In the crystalline days that followed I did much to bring about a friendship between Garry and Berna. At first I had difficulty in dragging him to the house, but in a little while he came quite willingly. The girl, too, aided me greatly. In her sweet, shy way she did her best to win his regard, so that as the winter advanced a great change came over him. He threw off that stern manner of his as an actor throws off a part, and once again he was the dear old Garry I knew and loved.
His sunny charm returned, and with it his brilliant smile, his warm, endearing frankness. He was now twenty-eight, and if there was a handsomer man in the Northland I had yet to see him. I often envied him for his fine figure and his clean, vivid colour. It was a wonderfully expressive face that looked at you, firm and manly, and, above all, clever. You found a pleasure in the resonant sweetness of his voice. You were drawn irresistibly to the man, even as you would have been drawn to a beautiful woman. He was winning, lovable, yet back of all his charm there was that great quality of strength, of austere purpose.
He made a hit with every one, and I verily believe that half the women in the town were in love with him. However, he was quite unconscious of it, and he stalked through the streets with the gait of a young god. I knew there were some who for a smile would have followed him to the ends of the earth, but Garry was always a man's man. Never do I remember the time when he took an interest in a woman. I often thought, if women could have the man of their choice, a few handsome ones like Garry would monopolise them, while we common mortals would go wifeless. Sometimes it has seemed to me that love is but a second-hand article, and that our matings are at best only makeshifts.
I must say I tried very hard to reconcile those two. I threw them together on every opportunity, for I wanted him to understand and to love her. I felt he had but to know her to appreciate her at her true value, and, although he spoke no word to me, I was soon conscious of a vast change in him. Short of brotherly regard, he was everything that could be desired to her—cordial, friendly, charming. Once I asked Berna what she thought of him.
"I think he's splendid," she said quietly. "He's the handsomest man I've ever seen, and he's as nice as he's good-looking. In many ways you remind me of him—and yet there's a difference."
"I remind you of him—no, girl. I'm not worthy to be his valet. He's as much above me as I am above—say a siwash. He has all the virtues; I, all the faults. Sometimes I look at him and I see in him my ideal self. He is all strength, all nobility, while I am but a commonplace mortal, full of human weaknesses. He is the self I should have been if the worst had been the best."
"Hush! you are my sweetheart," she assured me with a caress, "and the dearest in the world."
"By the way, Berna," I said, "you remember something we talked about before he came? Don't you think that now——?"
"Now——?"
"Yes."