Edna Ferber: Fanny Herself

17. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (continued)

Fanny had been sitting back in her chair, crouching almost, her eyes fixed upon the man's face, so terrible in its earnestness and indomitable strength. When he stopped talking now, and stood looking down at her, she rose, too, her eyes still on his face. She was twisting the fingers of one hand in the fingers of the other, in a frightened sort of way.

"I'm not really a business woman. I--wait a minute, please--I have a knack of knowing what people are thinking and wanting. But that isn't business." "It isn't, eh? It's the finest kind of business sense. It's the thing the bugs call psychology, and it's as necessary to-day as capital was yesterday. You can get along without the last. You can't without the first. One can be acquired. The other you've got to be born with."

"But I--you know, of late, it's only the human side of it that has appealed to me. I don't know why. I seem to have lost interest in the actual mechanics of it."

Fenger stood looking at her, his head lowered. A scarlet stripe, that she had never noticed before, seemed to stand out suddenly, like a welt, on his forehead. Then he came toward her. She raised her hand in a little futile gesture. She took an involuntary step backward, encountered the chair she had just left, and sank into it coweringly. She sat there, looking up at him, fascinated. His hand, on the wing of the great chair, was shaking. So, too, was his voice.

"Fanny, Katherine's not here."

Fanny still looked up at him, wordlessly.

"Katherine left here yesterday. She's in town." Then, at the look in her face, "She was here when I telephoned you yesterday. Late yesterday afternoon she had one of her fantastic notions. She insisted that she must go into town. It was too cold for her here. Too damp. Too--well, she went. And I let her go. And I didn't telephone you again. I wanted you to come."