"And the physicians?"
"They are very nice." She didn't say how nice, and he didn't ask, so it ended there.
She went from one office to another, and almost all purchased. Some out of real interest, while others subscribed merely through courtesy to her, and from the fact that it was rare to meet colored people selling, or trying to sell anything.
She had completed the third floor, and was ascending to the fourth, when the then overcast skies became darker and rain began falling fitfully. She made all the offices on that floor with her usual success, and started upon the fifth. Twilight was gathering, and, with the darkness from the clouds, lights were soon aglow.
She had made the fifth and was just passing to the elevator, when she chanced to spy an office that she had overlooked, and, in that moment, she recalled the doctor's statement about the stranger. The office was at the end of the hall—a hall that was not much used, evidently. Mildred observed, as she approached, that the door was slightly ajar. She knocked lightly, and then, receiving no invitation, pushed the door open and entered.
A man sat at the other side of the room, and he seemed to be sick, or asleep—at least he lay with face downward across the desk, at which he sat. She approached him, disregarding his apparent lethargy, and when she had offered a greeting, and he had raised himself slightly, she told him the story of the book.
He was sick, she soon saw, and she felt sympathetic. She bathed his head—his forehead—with a damp towel; then she inquired if he felt better, and looked for the first time into his face.
"At last, oh Lord, at last!" she cried, in a subdued voice, as she bounded down the steps. "I have found him, I have found him!" She walked hurriedly on her way to the street, and did not wait or think of the elevator that would have saved her strength. When she was on the street, she hurried through the rain—for it was pouring now—and did not stop until the ferry had been reached.
Once aboard this, she hid herself in the darkest place she could find, and there, as the paddle of the propeller came to her ears, she cried: "Sidney, my Sidney, I have found you. And never, never, until the end of the world will I be far from you—Oh, my love!"