Daily she saw the name of his banking and brokerage firm advertised in the papers.

Once she met him in Merrill's store at noon, and he invited her to lunch; but she felt obliged to decline.

Always he looked at her with such straight, vigorous eyes.
To think that her beauty had done or was doing this! Her mind, quite beyond herself, ran forward to an hour when perhaps this eager, magnetic man would take charge of her in a way never dreamed of by Harold.

But she went on practising, shopping, calling, reading, brooding over Harold's inefficiency, and stopping oddly sometimes to think--the etherealized grip of Cowperwood upon her.

Those strong hands of his--how fine they were--and those large, soft-hard, incisive eyes.