"He isn't getting on, unless you count as the on a distinct gain in the beauty of holiness. No," she interrupted him with a sudden gesture; "I don't mean the kind of holiness you preach, on Sunday; but the kind we both of us admire, on Monday morning."
"Is there a difference?" he queried, while his gray eyes searched her face.
She met his eyes unflinchingly.
"Isn't there? Preacher that you are, I defy you to deny it."
And then the maid opened the door before them, and they passed in.
Once in the hall, however, Olive changed her mind about going up to Reed's room.
"I think I'll wait, Mr. Brenton," she said suddenly. "Really, I have nothing much ahead of me, to-day. I can come in later, just as well; and you are a novelty, in these latter days. Go on alone, and talk man-talk to Reed. It will do him any amount more good than dozens of my visitations. Just don't tell him I was here, and then he won't have any qualms about holding on to you till the last possible minute. I'll come in again."
"But—"
"No but about it. I tell you he needs men. In fact, we all do, now and then, no matter how we try to veil the fact. If you want proof, ask any sane woman whether she would rather go out to luncheon or to dinner. Granted her sincerity isn't complicated with questionings about a frock, she will declare for dinner, every time. Go in, though. This is most irrelevant. Moreover, by way of living up to my own theory, I'm going to take the time when you are out of the way, to drop in on Mrs. Brenton. Good bye, and—be very good to Reed."
The door shut behind her, and Brenton went on up the stairs, wondering, at every step, what had been the meaning of her final phrase. Meaning it obviously had. Olive rarely talked at random to any of her acquaintances; never at all, it seemed to Brenton, in thinking backward over the way, from point to point, her mind apparently had been marching on beside his own. Did her intuitions never fail her, in the case of any man? Or was it that her clairvoyance focussed itself on him? Did she, indeed, actually comprehend her old friend, Opdyke, one half so clearly as she did himself? Priest though he was, the man in him had an instant of hoping not.