FROM THE LIFE
hand to him blindly, to reassure him. He took it as simply as she gave it.
She settled back in the seat with a little trembling sigh. There were tears in her eyes, but she gazed through them, smiling, at the long empty road and the long empty past. "I've motored by your house," she said, "but it was always closed."
He had lifted her hand and bent down to it and put his cheek against it, with his face averted. She slipped her fingers out of his and turned his head to her and held him so, looking at him, all smiling tears and tenderness, with eyes that at once searched him and accepted him and surrendered to him. Suddenly, as if he were unable to bear it, he bowed forward, with his face in his hands. She patted his head, weeping happily, and distractedly stroking his hair.
"Isn't it strange?" she said. "The first time I saw you, alone, on that platform, under the torchlight, I had almost the same feeling for you. And I told you those figures on the blackboard just as if I were talking to myself, and I knew you'd hear. And then they sent me away to school and I lost you, but somehow I always knew you'd come back. Even when—there was some one else that— I don't know. I think it was only because he seemed like you. And the moment I saw you passing the restaurant window I knew I had been cheating myself. And I brought you into the hotel and told you to buy the stock. And then I began to worry be-
[ 166 ]
