ng to
overcome a feeling of being suddenly sick. Then she stepped forward and,
though pale, had her usual manner of complete self-possession. "You
wished to see me?" she asked in an even tone faintly tinged with polite
incredulity.

"Yes," he said, and was so relieved at his voice sounding pretty much
all right that he drew a longer breath.

She looked hesitatingly at a chair, then sat down; he resumed his seat
on the edge of the stiff little chair.

She sat there waiting for him to speak; she still had that look of
polite incredulity. She sat erect, her hands loosely clasped; she
appeared perfectly poised, unperturbed, but when she made a movement for
her handkerchief he saw that her hand was shaking.

"I know I've got my nerve to come here, Mrs. Williams," he blurted out.

She smiled faintly, and he saw that as she did so her lip twitched.

"I'm leaving for the West this afternoon. I'm going out there to
live--to work." That he had said quite easily. It was a little more
effort to add: "And I wanted to see you before I went."

She simply sat there waiting, but there was still that little twitching
of her lip.

"Mrs. Williams," he began quietly, "I don't know whether or not you know
that I've been with my sister Ruth this summer."

When she heard that name spoken there was a barely perceptible drawing
back, as when something is flicked before one's eyes. Then her lips set
more firmly. Ted looked down and smoothed out the soft hat he was
holding, which he had clutched out of shape. Then he looked up and said,
voice low: "Ruth has come to mean a great deal to me, Mrs. Williams."

And still she did not speak, but sat very straight and there were two
small red spots now in her pale cheeks.

"And so," he murmured, after a moment, "that's why I came to you."

"I think," she said in a low, incisive, but unsteady voice, "that I do
not quite follow."

He looked at her in a very simple, earnest way. "You don't?" he asked.
There was a pause and then he said, "I saw you at the theatre last
night."

"Indeed?" she murmured with a faint note of irony.

But she did not deflect him from that simple earnestness. "And when I
went home I thought about you." He paused and then added, gently, "Most
all night, I thought about you."

And still she only sat there looking at him and as if holding herself
very tight. She had tried to smile at that last and the little
disdainful smile had stiffened on her lips, making them loo