"Just that." Ormsby put all the nonchalance he could muster into the laconic reply, but he was anticipating the sequent demand which came like a shot out of a gun.
"And there never has been?"
Ormsby grinned.
"When you are digging a well and have found your stream of water, it's folly to go deeper, David. Can't you let 'good enough' alone?"
Kent turned it over in his mind, frowning thoughtfully into his coffee-cup. When he spoke it was out of the mid-heart of manliness.
"I wish you would tell me one thing, Ormsby. Am I responsible for—for the present state of affairs?"
Ormsby stretched the truth a little; partly for Elinor's sake; more, perhaps, for Kent's.
"You have done nothing that an honorable rival—and incidentally a good friend of mine—might not do. Therefore you are not responsible."
"That is putting it very diplomatically," Kent mused. "I am afraid it does not exonerate me wholly."
"Yes, it does. But it doesn't put me out of the running, you understand. I'm 'forninst' you yet; rather more stubbornly than before, I fancy."