When they parted at the door, Peter thanked Lispenard: “I’ve really learned a good deal, thanks to Miss De Voe and you. I’ve seen the pictures with eyes that know much more about them than mine do.”
“Well, we’ll have to have another turn some day. We’re always in search of listeners.”
“If you come and see me, Mr. Stirling,” said Miss De Voe, “you shall see my pictures. Good-bye.”
“So that is your Democratic heeler?” said Lispenard, eyeing Peter’s retreating figure through the carriage window.
“Don’t call him that, Lispenard,” said Miss De Voe, wincing.
Lispenard laughed, and leaned back into a comfortable attitude. “Then that’s your protector of sick kittens?”
Miss De Voe made no reply. She was thinking of that dreary wintry stretch of sand and dune.
Thus it came to pass that a week later, when a north-easter had met a south-wester overhead and both in combination had turned New York streets into a series of funnels, in and through which wind, sleet and snow fought for possession, to the almost absolute dispossession of humanity and horses, that Peter ended a long stare at his blank wall by putting on his dress-suit, and plunging into the streets. He had, very foolishly, decided to omit dinner, a couple of hours before, rather than face the storm, and a north-east wind and an empty stomach are enough to set any man staring at nothing, if that dangerous inclination is at all habitual. Peter realized this, for the opium eater is always keenly alive to the dangers of the drug. Usually he fought the tendency bravely, but this night he felt too tired to fight himself, and preferred to battle with a little thing like a New York storm. So he struggled through the deserted streets until he had reached his objective point in the broad Second Avenue house. Miss De Voe was at home, but was “still at dinner.”
Peter vacillated, wondering what the correct thing was under the circumstances. The footman, remembering him of old, and servants in those simple days being still open to impressions, suggested that he wait. Peter gladly accepted the idea. But he did not wait, for hardly had the footman left him than that functionary returned, to tell Peter that Miss De Voe would see him in the dining-room.
“I asked you to come in here, because I’m sure, after venturing out such a night, you would like an extra cup of coffee,” Miss De Voe explained. “You need not sit at the table. Morden, put a chair by the fire.”