"Well, David, you will soon be leaving us forever," he said, bringing his hands together and smiling at me over his wide-spread fingers. In that word "forever" I saw a hidden meaning, and behind my back I clinched my hands and registered my unalterable will. "You are going out into the world to make your name, David," the doctor went on, growing grave. "I do hope that you will succeed as well as Boller of '89. Boller, David, is a man of whom McGraw is proud—a remarkable young man. He dropped into my study for a few minutes this evening and it was a pleasure to listen to him. Such a breadth of view! Such nobility of purpose! He will rise high—that young man. We shall hear much of Boller."
It had been my intention to try to sit out Doctor Todd, but I was in no mood to listen to these praises of Boller from one whom I now regarded as his confederate. I took my leave as quickly as I could, but it was with the inwardly avowed purpose of returning as quickly as I could. Then, I said, the three words would be spoken, not rudely blurted out, but spoken as they should be for the first time. The mention of Boller had brought back to my mind the haunting "three," to echo in every corridor of my brain, and before I fell asleep that night, exhausted by over-thinking, I lifted my hands into the blackness and whispered what had so long hung unuttered on my lips. To-morrow, I said, I shall say it—at two.
At two in the afternoon I found Gladys Todd in the little vine-covered veranda in the rear of the house, painting. I am sure that had I seen her for the first time as she sat there at her easel beautifying a black plaque with a bunch of tulips, every wave of her hand as she plied the brush would have struck the divine spark in my heart. Marguerite at her spinning was not more lovely. The place was ideal for my purpose. We were above the town, hidden by height from its sordidness, and we looked far into mountain-tops where white clouds loitered on the June-day peace. The fresh green of early summer was about us, and the only sound was the drum of bees in the honeysuckle. The time, too, was ideal, for it was a whole hour until "three." My position was ideal, for I placed my chair very close to her and leaned forward with one hand outstretched to support my appeal. Thus I stayed, mute, like an actor who has forgotten his lines. The three words came to my lips, only to halt there.
Fortunately Gladys Todd did not notice my embarrassment, for her eyes were on her work, and while she painted she was telling me of a game of tennis which she had played that morning with the three Miss Minnicks. To the three Miss Minnicks I laid the blame of my silence. Had she been talking of any one else or of anything else, I said, I could have uttered the vital fact which hung so reluctantly on my lips, but to break in rudely in a recitation of fifteen thirties, vantages in and vantages out, with an announcement that I loved her would be quite ridiculous. I dropped my hand and stretched back in my chair. Gladys Todd talked on and painted.
The college clock struck the half-hour, and for me the one clanging note was a solemn warning. I sat up very straight, I grasped the sides of the chair, and the words were uttered. But to me it seemed that some other David Malcolm had spoken them—mere shells of words that rattled in my ears.
"David!" The voice and tone were like my mother's. Gladys Todd stopped painting and, turning, looked at me strangely. I could not have faced that gaze of hers and said another word, but she quickly averted her eyes, abandoned brush and palette, and sat studying her clasped hands.
There was nothing now to hold back the flood of passionate avowal. Perhaps my voice was a little weak, but it grew stronger as I took heart at the sight of her listening so quietly. I told her that I had loved her that evening when we first met; that since then, in all my waking moments, she had been in my thoughts; I had never loved another woman; I never could love another woman. With my outstretched arm hovering so near to her I might have taken her unawares, taken her into my possession and throttled any rising protest; but to touch her with my little finger would have seemed to me a profanation. I expected her to sink into the embrace of that solitary arm.
But she did not. She looked up at me and said: "David, I am sorry—so sorry."
"Sorry?"
There was a ring of indignation in my voice. I was not prepared for such an enigmatic answer. Indeed, I had expected but one response, the one that was mine by right of four years of devotion, by right of those beacon-lights which I had seen so often in her eyes. Sorry? If she was sorry, why had she led me to spend so many hours in her company, why had she walked with me in "our lane," where the very air seemed to brood with sentimental thought? I doubted if I heard her rightly.