Her low sweet laughter purred over the wires to him.
"Can't you remember?" she asked quietly. "I am Felice.—Yes, I am Felice. I have been trying to find your house, Dudley Hamilt, but it's gone, they are building a vairee big house there. I didn't have your letter, that letter that you sent me. Not till Zeb brought it to me day before yesterday. That was why I didn't write to you where I was."
"Where are you now?" the excitement in his voice frightened her. "Tell me, where are you?"
The giggling back of her grew so insistent that it broke in upon even the solitude of her wonderous moment. She raised her eyes to the mirror before her. She caught a swift glimpse of laughing faces, the impishness of their mischievous eyes made her shiver. She instinctively glanced into the looking glass to see where their gaze rested. And looked straight at—herself!
At Louisa's ugly bonnet, at the damp and shapeless shoulders of the gray coat, at her own pallor, at the deep shadows under her tired eyes, into her own eyes, and saw the whole drab mirrored ghost of the woman who had been the young Felicia. And through the telephone rang Dudley Hamilt's eager voice, as eager as it had been that night when he clambered over the gate.
"Tell me quickly where you are—I must see you—oh, your voice sounds as though I'd not lost you at all—" he laughed nervously like an embarrassed boy, "I want to see you—" he repeated inadequately.
She thought quickly, she could think of only one thing and that was that Dudley Hamilt must NOT see her.
"Let's pretend," she interrupted him, her low contralto voice trembling, "Let's pretend that I'm somewhere you can't see me—I only wanted—to tell you that I had your letter. I wanted you to know how happy it made me to have it. Dudley Hamilt—"
The receiver dropped from her hand; somewhere back of her the giggling grew fainter and farther away. She shook her head weakly when the drug clerk hurried with a glass of water. She was swaying, dimly conscious of the awe in the face of the girl who was hastening toward her.
"Oh, she looks awfully ill—" she heard a dismayed voice.