Still Foord sketched away rapidly, and by-and-by Gilderman found himself becoming interested in the swift, dexterous strokes of the pencil and the quick suggestions of portraiture. “Do you suppose they mind you doing this?” he whispered.
“Lord bless you, no!” said Foord, sotto voce. “They don’t see or know anything when they’re in that state.”
At the sound of the voice the crying man lifted his face for a moment from his hands and looked towards Gilderman with strange, filmy, sightless eyes. His cheeks were drenched with tears. Gilderman knew that though the man looked towards him he did not see him.
As Gilderman continued down-town towards the office, he felt strangely softened and moved–strangely impressed by what he had just seen. Again, as he thought over it all, a feeling as of awe came upon him. He did not understand what it was he had beheld, but the impression lay heavily upon him. A recollection of the morning’s scene, accompanied by the same feeling of awe (though less strong and vivid), recurred again to him that afternoon as he crossed the river to embark upon the other side for the capital. He was standing in the bow of the ferry-boat at the time looking out across the water. He had never seen a human face illuminated as those faces had been. It was as though the spirit shone forth and consumed the fibres of flesh that incased it. Was it then, indeed, true that the spirit was so present in every fibre of flesh that it could thus glorify the human body to that strange illumination? The bright surface of the harbor stretched away before him, shut in by the distant farther shore of clustered buildings. A huge out-going steamer was ploughing its slow and monstrous way down the river. Gilderman saw everything and yet saw nothing as he stood there pondering the remembrances of that morning.
He suddenly awoke to the things of every day as the boat thumped its way into the slip, and he pushed forward with the crowd which, as soon as it had poured off from the boat, presently spread out until he was able to hurry through the waiting-room of the depot to the train.
His man met him at the gate and directed him to the parlor-car, where Stirling West met him. “Hello, Gildy!” he said; “I thought you were going to be left.”
As they went together along between the rows of chairs to the compartment where Tom De Witt and his mother and two sisters already sat, Stirling West nudged Gilderman with his elbow. “Ain’t she a daisy!” he said, in a whisper. And Gilderman, looking down, saw an exceedingly pretty and stylishly dressed blond girl sitting with an elderly man of senatorial appearance.
He felt a distinct pleasure in the prettiness of the girl, and he looked back at her again as he was about to enter the door of the compartment. He was already forgetting what he had that morning seen.
THE END