Tessa felt Dr. Lake’s mood; she could have written out his thoughts, as he drove homeward in the rain; she dreaded his hilarious entrance, how his eyes would shine, with tears close behind them!
Her reverie was interrupted by the entrance that she dreaded. “Ah, Mystic, praying for my happiness here alone! I know you are. I come to be congratulated.”
“I congratulate you,” she said rising and taking his hand. Not so very long afterward, when she saw his cold, dead hands folded together and touched them, she remembered with starting tears this soft, hot, clinging clasp.
“You didn’t dream of this two months ago, did you?” he cried, dropping into the chair that Sue had been sitting in. “You didn’t know that I was born under a lucky star despite all my woeful past. I have turned over a new leaf; I turned it over to-night in the rain; it is chapter first. Such a white page, Mystic. Don’t you want to write something on it for me?”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh, yes, you would! What do you wish for me? Write that.”
“I wish for you—” she rolled the white wool over her hand.
“Well, go on! Something that must come true!”
“—The love that suffers long and is kind.”
“Whew!” He drew a long breath. “There is no place for that in me.”