"Not because of anything you have said here to-night, I hope," John urged at once. "I want you to believe me, old man, that your confession hasn't made any difference. It's rather relieved my mind, to tell the truth. I suspected something was up that I did not yet know about. It's made me love you more than ever, drawn us closer."
"I appreciate that, John. I feel the same way," Rodrigo said.
Nevertheless, he told himself, he was going away. He would see Mary; deliberately kill her love for him, throw her into John's arms. John needed her. John deserved happiness. It was the least he could do for John. But it was not a confession of weakness, his wanting to see Mary again. He must see her, must do something that would convince her he was unworthy of her love, that would strangle any desire in her to keep his memory alive after he was gone. He must disappear from her heart as well as from her sight.
CHAPTER XX
Rodrigo walked slowly into the offices of the Italian-American Line late the next morning, like a man lately condemned to the scaffold, and booked passage on a vessel sailing for Naples the following Saturday. Then he took the subway uptown.
The warm sun drenching the exhibition rooms of Dorning and Son, the cheerful good mornings of the clerks, mocked at his mood. He summoned a masking smile on his face and held it while he opened the door of John's office and strode in. Mary was sitting beside John at the latter's desk, their heads quite close together. They had been talking confidentially, almost gayly. Their faces sobered as they looked up at the intruder. It seemed a warning to Rodrigo that he must go through with his program. The faint hope, conceived the night before, that the "developments" Mary had written him about, concerned the discovery of Elise's treachery only and had nothing to do with an announcement of a troth between Mary and John, vanished. It was unmistakable. They loved each other. It showed in the quick, warning glance that passed between them as he entered, in the way they almost sprang apart at the sight of a third person.
They greeted him warmly enough, and almost immediately John departed on the excuse of a conference with Henry Madison. Rodrigo took the seat that his partner had vacated. He did not have to urge Mary to remain.
His voice simulated a careless nonchalance as he smiled at her and said, "I hadn't a chance hardly to say a word to you yesterday, Mary."
"That wasn't my fault," she pouted. He was surprised to discover that Mary could pout. He thought she had never looked more adorable. Sophie, Rosa, Elise—never in their prime had they been as beautiful as Mary.