“Oh, I’m quite at rest about that. You need not be disturbed.”
“Well, such faith in human nature is stimulating,” he answered. “I should hate to imperil it. So you may be sure I’ll turn up to-morrow. Meanwhile I’m awfully obliged.”
Thereat he went away.
I paid his reckoning from my own purse, and immediately fell again to wondering about him.
By and by it occurred to me, “Why, that is the first human being who has taken you out of yourself for the last two years!” And thereupon I transferred my wonder to the interest he had managed to arouse in my own preoccupied mind. Then gradually my thoughts flowed back into their customary channels.
But early the next day I caught myself asking, “Will he return?” and devoutly hoping that he would. Not on account of the money; I had no anxiety about the money. But somehow, self-centered as I was, I had felt drawn toward this blue-eyed young man, and anticipated seeing him again with an approach to genuine pleasure.
Surely enough, in the course of the afternoon the door opened and he entered.
“Ah,” he said, “you see, I am faithful to my trust. Here is the lucre: count it and be satisfied that the sum is just. Really,” he added, dropping the mock theatrical manner he had assumed, “really, it was frightfully embarrassing yesterday. But I’m a victim of absentmindedness, and in changing my clothes I had omitted to transfer my pocket-book from the one suit to the other. I can’t tell you how much indebted I am for your considerateness. I suppose you are overrun with dead-beats who play that dodge regularly—eh?”
I gave him the answer his question called for, served him with the drinkables he ordered, and stationed, myself at a respectful distance.
He lighted his inevitable cigarette and produced his book. He read and smoked for a few moments in silence. Suddenly he flung the book angrily upon the table, pushed back his glass, and uttered an audible “Confound it!”