“No, I can’t.”
“Renny, make her happy. She loves you with all her heart.”
“Would that be fair to her, Duke? Let me know my own mind first.”
“Ah, I am afraid you don’t care to know it; that you are playing with a pleasurable emotion. Take care—oh, take care, I tell you! The halt and maimed see further in the dark than the vigorous. Renny, there is trouble ahead. I know more of women than you do, perhaps, because, cut off from manly exercises, I can gauge their temptations and their weaknesses. I see a way of striking at you that you don’t dream of. Be great with resolve! Save my little book-sewer, I implore you.”
“Duke,” I said, with extreme emotion, for I fancied I could catch the shine of most unaccustomed tears in his dark eyes, “my good, dear fellow, what is the meaning of this? I would do anything to make you or Dolly happy; but where is the sense of half-measures? If you feel like this, why don’t you—I say it with all love—why don’t——”
He struggled to his feet, and with a wild, pathetic action drew emptiness about him with enfolding arms.
“I tell you,” he cried, in a broken voice, “that I would give my life to stand in your shoes, valuing the evil as nothing to the sweet.”
He dropped his head on his breast and I had no word to say. My willful blindness seemed to me at that moment as vile a thing as any in my life.
Suddenly he stood erect once more.
“Renny,” he said, with a faint smile, “for all your good friendship you don’t know me yet, I see. I’m too stiff-jointed to kneel.”