After that it was different. But for that—but he had worried himself sick, and had succeeded in forgetting it and her until the day he took sick. He was too weak and torn by the illness to think about the matter, while he lay on his back in the hospital. But when convalescence had set in, he had thought of it almost constantly. Try as he would, he had been unable to understand how it all happened. He pondered over it until he entered the office an hour ago, and now it was all plain.
"Who is this girl?" he asked himself. "What is she?" he demanded. "She has always puzzled me." But, at the end of it all, the old hag on the steps, with the words she had spoken, rose again before him, and he forgot—he felt he was compelled to forget, all the rest.
He got up, after a time, and walked about the office. He felt tired, and in view of her success, and of the circumstances surrounding it, he would go somewhere and rest, until he had thought it all out. But of one thing he was certain, and that was he must never see her again. He could love her; he could do anything within his power for her—he was only too glad to; but he felt he could never forget the few words he had heard a long time ago.
So he wrote a letter to the effect that he had gone away, but he did not state where.
"Oh, I have overslept myself dreadfully," cried Mildred, entering the kitchen where the other worked away in silence.
"I started to awaken you, and you were resting so quietly, that I desisted," Mrs. Jacques replied, regarding her with a fond glance that the other did not understand.
"I must hurry, for, of all mornings, this is the very one I would not have been late for anything," and she hurried through her breakfast and was turning to go, when the other came up, threw her arms about her impulsively, and kissed her long and lingeringly upon the lips. Mildred returned the embrace, but she did not understand the expression in the eyes of the other, as she took her leave.
She arrived at the office, and was surprised to find only Katherine working away on the books.
"Has—ah, any one been here?" she inquired, after waiting to hear something from the lips of the other.