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“There,” she said.

Larkin looked at the money and fell into a dark mood.

“What is this for?” he said presently.

“This is a loan,” said she, “from me to you; to be a tiding over of present difficulties, a reminder of much that has been pleasant in the past, and an earnest of future well-doing. Good luck to you, David.”

“I wish I could take it,” said the young man with a swift, slanting smile. “And at least I can crawl upon my stomach at your feet, and pull my forelock and heap dust upon my head…. God bless you!” And he returned the bills to her.

She smiled cheerfully but a little disdainfully.

“Very well, then,” said she. “I tear them up.”

“Oh!” cried Larkin. “Don’t make a mess of a beautiful incident.”

“Then take them.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, you know as well as I do that a man can’t borrow from a girl.”

“A man?” asked Miss Tennant simply, as if she doubted having heard correctly. Then, as he nodded, she turned a pair of eyes upon him that were at once kind, pained, and deeply thoughtful. And she began to speak in a quiet, repressed way upon the theme that he had suggested.

“A man,” she said; “what is a man? I can answer better by telling you what a man is not. A man is not a creature who loafs when he ought to be at work, who loses money that he hasn’t got, who drinks liquor that he cannot carry, and who upon such a noble groundwork feels justified in making love to a decent, self-respecting girl. That is not a man, David. A man would have no need of any help from me…. But you–you are a child that has escaped from its nurse, a bird that has fallen out of its nest before it has learned to fly, and you have done nothing but foolish things…. But somehow I have learned to suspect you of a better self, where, half-strangled with foolishnesses and extravagance, there lurks a certain contrition and a certain sweetness…. God knows I should like to see you a man….”

Larkin jumped to his feet, and all of him that showed was crimson, and he could have cried. But he felt no anger, and he kept his eyes upon hers.

“Thank you,” he said; “may I have them?”

He stuffed the bills into his pocket.

“I have no security,” he said. “But I will give you my word of honor neither to drink, neither to gamble, neither to loaf, nor to make love until I have paid you back interest and principal.”

“Where will you go? What will you do, David?”

“West–God knows. I will do something…. You see that I can’t say any thanks, don’t you? That I am almost choking, and that at any moment I might burst into sobs?”

They were silent, and she looked into his face unconsciously while he mastered his agitation. He sat down beside her presently, his elbows on his knees, his chin deep in his hands.

“Is God blessing you by any chance?” he said. “Do you feel anything of the kind? Because I am asking Him to–so very hard. I shall ask Him to a million times every day until I die…. Would it be possible for one who has deserved nothing, but who would like it for the strengthingest, beautifulest memory….”

“Quick, then,” said she, “some one’s coming.”

That very night screams pierced to every corner of the Tennants’ great house on the Whiskey Road. Those whom screams affect in one way sprang from bed; those whom they affect in another hid under the bedclothes. Mr. Tennant himself, a man of sharp temper and implacable courage, dashed from his room in a suit of blue-and-white pajamas, and overturned a Chippendale cabinet worth a thousand dollars; young Mr. Tennant barked both shins on a wood-box and dropped a loaded Colt revolver into the well of the stair; Mrs. Tennant was longer in appearing, having tarried to try the effect upon her nerves and color sense of three divers wrappers. The butler, an Admirable Crichton of a man, came, bearing a bucket of water in case the house was on fire. Mrs. Tennant’s French maid carried a case of her mistress’s jewels, and seemed determined to leave.