“And you didn’t tell me,” she accused him.
“It seemed to me none of my affair. I’m a newspaper man—I––”
“And did that excuse you from letting me know of his—of that pursuit of me?”
His newspaper impartiality had failed him, and he hung his head in doubt and shame. She claimed, and she deserved, his friendship; the last vestige of his pretence of mere observation was torn from him. He was a human among humans—and he had a fervid if unexpected thought about the influence and exasperation of the river out yonder.
“I could not tell you!” he cried. “I didn’t think—it seemed––”
“You know, then, you saw why I had left him?” 133
“Liquor!” he grasped at the excuse. “Oh, that was plain enough.”
“Perhaps a woman could forgive liquor,” she suggested, thoughtfully, “but not—not stupidity and indifference. He never disturbed the dust on any of the books of his library. Oh, what they meant my books mean to me!”
She turned and stared at her book shelves.
“Suppose you hadn’t found books?” he asked, glad of the opportunity for a diversion.