ven looking
across from our table, by the extreme nervous tension of her face. She
looked a neurasthenic; but that was not all; surely her nerves were
almost from under control as she sat there, her rich cloak dropped back
over her chair, the corners caught up again and fumbled in a twisting,
restless hold.

Now, when Worth stood before her appealing eyes, she reached up and
clutched his hand in both of hers, staring at him through quick tears,
saying something in a low, choking tone, something that I couldn't for
the life of me make into the greeting you give even a beloved youngster
you haven't seen for several years.

At the moment, I was myself being presented to the lady's husband, a
typical top-grade, small town medical man, with a fine bedside manner.
His nice, smooth white hands, with which I had watched him feeling the
pulse of his supper as though it had been a wealthy patient, released
mine; those cold eyes of his, that hid a lot of meaning under heavy
lids, came around on his wife. His,

"Laura, control yourself. Where do you think you are?" was like a lash.

It worked perfectly. Of course she would be his patient as well as his
wife. Yet I hated the man for it. To me it seemed like the cut of the
whip that punishes a sensitive, over excited Irish setter for a fault in
the hunting field. Mrs. Bowman quivered, pulled herself together and sat
down, but her gaze followed the boy.

She sat there stilled, but not quieted, under her husband's eye, and
watched Worth's meeting with the other man, whom I heard the boy call
Jim Edwards, and with whom he shook hands, but who met him, as Mrs.
Bowman had, as though there had been something recent between them; not
like people bridging a long gap of absence.

And this man, tall, thin, the power in his features contradicted by a
pair of soft dark eyes, deep-set, looking out at you with an expression
of bafflement, defeat--why did he face Worth with the stare of one
drenched, drowned in woe? It wasn't his wedding. He hadn't done Worth
any dirt in the matter.

And I was wedged in beside the beautiful dark girl, without having been
presented to her, without even having had the luck to hear what name
Worth used when he spoke to her. At last the flurry of our coming
settled down (though I still felt that we were stuck like a sliver into
the wedding party, that the whole thing ached from us) and Dr. Bowman
proposed the health of the happy couple, his bedside manner going