f the past?

As he walked down Franklin Street a little later he contrasted boldly
the two Eugenias he had known--the Eugenia who was his and the Eugenia
who was Dudley Webb's. After fifteen years the rapture and the agony of
his youth showed grotesque to his later vision; men did not love like
that at forty years. He could see Eugenia now without the quiver of a
pulse; he could sit across from her, knowing that she was the wife of
another, and could eat his dinner. His passion was dead, but where it
had bloomed something else drew life and helped him to live. He had
loved one woman and he loved her still, though with a love which in his
youth he would have held to be as ashes beside his flame. There were
months--even years--when he did not think of her; when he thought
profoundly of other things; but in these years the thrill of no woman's
skirts had disturbed his calm. And again, there were winter
evenings--evenings when he sat beside the hearth, and there came to him
the thought of a home and children--of a woman's presence and a child's
laugh. He could have loved the woman well had she been Eugenia, and he
could have loved the child had it been hers; but beyond her went neither
his vision nor his desire.

Now he swung on, large, forceful, a man young enough to feel, yet old
enough to know. He entered his door quickly, as was his custom,
impatient for his work and his fireside. On his desk lay the papers that
had been brought over by his secretary, and he ran his fingers
carelessly through them, gleaning indifferently the drift of their
contents. As he did so a light flashed suddenly upon him, and the
meaning of Eugenia's restlessness was made clear, for upon his desk was
an application for the pardon of Bernard Battle.

VII

The paper was still in his hand when the door behind him opened.

"A lady to see you, suh."

"A lady?" He turned impatiently to find himself facing Eugenia Webb. She
had come so swiftly, with a silence so apparitional, that he fell back
as from a blow between the eyes. For a moment he doubted her reality,
and then the glow in her face, the mist on her furs, the fog of her
breath, proclaimed that she had followed closely upon his footsteps. She
must have been almost beside him when he hurried through the frost.

"You wish to speak to me?" he asked blankly, as he drew a chair to the
hearth rug. "Will you not sit down?"

There was an unfriendly question in his eyes, and she met it