"Not if it's given you for just that purpose," he answered then. "No, Reed, hear me out. It never has been your way to dodge responsibilities; in the end, you're sure to buck up against this one, so you may as well take it now as ever. This thing appears to be your present asset. Properly managed, it can bring you no end of influence. Your friends, who really know you, will watch you hanging on to yourself like grim death; and, in time, they'll come to where they'll trust your grip to pull them out of danger, too, when they get to funking. It's an almighty hard job you've got ahead of you, and an endless one; still, knowing you, I know you will put it through and come out of it with your colours flying. Meanwhile," the clear eyes came back to focus; "hang on to Brenton."
"If I can."
"As long as you can, I mean. The time may come when, like myself, you'll have to let him go. In the mean time, though, he is worth the holding."
"Brenton is pure gold," Reed said quietly. "I have known him for many years."
But his companion shook his head.
"Gold, if you will; but not the purest. There is a dash of alloy we may as well admit, at the start. Else, it will only muddle things, later on. Brenton is good stuff, but a little weak. There's something in him that always will make him stumble and fall down just short of his ideals."
"Naturally, being human," Opdyke assented rather dryly. "For that matter, Whittenden, which one of us does not?"
But Whittenden made no answer. His hands clasped now at the back of his head, his eyes were resting thoughtfully upon the bright, brave face before him, a thinner face than it had been used to be, more hollow about the temples where the wavy hair clung closely; upon the swaddled figure which, only a year before, had tramped the Colorado mountains, lording it over many men. And now, to the burden of his own that Reed was bearing, he had added the responsibility of watching over Brenton, of guarding Brenton's weakness with his own great strength. Was it just and right to thrust this second burden on to Opdyke? However, self-forgetfulness comes best by focussing all one's energy upon the victim next in line; and Reed Opdyke, just at the present crisis, needed nothing else one half so much as self-forgetfulness. Nevertheless, the pity of it all, the seeming heartlessness, surged in on Whittenden. It would have been far easier for him to have tried to lighten Opdyke's burden than to increase its heaviness. But ease was not the main thing, after all.
Suddenly he flung himself forward in his chair, and put his two hands down upon the straight, lean shoulders underneath the rug.
"Reed," he said, with an abruptness he did not often show to any one; "if one man ever loved another, it's I with you. For God's sake, then, don't let the time ever come between us when I must stop being of some little use to you, as I've just had to do in the case of Brenton."