She looked down at the heavy Eastern rug, exquisite in its softness and richness of colouring.
It was one of which, knowing its value, she had long envied her brother the possession. She put up her hand and brushed away the mist from her eyes.
"Aren't you going to take any comfortable things with you? Are you going to go on living on pine chairs and rag carpets—you, who were brought up on rugs like this?"
He nodded. "For the most part. I've been wondering if I might indulge myself in one big easy chair, just for old times. But I'm afraid it won't do."
"Oh, mercy, Don! Why not?"
"How should I explain its presence, opposite my red-cushioned rocker? Give it a good look, Sue, that chair, and tell me honestly if I can afford to introduce such an incongruous note into my plain bachelor house up there."
She surveyed the chair in question, a luxurious and costly type standing for the last word in masculine comfort and taste. It was one which had been given to Brown by Webb Atchison, and had long been a favourite.
"Oh, I don't know," she said hopelessly, shaking her head. "I can't decide for any monk what he shall take into his cell."
Brown flushed, a peculiar dull red creeping up under his dark skin. He smothered the retort on his lips, however, and when he did speak it was with entire control, though there was, nevertheless, an uncompromising quality in his inflection which for the moment silenced his sister as if he had laid his hand upon her mouth.
"Understand me, once for all, Sue—if you can. I am going into no monastery. To such a man as I naturally am, I am going out of what has been a sheltered life into one in the open. You think of me as retiring from the world. Instead of that, I am just getting into the fight. And to fight well—I must go stripped."