David looked grave and troubled. He appeared to be turning over difficult matters in his mind. Then he smiled gayly.
"At least I shall be free to make love if I want to."
"Nonsense," said Mr. Grey. "People don't make love because they want to. They do it because they have to."
Again David looked troubled, and a little sad, perhaps.
"True," said he. And he walked meditatively back to his own desk, took up a pen, meditated for a long time, and then wrote:
Best friend that any man ever had in the world! I shall be in Aiken on the twenty-fifth, bringing with me that which I owe, and can pay, and deeply conscious of that deeper debt that I owe, but never can hope to pay. But I will do what I can. I will not now take back the promises I gave, unless you wish; I will not do anything that you do not wish. And if all the service and devotion that is in me for the rest of time seem worth having to you, they are yours. But you know that.
David.
This, looking white, tired, and austere, he reread, folded, enveloped, stamped, sealed, and addressed to Miss Tennant.
Neither the hand which Miss Tennant laid on his, nor the cigarette which she lighted for him, completely mollified Mr. Billy McAllen. He was no longer young enough to dance with pleasure to a maiden's whims. The experience of dancing from New York to Newport and back, and over the deep ocean and back, and up and down Europe and back with the late Mrs. McAllen—now Mrs. Jimmie Greenleaf—had sufficed. He would walk to the altar any day with Miss Tennant, but he would not dance.
"You have so many secrets with yourself," he complained, "and I'm so very reasonable."