“Very much. She’s wonderful. My father died long ago.”
Mary-Clare did not ask whether he loved his father or not, and she hurried on:
“And now, when I try to think of you in your city, at your work, just how shall I think of you? Make it like a picture.”
Northrup struggled with himself. The girl beside him, in pushing him from her life, was so unutterably sweet and brave.
“My dear, my dear!” he whispered, and remorse, pity, yearning rang in the words.
“Make it like a picture!” Relentlessly the words were repeated. They demanded that he give his best.
“Think of a high little room in a tall tower overlooking all cities,” he began slowly, “the cheap, the beautiful, the glad, and the sad. The steam and smoke roll up and seem to make a gauzy path upon which all that really matters comes and goes as one sits and watches.”
Mary-Clare’s eyes were wide and vision-filled.
“Oh! thank you,” she whispered. “I shall always see it and you so. And sometimes, maybe when the sun is going down, as it is now, you will see me on that trail that is just yours, in your city coming to––to wish you well!”
“Good God!” Northrup shook himself. “What’s got us two? We’ve worked ourselves into a pretty state. Talking as, as if––Mary-Clare, I’m not going away. There will be other days. It’s that book of mine. Hang it! We’ve got snarled in the book.”