"How have you spent the day?" she asked.
"I"m thinking of to-morrow."
"And will to-morrow be so important?"
"Yes, the most important day of my life."
"Oh, tell me about it."
"I will to-morrow."
"Well, I suppose I shall have to wait, but I wish you would tell me just a little bit of it."
"To tell a little would be to tell all. The story is not yet complete."
"Oh, is it a story? And is it one that you are writing?"
"No, one that I am living. It is a strange tale."
"I know it must be interesting, but what has to-morrow to do with it?"
"It will be completed then."
"I don"t understand you; I never did. I"ve often thought you the saddest man I have ever seen, and I"ve wondered why. You ought not to be sad--fortune is surely a friend of yours. You live in a grand house, and your father is a power in this great community. All the advantages of this life are within your reach; and if you can find cause to be sad, what must be the condition of people who have to struggle in order to live!"
"The summing-up of what you say means that I ought to be thankful."
"Yes, you were stolen, it is true, but you were restored, and therefore, by contrast and out of grat.i.tude, you should be happier than if you had never been taken away."
"All that is true so far as it _is_ true," he replied. "And let me say that I"m not so sad as you suppose. Do you care if I smoke here?"
"Not at all."
He lighted a cigar and sat smoking in silence. A boy shouted in the hall, a dog barked, and a cat sprang up from a doze under a table, looked toward the door, gave himself a humping stretch, and then lay down again.
Whenever DeGolyer looked at the girl, a new expression, the rosy tinge of a strange confusion, flew to her countenance. His talk evoked a self-possessed reply, but over his silence an embarra.s.sment was brooding. She seemed to be in fear of something that sweetly she expected.
"I may not be at the office to-morrow until evening, but will you wait for me?"
"Yes."
"And when I come, I"ll be myself."
"Be yourself? Who are you now?"
"Another man."
"Oh, then I shall be glad to see you."
"I don"t know as to that. You may have strong objections to my real self."
"You are _so_ mysterious."
"To-day, yes; to-morrow, no."
He was leaning back, blowing rings of smoke, and was looking up at them.
"Perhaps I shouldn"t say it," she said, "but during the last three months you have appeared stranger than ever."
"Yes," he drawlingly replied, "for during the last three months it was natural that I should be stranger than ever."
"I do wish I knew what you mean."
"And when you have been told you may wish you had never known."
"Is it so bad as that?"
"Worse."
"Worse than what?"
"Than anything you imagine."
"Oh, you are simply trying to tease me, Mr. Witherspoon."
"Do you think so? Then we"ll say no more about it."
"Oh, but that"s worse than ever. Well, I don"t care; I can wait."
They talked on subjects in which neither of them was interested, but sympathy was in their voices. Gradually--yes, now it seemed for months--they had been floating toward that fern-covered island in the river of life where a thoughtless word comes back with an echo of love; where the tongue may be silly, but where the eye holds a redeemed soul, returned from G.o.d to gaze upon the only remembered rapture of this earth.
She went with him to the head of the stairway. "Don"t leave the office before I come," he called, looking back at her.
"You know I won"t," she answered.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
TOLD HIM A STORY.
At the appointed time, the next day, George Witherspoon was waiting in his library. DeGolyer came in a cab, and when he got out, he told the driver to wait.
"Where is your friend?" Witherspoon asked as DeGolyer entered the room.
"He"ll be here within a few minutes."