Together we went out into the gray morning light, and I stood on the curb, full-lunged, ecstatic, until Gibson and the taxi-cab appeared. He helped me into the cab and took the seat beside me.
"You ought to go home," I murmured, with sudden compunction. "You must be horribly tired."
They were my first words. I had made no comment on the message he brought, and it was clear that he had expected none. Now he smiled at me—the wide, kind, understanding smile that had warmed the five years of our friendship.
"Let me do this much for you, May," he said. "You see, it's all I can do."
Our eyes met, and suddenly I understood. An irrepressible cry broke from me.
"Oh, Billy," I said. "Not you! Not me!"
He smiled again.
"Yes," he replied. "Just that. Just you and me. But it's all right. I'd rather be your friend than the husband of any other woman in the world."
The taxi-cab hummed on its way. The east reddened, then sent up a flaming banner of light. I should have been tired; I should have been hungry; I should, perhaps, have been excited over "T. B.'s" final words. I was none of those things. I was merely in a state of supreme content. Nothing mattered but the one thing in life which mattered supremely. Godfrey was better; Godfrey would live!