Late that evening Mr. Warner, after dining at the Main Street restaurant, walked wearily up the two flights of stairs that led to his office. In his hand were two evening newspapers, and on the front page of each was a three-column picture of Mr. Warner himself. He had not read the accompanying articles, but their tenor may easily be guessed.
As he ate his dinner he had marveled somewhat at the pictures. To his certain knowledge there was not a photograph of himself anywhere in the world except the one he had given to his wife some fifteen years before, and he had supposed it had long since been destroyed. Yet here it was, staring him out of countenance from the columns of a newspaper!
He wondered vaguely how they had managed to get hold of it. He remembered now that when he returned from a long walk late that afternoon the man in the office next door had told him that some reporters had been hanging around since one o’clock.
He sat down at his desk, turned on the light — it was nearly eight o’clock — and opened one of the papers. So that was how he had looked fifteen years ago! Not so bad — really, not so bad. Silly mustache, though — kind of funny-looking. Had time improved it any? He got up and looked in the mirror over the mantel. As he turned again to the desk he was startled by hearing the telephone bell.
He took up the receiver.
“Hello.”
“Hello. Is this Mr. Warner?”
He recognized the voice at once. “Yes. What is it, Higgins?”
A pause followed, during which a mumbling of voices came over the wire. Then Higgins:
“Mrs. Warner wants to know if you’re coming home to dinner.”
“I’m not coming—” began Mr. Warner impulsively, then he stopped short. He reflected that such a message should not be given to a servant. But why not? The whole town would be talking of it in a day or two. He turned to the transmitter and spoke distinctly:
“Tell Mrs. Warner I’m not coming home at all.”
Then he hung up.
He opened a paper, sat down and tried to read. But the print was a vacant blur to his eyes, though he tried hard for five minutes.
“What the devil!” he muttered angrily, aloud, “am I losing my eyesight? Am I a baby?”
He threw the paper on the floor and picked up a law book, but with no better success. Somehow the page bore a distinct resemblance to a tangled mass of brown hair.
“If I’m going to do this I may as well do it like a man,” he growled; and to show that he meant what he said he got up and began to pace up and down the room. This for half an hour; then he crossed to the window and stood looking out on dimly lighted Main Street, two stories below.
In the show windows of the Thayer Dry Goods Company, directly opposite, wax dummies stood simpering at the passersby. Half a block down were the red and blue lights of Rowley’s drugstore; a block in the other direction was the arc over the entrance of the restaurant of which he had become a patron two days before. The street itself was nearly deserted; perhaps a dozen pedestrians were in sight, and now and then a carriage or buggy came along.
The whirr of an automobile sounded from the north, and soon the car itself appeared around the corner of Washington Avenue. It crossed, and came up the west side of Main Street; slowed down, and stopped in front of 417, directly beneath the window.
Mr. Warner felt something catch in his throat. “It can’t be,” he muttered. But he knew it was, and hence felt no additional surprise when he saw a familiar figure leap from the tonneau and start for the entrance. But he felt something else. What was it? What was the matter with him? He only knew that he seemed suddenly to have been paralyzed, that he could not move a muscle to save his life. He remained staring stupidly out of the window, feeling as though he were about to be shot in the back.
A moment passed that seemed an hour, and then he heard the door open and close and a voice sounded behind him:
“Timmie.”
He turned slowly, as on a pivot. Lora, with flushed face and strange eyes, stood with her back to the closed door.
“Good evening, my dear,” said Mr. Warner. Then he wanted to bite his tongue off. Next he tried, “Won’t you be seated?” and felt more foolish than before. So he kept still.
“I’ve come,” said Lora, advancing a step, “to take you home.”
The lawyer found control of his tongue. “I’m not going home,” he declared calmly.
“Yes, you are. You have to.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you.”
“Is my own inclination to be disregarded?”
“Oh!” She caught her breath. “Is that it? Don’t you want to live with me anymore?”
“Yes, that’s it. That is— See here, Lora. Sit down. Let’s talk it over.”
She crossed to the chair he placed for her with a curious hesitancy in her step he had never seen before, and waited for him to speak.
“You say you want me,” he began abruptly. “You don’t mean that. You mean you are used to me — miss me, like you would Higgins. Just now you asked me if I didn’t want to live with you. That’s just it. I’ve been living with you for fifteen years. If I were to say what I wanted, I’d say that I want you to live with me for a while.”
“It’s the same thing—” began Lora, but he interrupted her:
“Pardon me.” He caught her eye and held it. “Do you know what I meant?”
Her gaze fell. “Yes,” she admitted.
“Then don’t pretend. You see, the trouble is you shouldn’t ever have married me. Perhaps you shouldn’t have married anyone. But don’t think I’m saying you’re a great lawyer. I used to think that, but I don’t anymore. Any smart lawyer, even, would have seen that sixty-day clause in that franchise the first time he glanced at it. And you didn’t see it at all.”
He stopped; his wife raised a flushed face.
“You are pretty hard on me, Timmie.”
At that, moved by a swift, uncontrollable impulse, he sprang to his feet and shouted:
“Don’t call me Timmie!”
Lora looked amazed. “Why not?”
“Because it’s a fool name. ‘Timmie!’ No woman could think anything of a man with a name like that. That’s why I don’t blame you. It’s the most idiotic name I ever heard.”
“It’s your name. That’s why I like it.”
“And that’s why I hate it.” Mr. Warner actually glared. “I should never have let you call me Timmie. I shouldn’t have let you do lots of things — at the beginning, I mean — but I was so crazy about you I couldn’t help it. I thought—”
She interrupted him:
“You were crazy about me?”
“Of course.”
“Do you mean you were in love with me?”
“I do.”
“It’s funny you never said anything about it.”
“Good Heavens!” Again the little man glared. “It was you who wouldn’t let me say anything! Simple enough, since you weren’t in love with me.”
“That isn’t true.”
“It is.”
“I say it isn’t.”
Mr. Warner advanced a step. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded. “Were you in love with me?”
Silence. He advanced another step, and repeated his question. “Were you in love with me?”
Lora nodded her head slowly up and down, and there came to Mr. Warner’s ears a barely audible: “Yes.”
That, entirely unexpected, brought him to a halt. He didn’t know what to say, and ended by dropping back into his chair and muttering “Too bad it ended so soon.”