“At least,” he said, “you have done what I never would have believed even you could do—convinced me against my will that you are right. You love him—he worships you. There is a promise of life for him in Arizona—with you. I can’t forbid the bans. But I shall always believe, what you dare not dispute, that if I had come first—you——”
She held out her hand. “That you must not say,” she said. “But there is one thing you may say—that you are my best friend, whom I can count on——”
“As long as there is life left in me,” he answered fervently. He wrung her hand in both his, looked long and steadily up into her face as if his eyes could never leave the lovely outlines showing clear in the light from the windows, then turned away and strode off toward the station without a look behind.
XXI.—Everybody Gives Advice
“I should do it in brown leather,” said Cathcart decidedly, looking about him.
He stood in the centre of Anthony’s den. The carpenters had gone, the plasterers had finished their work, and the floor had just been swept up.
“You’re all right as far as you go,” observed Anthony, who stood at his elbow, “but you don’t go far enough. If you want me to hang these walls with brown leather you’ll have to put up the money. I may be sufficiently prosperous to afford the addition to my house, but I haven’t reached the stage of covering the walls with cloth-of-gold.”
“Burlap would be the thing, Tony,” Judith suggested.