"Not if you can help it. We will see how it turns out in the end."
"Billy Little, you are the greatest croaker I ever knew," observed Dic, testily.
"It is better to croak early than to sing too soon. But what do you want?"
"I want to know again what I shall do about Sukey since this new change in Rita. When I thought Rita was lost to me, I fear I permitted Sukey to believe I would, you know, comply with her wishes; but now I can't, and I don't know how to tell her about it. I said nothing, but my silence almost committed me."
After a moment spent in thought, Billy answered: "Frederick the Great used to say, 'In default of unanswerable arguments it is better to express one's self laconically and not go beating about the bush.' Go tell her."
"That's easier to advise than to do," retorted Dic. "She will cry, and—"
"Yes, I know; if it were as easy to do as it is to advise, this would be a busy world. She will cry, and a woman's tears hurt the right sort of man. But bless my soul, Dic, why don't you settle your own affairs? I'm tired of it all. It's getting to trouble me as much as it troubles you." Billy paused, gazing into the fire, and dropped into a half-revery. "I can see the poor little dimpler weeping and grieving. I can hear her sobs and feel her heartaches. She is not good; but the fault is not hers, and I wish I might bear her pain and suffer in her stead. I believe it hurts me more to see others suffer than to suffer myself. I wish I might bear every one's suffering and die on a modern Calvary. What a glorious thought that is, Dic—the Master's vicarious atonement! Even if the story be nothing but a fable, as some men claim, the thought is a glorious one, and the fate—ah, the fate—but such a fate is only for God. If I can't help the suffering of the world, I wish I might live in the midst of Sahara, where I could not hear of human pain. It hurts me, Dic. Indeed it does. And this poor little dimpler—I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"Ah, Billy Little, think of my sorrow," said Dic.
"It's a question whether we should shrink from our troubles or face them," continued Little; "but in your case I should choose the shrinking, and write to the poor, pathetic little dimpler. Poor thing! Her days of dimpling are over. If you knew that you had led her astray, your duty, I believe, would be clear; but there is the 'if' that gives us serious pause and makes cowards of us both. Write to her, Dic. You are too great a coward to face her, and I'm not brave enough even to advise it."
Dic wrote to Sukey, and avoided the pain of facing her, but not the pain of knowing that she suffered. His letter brought an answer from Sukey that was harder to bear than reproaches.