“She wouldn't,” Tavernake replied. “After all, why should she? I have my way to make yet. I can't expect others to believe in me as I believe in myself. She was kind but she wouldn't.”
Pritchard lit a cigar.
“Look here, Tavernake,” he said, “you are a young man, you've got your life before you and life's a biggish thing. Empty out those romantic thoughts of yours, roll up your shirt sleeves and get at it. You are not one of these weaklings that need a woman's whispers in their ears to spur them on. You can work without that. It's only a chapter in your life—the passing of these three people. A few months ago, you knew nothing of them. Let them go. Get back to where you were.”
Then Tavernake for the first time laughed—a laugh that sounded even natural.
“Have you ever found a man who could do that?” he asked. “The candle gives a good light sometimes, but you'll never think it the finest illumination in the world when you've seen the sun. Never mind me, Pritchard. I'm going to do my best still, but there's one thing that nothing will alter. I am going to make that woman tell me her story, I am going to listen to the way she tells it to me. You think that where women are concerned I am a fool. I am, but there is one great boon which has been vouchsafed to fools—they can tell the true from the false. Some sort of instinct, I suppose. Elizabeth shall tell me her story and I shall know, when she tells it, whether she is what you say or what she has seemed to me.”
Pritchard held out his hand.
“You're a queer sort, Tavernake,” he declared. “You take life plaguy seriously. I only hope you 'll get all out of it you expect to. So long!”
Tavernake opened the window after his visitor had gone, and leaned out for some few minutes, letting the fresh air into the close, stifling room. Then he went upstairs, bathed and changed his clothes, made some pretense at breakfast, went through his letters with methodical exactness. At eleven o'clock he set out upon his pilgrimage.