XXVII
JUDGMENT
At first he did not know her. He stood there, while their eyes were locked, in his own eyes no gleam of honest memory. He was unchanged—the serene, the secure, the smug Max Grossman of that first meeting in the street of her little Pennsylvania town; but she, as she so well knew without this silent testimony, was not now, and never again could be, the girl of that lost springtime. He looked at her, his thick lips drawn thin in a professional grimace, and not until she spoke a second time did he recognize her.
He started then, and his olive face went pale; but Mary put out her hand precisely as if she were meeting, after a brief absence, only an acquaintance of the everyday friendly sort, and Max, too glad for pardon to question motive, seized and squeezed her hand tenderly.
"Vhat?" he cried in mock pleasure at this contretemps. "No, it ain'd! I gan't hardly belief mine eyes you're lookin' so fine. But it is Mary Denbigh!"
She smiled almost gayly. In little she had to lie, but in much, though for a reason that he must not suspect, she was indeed exultant.
"I am lookin' good, ain't I, Max?" she said.
He surveyed her cheap finery; saw her hair, disordered in her passage through the crowded court-room, and turned his gaze quickly from her hollow, painted cheeks, her hardening carmine mouth, and her heavily ringed eyes.
"You're grand," he said. "I always knew you'd make good, Mary."
"You jollier!" she laughed, and with her free hand, patted his olive cheek.