"All right. Thanks for coming. I didn't want you to think I had behaved badly to Frances, for I didn't, and I had to talk to some one. Good by!"
He let in his clutch, quickly, and the machine jerked forward. He turned into the Park entrance and disappeared, going like a crazy man.
So I returned home, feeling ever so badly for the two of them. I honestly think and hope that I am of a charitable disposition, but I could not extend all sympathy and forgiveness to my friend. He had deliberately gone to work and proposed to a woman he did not truly love, and she had accepted him. The poor girl probably thinks the world of him, in her own way, which is probably a true and womanly one. And now, after he is bound hand and foot by her consent, he goes to work and lays down his heart at the feet of another.
Honor, manliness, even common decency should have held him back! I wondered sadly whether the best and truest friend I ever had was now lost to me, and I could have sat down and wept, had not tears been for many years foreign to my eyes.
And then the picture of Frances seemed to appear before me, in all its glory of tint, in all its sweetness and loveliness, and I shook my head as I thought of the awful weakness of man and of how natural it was that, before such a vision, no strength of will or determination of purpose could have prevented the culmination of this tragedy. I am sure that he resisted until the very last moment, to be at last overwhelmed. Poor old Gordon!
Her door was closed and there was utter silence when I returned. I tried to write, but the noise of the machine offended me. For a long time I stared at the pages of an open book, never turning a leaf over, and, finally, I sought my bed, more than weary.
At two o'clock, on the next afternoon, I got a wire from Gordon.
"Am taking the Espagne. Lots of sport driving an ambulance at the front. May perhaps write.
"Gordon."
I stared at the yellow sheet, stupidly. After this there was a knock at the door and the colored servant came in, bringing me a parcel. I opened it and found some advance copies of the "Land o' Love," which I threw down on the floor. What did all those silly words amount to!