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 again," he commented. "They've a new unit, you know, just equipped."

Of course Mr. Rountree very well knew; it was the unit manufacturing for Metten.

Mr. Rountree resorted to personal talk about Lew's father, which opened the way for Lew to inquire: "How's the boy getting along? He certainly rises early. . . . His wife rejoined him?"

"She's cruising, with family friends, in the Caribbean," replied Mr. Rountree, and took up details of business between his company and Alban. Lew disposed of these quickly. He liked to be swifter than the man he dealt with. Over the shop-sheets, which Mr. Rountree lengthily studied, Lew looked at Ellen.

He was no man to possess power over others, but how much he held over Mr. Rountree and over Jay—and her! How much more than when, last, he had sat in the office eyeing her over shop-sheets! How much more she felt it.

Ellen did not flatter herself that she was more attractive, femininely, than other girls who were undoubtedly obtainable by Lew, but she knew the type of man that cares nothing for the cheaply obtained. It was the type that liked to destroy, and to destroy no easily bought stranger but one who had long defied and delayed him and upon whom he had often looked. It was this which, vaguely, she had realized and which had underlain her remark to Jay that Lew Alban would not be as simple for the Slengels as Sam Metten. Jello had delighted in Diana and had allowed her to compromise him, but Di would be a trifle to Lew.