oor into the hall. Then he stood at a safe distance from her, and
folded his arms in order to be able to keep his head-which shows how
strange the English language is.

"Elizabeth," he said gravely. "I've been a self-centered fool. I stayed
away because I've been in trouble. I'm still in trouble, for that
matter. But it hasn't anything to do with you. Not directly, anyhow."

"Don't you think it's possible that I know what it is?"

"You do know."

He was too absorbed to notice the new maturity in her face, the brooding
maternity born of a profound passion. To Elizabeth just then he was not
a man, her man, daily deciding matters of life and death, but a worried
boy, magnifying a trifle into importance.

"There is always gossip," she said, "and the only thing one can do is to
forget it at once. You ought to be too big for that sort of thing."

"But--suppose it is true?"

"What difference would it make?"

He made a quick movement toward her.

"There may be more than that. I don't know, Elizabeth," he said, his
eyes on hers. "I have always thought--I can't go to David now."

He was moved to go on. To tell her of his lost youth, of that strange
trick by which his mind had shut off those hidden years. But he could
not. He had a perfectly human fear of being abnormal in her eyes,
precisely but greatly magnified the same instinct which had made him
inspect his new tie in daylight for fear it was too brilliant. But
greater than that was his new fear that something neither happy nor
right lay behind him under lock and key in his memory.

"I want you to know this, Dick," she said. "That nothing, no gossip or
anything, can make any difference to me. And I've been terribly hurt.
We've been such friends. You--I've been lying awake at night, worrying."

That went to his heart first, and then to his head. This might be all,
all he was ever to have. This hour, and this precious and tender child,
so brave in her declaration, so simple and direct; all his world in that
imitation mahogany chair.

"You're all I've got," he said. "The one real thing in a world that's
going to smash. I think I love you more than God."

The same mood, of accepting what he had without question and of refusing
to look ahead, actuated him for the next few days. He was incredibly
happy.

He went about his work with his customary care and thoroughness, for
long practice had made it possible for him to go on as though nothing
had happened, to listen