“Do you mean that this is what you have learned?” she asked.

Her seriousness sent him off into his pleasant laugh.  “Whatever I have learned it has not been ingratitude for a meeting like this,” he responded gayly.  “It is one of my unexpected joys.”

“And yet it’s a joy that you take small advantage of,” she remarked.  “I’m almost always at home and I’m very often wishing that you would come.  As a last test, will you dine with me to-morrow night?”

While she spoke, for the briefest flicker of her eyelashes, she saw him hesitate; then he shook his head.

“I fear I can’t,” he replied regretfully, “the nurse goes home, you see, and there’s no one left with Connie.  When she’s well again I’ll come gladly if you’ll let me.”

Her face flushed a little.  “I’m sorry I asked you,” she said; “I ought to have thought—­to have known.”

He felt the wrench within him as if he had torn out a living nerve, for it was the end between them and he had meant that it should be so.  Life would have no compromises with illusions, he knew—­not even with the last and the most beautiful of desires.

“On the other hand your wish made me very happy,” he returned.

She had stopped when they reached a corner, and he realised, with a pang, that the chance meeting was at an end.  As she stood there in the pale sunshine, his eyes hung upon her face with an intensity which seemed to hold in it something of the tragedy of a last parting.  At the moment he told himself that so far as it lay in his power he would henceforth separate his life from hers; and as he made the resolution he knew that he would carry her memory like a white flame in his heart forever.

An instant afterward he went from her with a smile; and as she turned to look after him, moved by a sudden impulse, she felt a vague stir of pity for the gaunt figure passing so rapidly along the crowded street.  While she watched him she remembered that there were worn places on the coat he wore, and with one of the curious eccentricities of sentiment, this trivial detail served to surround him with a peculiar pathos.

CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH FAILURE IS CROWNED BY FAILURE

At one o’clock, when Adams left his office to go home to luncheon—­a custom which he had not allowed himself to neglect since Connie’s illness—­he found Mr. Wilberforce just about to enter the building from the front on Union Square.

“Ah, I’ve caught you as I meant to,” exclaimed the older man, with the cordial enthusiasm which Adams had always found so delightful.  “It’s been so long a time since I had a talk with you that I hope you’ll come out somewhere to lunch?”

“I only wish I could manage it,” replied Adams, “but I must look in for a minute on Mrs. Adams—­she’s been ill, you know.”

He saw the surprise reflected in his companion’s face as he had seen it a little earlier in Laura’s; and at the same instant he felt a sensation of annoyance because of his inability to act upon his impulse of hospitality.  He would have liked to take Mr. Wilberforce home with him; but remembering the probable quality of the luncheon which awaited him, he repressed the inclination.