"No, Katharine, I don't," he replied, replacing his manuscript in the
drawer. "It does me good to think of you."
So quiet an answer, followed as it was by no expression of love, but
merely by the statement that if she must go he would take her to the
Strand, and would, if she could wait a moment, change his dressing-
gown for a coat, moved her to the warmest feeling of affection for him
that she had yet experienced. While he changed in the next room, she
stood by the bookcase, taking down books and opening them, but reading
nothing on their pages.
She felt certain that she would marry Rodney. How could one avoid it?
How could one find fault with it? Here she sighed, and, putting the
thought of marriage away, fell into a dream state, in which she became
another person, and the whole world seemed changed. Being a frequent
visitor to that world, she could find her way there unhesitatingly. If
she had tried to analyze her impressions, she would have said that
there dwelt the realities of the appearances which figure in our
world; so direct, powerful, and unimpeded were her sensations there,
compared with those called forth in actual life.
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