“You’re too good for me,” said Ralston, in a low voice, and for the third time there was a quiver in his tone. Moreover, he felt an unaccustomed moisture in his eyes which gave him pleasure, though he was ashamed of it.
“No, I’m not—not a bit too good for you. But I like to hear—I don’t know why it is, but your voice touches me to-day. It seems changed.”
Ralston was truthful and honourable. If he had himself understood the causes of his increased emotion, he would have hanged himself rather than have let Katharine say what she did, without telling her what had happened. He drank, and he knew it, and of late he had been drinking hard, but it was the first time that he had ever spoken to Katharine Lauderdale when he had been drinking, and he was deceived by his own apparent soberness beyond the possibility of believing that he was on the verge of being slightly hysterical. Let them who doubt the possibility of such a case question those who have watched a thousand cases.
There was a little pause after Katharine’s last words. Then she went on,—explaining her project.
“Uncle Robert always says that nobody understands him as I do. I shall try and make him understand me, for a change. I shall tell him just what has happened, and I shall tell him that he must find work for you to do, since you’re perfectly capable of working if you only have a fair chance. You never had one. I don’t call it a chance to put an active man like you into a gloomy law office to copy fusty documents. And I don’t call it giving you a chance to glue you to a desk in Beman Brothers’ bank. You’re not made for that sort of work. Of course you were disgusted and refused to go on. I should have done just the same.”
“Oh, you would—I’m quite sure!” answered Ralston, with conviction.
“Naturally. Not but that I’m just as capable of working as you are, though. To go back to uncle Robert. It’s just impossible, with all his different interests, all over the country, and with his influence—and you know what that is—that he should not have something for you to do. Besides, he’ll understand us. He’s a great big man, on a big scale, a head and shoulders mentally bigger than all the rest of the family.”
“That’s true,” assented Ralston.
“And he knows that you don’t want to take money without giving an equivalent for it.”
“He’s known that all along. I don’t see why he should put himself out any more now—”