"It will be completed then."
"I don't understand you; I never did. I've often thought you the saddest man I have ever seen, and I've wondered why. You ought not to be sad—fortune is surely a friend of yours. You live in a grand house, and your father is a power in this great community. All the advantages of this life are within your reach; and if you can find cause to be sad, what must be the condition of people who have to struggle in order to live!"
"The summing-up of what you say means that I ought to be thankful."
"Yes, you were stolen, it is true, but you were restored, and therefore, by contrast and out of gratitude, you should be happier than if you had never been taken away."
"All that is true so far as it is true," he replied. "And let me say that I'm not so sad as you suppose. Do you care if I smoke here?"
"Not at all."
He lighted a cigar and sat smoking in silence. A boy shouted in the hall, a dog barked, and a cat sprang up from a doze under a table, looked toward the door, gave himself a humping stretch, and then lay down again.
Whenever DeGolyer looked at the girl, a new expression, the rosy tinge of a strange confusion, flew to her countenance. His talk evoked a self-possessed reply, but over his silence an embarrassment was brooding. She seemed to be in fear of something that sweetly she expected.
"I may not be at the office to-morrow until evening, but will you wait for me?"
"Yes."