She saw now that what had depressed her, overthrown her self-control, impelled her to reject the kindness of Miss Minster, had been the humanization, so to speak, of her ideal, Reuben Tracy. The bare thought of his marrying and giving in marriage--of his being in love with the rich girl--this it was that had so strangely disturbed her. Looking at it now, it was the most foolish thing in the world. What on earth had she to do with Reuben Tracy? There could never conceivably have entered her head even the most vagrant and transient notion that he--no, she would not put _that_ thought into form, even in her own mind. And were there two young people in all the world who had more claim to her good wishes than Reuben and Kate? She answered this heartily in the negative, and said to herself that she truly was glad that they loved each other. Yes, she was glad! She bit her lips, and insisted on repeating this to her own thoughts. But why, then, had the discovery of this so unnerved her? She answered the question only vaguely. It must have been because the idea of their happiness made the isolation of her own life so miserably clear; because she felt that they had forgotten her and her work in their new-found concern for each other. Yes, that would be the reason. She was all over that weak folly now. She had it in her power to help them, and dim, half-formed wishes that she might give life itself to their service flitted across her mind. She had spoken never a word to her father all this while, and had seemed to take no note either of direction or of what and whom she passed; but she stopped now in front of the doorway in Main Street which bore the law-sign of Reuben Tracy. “Wait for me here,” she said to Ben, and disappeared up the staircase. Jessica made her way with some difficulty up the second flight. Her head burned with the exertion, and there was a novel numbness in her limbs; but she gave this only a passing thought. The door of the office was locked. On the panel was tacked a white half-sheet of paper. It was not easy to decipher the inscription in the failing light, but she finally made it out to be: “_Called away until noon to-morrow (Friday)_.” The girl leaned against the door-sill for support. In the first moment or two it seemed to her that she was going to swoon. Then resolution came back to her, and with it a new store of strength, and she went down the stairs again slowly and in terrible doubt as to what should now be done. The memory suddenly came to her of the one other time she had been in this stairway, when she had stood in the darkness with her little boy, gathered up against the wall to allow the two Minster ladies to pass. Upon the heels of this chased the recollection--with such lack of sequence do our thoughts follow one another--of the singularly sweet smile her little boy had bestowed upon her, half an hour since, when she kissed him.