The next moment Jean was pounding out her interview on the machine. It was done in a space of time unsurpassed even by the concentration of Mr. Thompson. Jean sent a messenger with it to the office and began cleaning the studio. By half past two the place was so clean that Jean could not find another thing to do, not even rearrange for the fourth time a vase of roses. She took a book to the window seat and sat down.
"Now you compose your mind and act like a rational human. She won't get here any sooner if you flutter about like a demented hen. 'Flutter like a demented hen'—it must be the effect of Pat's coming!"
By sheer will Jean succeeded in sitting still, but no effort could keep her attention on the print. Her thoughts got away from her and ran back down the months, fetching up in days she and Pat had spent together; in graduation day, that seemed so many years behind her; and courses they had taken together, that for some reason seemed closer now, than when she had taken them.
In the glow of Pat's coming, forgotten things became recent and clear, while recent things seemed unreal and far away. In this inversion, the past winter, with the strained atmosphere between herself and Herrick, blurred into a memory of some very disagreeable period she had lived through long ago. Perhaps that unobtrusive, ever present third presence that had moved so silently between them through the long weeks of rain, and against whom she was ever on her guard, was not so real as she had fancied. She had accepted the thing she did not want to believe and believed it for fear of being a coward in not facing it.
"I'm an idiot, and a conceited one at——"
"Haven't a doubt about it, old girl. Didn't I always say so?"
Jean tumbled from the window seat and Pat's arms closed about her.
"Oh Pat—Pat."
They stood so for a moment. Then they separated, Pat wiped her eyes and they grinned foolishly at each other.
"I knew I'd be glad. But I didn't know I'd be like this. I guess I've been suppressing all the way down in the train, in case you'd changed a lot, and you haven't changed a bit, not a single bit."