He did not tell himself that he was in love with her, and he would have denied convulsively that he wished her to be in love with him. With him? Fool! Dolt! Lout! Boor! Not to him did he wish her to stoop! All he wanted was to become nobler for her sake, to serve her, to die for her! Merely that! And before dying, to become humbly indispensable to her, to know her more intimately than any one had ever known her, to take up every moment of her time! It was entirely for the sake of her perfection, of the holy and ineffable vision, that he objected profoundly, almost with nausea, to Deutch's saying that she had acted loony about Ingham. Ingham!—why Ingham? Even he, Herrick, would be better than Ingham. For had not he, unworthy, by his deep perception of her become worthy? Great as her beauty was, it was not for the mob. It was too fine, too subtle; slim as a flame and winged as the wind yet April-colored, its aching ravishment could thrill only sensitive nerves. Yet he remembered something—the elevator boy had thought that, too! Joseph Patrick had declared he supposed that other people thought dressier ladies was handsomer, but he preferred Miss Hope! Deutch, too; hadn't he suggested something of the kind? Now he came to think of it, even the beast of a coroner had said so! Then, and not till then, did he fully perceive the cruel trick, the last refinement of her perfect beauty; that it came to you in such a humble, friendly, simple guise, so slight and helpless did it knock upon your heart, whispering its shy way into your blood with the sweet promise that it was yours alone and that you alone could understand it. Until, when it had taken you wholly, passion and spirit, it drew aside its veil and revealed itself as the dream of every common prince and laborer and lover; the poet's hope and the world's desire. He saw her now, coming toward him through the wet wind, shining in the gray day, with a smile on her uplifted face, and, at last, past its candor and its child's decorum, he knew it for the face that launch'd a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium!
At that moment the summons of a Grubey infant declared him wanted on the telephone. And through the potent instrument a friendly voice from the Record office brought him back to earth. It said, "Say, Herrick, we've got hold of a corking wind-up for your inquest story."
He cared nothing, now, for inquests, since they no longer concerned her. But he said, "Have you?"
"Yes. We thought we'd see what the Cornish girl had to say, and we sent right down, both to her boarding-house and her theater."
"And what had she?"
"Why, that's it. Since the day of the murder she hasn't showed up at either place. She's disappeared."