being. They were almost at the fourteenth floor before Elsa recovered herself sufficiently to reply to Maxene's overture.

"Good morning. I'm. . . . I'm happy to meet you. My name's Elsa. I work in the Administration offices " She spoke abruptly in her usual monotone, stuttering slightly under her present confusion. The elevator door rattled open at fourteen. Elsa raised her hand in a timid gesture of parting, and with an effort looked away from her companion and down the long corridor towards her office. She felt Maxene's eyes silently following her as the elevator resumed its ascent,

For Elsa, the day passed in a nervous daze. Even her employers noticed her preoccupation, and asked solicitously if anything was wrong. "I'm feeling rather ill," Elsa had confessed hesitantly as half-painful, halfdelicious tremors shook her body. She did not at all connect her unprecedented physical disturbance with Maxene. On the contrary, vague premonitions about the menopause began to agitate her mind. I must see my doctor very soon, she thought. By five, however, she felt curiously vital and buoyant, and her nervousness had disappeared. She said goodnight to the staff with an effusiveness extraordinary for her, and walked the entire twenty blocks to her apartment. She had forgotten about the doctor.

The third floor of the State Building housed a pleasant cafeteria at which many of the employees spent their noon hour. Elsa had always brought her own lunch and eaten by herself, hunched at her desk in the empty office. But the day after her meeting with Maxene she did not bring her lunch, to everyone's consternation. This was not the only change to overtake Elsa. Now some color tinged her puffed, middle-aged face; a spring had come into her walk. Life sparkled faintly in her chinablue eyes, and a smile played at the corners of her drooping mouth. The others were astonished but said nothing, and Elsa ate at the cafeteria that noon, looking continually about her with bright searching glances. If anyone had asked Elsa what had come over her, or for what or whom she was looking, she could not have said because she did not know. She was only aware that her body tingled with unexplainable life, that she felt on the verge of a mild hysteria, that, after long years of seclusion, she suddenly felt it unbearable to be alone.

Elsa did not see Maxene that day or the next. But the third day during lunch Maxene made her appearance in the cafeteria. She entered minutes after most of the other diners were seated, and was therefore quite conspicuous as she moved lithely along the cafeteria line. Elsa's first sight of her had the effect of an electric shock. As formerly in the elevator, the same emotions now gripped her. She began to fidget uncontrollably, trying not to stare but incapable of looking away. Elsa was sitting at an otherwise empty table, and when at length Maxene began to walk straight in her direction, she was almost overcome. Maxene beamed as she arranged her dishes across from Elsa's seat, and as she took her chair Elsa's eyes ravished the stranger's face. It was an unusual face, somewhat angular of cheekbone, nose and jaw, with flawless skin and vivid makeup which would have appeared offensive on features less symmetrical, less dramatic. But Maxene had a flair for the spectacular and was the sort who could affect any extreme of dress with impunity. A more careful eye would have mistrusted a certain narrowness between the eyes, a pinch in the nostrils, and a hardness in the line of the full, sensuous lips.

one

28