At one o'clock, when Adams left his office to go home to luncheon—a custom which he had not allowed himself to neglect since Connie's illness—he found Mr. Wilberforce just about to enter the building from the front on Union Square.
"Ah, I've caught you as I meant to," exclaimed the older man, with the cordial enthusiasm which Adams had always found so delightful. "It's been so long a time since I had a talk with you that I hope you'll come out somewhere to lunch?"
"I only wish I could manage it," replied Adams, "but I must look in for a minute on Mrs. Adams—she's been ill, you know."
He saw the surprise reflected in his companion's face as he had seen it a little earlier in Laura's; and at the same instant he felt a sensation of annoyance because of his inability to act upon his impulse of hospitality. He would have liked to take Mr. Wilberforce home with him; but remembering the probable quality of the luncheon which awaited him, he repressed the inclination.
"Is that so? I'm sorry to hear it," remarked the other in the conventional tone in which Adams' friends always spoke of Connie. "Well, I'll walk a block or two with you in your direction," he added as they turned toward Broadway. "Laura told me, by the way, that she was so fortunate as to have a glimpse of you this morning."
Adams nodded and then looked quickly away from the other's searching eyes. "Yes, we met rather early in the street," he responded; "she seems to me to be looking very well, and yet she's altered, somehow—I can't say exactly how or where."
"Then you've noticed it," returned Mr. Wilberforce, with a sigh, and he asked almost immediately: "Does she appear to you to be happier than she was?"
"Happier? Well, perhaps, but I hardly analysed the impression she produced. There was a change in her, that was all I saw."
"Did she speak to you, I wonder, of her book?"
Adams laughed softly. "She spoke of it to say that she was tired of it," he answered, "but that is only the inevitable reaction of youth—it's a part of the universal rhythm of thought, nothing more."