At six, when he reached Harrow Street, for the first time, he was not permitted to use the key to the street door that he had carried so long, for Miss Claes met him at the basement entrance. He had heard her voice over the telephone in the morning, but had not remotely anticipated the stir of feeling that the sight of her awakened. No emotionless reporter about Mr. Cobden at this moment. He followed her to the open fire; the door was shut. They stood together in silence, and he had never seen her look so well.
“Why, Miss Claes, you are just the same!” he was saying. “I mean, all day I have been seeing the ravages of the war years in the people at home, in John Higgins, in everybody. But you——”
“Your coming makes me happy.”
Firelight and a fragrant room, and the stillness of Harrow Street. Miss Claes was speaking of Nagar—of Pidge—of Pidge and the child—of Rufus Melton—of Fanny Gallup—of himself—as if they were all one, all blent in destiny.... Pidge had taken the child to Los Angeles.
A ring at the street door! Dicky watched Miss Claes’ face as she left the room, purse in hand. She returned in a moment with a telegram for him.
Welcome home. So glad to hear, so relieved. Needed here a little longer.
Pidge.
The door shut again.... Miss Claes had heard of everything—even of his experience with Rufe Melton in Paris, and from Pidge what Ames had told John Higgins.
“I should have put Ames wise about that,” Dicky told her. “It was pretty hard to have Pidge hurt that way.”
“She brought home the news exultingly,” Miss Claes said. “Hurt, of course—her old sorrow for Rufus Melton, but a compensating gladness, too. You would have to be a woman, to feel exactly what it meant to her. Pidge learned that day that you were close enough in sympathy to share her work. That was light to her out of the depths.”