"I never think," he laughed with his eyes upon hers, "I live."
The animation, which was like the glow from an inner illumination, shone in her face, and he thought, as Trent had thought before him, that her soul must burn like a golden flame within her—a flame that reached toward life, knowledge and the veiled wonders of experience.
"And so would I if I were a man," she said.
She rose, clasping the furs at her throat, then folding Gerty in her arms she kissed her cheek.
"I stopped for a moment to look at you, nothing more," she confessed. "It was a choice between looking at you and at the Rembrandt in the Metropolitan, and I chose you." As she held Gerty from her for an instant and then drew her into her embrace again, Kemper saw that her delight in her friend's beauty was almost a rapture, that her friendship possessed something of a religious fervour.
"Do stay with me," pleaded Gerty; "I want you—I need you."
"But you dine out."
"Oh, I forgot. Wait, I'll break it. I'll be ill."
Laura smiled her refusal and, stooping, picked up her large, fluffy muff.
"I'll come to-morrow," she returned, "and it won't cost us a lie. Good bye, my bonnie, what do you wear?"