The other rose up instantly.
"You couldn't give me too much to do in this matter," declared he, earnestly. "I would do it alone if you were not here, and I had brains enough, Kirk. The thing must end. If it goes on much longer and I keep seeing those infernal insinuations in the papers, I'll go completely off my chump."
There was a little silence; then Ashton-Kirk said:
"I never knew that you were—ah—this way, old chap, until the other day. How long has it been going on?"
"Why, for years, I think," answered Pendleton. "Being very distantly related, Edyth and I saw quite a deal of each other when she was a slip of a girl. And she was a stunner, Kirk, even then. Kid-like, I fancied I'd get it all over with when the proper time came; but somehow I never got around to it. She turned out to be a dickens of a strong character, you see; and she expected so much of life that I got the notion that perhaps I wasn't just the right sort of fellow to realize her ideals.
"You know, old boy, there are times when a man thinks quite a bit of himself. This is more especially so before he's twenty-five. But then again there are times when he sees his bad points only, and then of all the unutterable dolts in the universe, he gets the notion that he is the worst. When we were at college and I held down that third base position and hit 320 in the first season, I was chesty enough. I suppose you remember it. And when I came into my money and began to make collections of motor cars, yachts and such things, I thought I had taken life by the ears and was making it say 'uncle.'
"Well, we're only grown-up boys, after all. I recall that I thought I'd dazzle Edyth with my magnificence, just as Tom Sawyer did the little girl with the two long braids of yellow hair—do you remember? And it was after I discovered that she was not to be dazzled that I sort of gave up. I wasn't anybody—I never would be anybody; and Edyth would be the sort of woman who would expect her husband to take the front at a jump. And no sensible person could imagine me at the front of anything, unless it was a procession on its way to the bow-wows."
"I think," said Ashton-Kirk, "that you began to prostrate yourself before your idol; and when a man takes to that, he always gets to thinking meanly of himself. The attitude has much to do with the state of mind, I imagine. Miss Vale is a courageous, capable girl; but you can never tell what sort of a man a woman will select for a husband. Girls have fancies upon the subject, and give voice to them sometimes; but it is the man they choose and not the one they picture to whom you must give your attention."
"I suppose that is true enough," said Pendleton.
"Miss Vale's evident strength awed you," went on the other. "And then your timidity began to magnify her qualities. No woman is what she seems to be to the man who loves her. Miss Vale is not so difficult to please as you thought. I fancy that her engagement to young Morris proves that."