"I say it is—and, besides, you'd get over this in a week—"
"Jim!" called Albert, warningly, sharply.
"All right," said Jim, in the tone of a man who knows it's all wrong—"all right; but the time 'll come when you'll wish I'd—You ain't doin' the girl enough good to make up for the harm you're doin' yourself." He broke off again, and said in a tone of finality: "I'm done. I'm all through, and I c'n see you're through with Jim Hartley. All right!"
"Darn curious," he muttered to himself, "that boy should get caught just at this time, and not with some o' those girls in Marion. Well, it's none o' my funeral," he ended, with a sigh; for it had stirred him to the bottom of his sunny nature, after all. A dozen times, as he lay there beside his equally sleepless companion, he started to say something more in deprecation of the step, but each time stifled the opening word into a groan.
It would not be true to say that love had come to Albert Lohr as a relaxing influence, but it had changed the direction of his energies so radically as to make his whole life seem weaker and lower. As long as his love-dreams went out toward a vague and ideal woman, supposedly higher and grander than himself, he was spurred on to face the terrible sheer escarpment of social eminence; but when he met, by accident, the actual woman who was to inspire his future efforts, the difficulties he faced took on solid reality. His aspirations fell to the earth, their wings clipped, and became, perforce, submissive beasts at the plough. The force that moved so much of his thought was transformed into other energy.
The table was very gay at dinner next day. Maud was standing at the highest point of her girlhood dreams. Her flushed cheeks and shining eyes made her seem almost a child, and Hartley wondered at her, and relented a little in the face of such happiness.
"They're gay as larks now," thought Hartley to himself, as he joined in the laughter; "but that won't help 'em any ten years from now."
He could hardly speak next day as he shook hands at the station with his friend.
"Good-by, ol' man; I hope it'll come out all right, but I'm afraid—But there! I promised not to say anything about it. Good-by till we meet in Congress," he ended, in a resolute attempt to conceal his dismay.
"Can't you come to the wedding, Jim? We've decided on June. You see, they need a man around the house, so we—You'll come, won't you, old fellow? And don't mind my being a little crusty last night."