office and the next day I'll take you South.
There you'll stay out of doors and get well again. The flesh will come
back to your body and the colour to your cheeks.

"I shall never be pretty again--never," she moaned, as he held her.

"Nonsense. You're a trifle pale and fagged that's all--but we'll have
you a beauty again before two weeks are up."

And so through the long night he sat with his touch, which compelled
quiet, upon her body, for when, after she had fallen at last into a
fitful slumber, he arose and lowered the lights, she started up with a
scream and called out that she was "alone--fearfully alone!" Then, as he
returned to his chair, she reached for him in the darkness and clung
desperately to his outstretched arm, drawing it presently across her
shoulders until she lay as if shielded by the soothing familiar
presence.

CHAPTER II

AN ADVANCE AND A RETREAT

It was the day after this, while Laura was still in Kemper's thoughts,
that he ran across her as she came out of a church in Twenty-ninth
Street. At the first glance she appeared a little startled, but the
disturbance was so slight that it passed swift as a shadow across her
face, and the next instant the illumining smile which he had thought of
as her one memorable beauty shone from her eyes and lips.

"At first I hardly recognised you," she explained, "you don't look quite
as I remembered you."

His amused glance lingered upon her face. "So you did remember me?" he
said and the retort was so characteristic of the man that Gerty
Bridewell would have paused waiting for it after she had spoken. If
there was the smallest loophole apparent in the conversation through
which the personal intention might be made to enter, he took to it as
instinctively as the fox takes to the covert. The mere uttered words
were what he might have responded to any woman who unconsciously gave
him the opportunity, yet as he looked down upon Laura, in her velvet hat
and black furs, at his side, he was filled with amazement at the
interest aroused in him by her slender, though delicately suggestive
figure. He felt the magnetic touch of her through the very flutter of
her skirts--felt the fervour of her soul, the warmth of her personality,
and he found himself attracted by her as by the mystery of a bright and
distant flame. The intensity of life--the radiant energy of
intellect--was in her look, in her voice, in her smile--and he knew
instinctively that she was