"The carriage is waiting now," she said, "we can take it and let Perry go to his dinner in a cab."
"But—good Lord, Gerty—what am I to say to them?" demanded Perry while he shook hands with Adams. "I never could make up an excuse in my life, you know."
Then his eyes blinked rapidly and he fell back with merely a muttered protest, for Gerty shone, at the instant, with a beauty which neither he nor Adams had ever seen in her before. The wonderful child quality softened her look, and they watched her soul bloom in her face like a closed flower that expands in sunlight.
"I don't know, my dear," she responded gently, and with her hand on Adams's arm, she ran down the steps and into the carriage before the door. As they drove away, she looked up at him with a tender little smile.
"I am so glad that she has you," she said.
"In having you, she has a great deal more."
"It is you who have done it all—you expected me to have courage, so I have it. Had you expected me to be cowardly, I should have been so."
"Well, I expect you to save her," he answered quietly.
"Does she need it? What was it? What does it mean?"
"You'll know to-night, perhaps. I shall never know, but what does it matter?"