He rose and paced the long terrace. In his boat-shoes and white flannels he glided noiselessly back and forth, like a ghost in the star dusk. He paused at the western balustrade and looked off at St. Agatha's. Then he passed me and paused again, gazing lakeward through the wood, as though turning from Helen to Rosalind; and I knew that it was with her, far over the water, in the little cottage at Red Gate, that his thoughts lingered. But when he came and stood beside me and rested his hand on my shoulder I knew that he wished to speak of Helen and I took his hand, and spoke to him to make it easier.
"Well, old man!"
"I was thinking of Helen," he said.
"So was I, Buttons."
"They are different, the two. They are very different."
"They are as like as God ever made two people; and yet they are different."
"I think you understand Helen. I never did," he declared mournfully.
"You don't have to," I replied; and laughed, and rose and stood beside him. "And now there's something I want to speak to you about to-night. Helen borrowed some money of you a little while ago to meet one of her father's demands. I expect a draft for that money by the morning mail, and I want you to accept it with my thanks, and hers. And the incident shall pass as though it had never been."
About one o'clock the wind freshened and the trees flung out their arms like runners rushing before it; and from the west marched a storm with banners of lightning. It was a splendid spectacle, and we went indoors only when the rain began, to wash across the terrace. We still watched it from our windows after we went up-stairs, the lightning now blazing out blindingly, like sheets of flame from a furnace door, and again cracking about the house like a fiery whip.
"We ought to have brought Henry here to-night," remarked Gillespie. "He's alone over there on the island with that dago and they're very likely celebrating by getting drunk."