He was almost relieved to find that Miss Davies and her mother had stepped across the way. They would be back soon, he was told; so he went in, left his hat and coat in the hall, and walked in through the parlour to the long sitting-room, where there were rows upon rows of books and a round-edged table covered with other books and with magazines, and a great fireplace with a wood fire burning to take the edge off the evening air.
He sat down in the Morris chair by the table and picked up a book—he had not had time to read much of late years. But after a moment of turning the pages the book was lowered to his knees and his eyes looked over it at the fire. There had been a time when he had laid that fire regularly every morning, and now to be sitting here, suddenly conscious that his life had taken a new direction, that he was older, and that his clothes were better—that he was, in fact, another person altogether—was odd and haunting, was almost disconcerting.
He heard the front door open. There was a rustle out in the hall, and voices. He let his head fall against the back of his chair and turned his face toward the parlour door. He hardly knew what to make of himself; he was almost afraid he had emotions. Certainly a peculiar disturbance was going on somewhere within him, such a disturbance as hardly could be looked for within the manager of a lumber company. He did not like it at all. He wondered why she was so long about coming in. Perhaps she would go on upstairs, not knowing he was there; and that would be awkward. Altogether, it was probably a good thing that Halloran had come out to Evanston before the new life had succeeded in withdrawing him finally from the old, before the proportion of one-tenth to nine-tenths had been evened up and he had wholly changed into Michigan lumber—a very good thing indeed.
She came in through the hall doorway and paused surprised. He felt himself rising and standing with his back to the table and the light. She came slowly forward, inclining her head a little to get the light out of her eyes so that she could see his face. The disturbance, now increasing in that strange new part of him, out of all proportion to the occasion, called his attention to her reserve, to the something—was it pride?—that had disturbed him in other days; it taunted him with her firm carriage, her fine, thoughtful face; it reminded him of her real superiority, the superiority that comes only from pride in right living; and so Halloran, the vigorous, the elated, at the moment of greeting an old friend in her own house, was so far from equal to the situation that for the life of him he could think of nothing but certain raw facts in his own bringing-up, or fighting-up, whichever it might be called. And not a word did he say—simply waited.
She came a few steps nearer and hesitated. Then, after an instant, her whole expression changed. Her eyes lighted up with gladness so real that even he could not misread it; and she came rapidly forward with outstretched hand.
“Why, John Halloran,” she cried; “where did you come from?”