"You came like a spirit without my suspecting that you were near," he answered, smiling.
She laughed softly, giving him her full face as she looked up with her unfathomable eyes and tremulous red mouth. At the first glance he noticed a change in her—an awakening he would have called it—and for a minute he lost himself in a vague surmise as to the cause. Then all other consciousness was swept away by pure delight in the mere physical fact of her presence. For the instant, while they walked together through the same sunshine over the same pavement, she was as much his own as if they stood with each other upon a deserted star.
"It has been so long since I really saw you," she said, after a moment's pause, "I wondered, at first, if you were ill, but had that been so I was sure you would have written me."
Even her voice, he thought, had altered; it was fuller, deeper, more exquisitely vibrant, as if some wonderful experience had enriched it.
"Connie was ill, not I," he answered quietly. "I took her South for a fortnight, and since getting back I've hardly been able to go anywhere except to the office."
She glanced at him with a sympathy in which he detected a slight surprise—for so long as Connie had been well and happy he had rarely mentioned her name even to his closest friends.
"I hope, at least, that she is better by now," responded Laura with conventional courtesy.
"Oh, yes, very much better," he replied; "but tell me of yourself—I want to hear of you. Is there other verse?"
For a minute she looked away to the rapidly moving vehicles in the street; then turning quickly toward him, she spoke with one of the impulsive gestures he had always found so charming and so characteristic.
"There is no verse—there will never be any more," she said. "Shall I tell you a secret?"