“Bayard!” he exclaimed; “you look as white as a Cesarea snowdrift. You are overworked, man. What can I do, to help you?—If there is anything,” he added with genuine concern, “you’d let me know, wouldn’t you?”
“Probably not, Fenton,” replied Bayard, smiling.
“I mean it,” urged the other, flushing.
“If you do, the time may come,” said Bayard dreamily.
He glanced at his old friend,—the rosy, well-fed man; at the round face destitute of the carving of great purpose or deep anxiety; at the pretty girl with the Berkshire eyes who looked adoringly over the sleek elbow to which she clung. These two well-meaning, commonplace people seemed ennobled and beautified, as commoner far than they may be, by their human love and happiness. Bayard, in his shabby clothes, with his lonely face, watched them with a certain reverence.
He thought—but when did he not think of Helen?
He wrote; she answered; they did not meet; he worked on patiently; and the winter went. Bayard drowned himself in his work with the new and conscious ardor of supreme renunciation. He thought of the woman whom he loved, as the diver at the bottom of the sea, when the pumps refuse to work, thinks of sky and shore and sun, of air and breath.
One bleak, bright February night, Bayard came out from his mission, and looked about Angel Alley anxiously.
Bob was within, and Tony and Jean were safe; Job Slip was sober, and Tom, Dick, and Harry were accounted for. But Lena—Lena had not been seen at Christlove for now many weeks.