She could not be near Cowperwood for long at a time, however, without being stirred by a feeling which was not of her own willing.

He fascinated and suffused her with a dull fire.

She sometimes wondered whether a man so remarkable would ever be interested in a girl like her.
The end of this essential interest, of course, was the eventual assumption of Antoinette.

One might go through all the dissolving details of days in which she sat taking dictation, receiving instructions, going about her office duties in a state of apparently chill, practical, commercial single-mindedness; but it would be to no purpose.

As a matter of fact, without in any way affecting the preciseness and accuracy of her labor, her thoughts were always upon the man in the inner office--the strange master who was then seeing his men, and in between, so it seemed, a whole world of individuals, solemn and commercial, who came, presented their cards, talked at times almost interminably, and went away.