Marcreta made a random reply. She was wondering what kind of person Roger Kenwick's real self was. And she was soon to discover. For that evening marked the beginning of a new era for them both. Scarcely a week passed that he did not spend Saturday and Sunday evenings at the house on Pine Street. Sometimes he read aloud to her "stuff" that he had written for the local newspapers. Sometimes she read to him from her favorite books. Once she helped him plan the plot of an absorbing serial story. But often they didn't read anything at all; just sat in front of the open fire and talked.
In May Kenwick was graduated from the university, but was still living at the fraternity-house in Berkeley when there came a sudden summons from New York. He ought to come, Isabel informed him, for his brother was seriously ill. On the night before he left he made a longer call than usual at the Morgan home.
"Everett's the finest chap in the world," he told Marcreta. "He's been like a father to me. But——Lord! How I hate to tear myself away from here! And the worst of it is, I don't know how long I may have to stay. You won't forget me if it's a long time?"
And then all at once they were not talking about his trip any more, nor of Everett. "If you could only give me some hope to go on," Kenwick was saying. "Something to live on while I'm away."
But to this entreaty Marcreta was almost coldly unresponsive. She tried evasions first; asked solicitous questions concerning his plans; showed a heart-warming interest in his anxiety concerning his brother. But, forced at length to answer his persistent question, she said simply: "No. I don't care for you—in that way. Let's not talk any more about it. Let's not spoil our last evening together."
It brought him to his feet white and shaken. "Spoil my last evening with you!" he cried. "Spoil my whole life! That's what it will do if I can't have you in it." His fingers sought an inside pocket of his coat. "I've got your picture," he told her fiercely. "I got it down at Stafford's studio the other day. And I'm going to carry it with me always—until you give me something better."
A month after his arrival in New York he wrote her that his brother had recovered and that he would soon be coming back to find a position in a newspaper office in San Francisco. But he didn't come back. For it was just at this time that men began to hear strange new voices calling to them from out of the world-chaos. Day by day they grew in volume and in authority luring youth out of the isolation of personal ambition into the din and horrible carnage of war. Just before he left for a Southern training-camp Kenwick wrote her a long letter. In it there was neither past nor future tense. It concerned itself solely, almost stubbornly, with the present.
On the evening that she received it Marcreta held conference with her brother in the dignified old drawing-room. "Clinton, I want to make the old house take a part in the war. I've been talking it over with Dr. Reynolds. He says it would make an ideal sanitarium. I want to use it for the families of enlisted men; the women and children, you know, who are too proud for charity and who, for just a nominal sum, could come here and get the best treatment. If you were at the front, wouldn't it relieve your mind to know that somebody you loved, I for instance, was getting the proper care when I was ill, even though you couldn't provide it for me? I'll do all this out of my own money, of course, and keep your room and mine, so that this will still be home to you when—you come back from training-camp."
He stared at her incredulously. "Why, how did you——What makes you think that—I'm going away?"
"I saw Captain Evans's name on that envelope the other day, so I wrote to him and asked if you had quizzed him about war work," she told him shamelessly. "I couldn't help it, Clint. I had to know. I really knew anyway. Knowing you, how could I help seeing that you were mad to get away and help. Every man must be. But you've been afraid to broach it to me."