The next page was dated the next day, and, beneath, he read: 

“That was all I could write, yesterday.  I think I was too excited to write.  Something seemed to be singing in my breast.  I couldn’t think in sentences—­not even in words.  How queer it is that I had decided to keep a diary, and bound this book for it, and now the first thing I have written in it was that!  It will not be a diary.  It shall be your book.  I shall keep it sacred to You and write to You in it.  How strange it will be if the day ever comes when I shall show it to You!  If it should, you would not laugh at it, for of course the day couldn’t come unless you understood.  I cannot think it will ever come—­that day!  But maybe——­ No, I mustn’t let myself hope too much that it will, because if I got to hoping too much, and you didn’t like me, it would hurt too much.  People who expect nothing are never disappointed—­I must keep that in mind.  Yet every girl has a right to hope for her own man to come for her some time, hasn’t she?  It’s not easy to discipline the wanting to hope—­since yesterday!

“I think I must always have thought a great deal about you without knowing it.  We really know so little what we think:  our minds are going on all the time and we hardly notice them.  It is like a queer sort of factory—­the owner only looks in once in a while and most of the time hasn’t any idea what sort of goods his spindles are turning out.

“I saw You yesterday!  It seems to me the strangest thing in the world.  I’ve seen you by chance, probably two or three times a month nearly all my life, though you so seldom come here to call.  And this time wasn’t different from dozens of other times—­you were just standing on the corner by the Richfield, waiting for a car.  The only possible difference is that you had been out of town for several months—­Cora said so this morning—­and how ridiculous it seems now, didn’t even know it!  I hadn’t noticed it—­not with the top part of my mind, but perhaps the deep part that does the real thinking had noticed it and had mourned your absence and was so glad to see you again that it made the top part suddenly see the wonderful truth!”

Lindley set down the ledger to relight his cigar.  It struck him that Laura had been writing “very odd Stuff,” but interesting; and certainly it was not a story.  Vaguely he recalled Marie Bashkirtseff:  hadn’t she done something like this?  He resumed the reading: 

“You turned and spoke to me in that lovely, cordial, absent-minded way of yours—­though I’d never thought (with the top part) what a lovely way it was; and for a moment I only noticed how nice you looked in a light gray suit, because I’d only seen you in black for so long, while you’d been in mourning for your brother.”

Richard, disturbed by an incredible idea, read these last words over and then dismissed the notion as nonsense.