"And Corkey does not know how rapidly this anxiety is killing me!"
The druggist plans every day to confess all to Corkey. Every day, too, there is a plan to meet Esther. But as David Lockwin grows small, Esther grows grand. Talking with the servants of her mother's home has degraded, declassed, the husband. He has hungered to meet her, yet months intervene without that bitter joy.
It is a bitter joy. Yesterday, when Lockwin carried a prescription to the house of a very sick widow, he suddenly came face to face with Esther. It had been long apparent to the man that the woman was repelled by his face. This, yesterday, she did not conceal. The husband trembled with a thousand pleasures as the sacred form passed by. He struggled with ten thousand despairs as he was robbed of her company and left to bemoan her disdain.
He worshiped her the more. He read last night, more eagerly, how love endureth all things. It must fast come to this, that David Lockwin shall love her at a distance, and that she shall be true to the memory of the great and good David Lockwin.
Or, he must approach Corkey on the subject of his scheme of reunion. This morning, washing the windows of the drug-store, the proprietor revolves the problems of his existence.
"Time is passing," he groans; "too much time."
The gossip of the store deals often with Dr. Tarpion. Dr. Tarpion is gradually arousing the jealousy of the husband. The burning of the consolatory letters was a dreadful repulse of the lover's siege.
The druggist has scrubbed the windows with the brush. He is drying them with the rubber wiper. He stamps the pole on the sidewalk. He does not want to be jealous, but time is going by--time is going by. That Tarpion! It would be hard! It would be hard!
A new thought comes. The disfigured face grows malicious.
"It would be bigamy! Ha!"