"Don," he said, paying no attention to my motion toward a chair, "what is the trouble between you and Statia? I can't believe you have done anything intentionally to set her so against you, and yet—"
"Sit down and don't get excited," I responded quickly, deciding to dispose of the matter in the calmest way. "Have you had your coffee? If not, let me ring for another pot. You don't seem well this morning, old boy."
"I'm not well," he said, in a dispirited tone, taking the chair at last. "But you can make me so with one word. Last night Statia came to me with her eyes full of tears. 'Tom,' she said, 'if you love me I want you to promise never to see Donald Camran again.' 'Never to see Don!' I exclaimed, unable to believe my ears. 'Yes,' said she, 'I've told him I don't wish him to call here and I want you to write him to the same effect.' You may imagine what a staggerer that was. There's not another fellow in the world of whom I wouldn't rather she'd have said that. I tried to get her to give some reason—any reason, or the hint of one—but it was no use. She only cried the harder, and when at last I went to bed, I tell you I didn't get much sleep. Tell me, Don, what it means."
"It seems you didn't make your sister the promise," I replied. "And you were quite right. The whim of a girl should not come between stanch friends like us."
That did not satisfy him, however. He murmured that we had been good friends—that he couldn't bear to think we should ever be otherwise—but he wanted to understand what his sister meant. As she wouldn't tell him, he had come to ask that favor of me.
"Supposing I don't care to say anything about it," I replied, quietly. "If Statia is set on keeping the wonderful secret, how can you expect me to divulge it?"
He struggled a moment with this idea, for Tom was always slow in grasping abstruse problems.
"You'll have to help me clear up the mystery," he said, at last. "I've only got one sister, Don, and she and I are all there are to the family now. If it comes to losing my sister or my best friend, I must stand by Statia."
I felt a chill going over my flesh as he spoke. I liked Tom, and I liked Statia—yes, in spite of the silly meeting of the day before. It was better to back down a little than to lose such friends.
"What a serious matter you make of it!" I exclaimed. "You ask me what is the trouble between Statia and me. Well, the fact is, I hardly know. She met me in Broadway yesterday and wanted to make me promise something that I could not see—to be candid—was any affair of hers. When I declined, as courteously as I knew how, she flew at me with the statement that I need never call at her house again. I had no choice in the matter, Tom, not the least. I wouldn't do anything to justify her in talking to me in that way, if I could help it, but one must retain a few of his personal rights, you know."