Coming out, he poured a glass of wine and drank with Glenn Andrews.
“Have a smoke,” glancing towards a tabourette, strewn with pipes, some of them disreputable enough to the eye.
“Take any of them, you won’t be smoking any old, dry, dead memories—these are all ‘bought’ ones.”
“I’ll help myself. I was just reading my mail. The boy handed it to me as I was leaving the office.”
Folding a sheet of paper on which was written only a name and address, he took up one of the pipes and began filling it.
So Esther Powel was in town. It was a daring entrance upon life for this little hard-headed, soft-hearted Southerner. He looked thoughtful; the soberness of his youth, rather than the labor of his manhood, had lightly marked his face. A sudden apprehension seized him for the pure, sweet life he knew so well. It was almost as much as her life was worth to come here so pretty and so friendless. She needed protection.
This thought took possession of his mind to the exclusion of all else. In the old days he had been the only one who could bend her wayward will. Her faith in him was the blind unquestioning faith of a child. Her own feeling for him she did not reason with. She accepted it as a fact which was beyond her analysis. Under its spell she had grown and flourished against great odds. Why should she not continue to do so?
“Briarley,” Glenn went on, filling his pipe, and packing it down with his thumb. “Suppose you knew a girl who was coming here alone, to study art, what would you consider the very best way to shield her?”
“By keeping away from her.”
“But, suppose she needed some one to look to—suppose she were young and knew no one. City life is a fiercely hardening process, you know.”