She was quiet in her greeting, and gentle. Her cheeks were still flushed, her hair tumbled from her game, but her eyes were thoughtful and, he thought, sad. He felt that the sadness was because of him; of him and the things of which he made her think. He knew of her affection for him, the warmth there was in her admiration of the things for which he had fought. He had discovered that it hurt her now that others should be seeing and not he, pained her to watch so sorry a thing as his falling below himself, wounded both pride and heart that men whom she would doubtless say had never appreciated him were whispering among themselves about how to get rid of him. Why, the poor child might even be tormenting herself with the idea she ought to tell him!
That was why he told her. He pointed to the address on the envelope, saying: “That carries my resignation, Gretta.”
Her start and the tears which rushed to her eyes told him he was right about her feeling. She did not seem able to say anything. Her chin was trembling.
“I see that the time has come,” he said, “when a younger man can do more for the school than I can hope to do for it.”
Still she said nothing at all, but her eyes were deepening and she had that very steadfast, almost inspired look that had so many times quickened him in the class-room.
She was not going to deny it! She was not going to pretend!
After the first feeling of not having got something needed he rose to her high ground—ground she had taken it for granted he would take.
“And will you believe it, Gretta,” he said, rising to that ground and there asking, not for the sympathy that bends down, but for a hand in passing, “there comes a hard hour when first one feels the time has come to step aside and be replaced by that younger man?”
She nodded. “It must be,” she said, simply; “it must be very much harder than any of us can know till we come to it.”
She brought him a sense of his advantage in experience—his riches. To be sure, there was that.