Well, let it come, he thought, not defiantly, indeed, but humbly. He had deserved it all. And, long as it might last, it would end some time. And there was an after life, where faith, repentance and reformation in this world would surely be followed by rest, peace and joy in that world to come, where, also, as some believed, true lovers severed here would meet to part no more forever, because from their creation their souls had been essentially one, though apparently two.
And, if this should be true, as some deep inspiration whispered that it surely was—man might bear patiently, hopefully, courageously all that the world, the flesh and the devil might inflict upon him even the hardest of all to bear the disgrace and penalty of his own sin and folly.
In this mood of mind Harcourt reached New York late one evening toward the last of April.
He went directly to his lodgings, passed up the four flights of stairs to the attic floor, and paused a moment in the passage before his own and his neighbor’s door.
There he heard the old, familiar thumper-thumper-thumper-thumper of Annie Moss’ sewing machine, going on as he had heard it all the time he had lived in the next room, as he had heard it on the evening he had taken leave of her, as if it had never stopped during the three weeks of his absence.
“Oh, these poor working women!” he thought. “How patient they are, at their monotonous work! What a lesson it is to others.”
He rapped at the door.
“Well! Who is it?” inquired the pleasant voice, as the sound of the machine stopped.
“It is I, Annie,” he answered.
Although she was old enough to be his mother, he had got to calling her “Annie,” because everybody else did, so far as he knew—Adler and Adler’s wife and their children, all called Mrs. Moss Annie. The name seemed to suit the fair, gentle, helpful woman.