The morning, with its unusual burden of introspection, was, perhaps, the most miserable he had ever spent, and after he had lunched at his club—­when to his surprise he found that his appetite was entirely undisturbed by his mental processes—­he returned to his rooms before starting dejectedly for a long run in his automobile.  But a letter from Laura was the first object he noticed upon his desk, and his afternoon plans were swept from his mind with the beginning of her heart-broken entreaty for reconciliation.  While he read it there was recognition in his thoughts for no feeling except his rapture in her recovery, and he took up his pen with a hand which trembled in the shock of his reaction from despair to happiness.  Then, while he still hesitated, in a mixture of self-reproach and tenderness, there was a knock at his door, it opened and shut quickly, with an abruptness which even in inanimate things speak of excitement, and Laura, herself, breathing rapidly and very pale, came hurriedly across the room.

“I could not stay away—­you did not answer my note—­it would have killed me,” she began brokenly; and as he stretched out his arms she threw herself into them with a burst of tears.

“Oh, you angel!” he exclaimed, in a tenderness which was almost an ecstasy of feeling; and then, moved by a passion of sympathy, he called her by every endearing name his mind could catch at or his voice utter.  The depth of his nature responded in all its volume, as she lay there weeping for joy, in his arms, and in her coming to him as she had done he beheld then only an exquisite proof of her nobility of soul, of the unworldly innocence for which he loved her.  In that embrace, for that one supreme instant, their spirits touched more nearly than they had ever done in the past or would ever do again in the future—­for even while he held her the tide of being receded from its violence and they drew apart.

“If you had only waited I should have come to you at once,” he said, looking at her in a rapture which, though he himself was ignorant of it, struggled against a disappointment because she had shown herself to be closer to his own level than he had believed.

Drawing slightly away Laura stood shaking the tear drops from her lashes, while she regarded him with her radiant smile.  The misty brightness of her eyes showed to him in an almost unreal loveliness.

“I didn’t care—­nothing mattered to me,” she answered, “it made no difference what the world said—­nor whether I lived or died.”

Though the flattery of her coming moved him strongly, he found himself wishing while she spoke that she had not proved herself to be so ardently regardless of conventions—­that she had appeared, for once, less natural and more worldly-wise.

“Well, I’ll take you home now,” he said, smiling; then as he saw her gaze, passing curiously about the room, rest enquiringly upon the portrait of Madame Alta, he broke into a laugh which sounded, for all its pleasantness, a little strained.