"Honest--not hesitate to send for me if you ever think I could be of any service to you? Will you promise?" A woman more experienced, more quick in a perception of surface indications, might have guessed a weightier matter than the young man's words implied. Lorry took them as they were, feeling only the heart behind them. "Yes, I'll promise," she said. "Then it's a pact between us. I'll know if you ever want me you'll call on me. And I'll come; I'll come, no matter where I am." The room was growing dim, dusk stealing out from its corners into the space near the long windows where they sat. Their figures, solid and dark in the larger solidity of the two armchairs, were motionless, and in the pause following his words, neither stirred or spoke. It was a silence without embarrassment or constraint, a moment of arrested external cognizances. Each felt the other as close, suddenly glimpsed intimate and real, a flash of finer vision that for an instant held them in subtle communion. Then it passed and they were saying good-by, moving together into the hall. Fong had not yet lighted the gas and it was very dim there; Mark had to grope for his hat on the stand. He touched her hand in farewell, hardly conscious of the physical contact, heard his own mechanical words and her reply. Then the door opened, shut and he was gone. Lorry went upstairs to her own room. Her being was permeated with an inner content, radiating like light from a center of peace. She closed her eyes to better feel the comfort of it, to rest upon its infinite assurance. She had no desire to know whence it rose, did not even ask herself if he loved her. From a state of dull distress she had suddenly come into a consciousness of perfect well-being, leaving behind her a past where she had been troubled and lonely. Their paths, wandering and uncertain, had met, converging on some higher level, where they stood together in a deep, enfolding security. She was still motionless in the gathering dusk when Chrystie entered the room beyond, filling it with silken rustlings and the tapping of high heels. Lorry did not know she was there till she came to the open door and looked in. "Oh, Lorry, is that you? What are you doing sitting like Patience in a rocking chair?" "I don't know--thinking, dreaming." Chrystie withdrew with mutterings; could be heard moving about. Suddenly she exclaimed, "It's a glorious afternoon," and then shut a drawer with a bang. Presently two short, sharp rings sounded from the hall below and following them her voice rose high and animated: "That's the mail. I'll go and see if there's anything exciting." Lorry heard her turbulent descent of the stairs and came back to a realization of her environment. In a few minutes Chrystie was in her room again, a little breathless from her race up the long flight. "There're only two letters," she called. "One for you and one for me."