for William. It’s windy too. You must have been cold. What could you see? Nothing but our windows.”
“It was worth it. I heard you call me.”
“I called you?” She had called unconsciously.
“They were engaged this morning,” she told him, after a pause.
“You're glad?” he asked.
She bent her head. “Yes, yes,” she sighed. “But you don’t know how good he is—what he’s done for me—” Ralph made a sound of understanding. “You waited there last night too?” she asked.
“Yes. I can wait,” Denham replied.
The words seemed to fill the room with an emotion which Katharine connected with the sound of distant wheels, the footsteps hurrying along the pavement, the cries of sirens hooting down the river, the darkness and the wind. She saw the upright figure standing beneath the lamp-post.
“Waiting in the dark,” she said, glancing at the window, as if he saw what she was seeing. “Ah, but it’s different—” She broke off. “I’m not the person you think me. Until you realize that it’s impossible———”
Placing her elbows on the table, she slid her ruby ring up and down her finger abstractedly. She frowned at the rows of leather-bound books opposite her. Ralph looked keenly at her. Very pale, but sternly concentrated upon her meaning, beautiful but so little aware of herself as to seem remote from him also, there was something distant and abstract about her which exalted him and chilled him at the same time.
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I don’t know you. I’ve never known you.”
“Yet perhaps you know me better than any one else,’ she mused.
Some detached instinct made her aware that she was gazing at a book which belonged by rights to some other
