or many days; and she felt again the impulse to unburden her
heart to him, which she had resisted on the afternoon they walked
together down Fifth Avenue. The dawn had begun to break, and while she
waited impatiently for the growing light, she resolved with one of those
promptings of wisdom, in which ordinary reason appeared to have no part,
that when the morning came she would go to Adams' office before seeing
Kemper. Then she remembered the distance which had sprung between them
in the last few months, and it seemed to her to have grown still more
impassable since the evening before. But because the visit offered an
excuse to postpone her confession to Kemper until the afternoon, she
caught at it with an eagerness, which hurried her into her hat and coat
as soon as her pretence of breakfasting with Angela was at an end.

The morning was bright and clear, and as she walked through the early
sunshine in the street, she remembered the day, so long ago now, when
she had met Adams going to his office at this hour, and she recalled,
with a smile, that she had pitied him then because of the worn places on
his overcoat. She no longer pitied him now--Gerty, herself, Perry
Bridewell, even Kemper, she felt, might be deserving of compassion, but
not Adams. Yes, she, herself, in spite of her boasted strength had come
at last to feel the need of being loved for the very weakness she had
once despised. But she knew that, though Adams might understand and
forgive this weakness, in Kemper it would provoke only the scorn which
she had begun to fear and dread. Yet her intellect rather than her heart
told her that Adams was a stronger man than Kemper and that his wider
sympathies proved only that he was, also, the larger of the two. Was the
difference between them merely one of goodness, after all, her
intellect, not her heart, demanded, and was it true that the perfect
love could not enter except where this goodness had been to blaze the
way before it in the soul?

As she walked through the streets fanciful comparisons between the two
men thronged in her brain, but when presently she reached Adams' office,
and stood beside his desk, with her hand in his hearty grasp, she
realised all at once that the visit was useless, and that there was
nothing she could say to him which would not sound hysterical and
absurd.

"So, thank heaven, there's something I can do for you!" he exclaimed,
with his cordial smile. "Wait till I get into my overco