"Calm yourself, George. The necessary steps are being taken. I think Mrs. Waddington would have been just as pleased to let the whole thing drop, but Molly became very active. She telephoned in all directions, and eventually succeeded in locating a disengaged minister in the neighbourhood of Flushing. She and Mrs. Waddington have gone off together in the car to fetch him. They will be back in about an hour and a half."
"You mean to tell me," demanded George, paling, "that I shall not see Molly for an hour and a half?"
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I quote Thomas Haynes Bayly. And Frederick William Thomas, a poet of the early nineteenth century, amplifies this thought in the lines:
''Tis said that absence conquers love:
But oh, believe it not:
I've tried, alas, its power to prove,
But thou art not forgot.'
Be a man, George. Clench your hands and try to endure."
"It's sickening."
"Be brave," said Hamilton Beamish. "I know just how you feel. I, also, am going through the torment of being parted from the one woman."