"Twenty years older, yes; but he wouldn't have lived here for one DAY!" she answered vivaciously. "He was a diplomat, a courtier to his finger-tips. He was born to the atmosphere of hothouse flowers, and salons, and delightful little drawing-room plots and gossip. He loved politics, and power, and women in full dress, and men with orders. Of course I was very new to it all, but he liked to spoil me, draw me out. If it hadn't been for his accident, I never would have grown up at all, I dare say. As it was, I was more like his mother. We went to Washington for the season, New York for the opera, England for autumn visits, Paris for the spring: I loved to make him happy, Barry, and he wasn't happy except when we were going, going, going. He was exceptionally popular; he had exceptional friends, and he couldn't go anywhere without me. My babies were with his mother—"
She paused, turning a white rose between her fingers. "And afterwards," she said presently, "there was Father. And Father never would spend two nights in the same place if he could help it."
"I wasn't drawn back here as you were," said Barry thoughtfully, "I liked New York; I could have made good there if I'd had a chance. It made me sick to give it up, then; but lately I've been feeling differently. A newspaper's a pretty influential thing, wherever it is. I've been thinking about that clubhouse plan of yours; I wish to the Lord that we could do something for those poor kids over there. You're right. Those girls have rotten homes. The whole family gathers in the parlor right after dinner. Pa takes his shoes off, and props his socks up before the stove; Ma begins to hear a kid his spelling; and other kids start the graphophone, and Aggie is expected to ask her young man to walk right in. So after that she meets him in the street, and the girls begin to talk about Aggie."
"Oh, Barry, I'm so glad you're interested!" Standing a step above him, Sidney's ardent face was very close to his own. "Of course we can do it," she said.
"We!" he echoed almost bitterly. "YOU'LL do it; you're the one—" He broke off with a short, embarrassed laugh. "I was going to cut that sort of thing out," he said gruffly, "but all roads lead to Rome, it seems. I can't talk to you five minutes without—and I've got to go. I said I'd look in at the office."
"You seem to be afraid to be friendly lately, Barry," said Mrs. Burgoyne in a hurt voice, flinging away the rose she had been holding, "but don't you think our friendship means something to me, too? I don't like you to talk as if I did all the giving and you all the taking. I don't know how the girls and I would get along without your advice and help here at the Hall. I think," her voice broke into a troubled laugh, "I think you forget that the quality of friendship is not strained."
"Sidney," he said with sudden resolution, turning to face her bravely, "I can't be just friends with you. You're so much the finest, so much the best—" He left the sentence unfinished, and began again: "You have a hundred men friends; you can't realize what you mean to me. You—but you know what you are, and I'm the editor of a mortgaged country paper, a man who has made a mess of things, who can't take care of his kid, or himself, on his job without help—"
"Barry—" she began breathlessly, but he interrupted her.
"Listen to me," he said huskily, taking both her warm hands in his, "I want to tell you something. Say that I WAS weak enough to forget all that, your money and my poverty, your life and my life, everything that puts you as far above me as the moon and stars; say that I could do that—although I hope it's not true—even then—even then I'm not free, Sidney. There is Hetty, you know; there is Billy's mother—"
There was a silence. Sidney slowly freed her hands, laid one upon her heart as unconsciously as a hurt child, and the other upon his shoulder. Her troubled eyes searched his face.