AT LAST.
Mary, cooking supper, uttered a soft exclamation of pleasure and relief as she heard John’s step under the alley window and then at the door. She turned, with an iron spoon in one hand and a candlestick in the other, from the little old stove with two pot-holes, where she had been stirring some mess in a tin pan.
“Why, you’re”—she reached for a kiss—“real late!”
“I could not come any sooner.” He dropped into a chair at the table.
“Busy?”
“No; no work to-day.”
Mary lifted the pan from the stove, whisked it to the table, and blew her fingers.
“Same subject continued,” she said laughingly, pointing with her spoon to the warmed-over food.
Richling smiled and nodded, and then flattened his elbows out on the table and hid his face in them.
This was the first time he had ever lingered away from his wife when he need not have done so. It was the Doctor’s proposition that had kept him back. All day long it had filled his thoughts. He felt its wisdom. Its sheer practical value had pierced remorselessly into the deepest convictions of his mind. But his heart could not receive it.