“And yet why should I hunger for his presence and what is there in it when it comes that is worth this wanting?” she asked in dismay of her own longing.  “When I am away from him I think of nothing except of the hour when I shall see him again, and yet when the meeting comes I am not happy and he is always a little different from what I hoped that he would be.  I have no particular satisfaction when I see him, but when he goes the longing and the dream begin again and I build up other ideals of him which he will destroy the first time that we come together.  Is it because I have never really got to the thing that he is eternally—­to the soul of him—­that he creates in me this agony of expectancy and of disappointment?  When I meet him to-morrow may it not happen that for the first time he will fulfill all the ideals of him that I have made?”

And it seemed to her almost impossible that she should wait the twenty-four intervening hours before making her final discovery—­that she should exist a day and a night in utter vacancy while the ultimate moment still beckoned her from to-morrow.  Would time never pass?  Was there no way of strangling it before it came to birth?  She picked up her favourite books from her desk—­Spinoza, Shelley, “The Imitation of Christ”—­but the throbbing vitality in her own breast caused the printed pages to turn chill and lifeless.

A mirror was placed over the mantel and she looked closely into it, meeting her profound gaze and the poetic charm which hung like an atmosphere about her delicate figure.  She felt at the instant that she would have given her life—­her soul even and its infinite possibilities—­for an exterior of Gerty’s brilliant beauty.  The blackness of her hair, the prominence of her brow, the faint amber pallor of her skin, provoked her into a sensation of anger; and she turned away with an emotion that was almost one of bitterness.  A minute later it seemed to her that the afternoon would pass more quickly if she spent it out of doors, and as she slipped into her walking clothes she thought with relief of the crowded streets and of the noises that would drown the consciousness of her own thoughts.  When Angela called to her as she passed along the hall it was with a movement of irritation that she turned the handle of the door and entered the invalid’s room, where the pale winter sunshine fell over the tall white candles and uncarpeted floor.

Mrs. Payne, in her black velvet and old rose point, sat by the window reading aloud in her shrill voice extracts from a society paper which she had brought for the purpose of entertaining her sister.  In the conventual atmosphere in which Angela lived the biting scandals and malicious gossip of the worldly old woman always produced upon Laura an impression of mere vulgar insincerity.  To have lived over seventy years and still to find one’s chief interest in the social indiscretions of one’s neighbours was a fact which would have been pathetic had it been less ridiculous.  Tottering reluctantly to her grave, in the centre of a universe filled with a million mysteries of dead and living suns, she was absorbed to the exclusion of all larger matters in the question as to whether or not “Tom Marbury had compromised Mrs. Billy Pearce?”