Her husband explained with a little heat: “People
can have a sickness that affects their mind,
can’t they? Their mind can get some affected
without bein’ lost, can’t it?”
“Then you mean the poor man’s mind does
seem affected?”
“Why, no; I’d scarcely go as far as that,”
Lohr said, inconsistently, and declined to be more
definite.
Adams devoted the latter part of that evening to the
composition of his letter—a disquieting
task not completed when, at eleven o’clock,
he heard his daughter coming up the stairs. She
was singing to herself in a low, sweet voice, and
Adams paused to listen incredulously, with his pen
lifted and his mouth open, as if he heard the strangest
sound in the world. Then he set down the pen
upon a blotter, went to his door, and opened it, looking
out at her as she came.
“Well, dearie, you seem to be feeling pretty
good,” he said. “What you been doing?”
“Just sitting out on the front steps, papa.”
“All alone, I suppose.”
“No. Mr. Russell called.”
“Oh, he did?” Adams pretended to be surprised.
“What all could you and he find to talk about
till this hour o’ the night?”
She laughed gaily. “You don’t know
me, papa!”
“How’s that?”
“You’ve never found out that I always
do all the talking.”
“Didn’t you let him get a word in all
evening?”
“Oh, yes; every now and then.”
Adams took her hand and petted it. “Well,
what did he say?”
Alice gave him a radiant look and kissed him.
“Not what you think!” she laughed; then
slapped his cheek with saucy affection, pirouetted
across the narrow hall and into her own room, and
curtsied to him as she closed her door.
Adams went back to his writing with a lighter heart;
for since Alice was born she had been to him the apple
of his eye, his own phrase in thinking of her; and
what he was doing now was for her.
He smiled as he picked up his pen to begin a new draft
of the painful letter; but presently he looked puzzled.
After all, she could be happy just as things were,
it seemed. Then why had he taken what his wife
called “this new step,” which he had so
long resisted?
He could only sigh and wonder. “Life works
out pretty peculiarly,” he thought; for he couldn’t
go back now, though the reason he couldn’t was
not clearly apparent. He had to go ahead.
He was out in his taxicab again the next morning,
and by noon he had secured what he wanted.
It was curiously significant that he worked so quickly.
All the years during which his wife had pressed him
toward his present shift he had sworn to himself,
as well as to her, that he would never yield; and
yet when he did yield he had no plans to make, because
he found them already prepared and worked out in detail
in his mind; as if he had long contemplated the “step”
he believed himself incapable of taking.
