Its two occupants were seated side by side.
“Why, Luney,” said Jimmy Dodson in a voice of bewilderment, “I hardly knew you.”
“Is it surprising?” said his companion.
“And your voice,” said Jimmy Dodson, “I hardly recognize your voice as belonging to you either. Something seems to have happened to you.”
“As you say,” said William Jordan softly, “something seems to have happened to me; but,” he added as he laid his delicate fingers upon those of his friend, “I can never forget those to whom I owe everything.”
Dodson already felt a curious susceptibility to the new and strange manner of his companion.
“But, you know, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, whose joy in their meeting was suddenly tempered by the things that were, “all this must be kept from my people all the same. You see, my father—well, my father is in the Force, and—and, well naturally, it would not be professional. And of course you are done for socially—it is no use my disguising it, is it, old boy? It is only kindness to tell you. And I should be done for socially too if any of my set knew that I had taken up with you again. And I should get sacked from the office—my screw is now three hundred a year—and of course nobody would be to blame but myself. I suppose my taking up with you again is all very weak and wrong; yet if I must tell you the truth, Luney, I have come to feel that I would rather not go on living if I have to do without you.”
The last few sentences of Jimmy Dodson’s remarkable speech, the whole of which was uttered in a very rapid, mumbling, somewhat incoherent fashion, far other than the one he was wont to affect, caused a poignant expression to flit through the large and bright eyes of William Jordan.
“I have no counsel to give you, Jimmy,” he said. “I can only leave you to go out alone into the wilderness.”
Jimmy Dodson looked at his friend with wonder and bewilderment, taking a firmer hold upon him.