Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/356

 on the edge of his own bed, in the bleak morning, he stared straight at the fact that the girl he had enshrined was merely a bad copy of his image of her; that she had changed from poetry to prose and didn't scan any more. The magic cloak was gone. And if he were to give in to a deep yearning to tell all these things to Rhoda—then forever and forever the magic cloak which had seemed to shroud him in her eyes would be gone. And life just wasn't worth living if all the magic went.

Business, though it had crystallized Rhoda, had at any rate not robbed her of her femininity; in some ways she was more feminine than ever, as he was more masculine. It's merely the effect of being grown up, he guessed. In one emergency she broke her custom and discussed the affairs of the office with him. With the death of her father a reorganization of the firm was a foregone conclusion, and as his will had left a controlling interest in her hands, her judgment was being taxed to the utmost. There were rivalries, enmities, and traps. One man who knew secrets of great value was threatening to keep them to himself unless his unreasonable terms were granted. At that point Rhoda had bent under the strain of her responsibility and laid the situation before Grover. In a flash he brushed aside the technical complications and judged the case from the moral and psychological point of view.

"Give him a categorical offer," he advised, "and if