Bayard laid down the letter. The room grew black before his starting eyes.
“There is another man,” he thought. “She is engaged. She cannot bear to tell me.”
Sparks of fire leaped before his eyeballs. Black swung into purple—into gray—light returned; and he read on:—
“If I flatter myself in supposing that you might mind it a little, why, the mistake hurts nobody, neither you nor me; but the fact is we are not coming to Windover this summer. We sail for Europe next week.
“Father has decided quite suddenly, and there is nothing to be done but to go. It is something to do with Exegesis, if you please! There is a mistake in Exegesis, you know,—in the New Version. It seems to me a pretty Old Version by this time, but father has always been stirred up about it. He has been corresponding with a German Professor for a year or two on this burning subject. I have an inarticulate suspicion that, between them, they mean to write the New Testament over again. Could they do another Version? How many Versions can be versed?
“I never graduated, you know; I never even attended a Cesarea Anniversary in my life (and you can’t think how it shocked the Trustees at dinner, and that was such fun, so I kept on not going!), and I can’t be expected to fathom these matters. Anyhow, it is mixed up with the Authenticity of the Fourth Gospel, and the Effect of German Rationalism upon the Evangelical Faith. It is a reason full of capital letters and Orthodoxy,—and go he will. He won’t leave mother behind, for he is one of the men who believe in living with their wives; he’s just as dependent on his womenkind when he’s engaged in a theological row, as a boy who’s got hurt at football; and I’ve got to go to take care of the two of them. So there it is! I think there is a convention in Berlin—an Exegetical Something—anyhow, there’s a date, and live up to it we must. He has sublet the Flying Jib to the Prudential Committee of the A. B. C. F. M.—I mean to one of it, with six grandchildren. Think how they’ll punch their fists through our lace curtains! I wish you’d go down and tell Mr. Salt they shan’t have my dory. Couldn’t you manage to use it yourself? And I—I can’t take Joey Slip to the circus, nor sit down in sackcloth on the ashes of Christlove Chapel to help you.
“Truly, dear friend, I meant to help this summer. And I am disappointed, if you care to know it.
“Yours faithfully,
“Helen Carruth.