STELLA determined to make one more direct appeal to John Graham before resorting to indirect subterfuges for the purpose of meeting him.
She wrote half a dozen letters and tore them up. They lacked simplicity. The only effective appeal to this man must disarm all suspicion of subtlety. It must be natural, sincere and ring true. She found it a very difficult thing to express in cold written words one thing and mean another, and yet preserve the ring of truth and sincerity. At last she wrote a letter which seemed to be effective. She read it over and over, and added to the paper the faintest touch of delicate perfume, an old extract of sweet pinks, which she had used the night of their meeting. She laid it aside and waited an hour to carefully read it again. It was too important to risk a failure. Should he once suspect an ulterior purpose of any kind her plan must end in utter defeat. She spent an hour walking through the lawn, returned and read again the letter.
It seemed cold, stiff and artificial, and the touch of perfume obvious and vulgar. It lacked the magnetism of personality. She had no power to convey this as yet in words. She must see him face to face, hold him with the deep charm of her great eyes, and enfold him with the spell of her beauty.
“I must see him,” she cried—“or I’ll fail! If I can only touch his hand, stand by his side and look into his face, I’ll win.”
She walked to the window and stood thoughtful a moment. Suddenly her eyes lighted.
“I’ll do it! I’ll go to his dingy office and ask for his services as any other client. Why not? His sign is a standing invitation to the world. How stupid of me to be wasting paper!”
In five minutes she was on the way. Her dress was a simple girlish pattern of green dimity. A quaint bonnet of the period, flaring wide and high in front, its tiny circular crown tilted, with ribbon tied under her dainty chin, made a picture no artist could pass without a sigh.
She stopped before the wrought-iron weatherbeaten sign which hung from the doorway leading up a flight of stairs to the young lawyer’s office. Her heart fluttered with a moment of uncertainty as she felt herself standing on the threshold of the most daring step of her life. The plain gold letters of the sign held her with a strange fascination:=
````JOHN GRAHAM
```ATTORNEY AND COUNSELLOR
`````AT LAW=
She had never noticed this piece of plain black iron before, and yet somehow it seemed a part of the record of her deep inner life, and, as it moved, gently stirred by the soft breezes of a Southern day, creaking on the rod from which it hung, the sound thrilled her with a feeling of strange terror. She turned quickly away, her heart pounding with excitement, and began to retrace her steps.
She walked a block, stopped, flushed red, frowned and turned on her heels.
“I’ll not be a silly coward. I’ll not look back again until it’s done.”
This time she walked firmly up the stairs and gently knocked on his door.
John had just finished his business with Nickaroshinski.
The old Jew had accepted his personal note unsecured by any endorsement for the money needed to send Billy north to college. He sat in brooding silence, idly holding between his fingers the paper on which he had recorded the memorandum of his new indebtedness. He was not worrying over his ability to pay—of that he felt sure. Butler had answered his suit by removing the order of his disbarment on Larkin’s advice the day of the County Convention. His practice gave promise of a comfortable living.
It was Billy’s flight, which was arranged for the following day, that had focussed his thoughts on the miserable tragedy which had raised still another barrier between him and his possible approach to Stella.
The knock on his door had not interrupted the train of his thought. He was looking through his window into the deep blue of the infinite skies, and linking in fancy the mysteri............