* * * * *
During all these days, and long after prosperity had come to them, the two young men were nightly frequenters of the Golden Bar—partly to see the girl they were now both madly in love with, and partly to watch each other.
What was maddening to Huey was that he could make no claim to any special preference shown to himself. Bertha always received him pleasantly, and seemed to appreciate him and understand his point of view, as no other girl he had ever met had done; but the mischief of it was, that her manner to many other persons, Alec, for example, was equally gracious. Particularly to Alec, who was always full of small talk, arrant nonsense for the most part, that Huey disdained, even as he watched with jealous eyes the success of his rival.
Unfortunately for Huey, he was endowed with an imagination, and he saw Bertha not only as she was, a pretty, emotional, pleasure-loving girl, but also as an exalted personage, gifted with all those virtues and talents that formed his mute ideal. And to see her pandering in a public bar to the coarse jokes of fools was to him a mental torture. He did not for a moment doubt that they two were far superior to all about them, and as he recognized her superiority, so he felt in all justice she should recognize his.
Alec, on the contrary, had no imagination at all worth speaking of. To him Bertha was a fine girl, or, as he had learned to express it, “A damned fine girl;” and he said it and thought it in the same tone, as though he were speaking of a horse of great merit or a prize cow. His talk with her, and, for that matter, with every one else, was always on what Theosophists term the “material plane.” And if she responded freely it was perhaps because women of her nature have the art to appear sympathetic to every one they desire to please.
Between the two young men the person of Bertha was never mentioned; but there was a silent acknowledgment of rivalry, a silent determination on each side to have the prize, and a certainty with each that no hope was possible without a big bank balance.
“If I only had twenty thousand pounds I’d marry you to-morrow,” cried out Alec, in a half-jesting, half-serious tone to Bertha.
“If!” was all Bertha replied, as she smiled.
And Huey sat by and listened and ground his teeth, as he also wished that he had the like sum. But he did not blurt out his wishes in a coarse way like Alec—“Curse him!”
The first use Alec made of his freshly acquired income was to buy a rich bracelet and present it to Bertha. This she declined, but consented to go for a drive with him on the following Sunday.