The Gorgeous Girl. Nalbro Bartley

comfort. The Gorgeous Girl was sharing him with Mary Faithful––would always share him. That was a comfort, too.

      After the errand boy left, Mary tried to write a letter but she found herself going into the washroom off Steve’s office and without warning weakly burying her face in an old working coat he had left behind. She had just made a great many dollars for him which he would spend on the Gorgeous Girl; she would make many more during the long summer while she stayed at the post and was Miss Head of Affairs. She had laid her woman’s hopes on the altar of commerce because of Steve O’Valley, and he rewarded her with a ten-dollar-a-week raise since a man was always generous on his wedding day.

      Yet there was a distinct satisfaction in the heartache and the responsibility, even in the irony of the ten-dollar-a-week advance. Life might be hard––but 59 it was not empty! She was glad to be in the deserted office replete with his belongings and breathing of his personality. She was glad to be an acknowledged Miss Head of Affairs.

      “You’d miss even a heartache if it was all you had,” she whispered to herself from within the folds of Steve’s office coat.