“Get me a jug of water, will you? Vanessa has been picking these and she sent me back to fix ’em. Hurry, man! She is waiting for me in the garden.” Wayne gazed earnestly at his friend.
“So you have done it, have you, Stuyve?”
“Done what?” demanded Briggs, blushing.
“It.”
“If you mean,” he said with dignity, “that I’ve asked the sweetest girl on earth to marry me, I have. And I’m the happiest man on the footstool, too. Good Heaven, George,” he broke out, “if you knew the meaning of love!
if you could for one second catch a glimpse of the beauty of her soul! Why, man of sordid clay that I was—creature of club and claret and turtle—like you——”
“Drop it!” said Wayne somberly.
“I can’t help it, George. We were beasts—and you are yet. But my base clay is transmuted, spiritualized; my soul is awake, traveling, toiling toward the upward heights where hers sits enthroned. When I think of what I was, and what you still are——”
Wayne rose exasperated:
“Do you think your soul is doing the only upward hustling?” he said hotly.