They were both thinking of Kathryn. Monstrous as it might seem, Brace recalled her as she looked that day--pulling the shades of the automobile down! That ugly doubt had haunted him many times.
Helen was half sick with fear of what would occur when Brace saw Kathryn.
"I ought not keep you, son," she said weakly. "You ought to go to Kathryn. No filial duty toward me, dear! I'm a terribly self-sufficient woman."
"Bully! And that's why I want to have dinner with you alone. I've got used to the self-sufficient woman--I like her."
It was long after eight o'clock, that first evening, when Northrup left his mother's house.
So powerfully hypnotic is memory that as he walked along in the bland summer night he shivered and recalled the snowstorm that blotted him out after his last interview with Kathryn. With all earnestness he had prepared himself for this hour. He was ready to take up his life and live it well--only so could he justify what he had endured. His starved senses, too, rose to reinforce him. He craved the beauty, sweetness, and tenderness--though he was half afraid of them. They had so long been eliminated from his rugged existence that he wondered how he was again to take them as his common fare.
He paused before touching the bell at the Morris house. Again that hypnotic shiver ran over him; but to his touch on the bell there was immediate response.
"Will you wait, sir, in the reception-room?" The trim maid looked flurried. "I will tell Miss Kathryn at once."
Northrup sat down in the dim room, fragrant with flowers, and a sense of peace overcame his doubts.
Now the Morris house was curiously constructed. The main stairway and a stairway leading to a side entrance converged at the second landing, thus making it possible for any one to leave the house more privately, should he so desire, than by the more formal way.
After leaving Northrup in the reception-room, the maid was stopped by Miss Anna Morris somewhere in the hall. A hurried whispered conversation ensued and made possible what dramatically followed.
A door above opened--the library door--and it seemed to set free Kathryn's nervous, metallic laugh and Sandy Arnold's hard, indignant words:
"What's the hurry? I guess I understand." Almost it seemed as if the girl were pushing the man before her. "I was good enough to pass the time with; pay for your fun while you weighed the chances."