“Oh yes,” he said, “I’m all right. No, I don’t feel very well. How are you this morning, Florence?”
“Oh, I feel very well, indeed.”
She held up her face as he passed behind her, and he bent over and kissed it. Then a sudden feeling of straining pity for her coming motherhood seized him. He hesitated for a moment, and then he took her face in both his hands and, raising it, kissed it again. She laughed and blushed a little. “What is it, Henry?” she said.
“Nothing,” he answered, and then he went around to his place.
The waiter offered him a dish of fruit, but he shook his head. “Fetch me a cup of coffee,” he said.
“Aren’t you going to eat anything?” said Mrs. Gilderman as the man poured out a black stream of coffee into a cup.
“No; I’m not hungry.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing; only I didn’t sleep very well. Maybe I’ll eat something by-and-by down at the club.”
He had almost finished his cup of coffee, and had just opened the paper, when the man came in to say that Mr. Furgeson was down-stairs and wanted to know if he could see Mr. Gilderman. Furgeson was one of Gilderman’s agents, and he had gone down the day before to the Lenning sale to buy a famous hunter and two road-horses.