"You'll never know," Stuart said with deep emotion, "how much I owe to you in my own life. You have always been an inspiration to me."
The patient gray eyes smiled.
"I'm glad to hear that to-night, my boy. For strange as it may seem to you, I've been whistling to keep up my courage. I'm going to make this fight for principle because I know I'm right, and yet somehow when I look into the face of my baby I'm a coward. I'm going to make this fight and I've a sickening foreboding of failure. But after all, can a man fail who is right?"
"I don't believe it!" was the ringing answer which leaped to Stuart's lips. "I've had to face a crisis like this recently. I was beginning to hesitate and think of a compromise. You've helped me."
"Good luck, my boy," was the cheery answer. "I was a poor soldier to-night myself until the little weasel told me an obvious lie and I took courage."
"Funny if Bivens should do anything obvious."
"Wasn't it? He pretended to have come in a mood of generosity—his offer of settlement inspired by love."
"The devil must have laughed."
"So did I—especially when he told me that he was engaged to be married."
"Engaged—to—be—married?" Stuart made a supreme effort to appear indifferent—"to whom?"