"Yes, it would," I said, trying hard not to say it too joyfully.
"What?" he exclaimed. "Really? Without breaking an engagement? Or telephoning anybody? This is wonderful. Oh, by the way. Let me see your hand when you write."
He brought me a pad and pen and ink.
"Write anything," he said. "Write."
I wrote. He watched me absorbedly and drew a sigh that might have been relief.
"That's all right, too," he told me. "I had a young woman here helping me once who wrapped her fingers round the pen when she wrote, in a fashion that drove me mad. I used to go out and dig in the garden till my secretary had gone home, and then come in and get down to work myself."
I put away my hat, and merely to shut the door on the closet that held umbrellas and raincoats was an intimacy that gave me joy. I had starved for him, thirsted for him, and two days ago had not known that he was not in China still; yet here was this magic, as life knows so well to manufacture magic.
"I'm afraid I don't remember," he said, "what Mrs. Carney told me your name is?"
While we talked, it had been gradually fastening itself in my mind that it would have been remarkable if he had recognized me. A country girl, in a starched white dress, with her hair about her face, acting like a common creature on the Katytown road, and later, to his understanding working in a New York factory, could have no connection with a woman of twenty-six, in well-fitting clothes, who came to him six years after, as his secretary. I told him my last name, and he said it over as if it had been Smith.