Juliet nodded, understanding him. Presently she rose. “I have an errand to do,” she said. “Will you walk over to the Evanstons’ with me, Roger?”
“Now, tell me,” began the doctor the instant they were off, “is she going to persist in this awful sacrifice?”
“Poor Rachel,” breathed Juliet. “So many lovers—and so unhappy.”
“Is she unhappy?” begged the doctor. “Is she? If I only were sure of it——”
“What girl wouldn’t be unhappy—to be making even one man out of two as miserable as you?”
“But you know what I mean. Is she going to marry Huntington out of love as well as pity—or only pity?”
“Roger”—Juliet stood still in the road, regarding him in the dim light with kind eyes—“if I knew I wouldn’t tell you. That’s Rachel’s secret. But I don’t know. She’s as loyal as a magnet, and as reserved as—you would want her to be if you were Mr. Huntington.”
“She’s everything she ought to be. I’m a dastard for saying it, but I could forgive her for being disloyal enough to him to show me just a corner of her heart. Even if she loves him it’s what I called it—an awful sacrifice—a man dying with consumption. If she doesn’t—except as the friend of her early girlhood, when she didn’t know men or her own heart—Juliet, it’s impious.”
“Roger, dear, keep hold of yourself,” Juliet replied. “You’re too strong and fine to want to come between her and her own decision—if she has made it.”
“If you were a man,” said he hotly, “would you let a woman marry you—dying?”