“It’s grotesquely simple,” said Hastings, and there was an involuntary tinge of bitterness in the tone he tried to keep even. “My uncle, who has given me my start in life—the only relative I have—has written me to come back to New York at once. I’m to give up being an architect. When it’s the only thing I am fitted for! He has something else for me. He doesn’t explain what. He does vouchsafe the information that the place is quite impossible, but, he says, what are a few years out of a young man’s life?” His voice was a trifle unsteady. Years seemed eternity to him just then.
“I must go, of course, unquestioningly,” he went on, holding himself in check. “Considering that I owe him everything, it’s a military command. And I have no right to say anything but good-by to—to any woman. I’m out of things, that’s all.”
So much, at least, he vowed he would tell her; but he was determined that he would not be so weak as to ask her to wait for him.
The years of his uncle’s bounty fettered him hopelessly. When he knew where he stood, when he had something definite to offer her, then—but not till then. But it was bitter. He had supposed, of course, that he would go back in the autumn, open an office, be self-supporting, and then——
It was a few seconds before Elenore spoke. When she did her voice was cheerful and friendly.
“There is always something interesting in the most impossible places,” she said. “It may be rather fun. And we shall expect you to make it as picturesque as possible in your letters, if we tell you all the gossip here in exchange.”
He said to himself that she understood, at least. He thanked Heaven for that, as youth is prone to thank Heaven when Heaven lives up to its expectations. And if the place was not so very impossible—if—and perhaps——
So hope began to whisper. And then because If and Perhaps were all he could take with him, because she was so winsome and dear and so desirably human, because she was so daintily proud, and because the things he was not to tell her refused to be held back, he caught her hands in his, whispered: “God bless you! I shall write you everything—that I can,” and, wrapping his New England conscience round him, went without a backward glance.
Elenore stood quite still for a moment. The shadows were beginning to thicken in the long room, and she felt a certain restfulness in the half-light.
Then she turned resolutely toward her brother. Something in the dejection of his poise quickened her instantly.