He felt that youth would flow back again into him through the very tips of the pinching fingers. It wasn't much—just wanting to pinch a girl. Why did people make such a fuss about it?
He almost convinced himself that a full-blown rose like Emma Downes was far better than a skinny young thing. There was, too, of course, the Widow Barnes, who lived next door, still in her prime, and with a large fortune as well.
He took up the Congressional Record, and tried to lose himself in its mountains and valleys of bombast and boredom, but in a little while the book lay unnoticed on his heavy thighs and he was arguing with the other Moses Slade across the desk.
Suddenly, as if he had been roused from a deep sleep, he again found himself talking aloud. "Well," he thought, "something has got to be done about this."
Meanwhile Emma, walking briskly along beneath the maples of Park Avenue, found her mind all aglitter with interesting projects. She often said that she always felt on the crest of the wave, but to-day it was even better than that; she felt almost girlish. Something had happened to her, while she sat with Moses Slade, consoling him and accepting his consolations. He had noticed her. She marked the look in his eye and noticed the fingers that drummed impatiently the fine edge of his black serge mourning trousers. A man behaved like that only when a woman made him nervous and uneasy. And as she walked, there kept coming back to her in a series of pictures all the adventures
