ng just as she'd left him, and as his face was partly turned away
from her, it could not have been from the expression of it that she got
her revelation. But she stopped there in the dark and caught her breath
and leaned back against the wall and squeezed the tears out of her eyes.

Perhaps it was just because he was sitting so still, a thing it was
utterly unlike him to do. The Rodney of her memories was always ranging
about the rooms that confined him. Or the grip of the one hand she could
see upon the chair-arm it rested on may have had something to do with
it. But it was not, really, a consciously deductive process at all; just
a clairvoyant look--_into_ him, and a sudden, complete, utterly
confident understanding.

He had come down here to New York to make another beginning. He meant to
assert no rights, not even in their common memories, he would make no
appeal. But something that he felt he had forfeited he was going to try
to earn back. What was the thing he sought--her friendship, or her love?
She knew! No plea that the inspired rhetoric of passion could be capable
of could have convinced her of his love for her and of his need for her
love as did the divine absurdity of this attempt of his to show her that
she need give him--nothing. She knew. Oh, how she knew!

She stole back into her little kitchen and shut the door and leaned
giddily against it, trying to get her breath to coming steadily again.
At last she straightened up and wiped her eyes. A smile played across
her lips; the smile of deep maternal tenderness. Then she picked up her
box of matches and carried them to him in the sitting-room.

He stayed that first evening a little less than an hour, and when he got
up to go, she made no effort to detain him. The thing had been, as its
unbroken surface could testify, a highly successful first call. Before
she let him go, though, she asked him how long he was going to be in New
York, and on getting a very indeterminate answer that offered a minimum
of "two or three days" and a maximum that could not even be guessed at,
she said:

"I hope you're not going to be too dreadfully busy for us to see a lot
of each other. I wish we might manage it once every day."

That shook him; for a moment, she thought the lightning was going to
strike and stood very still holding her breath, waiting for it.

But he steadied himself, said he could certainly manage that if she
could, and as the elevator came up in response