CHAPTER XXIV
THE OPEN DOOR
NO one would have guessed who saw a girl in a dark-blue, tailored suit enter the tea-room that evening about seven o'clock, and greet a man, with a brief and ordinary hand-shake, that there was a tremor of knees and hammering of heart underneath her quiet colors; and that the touch of the man's bare hand, even through her glove, sent something zigzagging down through her whole being, like a streak of lightning through a cloud. All she said was: "Hello, Bob. I've come, you see." And he quietly, "Yes, I see. You've come."
He dropped her hand. They looked straight into each other's eyes an instant.
"Anything the matter with anybody at home?" she questioned.
"Oh, no, nothing," he assured her. "Everybody's all right. Are you all right, Ruth?"
"Yes," she smiled. (How good it was to see him. His kind, kind eyes! He looked tired—a little. She remembered that suit. It was new last Spring. What dear, intimate knowledge she still possessed of him.) "Yes," she smiled, "I'm all right."
222
