She was standing, her hand on the knob of the door, as if seeking support, or rather as though ready for flight. Her eyes were especially large and luminous now, as always they were when any supreme emotion governed her. Her cheeks were flushed in that fashion which she never yet had learned to control. Her smooth brown hair was held tightly back under her cool summer hat, and the hands resting on her smooth-topped cane were well gloved. Not ill-looking she was as she stood, stooped a trifle, bent over a bit.
She was half a-tremble now with the excitement that she felt. To any chance observer, even at this hour of this Sabbath day, it must have seemed that here was only a client come with purpose of consultation with an attorney. To the angels above who looked down on such matters as this, it must have seemed a pathetic scene, this in which Miss Julia figured now. To any human being knowing all the facts it must have been apparent that this call upon Judge Henderson was Miss Julia Delafield's great adventure.
It was her great adventure—the greatest ever known in all her life; and she had dared it now only because of two of the strongest emotions known to a woman's soul. These are two. They both come under a common name. That name is love.
It was love had brought Miss Julia hither. Love in the first place for Dieudonné Lane—or was it, really, in the first place, love for him? For we, who know as much as Aurora Lane knew of Miss Julia's secret—who once saw her gazing adoringly at a certain framed portrait when she fancied herself alone—would have known that there was more than one mansion in the heart of the little lame librarian.
Helpless, resigned—but yet a woman—Miss Julia loved in the first place as every woman with any touch of normality does love in spite of all. She had known all these years that her love was hopeless, that it was wrong, that it was a sin—she classed it as her sin. And her sin being her own, she hugged it to her bosom and wept over it these twenty years—became repentant over it—became defiant for it; prayed over it and clung to it—in short, comported herself as any woman would. And now Miss Julia, being what she was, stood flushed, her tiding pulses rising to her eyes, staining her fair skin deep to her very neck, as she faced her great adventure—as she stood looking into the face she had framed on her wall, framed on her desk, framed in her heart as well, in silver and gold and all the brilliants and the gems of a woman's soul.
But she was here by reason of a twofold love. Always in her heart, since she could remember, there had been the great secondary longing for something small to love, to hold in her arms—the desire for a child of her own—the one thing which, as Miss Julia knew, might never be for her.
Indeed, this great craving had always remained unformulated, unidentified, until that time, years and years ago, when she first saw the baby of Aurora Lane lifting up its hands to her. So she had become one-half a mother, at the least.
He was half her boy, at least, he who now lay in prison. A woman is a coward as to revealing her love for her chosen mate—she will conceal that, deny that, to the death. But for the child her love is different—then she becomes bold—she will defy all the world—will force herself even into situations otherwise unthinkable. Except for her love for Don Lane, the fatherless, Miss Julia would never have undertaken to find a father for him.
But that child had a father! Each must have. Ah! how must the angels have wept over that piteous spectacle of Miss Julia in her own room, looking smilingly at the face she saw pictured here in her own hand—the face of one whom she held to be a great man, a noble man, a man good, just, wise, one with love and kindness in his heart as well as brawn and brains in his physical self. Yes, there was a father.... And he was perfect, heroic, for her; her love being thus much blessed by that divine blindness love works within us all.
Now, the face which Miss Julia saw in her boudoir, the face which she saw framed upon the wall of her library room, was the same which she saw now close at hand! She started, flushed, trembled, finding difference between a picture and a man.