“Long distance. Green Hills, New York, Mrs. Cornelius Morrison,” the operator in the outer office announced.

It was as if a current of electricity passed through Stephen. Though he didn’t move a hand or foot, Miss Mills observed his sudden alertness, the sudden tightening of the muscles around his jaw and cheek-bones. Discreetly she turned away.

“Connect me,” she heard him say. Then he turned to her. His eyes were like spots of phosphorescence. “We’ll finish that later. I’ll call you.” He nodded toward the outer office. She rose. “Please close the door.”

Alone, Stephen leaned forward, placed the telephone on the solid foundation of his desk, drew his chair close to it, jerked himself to the edge of his chair, crouched over the telephone eagerly, cupping his hand over the transmitter.

Helen’s voice sounded clear and sweet, as if she were in the very room beside him. He hadn’t heard her voice for two years.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Helen.”

“Is it you, Stephen?”

“It’s I. Yes. What is it? Are you all right?”

He caught her little laugh.

“Oh, yes, yes. I’m all right. I called you up to find out if you had an engagement for tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, have you an engagement?”

“No. Of course I haven’t. But—”

“Then could you come down this evening?”

“Helen, what has happened?”

“Nothing awful. Could you?”

“Yes. I could. But—”

“About eight o’clock?”

“Yes, eight o’clock. All right. But, Helen, please—”

“Eight o’clock tonight, then. Good-bye.”

She had sent for him! Helen had sent for him to come to her! At one o’clock, at half-past one, at two, Stephen was still sitting in his big chair before his desk, looking far out over the roofs. Miss Mills was still sitting outside the door, waiting to finish the dictation.

2

“I’M SORRY TO have called you at your office, Stephen,” were Helen’s first words when she saw him that night, standing ten feet away from him, just inside the threshold of the big room. “I suppose you were having a consultation or doing something important,” she tried to make her voice sound light and careless, “but I wanted to get you, right straight off, so that you wouldn’t fall down an elevator-shaft, or get killed in an explosion or something,” she laughed tremulously, “the way they do in novels, sometimes, before I had a chance to tell you that after all our years of waiting, that—that —after—Oh, Stephen—”

3

STELLA ARRIVED AT the apartment on Commonwealth Avenue at eleven o’clock that night. She telephoned to Laurel from the Back Bay station that she would be out in half an hour, and when she puffed up the last flight of stairs—it grew hotter and hotter as she approached the roof—Laurel, in her thin sleeveless nightgown, with her hair pulled tightly back and braided, was in the hall to meet her.