“I don't know, Mr. Plank,” very low.
“Did your interest in his fortunes ever concern him?”
“Yes, once.”
He looked at her sternly, his jaw squaring until his heavy under lip projected. “Within my definition of friendship, is he your friend?”
“You mean he—”
“No, I mean you! I can answer for him. How is it with you? Do you return what he gives—if there is really friendship between you? Or do you take what he offers, offering nothing in return?”
She had turned rather white under the direct impact of the questions. The jarring repetition of his voice itself was like the dull echo of distant blows. Yet it never occurred to her to resent it, nor his attitude, nor his self-assumed privilege. She did not care; she no longer cared what he said to her or thought about her; nor did she care that her mask had fallen at last. It was not what he was saying, but what her own heart repeated so heavily that drove the colour from her face. Not he, but she herself had become the pitiless attorney for the prosecution; not his voice, but the clamouring conscience within her demanded by what right she used the name of friendship to characterise the late relations between her and the man to whom she had denied herself.
Then a bitter impatience swept her, and a dawning fear, too; for she had set her foot on the fallen mask, and the impulse rendered her reckless.
“Why don't you speak?” she said. “Yes, I have a right to know. I care for him as much as you do. Why don't you answer me? I tell you I care for him!”
“Do you?” he said in a dull voice. “Then help me out, if you can, for I don't know what to do; and if I did, I haven't the authority of friendship as my warrant. He is in New York. He did go to the country; and, at his home, the servants suppose he is still away. But he isn't; he is here, alone, and sick—sick of his old sickness. I saw him, and”—Plank rested his head on his hand, dropping his eyes—“and he didn't know me. I—I do not think he will remember that he met me, or that I spoke. And—I could do nothing, absolutely nothing. And I don't know where he is. He will go home after a while. I call—every day—to see—see what can be done. But if he were there I would not know what to do. When he does go home I won't know what to say—what to try to do.... And that is an answer to your question, Miss Landis. I give it, because you say you care for him as I do. Will you advise me what to do?—you, who are more entitled than I am to know the truth, because he has given you the friendship which he has as yet not accorded to me.”