h a touch of genius."

"Yes, yes," she responded vaguely, without knowing what she said.
Literature appeared to her suddenly as the most uninteresting pursuit
upon the earth, and she longed to escape from the presence of Mr.
Wilberforce, because she knew that he would weary her by ceaseless
allusions to books which she no longer read.

"I'm on my way to Gerty's--she made me promise to come this afternoon,"
she explained hurriedly, recalling with surprise that she had once found
pleasure in the companionship of this ineffectual old man, with his
placid face and his interminable discussions of books. Feeling that her
impatience might provoke her presently into an act of rudeness which she
would afterward regret, she held out her hand while she signalled with
the other to the approaching stage.

"Come to-morrow when I shall be at home," she said; and though she
remembered that she would probably spend the next afternoon with Kemper,
this suggestion of an untruth seemed at the time to make no difference.
A moment later as she seated herself in the stage, she drew a long
breath as if she had escaped from an oppressive atmosphere; and the
rumbling of the vehicle was a relief to her because it silenced for
awhile the noise of the opposing hosts of angels that warred unceasingly
within her soul.

When she reached Gerty's house in Sixty-ninth Street, she found not only
her friend, whom she wished to see, but Perry Bridewell, whom she had
tried particularly to avoid. At first she felt almost angry with Gerty
for not receiving her alone; but Gerty, suspecting as much from her
chilled look, burst out at once into a comic protest:

"I tried my best to get rid of Perry," she said, "perhaps you may make
the attempt with better success."

"I've caught a beastly cold," responded Perry, from the cushioned chair
on the hearthrug, where he sat prodding the wood fire with a small brass
poker, "it's stuck in my chest, and the doctor tells me if I don't look
out I'll be in for bronchitis or pneumonia or something or other of the
kind."

That he was genuinely frightened showed clearly by the unusual pallor on
his handsome face; and with an appearance of giving emphasis to the
danger in which he stood, he held out to Laura, as he spoke, a glass
bottle filled with large brown lozenges.

"He remembers his last illness," observed Gerty seriously, "which was an
attack of croup at the age of two--and he's afraid they will bandage his
chest