"Damn him," muttered Harnash, under his breath. "He wrung my hand, too, as if I were his best friend."
"Well, you are, aren't you?"
"I was, I am, and I'm going to save him from--"
"From the misfortune of marrying me?"
"I don't see how you can jest under the circumstances."
"George," said the girl, "if I didn't jest I should die. I don't see how I can endure it as it is."
"Stephanie," he repeated, lifting his right hand as if making an oath--as, indeed, he was--"I'm going to take you from him if it is at the foot of the altar."
These were brave words with back of them, as yet, only an intensity of purpose and a determination, but no practical plan. It was Bill Woywod that gave the practical turn to that decision on the part of Harnash.
Now George Harnash came originally from a little down-east town on the Maine coast. That it was his birthplace was not its only claim to honor. It also boasted of the nativity of Bill Woywod. The two had been boyhood friends. Although their several pursuits had separated them widely, the queer friendship still obtained in spite of the wide and ever-widening difference in the characters and stations of the two men.
Running away from school, Bill Woywod had gone down to the sea as his ancestors for two hundred years had done before him. Left to himself, Harnash had completed his high school and college course and had gone down to New York as none of his people had ever done in all the family history. Both men had progressed. Harnash was already well-to-do and approaching brilliant success. He had thrust his feet at least within the portals of society and was holding open the door which he would force widely when he was a little stronger.