"Your duty, Mr. Hathaway," he concluded, "at present
will be merely nominal and, above all, confidential. Colonel
Pendleton and myself will set the thing going." As the youth--who
had apparently taken in and "illuminated" the whole subject with a
single bright-eyed glance--bowed and was about to retire, as if to
relieve himself of his real feelings behind the door, the woman
stopped him with a gesture.
"Let's have this thing over now," she said to the Mayor. "You draw
up something that we can all sign at once." She fixed her eyes on
Paul, partly to satisfy her curiosity and justify her predilection
for him, and partly to detect him in any overt act of boyishness.
But the youth simply returned her glance with a cheerful, easy
prescience, as if her past lay clearly open before him. For some
minutes there was only the rapid scratching of the Mayor's pen over
the paper. Suddenly he stopped and looked up.
"What's her name?"
"She mustn't have mine, said the woman quickly. "That's a part of
my idea. I give that up with the rest. She must take a new name
that gives no hint of me. Think of one, can't you, you two men?
Something that would kind of show that she was the daughter of the
city, you know.
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