“No, no, I could not tell it over the ’phone. No, it will keep. Good things will always keep if they are well cared for you know. No, really I can’t. And I’m very sorry to disappoint you to-night, but it can’t be helped.... Good-by.”
He hung up the receiver with a sigh of relief.
“Who is Miss Bentley?” asked Celia, with natural interest. She was pleased that he had not addressed her as “Julia.”
“Why, she is—a friend—I suppose you would call her. She has been taking possession of my time lately rather more than I really enjoyed. Still, she is a nice girl. You’ll like her, I think; but I hope you’ll never get too intimate. I shouldn’t like to have her continually around. She——” he paused and finished, laughing—“she makes me tired.”
“I was afraid, from her tone when she ’phoned you, that she was a very dear friend—that she might be some one you cared for. There was a sort of proprietorship in her tone.”
“Yes, that’s the very word, proprietorship,” he laughed. “I couldn’t care for her. I never did. I tried to consider her in that light one day, because I’d been told repeatedly that I ought to settle down, but the thought of having her with me always was—well—intolerable. The fact is, you reign supreme in a heart that has never loved another girl. I didn’t know there was such a thing as love like this. I knew I lacked something, but I didn’t know what it was. This is greater than all the gifts of life, this gift of your love. And that it should come to me in this beautiful, unsought way seems too good to be true!”
He drew her to him once more and looked down into her lovely face, as if he could not drink enough of its sweetness.
“And to think you are willing to be my wife! My wife!” and he folded her close again.
A discreet tap on the door announced the arrival of the man Henry, and Gordon roused to the necessity of ordering lunch.
He stepped to the door with a happy smile and held it open.