“I’ll take you home,” she said, as he reached her, and there seemed to her something delightful and romantic in this accidental meeting.

“What luck!” The severity melted from his features while he took his place beside her.  “I was thinking only this morning that I owe a sacrifice to the god of chance.  May I tell the man to drop me at my rooms?”

She nodded, watching him contentedly while he spoke to the chauffeur and then turned to look at her with his level impersonal gaze.  Happiness had brought the youth back to her face.  Her hair swept like burnished wings under her small close hat, and the eyes that she raised to his were dark and splendid.  There was about her always in moments of happiness the look of a beauty too bright to last or to grow old; and now, in this last romance of her life, she appeared to be drenched in autumn sunshine.

“One does want to make sacrifices,” she answered.  “That is the penalty of joy.  One can scarcely believe in it before it goes.”

“Well, I believe in this.  You are very lovely.  Where have you been?”

“To the Governor’s.  I wanted to speak to Patty.  I feel sorry for Patty to-day.  I feel sorry for almost every one,” she added, with an enchanting smile, “except myself.”

“And me.  Surely you don’t waste your pity on me?  But what of Miss Vetch?  Hasn’t she her own particular happiness?”

“I wonder—­” Then, without finishing her sentence, she left the subject of Patty because she surmised from Benham’s tone that he would not be sympathetic.  “I had a long talk with the Governor.  John, what do you think will come of the strike?”

He answered her question with another.  “What did he tell you?”

“Nothing except that the men have a right to strike if they wish to.”

He laughed.  “Well, that’s safe enough.  But don’t talk of Vetch.  I dislike him so heartily that I have a sneaking feeling I may be unjust to him.”

It was so like him, that fine impersonal sense of fairness, that her eyes warmed with admiration.  “That is splendid,” she responded.  “It is just the kind of thing that Vetch could never feel.”  Suddenly she knew that she was ashamed of having believed in Vetch when she contrasted him with John Benham.  How could she have imagined for an instant that the Governor could stand a comparison like this?

He pressed her hand as the car stopped before the apartment house where he lived.  “In a few hours I shall see you again,” he said; and his voice, in its eagerness, reminded her of the voice of Kent Page when he had made love to her in her girlhood.  Ah, she had learned wisdom since then!  Just so much and no more, that was the secret of happiness.  Give with the mind and the heart; but keep always one inviolable sanctity of the spirit—­of the buried self beneath the self.