“I shan’t——” she began, in a final effort to mutiny.
“Miss Lee,” he said, gravely, gently, and she was touched and perplexed by the gentleness of his voice, “you have spoken to me of service, of forgetting oneself to be of service to others.... Please forget yourself now. You are not doing this for me or for yourself.... It is necessary.... I beg of you to make haste.”
There could be no refusal. She passed through the gate and found herself walking with rapid, almost unladylike strides, to the hotel. Up the stairs she rushed and into her room. In five minutes she was redressed in a gray tailored suit. Then she set about packing her bag, and, singularly enough, the first thing she put into it was an evening gown, the gown which she had worn but once, and that to the final ball at the time of her graduation. Why she included this dress she could not have said, unless feminine vanity were at work—a hope that an opportunity to wear it might present itself.
In fifteen minutes she re-entered the Free Press office. A touring car stood at the door, with a young man, strange to her, behind the wheel.
“I’m ready,” she said to Evan Pell.
“Thank you,” he said, quietly. Then: “Don’t let anything prevent you from coming to the Governor. You will know what to say. See him before Abner Fownes gets his ear ... and ... and come back safely.” His voice dropped, became very low and yearning, as he spoke these final words. “Come back safely—and—try not to think of me as—harshly as you have done.”
“I—have never thought of you harshly,” she said, affected by his manner.
He smiled. “I am very glad I have loved you,” he said. “Will you please remember I said that, and that it came from my heart.... It is the one fine thing which has come into my life.... It might have changed me—made me more as you would—less the man you have criticized.”
“Why, Mr. Pell!... You speak as if I were never to see you again. I shan’t be gone more than a day.”
He smiled, and there came a day not far distant when she remembered that smile, when it haunted her, accused her—and gave her a strange happiness.