"Ah, that's the part of you I know and love the best!" she exclaimed. "How good you were to her! If anything could make me love you more, it would be your devotion to that poor, lonely, ravaged soul. It seems as if you have served me in serving her, and I would like to think that I could pay you back, by my love, for all you gave her. It stirs me so to think of her pain and her despair!"
"Let's make a pilgrimage!" he said impulsively. "I haven't been inside the Siskiyou Hotel since I was a child, though I've passed there often enough. It's a pretty disreputable place now, I'm afraid."
"Oh, yes!" Clytie caught up with his eagerness. "Think of seeing that place again, where we first met! It will be a celebration, won't it! How long is it? I don't quite dare think."
"Twenty-three years!"
"And all that time we've been coming together—"
"It was a wide curve my orbit traced, my dear!"
"It's one of the mysteries of life that while we seem to be going away from each other, we're as really coming together. But we'll travel the rest of the course together, I'm sure!"
They set out, forthwith, on their quest for what had been. It had begun to rain, but their spirits were unquenchable by the storm. The excursion was, indeed, an adventure. Granthope himself felt his fancy aroused at the thought of the revisitation of the old home. It had a double charm for him now, as the spot where the two women who had most affected his life had been.
He left her under the shelter of an awning while he went into the saloon to interview the bartender who rented the rooms in the building. The man had heard of Madam Grant, though it was so long since she had lived there. There were still stories told of her wealth and her eccentricities, as well as of her occult powers. The rooms had even, at one time, been reported to be haunted, but they had always been let easily enough. At present they were occupied by some Russians. Yes, Granthope might go up; perhaps they would let him in.
They ascended the narrow, dingy stairs together. The wall was grimy where many dirty elbows had rubbed the plastering; the rail was rickety and many balusters were missing. Granthope rapped at the door in the hall with a queer, sick feeling of familiarity, though it was as if he had read of the place in some story rather than a place he had used to inhabit.