“I’m a poor man, but I am alone in the world, so there’s no object in saving. Why shouldn’t I settle a few of the bills for Billie’s illness and say nothing about it?”
I shook my head.
“Mr Thorold would find out and be furious. You must help openly, or not at all. You have helped by keeping him company all these weeks.”
He hitched his shoulders, and made a grimace of disparagement.
“It’s a long time since my company could be called cheering, I’m afraid. Thorold is ‘down and out’ himself, and he ought to have happy people about him.” He turned his dark eyes upon me with sudden interest. “Like you!” he said emphatically, “like you! Excuse a personal remark, Miss Harding, but you seem to have an eternal flow of vitality. Thorold and I were talking about you last night, comparing you with other women of your—er—your generation. We agreed that you left an extraordinary impression of youth!” He looked at me with wistful eyes. He was a lonely man, and I was a woman, conveniently at hand, and possessed of a “feeling heart”. An impulse towards confidence struggled to birth. In his eyes I could see it grow.
“I suppose,” he began tentatively, “you have had an easy life?”
“In a material sense—yes! But I have had my trials.” A wave of self-pity engulfed me and quivered in my voice. “I have been separated, by death or distance, from all my relatives. My best friend is abroad.”
“Death—or distance!” he repeated the words in his deep, slow tones, as though they had struck a note in his own heart. “But distance is death, Miss Harding! The worst kind of death. Desolation without peace! Thorold thinks himself brokenhearted, but there are men who would envy him his clean, sweet grief. His sorrow is for himself alone. She is at peace!”
“Ah,” I said quickly, “I know what you mean. When we are quite young, death seems the crowning loss, but there are worse things—I’ve discovered that! I realised it in those terrible days when we feared for Billie’s brain. When you love people very much, it would be a daily death to know that they were suffering.”
He gazed gloomily into the fire.