Now that he was nothing but fellow worker to her, she could look at him with the friendly impartiality of human being for fellow being. Piecing together what she knew of his masculine side and what she could how see latent in those strong features, those intense nervous energies, she felt that somewhere there might be a woman equal to concentrating upon herself what went altogether into the duel for nature's secrets. "And unless she were a great woman, he would burn her up like a match tossed into a furnace."
This latent capacity of his for love fascinated her. There were even moments when it tempted her—was like a challenge taunting her womanhood as confessedly ineffectual. But at the laboratory she was too busy to linger over such thoughts; and in her other hours, there was household routine to compel her attention—and the plans for the great attempt.
At last Carter wrote that he would positively come in two weeks. "You've been splendidly patient with me," Dick said as he showed her the latter. "I've seen that you were eager to be gone." As she murmured a polite denial, he repeated, "Yes, eager—but not in the way to make me uncomfortable over my selfishness."
"I've rarely thought of it while I was down here," said she. "It was only in the evenings—and when I happened not to sleep very well."
"It was natural you should be upset," sympathized Dick. "Who wouldn't be, standing on the edge of the icy plunge so long? But you'll like it—and everything'll come out all right. I've discovered that you have a lot of common sense—and that's more than I can say for most men—including myself."
Another month, at the farthest, and she would be in New York, would have made the great beginning! ... Should she send Basil word as soon as she arrived? Should she wait until she got her bearings? She saw it would be wiser to wait. Everything depended on beginnings—right beginnings—and it would be the right beginning for Basil to find her as obviously master of her own destiny, as free to withhold or to give, as was he himself. Also— Coming from a small town in the West, she could not but feel strange in New York, and look provincial. "Yes, I'll wait," she decided, the instant this last reason dropped into the balance. For, she had not the vanity that underestimates the matter of looks and neglects the fact that everyone is at a distinct disadvantage in a strange environment.
One morning, about a week later, there came a ring at the telephone which was in Dick's part of the laboratory. As these calls were always for her, she rose from her case in the back room and went to answer. It was Mazie—"The hotel over to Fenton wants to speak to you, ma'am."
"Connect them, please," said Courtney, hoping her voice had betrayed and would betray nothing to the man behind her.
Soon came an operator's voice, and then Basil's. "I must see you!"
"Yes," she said. "I'll come."