"Oh, he didn't tell me," returned Baxter, "but it was some love-lorn whining he had to do, I reckon. Now what I can't understand is how a man can be so narrow sighted as only to see one woman out of the whole bouncing sex of 'em. It would take more than a refusal—it would take a downright football to knock out my heart. Good Lord! in this world of fine an' middling fine women, the trouble ain't to get the one you want, but to keep on wanting the one you get. I've done my little share of observing in my time, and what I've learned from it is that the biggest trial a man can have is not to want another man's wife, but to want to want his own."
A knock at the door called Ordway out into the warehouse, where he yielded himself immediately to the persuasive voice of Banks.
"Come back here a minute, will you, out of hearing? I tried to get to you last night and couldn't."
"Has anything gone wrong?" inquired Ordway, following the other to a safe distance from Baxter's office. At first he had hardly had courage to lift his eyes to Banks' face, but reassured by the quiet opening of the conversation, he stood now with his sad gaze fixed on the beaming freckled features of the melancholy lover.
"I only wanted to tell you that she didn't go," whispered Banks, rolling his prominent eyes into the dusky recesses of the warehouse, "she's ill in bed to-day, and Brown left town on the eight-forty-five this morning."
"So he's gone for good!" exclaimed Ordway, and drew a long breath as if he had been released from an emotional tension which had suspended, while it lasted, the ordinary movement of life. Since he had prepared himself for the worst was it possible that his terror of yesterday would scatter to-day like the delusions of an unsettled brain? Had Wherry held back in mercy or had Milly Trend? Even if he were spared now must he still live on here unaware how widely—or how pitifully—his secret was known? Would this ceaseless dread of discovery prove again, as it had proved in the past, more terrible even than the discovery itself? Would he be able to look fearlessly at Milly Trend again?—at Baxter? at Banks? at Emily?
"Well, I've got to thank you for it, Smith?" said Banks. "How you stopped it, I don't know for the life of me, but stop it you did."
The cheerful selfishness in such rejoicing struck Ordway even in the midst of his own bitter musing. Though Banks adored Milly, soul and body, he was frankly jubilant over the tragic ending of her short romance.
"I hope there's little danger of its beginning anew," Ordway remarked presently, with less sympathy than he would have shown his friend twelve hours before.
"I suppose you wouldn't like to tell me what you said to her?" inquired Banks, his customary awe of his companion swept away in the momentary swing of his elation.