“Come,” said he softly, “there is no time for us who have loved her so much, each in his own way, to misunderstand.”
Cranch did not answer. He did not move a muscle. But his eyes filled with the thin tears of aged persons.
“And now, Doctor,” said Estabrook, wheeling toward me, “we must find out if Margaret has sent us word.”
He plucked my sleeve; he started toward the stairs. He turned his back on the Gardens of Versailles and the vagrant who kneeled beside the cot in the foreground, with his face buried in the red blankets.
It was the hoarse call of this ghost of a man that stopped us.
“Estabrook!” he said.
“Yes.”
“We may never meet again.”
The younger man went back and without speaking, clasped the other’s hand.
“You will tell one person—just one—about me?” asked Cranch.