He stopped, and she knew that he was waiting for some sign of encouragement. She looked away again, meaning not to give it. It is one of the little martyrdoms of sympathetic souls to invite confidences and thereby to suffer vicariously for the misdoings of the erring majority, and her burdens in this wise were many and heavy. Why should she go out of her way to add to them those of this man who ought to be abundantly able to carry his own? Thus the unspoken question, and the answer came close upon the heels of it. But for her own curiosity,—impertinence, she had begun to call it,—the occasion would never have arisen.
"I am listening," she said, giving him his sign.
Being permitted to speak freely, Jeffard found himself suddenly tongue-tied. "I don't know what I ought to say,—if, indeed, I ought to say anything at all," he began. "I think I gave you to understand that the world had been using me rather hardly."
"And if you did?"
A palpitant couple, free of the waltz, came up the stair, and Jeffard rose to make way. When the breathless ones perched themselves on the landing above, he went on, standing on the step below her and leaning against the baluster.
"If I did, it was an implied untruth. It's a trite saying that the world is what we make it, and I am quite sure now that I have been making my part of it since I came to Denver. I'm not going to afflict you with the formula, but I shall feel better for having told you that I have torn it up and thrown it away."
"And you will write out another?"
"Beginning with to-morrow. I leave Denver in the morning."
"You are not going back?" She said it with a little tang of deprecation in the words.
His heart warmed to the small flash of friendly interest, and he smiled and shook his head. "No, that would never do—without the fortune, you know. I'm going to the mountains; with pick and shovel, if need be. I should have started to-night if I hadn't found Mrs. Calmaine's invitation. She has been very good to me in a social way, and I could do no less than come." He said it apologetically, as if the dip into the social pool on the eve of the new setting forth demanded an explanation.