"Follow her," whispered Andrew Zane. "If she is cool now she will be cold hereafter, unless you nurse her confidence."
With a sense of great youthfulness and demerit, Duff Salter entered the parlors and found Podge sitting in the shadows of that thrice notable room where death and grief had been so often carried and laid down. The little teacher was pale and thin, and her eyes wore a saddened light.
"I am very glad to see you again," said Duff Salter. "I wanted your forgiveness."
Striking the centre of sympathy by these few words, the late deaf man saw Podge's throat agitated.
"If you knew," he continued, "how often I accused myself since your illness, you would try to excuse me."
After a little silence Podge said,
"I don't remember just what happened, Mr. Salter. Was it you who sent me many beautiful and dainty things while I was sick? I thought it might be."
"You guessed me, then? At least I was not forgotten."
"I never forgot you, sir; but ever since my illness you seem to have been a part of the dread river and its dead. I have often tried to restore you as I once thought of you, but other things rise up and I cannot see you. My head was gone, I suppose."
"Alas, no! I drove away your heart. If that would come back, the wandering head would follow, little friend. Are you afraid of me?"