FullReads

“Is it,” thought he, “because he gave his word not to make love until he had made good–or is it because he really doesn’t give a damn about poor little Vi? If it’s the first reason, why he’s absolved from that promise, because he has made good, and every day he’s making better. But if it’s the second reason, why then this world is a wicked, dreary place. Poor little Vi–poor little Vi … only two things in the whole universe that she can’t get–the moon, and David–the moon, and David—-“

About noon the next day, David requested speech with his chief.

“Well?” said Uriah. The old man looked worn and feeble. He had had a sorrowful night.

“I haven’t had a vacation in a year,” said David. “Will you give me three weeks, sir?”

“Want to go back East and pay off your obligations?”

David nodded.

“I have the money and interest in hand,” said he.

Mr. Grey smiled.

“I suppose you’ll come back smoking like a chimney, drinking like a fish, betting like a book-maker, and keeping a whole chorus in picture-hats.”

“I think I’ll not even smoke,” said David. “About a month ago the last traces of hankering left me, and I feel like a free man at last.”

“But you’ll be making love right and left,” said Mr. Grey cheerfully, but with a shrewd eye upon the young man’s expression of face.

David looked grave and troubled. He appeared to be turning over difficult matters in his mind. Then he smiled gayly.

“At least I shall be free to make love if I want to.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Grey. “People don’t make love because they want to. They do it because they have to.”

Again David looked troubled, and a little sad, perhaps.

“True,” said he. And he walked meditatively back to his own desk, took up a pen, meditated for a long time, and then wrote:

Best friend that any man ever had in the world! I shall be in Aiken on the twenty-fifth, bringing with me that which I owe, and can pay, and deeply conscious of that deeper debt that I owe, but never can hope to pay. But I will do what I can. I will not now take back the promises I gave, unless you wish; I will not do anything that you do not wish. And if all the service and devotion that is in me for the rest of time seem worth having to you, they are yours. But you know that.

DAVID.

This, looking white, tired, and austere, he reread, folded, enveloped, stamped, sealed, and addressed to Miss Tennant.

Neither the hand which Miss Tennant laid on his, nor the cigarette which she lighted for him, completely mollified Mr. Billy McAllen. He was no longer young enough to dance with pleasure to a maiden’s whims. The experience of dancing from New York to Newport and back, and over the deep ocean and back, and up and down Europe and back with the late Mrs. McAllen–now Mrs. Jimmie Greenleaf–had sufficed. He would walk to the altar any day with Miss Tennant, but he would not dance.

“You have so many secrets with yourself,” he complained, “and I’m so very reasonable.”

“True, Billy,” said Miss Tennant. “But if I put up with your secrets, you should put up with mine.”

“I have none,” said he, “unless you are rudely referring to the fact that I gave my wife such grounds for divorce as every gentleman must be prepared to give to a lady who has tired of him. I might have contracted a pleasant liaison; but I didn’t. I merely drove up and down Piccadilly with a notorious woman until the courts were sufficiently scandalized. You know that.”

“But is it nothing,” she said, “to have me feel this way toward you?” And she leaned and rested her lovely cheek against his.

“At least, Dolly,” said he, more gently, “announce our engagement, and marry me inside of six months. I’ve been patient for eighteen. It would have been easy if you had given a good reason….”