She stared at me in profound surprise, then burst out laughing. "I didn't know you had grown pious," she observed with a shrug; and, seeing the fruits and confectionery piled on the table at my side, begged me to offer her some, and fell to eating them ravenously, despite the dignity of her sixteen years, and after devouring all she could, carried the rest of them away in her arms.
I sat quietly thinking about her after I was left alone. I smiled to myself at the thought of her coquettish parting glance, for I was sure she would have kissed me again had I asked her; but I wanted no more of her kisses, although I had found them so sweet. I seemed to have suddenly grown stronger and wiser where she was concerned; yet I suppose the poor truth of the matter was, that she had stung my vanity keenly, and said little to endear herself to me in our recent interview. Her words, instead of harming me, had roused all the resentment of the strong vital force within me. I felt curiously stirred, almost elated, in remembering what she had said, and contrasting her prophecies of impotence and failure with my growing sense of power. When the door-bell rang presently I myself hobbled across the floor on my crutches and opened it.
Jack Holt stood there. "Why, 'tis not really you, Floyd?" he exclaimed in surprise; and taking away one of my crutches, he himself supported me back to my chair. "I was afraid to come in," he went on, sitting down by my side, "lest you should already be over-tired; but if you are well enough to see me I have something to tell you."
"Oh, I am better to-night. In fact, all at once I feel that I am not always going to be the good-for-nothing fellow I have been of late. I begin to have a consciousness that somewhere within me life and energy are stirring again."
"I am so glad!" said he with a voice of some constraint, and looked at me fixedly. "Georgy was here," he observed presently.
"Yes."
"She did you good."
"I don't know," I returned with an effort at indifference: "she may have roused me a little."
He started up, and began to pace the floor with a flurried air quite unusual with him, now and then stopping abruptly and seeming to bend all his energies to the arrangement of a book or mantel-ornament, as if their displacement caused him annoyance—conduct so unlike his ordinary phlegmatic demeanor that I suspected him of extreme embarrassment.
"Speak out, old fellow!" said I briefly. "What's the use of all this hesitation?"