“I’m on my way to Gerty’s—­she made me promise to come this afternoon,” she explained hurriedly, recalling with surprise that she had once found pleasure in the companionship of this ineffectual old man, with his placid face and his interminable discussions of books.  Feeling that her impatience might provoke her presently into an act of rudeness which she would afterward regret, she held out her hand while she signalled with the other to the approaching stage.

“Come to-morrow when I shall be at home,” she said; and though she remembered that she would probably spend the next afternoon with Kemper, this suggestion of an untruth seemed at the time to make no difference.  A moment later as she seated herself in the stage, she drew a long breath as if she had escaped from an oppressive atmosphere; and the rumbling of the vehicle was a relief to her because it silenced for awhile the noise of the opposing hosts of angels that warred unceasingly within her soul.

When she reached Gerty’s house in Sixty-ninth Street, she found not only her friend, whom she wished to see, but Perry Bridewell, whom she had tried particularly to avoid.  At first she felt almost angry with Gerty for not receiving her alone; but Gerty, suspecting as much from her chilled look, burst out at once into a comic protest: 

“I tried my best to get rid of Perry,” she said, “perhaps you may make the attempt with better success.”

“I’ve caught a beastly cold,” responded Perry, from the cushioned chair on the hearthrug, where he sat prodding the wood fire with a small brass poker, “it’s stuck in my chest, and the doctor tells me if I don’t look out I’ll be in for bronchitis or pneumonia or something or other of the kind.”

That he was genuinely frightened showed clearly by the unusual pallor on his handsome face; and with an appearance of giving emphasis to the danger in which he stood, he held out to Laura, as he spoke, a glass bottle filled with large brown lozenges.

“He remembers his last illness,” observed Gerty seriously, “which was an attack of croup at the age of two—­and he’s afraid they will bandage his chest as they did then.”

As he fell back languidly in his easy chair, resting his profile against the pale green cushions, Laura noticed, for the first time, a striking resemblance to Kemper in the full, almost brutal curve of his jaw and chin.  Ridiculous as her annoyance was, she felt that it mounted through her veins and showed in her reddening face.

“Since you are ill I’ll not take Gerty away from you to-day,” she said, rising hastily.

“Oh, don’t think of going on my account,” replied Perry, with a pale reflection of his amiable smile, “a little cheerful company is the very thing I need.”  Then, as a servant entered with a cup of tea and a plate of toast, he sat up, with his invalid air, to receive the tray upon his knees.  “I manage to take a little nourishment every hour or two,” he explained, as he crumbled his toast into bits.