Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/211

 what he desired was best. She seemed to herself to be living in two worlds—one, the rushing, practical planet on which she worked by day; the other, a peaceful, happy sphere wherein he dwelt, and whither his letters sometimes transported her.

For more than two years the letters and the red roses came with unbroken regularity. When at last a certain Friday evening arrived and they did not, Miss Bancroft stared at the top of her unvisited desk as if some perplexing phenomenon had taken place. She would have been scarcely less surprised at the failure of a physical law than by this lack of fidelity—she could not call it forgetfulness or indifference—on the part of the Shadow. The face of the world seemed changed to her as she went home that night, and the sudden realization of what this meant made her heart contract. Perhaps he was only testing her—proving to her at last what a factor in her life he had come to be. But she rejected this thought at once; she did not know his name or face, but she knew the man too well to