four days of desperate anxiety were over. During this time, as he sat either by his brother's bedside or in one of the rooms adjoining, or made hasty visits to his office, he thought of Viola and wondered if she was puzzled by his lengthened absence. He did not think that she would misunderstand it. Like many men, he took it for granted that her knowledge of his character and affairs had been as thorough as the knowledge his superior insight and experience had given him into all that pertained to her.
On the sixth day after his brother's summons Mortimer was pronounced out of danger. This was the first opportunity John had had of seeing Viola.
At four o'clock he alighted from the car that had carried him across town to the old quarter about South Park. As he passed through the dingy side streets holiday reigned in his heart. Life in the past seemed dun and dreary compared to what it had become under the influence of the still, almost rapt joy which now possessed him. An immense, deep tenderness seemed to well from his heart over all his being. His love for Viola seemed to have made him see and feel all that was love-worthy in others—in the children that ran across his path or played in chattering groups in the gutters, the women he met trudging home with baskets on their
