“And Donald also?” asked Peter lightly.
“Donald of course,” assented Linda.
And then she lifted her tear-spilling, wonderful eyes, wide open, to Peter’s, and demanded: “But, oh Peter, I am so miserable I am almost dead. I have said you were a rock, and you are a rock. Peter, can you get me out of this?”
“Sure,” said Peter grimly. “Merely a case of living up to your blue china, even if it happens to be in the form of hieroglyphics instead of baked pottery. Give me the letters, Linda. Give me a few days to study them. Exchange typewriters with me so I can have the same machine. Give me some of the paper on which you have been writing and the address you have been using, and I’ll guarantee to get you out of this in some way that will leave you Donald, and your friendship with Marian quite as good as new.”
At that juncture Peter might have been kissed, but his neck was very stiff and his head was very high and his eyes were on a far-distant hilltop from which at that minute he could not seem to gather any particular help.
“Would it be your idea,” he said, “that by reading these letters I could gain sufficient knowledge of what has passed to go on with this?”
“Of course you could,” said Linda.
Peter reached in his side pocket and pulled out a clean handkerchief. He shook it from its folds and dried her eyes. Then he took her by her shoulders and set her up straight.
“Now stop this nerve strain and this foolishness,” he said tersely. “You have done a very wonderful thing for me. It is barely possible that Marian Thorne is not my dream woman, but we can’t always have our dreams in this world, and if I could not have mine, truly and candidly, Linda, so far as I have lived my life, I would rather have Marian Thorne than any other woman I have ever met.”
Linda clapped her hands in delight.