And yet such is the impact of one man’s assertion hurled repeatedly against a wall of self-evident fact that Jarvis actually found himself ignoring the evidence and building theories based on the major “if.” He toppled them over as fast as they rose, but they straightway grew again, and it took another conference with his chief, the night editor, to fully fortify his reason against the assaults of Antrim’s insistent faith.
CHAPTER XXVIII
HOW THE JUDGE GAVE OF HIS BEST
Having done what he might for his friend on the Saturday, Antrim thought he should not err in devoting the Sunday afternoon to his own affair, and to this end he turned his face to the Highlands as soon as he could break away from the Sunday duties which entangle the railway servant. He was a little later than usual; and Isabel, after waiting half an hour, avenged her pique by going out with Mrs. Hobart. Dorothy, meeting Antrim at the gate as she was starting for the mission school, was unable to tell him whither they had gone. Wouldn’t he go in and wait?
Piqued in his turn, Antrim decided he would not go in and wait. He had meant to do no more at present than to try to resume the old relation with Isabel, and he thought she might have suffered this, the more willingly since it was her own expressed wish. But if she were not yet complaisant——
Before he had argued the case to its irritant conclusion he found himself walking townward with Dorothy. They missed a car by a minute or two, and Antrim halted at the corner to wait for the next.
“I have time enough, and we can walk on until a car overtakes us, if you care to,” said Dorothy, who had a reason of her own for desiring an uninterrupted interview with her companion.
“I’d like to walk,” replied Antrim, whose mood welcomed a diversion of any sort.
They went on together, and mutual constraint immediately thrust a barrier of silence between them. Antrim thought he knew enough of Brant’s secret to make him hesitate to speak first of the thing which he imagined was uppermost in Dorothy’s mind; and Dorothy was made dumb by a great sympathy for Antrim in his disappointment. None the less, she was the first to break the silence.
“Have you—have you been to see Mr. Brant since the—” She could not give it a name, and Antrim promptly forestalled the necessity.
“Yes; I was with him for half an hour yesterday afternoon.”