The morning was bright and clear, and as she walked through the early sunshine in the street, she remembered the day, so long ago now, when she had met Adams going to his office at this hour, and she recalled, with a smile, that she had pitied him then because of the worn places on his overcoat. She no longer pitied him now—Gerty, herself, Perry Bridewell, even Kemper, she felt, might be deserving of compassion, but not Adams. Yes, she, herself, in spite of her boasted strength had come at last to feel the need of being loved for the very weakness she had once despised. But she knew that, though Adams might understand and forgive this weakness, in Kemper it would provoke only the scorn which she had begun to fear and dread. Yet her intellect rather than her heart told her that Adams was a stronger man than Kemper and that his wider sympathies proved only that he was, also, the larger of the two. Was the difference between them merely one of goodness, after all, her intellect, not her heart, demanded, and was it true that the perfect love could not enter except where this goodness had been to blaze the way before it in the soul?
As she walked through the streets fanciful comparisons between the two men thronged in her brain, but when presently she reached Adams' office, and stood beside his desk, with her hand in his hearty grasp, she realised all at once that the visit was useless, and that there was nothing she could say to him which would not sound hysterical and absurd.
"So, thank heaven, there's something I can do for you!" he exclaimed, with his cordial smile. "Wait till I get into my overcoat and then we'll see about it."
"No—no," she protested in a terror, which she could not explain even to herself, "don't come out with me—there's nothing you can do. I came because I couldn't help myself," she added, smiling; "and I'll go for no better reason, in a little while."
"Well, I'm ready whenever you say so. If it's to overturn Brooklyn Bridge, I'll set about it for the asking."
"It isn't anything so serious—there's nothing really I want done," she answered gayly, though the pain in her eyes stabbed him to the heart, "all I wanted was to make sure of you—to make sure, I mean, that you are really here."
"Oh, I'm here all right!" he replied, with energy. She looked at him steadily for a moment with her excited eyes which had grown darkly brilliant.
"Do you know what I sometimes think?" she said, breaking into a pathetic little laugh, "it is that I remind myself of one of those angels who, after falling out of heaven, could neither get back again nor reconcile themselves to the things of earth."
Her hand lay on his desk, and while she spoke he bent forward and touched it an instant with his own. Light as the gesture was, it possessed a peculiar power of sympathy; and she was conscious as he looked at her that there was no further need for her to speak, because he understood, not only all that she had meant to put into words, but everything that was hidden in her heart as well.
"I can't preach to you, Laura," he said, "but—but—oh, I can't express even what is in my mind," he added. "I wish I could!"