Now she knew that she was on the right way. Her start towards the river had been a false one, just as Jimmie's had been. Jimmie had had no more real thought of harming himself than she had had of finding the end of her search in the river.
He had just set himself adrift aimlessly, and unconsciously she seemed to know that mere physical weariness would bring him to where all the drifting logs of the city's stream sooner or later come to rest, the park benches.
Through the endless night she trudged, scanning the thousand figures that weariness and misery and failure take when they finally slump down to the friendly darkness of a shaded bench.
Policemen looked sharply after her. Good men looked wonderingly after her. Bad men looked discriminatingly after her. Her soul was sick with the misery and the sordidness that she searched among. But her heart was not afraid. She was right, and love was at the end of her search.
In the gray, haggard dawn she saw him at a little distance, sitting jauntily erect, his hand extended resting lightly on his cane, peering interestedly up into the coming light of the new day—as though he had that moment sat down to enjoy the fresh morning and to wonder at the miracle of dawn.
Augusta trembled in every aching nerve, but her heart laughed as she stole toward him. It was so like him, sitting up making a play at interest, when, as she knew, he probably didn't care whether the day dawned or not.
Then with a little desperate run she was kneeling on the bench beside him and had fairly dragged his head into her arms and was kissing him wildly, passionately.
Now Wardwell said not a word. He did not at first seem surprised. It is doubtful if, knowing Augusta and remembering her actions in those days when her mother had been lost, he really had thought that he could lose himself from her in the way he had taken.
But when he found Augusta's arms tight around him something within him awoke with a start. Augusta had kissed him before this—But—
Jimmie Wardwell knew as little of women's love and the ways of it as most men do. But he suddenly straightened up and deliberately pulled one of Augusta's arms away and caught her little face in his hand and looked boldly, hungrily down into her eyes.