“We aren’t going to talk about it, Nell. I told you I had given it up. But,” he went on after a heavy moment, 361unable entirely to subjugate his humanity–“but I wish now I had asked you before you left home.”
She was too oppressed with misery to speak at once, so he amplified.
“But it seemed rather more–I don’t want to call it by any such big word as chivalrous,–it seemed rather whiter not to urge it, when circumstances might have seemed to lay a compulsion on you. Then it seemed better to let all the talk, the unpleasantness, in Denver die down first. Then, too, I wanted you to see the world; I liked the thought of you having your fling. But,” he reiterated, “I can’t help wishing I had followed my instinct and asked you before I let you go. Tell the truth, Nell. Wouldn’t you have had me then?”
“I suppose, Tom, that I should have you now if you asked me. But then or now,” she brought in quickly, “it would be a mistake. I couldn’t love you more dearly, Tom, than I do, good big brother that you’ve been. Dear me, all we’ve been through together! Then all the fun we’ve had! We couldn’t change to something different without all being spoiled. You don’t seem to know, but I do, that I’m not the woman for you in that way. We’re too much alike, Tom. What you want is a little dainty woman, delicate, quick, bright-minded, something, to find an example near at hand, like Hattie Carver. A big fellow like you wants someone to cherish and protect. How would any one go to work protecting and cherishing a little darling big as a moose!”
“I might have known”–Doctor Tom made his reflections aloud,–“that a good big husky man wouldn’t have a chance with a good big husky girl while a sickly, sad-eyed, spindle-shanked son of a gun was hanging round!”
362“There’s nothing in that, I should think you’d know,” said Aurora, quickly. “I like him, of course, and I like to have him round. Haven’t you found him good company yourself? But that’s just friendship. Friendship like between a fish and a bird, and no more prospect of a different ending than that. If that’s troubling you, you can set your mind at rest, Tom.”
“It’s none of my business, anyhow,” said the doctor, brusquely, flinging down his cigar and walking away from her to the mantelpiece, where he stood looking up at her portrait, but thinking of that other portrait of her, with its wizardry and strange truth, which she had not failed to show him.
“Tom, if I thought you could feel bitter, I should die, that’s all,” cried Aurora, jumping up and following. “You’ve been such a friend to me! Do you suppose I forget? Never was there such a friend. And you know, now don’t you, Tom, that I think the whole, whole world of you?” Arms were clasped around his neck,–large arms, solid and polished as marble, but tender as mother birds; a head was pressed hard against his shoulder. “There never could anybody take your place with me. You’d only have to call over land and sea, and I’d come flying to serve you, to nurse you in sickness or help you in sorrow. Give me a good hug, Tom. Give me a good kiss, and say you know I mean every word!–Now, isn’t this better than to see me across the table at breakfast, with my hair in curlers, and to have me snooping round being jealous of your female patients?”
“No, it’s not better; but it’s pretty good.”
“Do you mean to tell me, Tom, that you’d be any more likely to cut my name in a tree, or kiss my stolen glove, than 363I’d be to wish on the first star you loved me or write poetry about my feelin’s?”