He laughed joyously as he caught her hand. "Yes, Mr. Osborne took it!"
"I knew he would! And he likes it? Tell me—how does he like it?"
"You must ask him. But—he likes it!"
"Immensely—I'm certain! Come, you must tell me all!"
They sat down and David told her of his half-hour with Mr. Osborne. Since receiving her note that morning he had not once thought of the end of their last meeting. If he had, and had been aware of the pain that meeting had brought her, he would have marvelled at the ease with which she threw her misery aside for the sake of a mere friend, a dishonoured friend. But he did not wonder; he just drank recklessly of this glorious draught, compounded of her praise and her joy in his joy.
At the end he told her of the three hundred dollars—never thinking that it was barely more than the price of the simple-looking gown she wore, that it was but a penny to the rich furnishings of the drawing-room, that it was her father's income for perhaps less than a quarter of a business hour. And completely abandoned to the boyish happiness that forced him to share everything, he told her of the draft for two hundred dollars.
Her face shadowed; this man, who was paying back, had suddenly brought to mind her father, who was not paying back. But quickly a deep glow came into her eyes.
"You should be as proud of this as of any of the rest," she said.
She gazed at him thoughtfully, her head slightly nodding. "Yes—you are going to win all you started out to win," she went on, her low voice vibrating with belief. "You are going to clear your name; you are going to achieve a personal success; you are going to carry out your dream to help save the human waste. Yes, you are going to do it all."
His success, her words, the glowing sincerity in her brown eyes, swept him to the heights of exaltation. Suddenly his love made another of its trials to burst from him.