"I'm just going," said Harry. "I won't interrupt you. I had a hope that you wouldn't mind just shaking hands with an old friend. I should like it—awfully!" His smile now was pleading, propitiatory, yet with the lurking hint that there was sentimental interest in the situation; possibly, though he could not be convicted of this idea—it was too elusively suggested—that there was, after all, a dash of the amusing.
She paused long on her answer. At last she spoke quietly, in a friendly voice. "Yes, I'll shake hands with you, Harry. Because it's all over." She smiled faintly. "I'll shake hands with you if Andy will let me."
"If Andy—?"
"Yes; because my hand belongs to him now. I came here to tell him so this morning." She passed her left arm through Andy's and held out her right hand towards Harry. Her lips quivered as she looked up for a moment at Andy's face. He patted her hand gently, but his eyes were set on Harry Belfield.
The hand she offered Harry did not take. He stretched out his for his hat, and picked it up from the table in a shaking grip. The smile had gone from his lips; his eyes were heavy and resentful; he found no more eloquent, appropriate words.
"Oh, so that's it?" he said with a sullen sneer.
"It's none of it been of my seeking," Andy protested again. In this last moment of the fight the old feeling came strong upon him. He pleaded that he had been loyal to Harry, that he was no usurper; it had never been in his mind.
Harry stood in silence, fingering his hat. He cast a glance across at them—where they stood opposite to him, side by side, her arm in Andy's. Very fresh across his memory struck the look on her face—the trustful happiness which had followed on the tremulous joy evoked by his wonderful words. It was not his nor for him any more, that look. He hated that it should be Andy's. He gave the old impatient protesting shrug of his shoulders. What other comment was there to make? He was what he was—and these things happened! The Restless Master plays these disconcerting tricks on his devoted servants.
"Well, good-bye," he mumbled.
"Good-bye, Harry," said both, she in her clear soft voice, Andy in his weightier note, both with a grave pity which recognised, even as did his shrug of the shoulders, that there was no more to be said. It was just good-bye, just a parting of the ways, a severing of lives. Even good wishes would have seemed a mockery; from neither side were they offered.