For the first time, as Laura watched him, she remembered that he had been through it all before without her; and the thought entered her heart like a dagger, that even now there was another woman alive somewhere in the world who had been his wife—who had been almost as much loved, almost as close to him as she herself was to-day. The thought sickened her, and she felt again her blind terror of a step so irrevocable.
Gerty had gone at last; and Kemper, after walking twice up and down the room, stopped to examine a silver coffee service with an attention which was so evidently assumed that Laura was convinced he might as well have fixed his gaze upon the fireplace. His thoughts were busily occupied in quite an opposite direction from his eyes, for turning presently, he laid down the sugar bowl he had picked up, and went rapidly to the mantel piece, where he took down a photograph of Roger Adams.
"You don't see much of Adams now?" he remarked enquiringly.
"Not much," she went over to the mantel and glanced carelessly at the picture in his hand. "I never shall again."
"How's that? and why?"
"Oh, I don't know—one never sees much of one's friends after marriage, somehow. To supply the world to me," she added gayly, "is a part of the responsibility of your position."
Though his gaze was fixed intently upon her face, she saw clearly that he had hardly taken in her words, for while she spoke his hands wandered to the inside pocket of his coat, as if he wished to make sure of a letter he had placed there.
"By the way, Laura, a queer thing happened to-day," he said, frowning.
She looked up a little startled.
"A queer thing?"