“Just once?” she responded, with a rising inflection. “Just always, you ought to say. As long as I live I’ll do whatever you tell me to do—at least when you tell me the truth as you are doing now. You see I always know when you are telling the truth. With other people it is different. Sometimes I can’t tell how much or how little they mean. But I know you so well! And besides you’re always clumsy at fibbing, even when you do it for a good purpose. That’s why I like you so much—or,” pausing,—“that’s one of the reasons. Has Dick gone for Chestnut?”
“Yes, Dick always obeys me.”
“Oh, but that’s quite different. You are Dick’s master you know—” Then she hesitated again, presently adding, “of course you are my master too—only in a different way. Oh, I see now; you’re my guardian. Of course I must obey my guardian, and I’ll show him a bright, fresh face in the morning. Here comes Dick with Chestnut. Good night—Master!”
From that hour Dorothy thought of Arthur always by that title of “master,” though in the presence of others she never so addressed him.
Arthur watched her ride away in the light of the rising November moon, Dick following closely as her groom. And as he saw her turn at the entrance to the woodlands to wave him a final adieu, he said out loud:
“I fear it is indeed too late!”
XX
A SPECIAL DELIVERY LETTER
WHEN Dorothy had disappeared, Arthur became conscious of a great loneliness, which he found it difficult to shake off. Presently he remembered that he had a letter to write, a letter which he had decided upon out there under the hickory trees. He had writing materials and a table in his own small quarters, but somehow he felt himself impelled to write this letter upon Dorothy’s own little lap desk and in Dorothy’s own little camp cottage.
“Positively, I am growing sentimental!” he said to himself as he walked toward Dorothy’s house. “I didn’t suspect such a possibility in myself. After all a man knows less about himself than about anybody else. I can detect tuberculosis in another, at a glance. I doubt if I should recognize it in myself. I can discover cardiac trouble by a mere look at the eyes of the man afflicted with it. I know instantly when I look at a man, what his temperament is, what tendencies he has, what probabilities, and even what possibilities inhere in his nature. But what do I know about Arthur Brent? I suppose that any of my comrades at Bellevue could have told me years ago the things I am just now finding out concerning myself. If any of them had predicted my present condition of mind a year ago, I should have laughed in derision of the stupid misconception of me. I thought I knew myself. What an idiot any man is to think that!”
Touching a match to the little camphene lamp on Dorothy’s table, he opened her desk and wrote.