"Desire."
Benis laid the letter softly down upon the ordered desk. No, he need not pity her. She had had the courage to let little things go. She, who had demanded so royally of life, now made no outcry that the price was high. Well, ... it need not be so high, perhaps. He would make it as easy as might be.
The parrot was trying to attract him with his usual goblin croaks. Benis rubbed its bent, green head.
"You'll miss her, too, old chap," he said, adding angrily, "dashed sentimentality!"
The sound of his own voice steadied him. He must be careful. Above all, he must not sink into self-pity. He must go back to his work. It had meant everything to him once. It must mean everything to him again. If he were a man at all he must fight through this inertia. Life had tumbled him out of his shell, played with him for an hour, and now would tumble him back again—no, by Jove, he refused to be tumbled back! He would fight through. He would come out somewhere, some-time.
It occurred to him that he ought to be thankful that Desire at least was going to be happy. But he did not feel glad. He was not even sure that she was going to be happy. Something kept stubbornly insisting that she would have been much happier with him. Quite with-out prejudice, had they not been extraordinarily well suited? He put the question up to fate. The hardest thing about the whole hard matter was the insistent feeling that a second mistake had been made. John and Desire—his mind refused to see any fitness in the mating. Yet this very perversity of love was something which he had long recognized with the complacence of assured psychology.
He heard Mary's voice in the hall. He had forgotten Mary. He hoped she would not tap upon the library door—as she sometimes did. No, thank heaven, she had gone upstairs! That was an odd idea of Aunt Caroline's. If he had felt like smiling he would have smiled at it. Desire jealous of Mary? Ridiculous....
"Here comes old Bones," said Yorick conversationally.
The professor started. It was a phrase he had him-self taught the bird during that time of illness when John's visit had been the bright spot in long dull days. It had amused them both that the parrot seldom made a mistake, seeming to know, long before his master, when the doctor was near.
But today? Surely Yorick was wrong today. John would not come today. Would never come again—but did anyone save John race up the drive in that abandoned manner? Benis frowned. He did not want to see John. He would not see him! But as he went to leave the library by one door John threw open the other and stood for an instant blinded by the comparative dimness within.