Powell’s eye brightened and his face glowed a deeper red; then the look died away as he said:
“Well, I made a mistake. I ought to have gone there.”
“Is it too late?”
Powell thought a moment, and Marley regretted having tempted him with an impossibility. He was relieved when Powell shook his head and said:
“Yes, it’s too late now.”
Powell, with something of the pathos of age and failure that was stealing gradually over him, begged Marley to come in and see him every day while he was at home.
“You see I’ve always kept your desk,” he said, in a tone that apologized for a weakness he perhaps thought unmanly, “just as it was when you went away.”
Marley thought cynically that Powell had kept everything else just as it was when he went away, but he was instantly ashamed of the thought, and ashamed, too, of the fact that he and Lavinia both considered even this little morning call a waste of time, and a sacrifice almost too great to be borne.
Powell went with Marley out into the street, and it gave him evident pride to walk by his side down Main Street and around the Square.
“I want them all to see you,” he said frankly.