"I know," said Banks, softly, as he bent over to poke the fire. "There was a line or two about it in a New York paper. But they'll hush it up, and besides they said it was just suspicion."
"You knew all the time and yet you wanted me to go back to Tappahannock?"
"Oh, they don't read the papers much there, except the Tappahannock Herald, and it won't get into that. It was just a silly little slip anyway, and not two dozen people will be likely to know what it meant."
"And you, Banks? What do you think?" he asked with a mild curiosity.
Banks shook his head. "Why, what's the use in your asking?" he replied. "Of course, I know that you didn't do it, and if you had done it, it would have been just because the other man ought to have written his name and wouldn't," he concluded, unblushingly.
For a moment Ordway looked at him in silence. "You're a good chap, Banks," he said at last in a dull voice. Again he felt, with an awakened irritation, that the absurd Banks was pulling him back to life. Was it impossible, after all, that a man should give up, as long as there remained a soul alive who believed in him? It wasn't only the love of women, then, that renewed courage. He had loved both Emily and Alice, and yet they were of less importance in his life at this hour than was Banks, whom he had merely endured. Yet he had thought the love of Emily a great thing and that of Banks a small one.
His gaze went back to the flames, and he did not remove it when a knock came at the door, and supper was brought in and placed on a little table before the fire.
"I ordered a bowl of soup for you, Smith," said Banks, crumbling the bread into it as he spoke, as if he were preparing a meal for a baby, "and a good stout piece of beefsteak for myself. Now drink this whiskey, won't you."
"I'm not hungry," returned Ordway, pushing the glass away, after it had touched his lips. "I won't eat."
Banks placed the bowl of soup on the fender, and then sat down with his eyes fastened on the tray. "I haven't had a bite myself since breakfast," he remarked, "and I'm pretty faintish, but I tell you, Smith, if it's the last word I speak, that I won't put my knife into that beefsteak until you've eaten your soup—no, not if I die right here of starvation."