"Come to see us. Miss Linden is back with us again," said Justin hospitably.
"Thank you," said Girard, an indefinable stiffening change instantly coming over him. "By the way, I mustn't forget what I came for, before I hurry off."
He took some bills out of his long, flat leather wallet as he rose. "Do you remember lending that sixty dollars to my friend Keston last year? He turned up yesterday, and asked me to see that you got this."
"I'd forgotten all about it," averred Justin. He had not realized until he took the bills that he had been keeping up all day by main strength, with that caved-in sensation of there being nothing back of it—nothing back of it. There are times when the touch of money is as the elixir of life. Justin, holding on by the skin of his teeth for ten thousand dollars, and needing imperatively at least as much more, felt that with this paltry sixty dollars it was suddenly possible to draw a free breath, felt a sheer lightness of spirit that showed how terrible was the persistent weight under which he was living. The very feeling of those separate bills in his pocket made him calmly sanguine.
He got ready to go home a little earlier than usual, saying lightly to Harker, who had come in for his signature to some papers:
"Those payments will begin to straggle in next week. Coneways' isn't due until the 31st—the very last minute! But he's always prompt, thank Heaven—what are you doing?"
"Knocking on wood," said Harker, with a grim smile.
"Oh, knock on wood all you want to," returned Justin.
He even thought of Lois on his way, and stopped to buy her some flowers. It was the first time he had thought of her unconsciously for a week. While he was waiting for a car to pass before he crossed the street, his eye caught the headline on a paper a newsboy was holding out to him: